‘Which means eight.’
‘Don’t be negative,’ Lou said, but she kept her tone light. ‘He seems nice.’
Josh knew Lou knew the real estate guy wasn’t nice. Well, he might very well be nice to his mates and his mum, but he was trying to sell them a house. Nice didn’t come into it. ‘Come on, Lou.’
She tightened her arms around him. ‘It will be fine,’ she said. ‘I’ve done the maths.’
‘So you keep saying. It’s just so much money.’ But Josh was getting sick of himself. It was what it was, and Lou needed him to be on board.
He just wasn’t used to feeling like he and Lou were on different sides. And over the past year, since they had Stella, that’s what he was feeling more and more.
They used to talk about everything, the two of them, lying in bed. It was his favourite place to be in the world, on his side, looking at Lou, listening to her talk. He liked to play with her hair while she told him stories about the kids she was teaching, about her friends, about the news, and politics (a female prime minister!). He used to love reaching for her, mid-sentence, and kissing her, feeling her soften in arms even as she kept talking to him, whispering right into his ear as he pushed inside her and they moved together.
He had never felt more himself than at those moments.
But those moments never came anymore. There were no slow nights and lazy mornings. There was always Stella – brilliant, heart-lifting, all-consuming Stella – and all the things she needed daily, hourly, by the minute, filling the time that used to be theirs.
He wouldn’t change it, he kept saying – to Mick, to Anika, to whoever was asking. But he missed Lou. The Lou who wasn’t always preoccupied, and tired.
Josh was achingly aware that he wasn’t as attuned to his daughter’s needs as Lou was. But it did feel sometimes – often – that he wasn’t invited to be. Whenever he tried to take ownership of even the smallest Stella-related project, he got it wrong. Lou was constantly irritated by his inability to understand the tiny nuances of how to make his daughter happy, to convince her to stop crying, to persuade her to cooperate.
And he knew Lou struggled with her new role, the one women were supposed to settle into effortlessly but which, as far as he could see, required her to give up on many of the things that had made her Lou. She was home all the time, and she had never loved that. She didn’t have time to run. She had taken on all these household tasks he didn’t even know existed, and she clearly hated doing them. It felt like his role now was a supporting one, both literally and figuratively. And it weighed on him in ways that made him itch.
Yes, having babies changed everything, just like his mum had said.
‘You know I love you,’ Lou was saying to him, arms still around his waist, head still at his back. ‘But you’re being a real pain in the arse about this.’
She stepped away, turned him around and took his hands. ‘Look at the possibilities,’ she said. ‘Think about how happy we could be here.’
‘Here, here, here,’ said Stella, still rolling around on the floor. ‘I heeeeeeeere.’
‘It’s still just me and you,’ Lou said to him. ‘We’re the same people, just on a different set. One with some space to breathe.’ And she widened her eyes and smiled at Josh as she mimed taking in some deep breaths.
He looked at her, with all her energy, her positivity, her ability to look at this blank room and paint a picture of a happy home.
‘No more than seven-seventy,’ he said, and he smiled, and she let go of his hands and turned in a tiny victory circle, pumping her fists like a champion boxer.
‘Hear that, Stell?’ Lou said, beaming. ‘Your daddy’s choosing happiness.’
‘Happiness and debt,’ corrected Josh, as he bent and swept Stella up in a hug.
And for a moment, he saw them through the real estate agent’s eyes. Think I sold it to a young family, Josh imagined him saying when he got back to the office today. And his colleagues would all nod, because the city was full of young families who were taking on big loans to buy small houses with the optimistic hope of living happy, ordinary lives in them.
Why did he think they were special enough to be any different?
Lou
‘I’m giving our marriage seven months,’ Lou said to Josh, loudly, clearly, directly. ‘We can’t keep going like this.’
It felt like those words had been stuck in her throat for weeks now, and saying them out loud, to Josh, was like expelling them with an almighty, cleansing cough.
But I should have chosen this moment better, she thought, as she held on tight to the base of the ladder. Josh was at the top, high among the branches of their tree, safety goggles on and a chainsaw in his hand. He peered down at her. ‘Pardon?’
‘I decided in January, Josh,’ she called up to him, ‘that this is the year of make or break.’
‘Make or break?’ He pushed the goggles back on his head with one hand, the other still clutching the saw.
‘Us,’ Lou said, her face turned up to him. ‘One year to decide if we should stay together or not.’
Josh didn’t say anything. Lou held on tight to the legs of the ladder. A minute passed. Lou looked up to see that Josh’s goggles were back on. She heard the chainsaw start up.
Against the noise, she yelled up into the leaves, ‘Don’t take too much! Just a trim!’
*
The month since the camping trip had been . . . fraught was the word that Lou was using. She’d been in the house with the girls when Josh arrived back that Easter Sunday, climbing out of an Uber from Central Station, weighed down by backpack and tent, still damp and darkly furious.
‘I had to leave a lot of stuff there with . . . them,’ he’d said as he came into the kitchen, where she was sitting at the table, reading news about a terrible bombing in Sri Lanka on her phone. The kids were already in bed, full of chocolate. It had been a long day.
‘How could you just take off like that?’ he asked. She could hear the anger in his voice. His hands were shaking as he planted them on the table and leaned towards her. ‘How could you just leave me? What did you tell the kids? All the way home I’ve just been trying to think of why you would leave me there . . . with them.’
Lou looked at Josh then, her tall and handsome husband, bedraggled and confused. ‘You thought about it for three hours on a train and you still couldn’t work it out?’ she asked. ‘Really?’
‘Explain it to me. Because I bet that what you think happened last night and what actually happened are not the same.’
‘This isn’t just about last night, Josh,’ Lou said. ‘I think you know that.’
‘Lou, I don’t know that!’ Josh walked around to stand next to her. She looked down at his muddy, battered Blundstone boots. He still wore those, always. This pair was now coated with mud and leaving smears on the kitchen floor. ‘I need you to tell me what the fuck is going on,’ he said.
‘I’d tell you, but I have no idea.’ Lou looked back at her phone and kept scrolling. ‘I think you’re the one with the answers.’
Josh was going to shout. It took a long time for him to get to that. What Lou knew and Josh’s mum Emma knew was that Josh pushed his anger down and down and down, afraid of being that man he’d known from childhood. The kind of man who punched holes in plaster and shouted into faces and made everyone around him feel they were always, always standing on a fault line that could fracture at any moment.
But there was a tipping point. She’d seen it once or twice, over the last few years. There came a point at which Josh couldn’t pretend to be the opposite of an angry man anymore. She hated seeing him reach it, because after fourteen years together, his feelings were entwined with her feelings, and the disappointment and disgust he would be soaking in for days after an explosion would make the whole house toxic. Still, she wasn’t going to defuse him. Not this time.
Josh hadn’t yelled yet. Lou could feel him wrestling with it. She could feel the frustration and confusion rolling off hi
m in waves, his energy crashing into hers. But, for some reason, Lou was finding it easy to stay calm in this chair, in this spot, in this kitchen, right now.
And then Josh roared, a big, ugly noise from deep in his chest, and slammed his hands onto the table. ‘You think I slept with Dana. I didn’t fucking sleep with Dana! I don’t want to. That is not what I want. I want you. I want our family. I want our home. I want you to stop treating me like I’m the world’s worst person, because I’m not.’
Lou didn’t feel anything as Josh’s words poured over her. She knew that she should, she knew that leaving Josh at a rainy campsite on Easter Sunday was something to feel guilty about, but she didn’t. She just felt tired.
I promised I’d give it a year, she thought. I promised a year, for Stella and for Rita and for all the years we’ve passed through together and all the ones ahead.
Josh collapsed into the seat next to her, and put his head on his arms, and cried.
And still, Lou sat, just numb.
*
She and Gretchen and the girls had driven back to Sydney in almost silence. She had spent the night in Gretchen’s cabin, the two of them lying on narrow bunks, and they’d done all their talking then.
Lou was shaken and teary. Gretchen thought the whole scene with Dana and Marco was hilarious, and a little pathetic.
‘Josh is out of his depth,’ she said. ‘I think he’s casting around for something to make you notice him, and he’s fallen into something he didn’t expect.’
‘Make me notice him?’ Lou almost laughed. ‘I don’t think that’s it.’
‘I do,’ said Gretchen. ‘He doesn’t know what’s happening to his life. Lou, you have to admit some fault there, friend.’
I do, Lou nodded. I do.
‘I know you’re struggling, but Josh looks lost to me.’ Gretch looked like she was taking a deep breath, like she was about to say something important. ‘I don’t think he deserves it. I think he’s a good man. And deep down, so do you.’
‘I just saw him kissing another woman on our family holiday!’ Lou argued, but even as she said it, she didn’t really believe it herself.
‘He was being kissed, Lou,’ Gretchen said. ‘You know it. And, really . . .’ She trailed off, but Lou knew exactly what her friend was thinking. Glass houses.
‘I should go and see to the girls,’ Lou said half-heartedly. She didn’t want to go back out there.
‘They’re with Josh, they’re fine,’ Gretchen said. ‘Let it all cool down.’
‘Fine? They could be witnessing an orgy.’
‘No chance. Josh will be snoring his head off. If we’re quiet, we can probably hear him.’ Gretchen laughed.
She was right, of course. As soon as it was light, Lou had tiptoed out to the tent. The girls were tangled up on one mattress, Josh was alone on theirs. Everyone was snoring. Storm clouds were rolling in.
Lou couldn’t face any of them. Not Josh, and not Dana and Marco. She just wanted to get her girls and go home, and that’s what she did. She shook Stella awake, pulled Rita into her arms, and took them back to Gretchen’s cabin just as the birds were beginning to shout. She lied to her daughters about rain cutting the holiday short, the Easter Bunny delivering directly to the car and Daddy staying behind to pack up.
All the way back to Sydney, Lou had looked out of the window and told herself it was time to unpick all this mess.
‘Take it all to the therapist,’ Gretchen said, looking sideways at her as they barrelled down the highway. ‘And for fuck’s sake, you’ve got to talk to Josh about what’s really going on.’
Lou knew she was right. I’m going to try everything to save it, she had promised herself in January. And if it doesn’t work I’m going to let it go.
But only then.
5. Honesty, she wrote into her phone. What happens if I’m not counting down alone?
She watched the tops of pale green gums flash past against the blue sky as they left the south coast behind. But the thought of having the conversation made her feel nauseous.
She still hadn’t been ready that night at the kitchen table, after Josh cried, when she eventually reached out a hand and put it on his head.
‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘It’s going to be okay, one way or another.’
And she hadn’t been ready in the weeks since, when they’d fallen back into the routine of school and home and dinners and sport and backyard catch-ups with neighbours on a Sunday and doing the big shop on a Saturday afternoon and Josh writing in his guitar room, and Lou fighting the urge to follow the red car.
And Josh hadn’t mentioned Dana and Marco again since the camping weekend. Lou hadn’t either. Josh had attempted to make a joke when they saw Dana from a distance at the school gate, and Lou had tried to laugh, but it came out hollow. And they’d had sex maybe twice, in the bed, Lou looking at the leaves as her husband’s mouth was up here and down there, but she couldn’t feel much of anything. And most days Gretchen would message to ask if there had been ‘progress’ and Lou would reply ‘soon’.
But nothing actually happened until the tree came through the window while Rita was sleeping.
*
The scream was louder than the smash, louder than the wind that had been whipping the house all night. And when Lou and Josh reached the kids’ bedroom door and flicked on the light, Rita was still screaming, her covers over her head, her pink and blue Frozen doona sprinkled with terrifying shards of broken glass.
Lou ran to the bed and sank down next to her daughter’s pillow, tiny spikes pushing into her knees.
She was aware of Josh at Stella’s bed, lifting her in his arms. She was crying too, and over at the window, a tree branch was swaying through the jagged edges of the broken window, like an arm reaching in.
‘For fuck’s sake!’ yelled Josh, over the wailing and the wind. ‘That tree!’
Lou was trying to peel back the cover from Rita’s head, ‘Come on, baby, are you okay?’ she asked. ‘Let me see, sweetie. Let me see . . .’
And in that moment Lou did what people in movies did. She started making deals in her head. If Rita’s okay, I’m going to start living my life without lies . . . Her daughter whimpered. If Rita’s okay, I’m never following the red car again. If Rita’s okay, I’m going to tell Josh what’s been going on.
‘Come on, Reets,’ she pleaded. ‘Let me look.’
Josh was suddenly next to her, seeming not to notice the shards of glass cutting into his bare feet. ‘You need to move away from here, Lou,’ he was saying. ‘I’ll lift Rita out, but we need to get away from the glass.’
It must have been a powerful blast of wind that had smashed the tree branch through the glass at just the right angle to shatter the pane. Looking at what was left of the window, Lou could see there were big spikes still sitting in the frame; another gust of wind and they might fall onto Rita’s bed under the window.
‘Come on, Reets,’ Lou whispered close to the cover. ‘We need to get you out. Come on, darling . . .’
And suddenly Josh was lifting Lou by her shoulders, moving her away from the bed, and in spite of her fear, Lou was instantly, instinctively reminded of the other time he’d lifted her like that, on the night they’d met, when he’d pulled her from the floor she was cowering on and she’d kissed him, just like that.
And then Lou became aware of the spikes of pain in her knees and looked down to see blood running in thin lines down her legs. And now she was out of the way, Josh bent down and in one decisive move, yanked off the duvet and swept down to gather Rita and carry her in his arms to the other side of the room.
Lou got to look at Rita, and she was fine. There was no blood anywhere that Lou could see.
‘Muuummy!’ Rita was calling out now, from the safety of her father’s arms. ‘Muuummy!’
And Josh and Lou’s eyes met over Rita’s head. And they shared a smile of relief for a moment before Lou cupped her daughter’s little face in her hands and kissed it.
And that b
ranch was still reaching in, flailing about for something, and the whole family stood there looking at it for a few moments before they cleaned up to go and sleep in the other room, all of them together.
*
So Josh was up the tree with the chainsaw when Lou finally blurted out the truth about her marriage experiment.
Rita and Stella were on a play date a few doors down with a neighbour’s kids. This is exactly how I pictured it, Lou thought. Living here, in the house with the tree. I imagined that the kids would be able to play in each other’s back gardens. I imagined that we’d have enough room to invite people over. I imagined that we’d plant a garden together, talking about important things that didn’t always revolve around the kids. And the tree would grow with our family.
‘Watch out down there!’ Josh called over the buzz of the saw. ‘Branches are going to fall.’
‘Not too many!’
‘Lou!’
And she jumped a little to the side, still holding on to the ladder, and small branches did fall, whizzing past her ears. I didn’t picture this part, she thought. The temporary board on the window. The kids’ bikes overturned on the too-long grass. The angry husband at the top of the ladder. The guilt and frustration in my gut.
‘That’s too many!’ she called as another branch fell.
‘This tree nearly killed your daughter!’ Josh shouted, loud enough to be heard over the saw. Loud enough to be heard by Ahmed, who was washing his car across the street.
‘Not on purpose,’ Lou replied. She knew how ridiculous that sounded.
The tree was the reason she’d loved the house in the first place. The reason she was able to talk Josh into it.
More leaves fell.
‘Get out of the way,’ Josh yelled. ‘This is a big one.’
Lou let go of the ladder and stepped back.
It was the branch that had smashed Rita’s window, heavy and knobbly with the weird-looking ‘hand’.
It crashed to the lawn next to Lou’s feet. She looked up at the tree without it. It was still there, lopsided, uneven, all cut back on the house side, the yellowy leaves still spreading out over the pavement.
I Give My Marriage a Year Page 18