I Give My Marriage a Year

by Holly Wainwright

  Now Sara was looking at Josh, who was looking at the floor.

  ‘We’re clearly not making each other happy,’ Lou said, addressing the therapist. ‘And I don’t want to be responsible for his unhappiness. I’m responsible for enough already.’

  Sara’s eyes went back to Lou. ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘Well . . .’ she inhaled. ‘I’m responsible for a whole classroom full of children and all their parents’ expectations. I’m responsible for our daughters – where they go, what they do, who they’re with, what they eat . . .’

  Josh stirred, and looked across at her. ‘Hey,’ he said. ‘That’s not on. I do a lot more for the girls than –’

  ‘Than most of your mates do,’ Lou finished his sentence. ‘That’s true, Josh. But, still, you execute, you don’t organise. You’re there, but you don’t know what snacks they’ll eat and how much Vegemite is too much Vegemite on Rita’s toast – which is why she never eats your toast, by the way – and you don’t know that Stella’s friend Amelie is really a little pain and you don’t know that their six-month dental check-ups are due next week, or that Rita’s been falling asleep in kindy class and that Stella is struggling a bit with her reading and could do with some extra support and that it’s their class teacher’s birthday next week and we’re doing a whip-round for some flowers because she’s just lost her mum and that we’re out of those organic fucking crispbread things I’ve been trying to buy instead of rice crackers because of the environment and . . .’ Lou realised she was ranting at almost the same moment that Sara cut her off.

  ‘I think you’ve made your point, Lou,’ the therapist said, nodding. ‘And it’s a good one.’

  ‘Hold on,’ said Lou, holding up a hand. ‘And there’s the house. Do you think you live in a lovely, clean home by accident? Do you think it magically remakes itself like that every fucking night when you disappear into your guitar room – which is not your guitar room, by the way – for your precious you time?’

  ‘Okay . . .’

  ‘Not finished, Sara, sorry. And did you know that I bought your sister Maya a birthday present yesterday, because you never would –’

  ‘Maya wouldn’t care if –’

  ‘Yes she would, Josh! She gets something from you every birthday, wherever she is in the world, and you probably don’t even know that, but it makes her feel anchored. And then there’s my mum, who I’ve been disappointing my whole fucking life, and my dad, who’s really not well, and Rob, who’s lonely as fuck since he broke up with Toby, and –’

  ‘Lou, really,’ Sara said, still gentle, but firm.

  ‘And you, Josh! I love you, but I’ve been dragging you around for fourteen years, pulling you forward, bolstering you, cheering you on . . . It’s exhausting.’ Lou was crying now. ‘I’m exhausted.’

  ‘Enough, Lou,’ Sara said. ‘You’ve said your piece.’

  Lou felt like she might hyperventilate; she was dizzy, gasping for air, and she couldn’t stop the tears. She didn’t want to be sobbing in front of Sara. In front of Josh, who was infuriating her with his silence. Snot was bubbling from her nose, her shoulders were heaving.

  ‘Josh,’ Sara said, ‘it’s okay for you to respond, you know. You have your own truth, too.’

  The room was quiet again. Apart from the gasps of her own breath, all Lou could hear was the whir of the air-con in the bright, freezing space.

  ‘She doesn’t make me unhappy,’ Josh said finally. And Lou looked up at him as he pulled back his shoulders and spoke to her directly. ‘You don’t make me unhappy. You make my life immeasurably better, and you have since I met you. But if you’ve fallen out of love with me, I want you to go. Because what’s crushing me is seeing you unhappy. And that’s the fucking truth. Even if . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re fucking someone else.’

  ‘I’m . . . not.’ Lou felt sick, knew her tear-smeared face would be red.

  He gave her a long look, and then looked down again. ‘Whatever. Everything you said is true. And I adore you, and I hate seeing you so miserable. So, if you want a separation, that’s what we should do.’

  ‘What do you want, Josh?’ Sara asked him, as Lou stared at her husband, the way he had leaned back in his seat, looking like he’d released something.

  ‘People keep asking me that,’ Josh said. ‘I want what I’ve always wanted. I want Lou. I want my girls. I want to play the guitar. I swear to God I am not more complicated than that. Maybe . . .’

  ‘Maybe?’

  ‘Maybe that’s the problem. I don’t want more.’ And Josh exhaled. ‘I wish Lou was happy with what we have, too. But she’s not.’

  ‘I . . . was.’

  ‘Yes, exactly.’

  Josh and Lou were sitting maybe a foot apart on the couch, and suddenly, she could feel how close he was. To Lou, Josh looked like he had just been revived after a period of sedation. He was almost . . . smiling.

  Turning back to face Sara, Lou realised that Sara was staring at them.

  ‘That was . . . very insightful,’ she said. ‘Of both of you.’

  Josh was still looking at Lou; she could feel it on the side of her head, like a warm light shining on the hair just above her ear.

  ‘A very productive session,’ Sara said. ‘With a lot for you to think about.’

  ‘But what happens now?’ asked Lou. ‘After we just . . . said all that?’

  ‘Nothing has to happen,’ said Sara. ‘But I hope it’s given you a lot to talk about.’

  ‘But I said –’

  ‘– that you want to separate,’ Josh finished her sentence.

  ‘I didn’t say I wanted to . . .’

  ‘Lou is allowed to express her opinion out loud, Josh, as you are yours. Nothing has to be acted on immediately. Give yourselves time to think about what’s been aired here today.’

  ‘We’ve been in therapy for months now,’ Lou said, she wasn’t sure whether to Josh or Sara. ‘Surely something’s supposed to happen.’

  ‘Some people are in therapy for years,’ Sara said. ‘Drastic action isn’t essential. Acceptance and appreciation are more important.’

  ‘Oh.’ Lou thought about what she’d said just a few minutes ago. I think we should separate. And she looked at Josh again.

  He was smiling at her.

  ‘Stop it,’ she said. But she felt kind of silly, because she was smiling too.

  *

  ‘My bum’s cold,’ Lou said, and broke the spell.

  They’d travelled home from the therapist’s office in separate cars. Lou had gone to pick up the girls from after-school care, and by the time they got home, Josh was there, making pasta sauce.

  Stella went up to Josh and hugged him from behind.

  ‘I missed you today, Daddy,’ Stella said, and Lou saw Josh gulp with emotion, stirring the sauce at the stove.

  ‘I missed you too, sweetheart,’ he said. ‘I always do.’

  ‘Everything okay, Stell?’ Lou asked. She’d put money on that little Amelie being a pest again.

  ‘Yeah, okay.’ And she came to stand close to Lou, too, who gave her eldest a tight hug.

  ‘My girls,’ said Lou. ‘How lucky am I?’

  ‘Sooooooooo lucky!’ called Rita, and kicked a shoe across the kitchen floor.

  Lou was careful not to catch Josh’s eye as she laid the table, persuaded Stella and Rita to unpack their schoolbags and wash their hands.

  She and Josh had continued to move around each other as they ate dinner then Lou took the girls up for their bath while Josh did the dishes. It was like every night, the monotony of domesticity. Depending on Lou’s mood, she could find it intoxicating or suffocating. Today, after everything she’d said in the therapy session, it was intoxicating; she was looking almost in wonder at what she and Josh had managed to create from a chance meeting in a dingy Newtown pub the night she found out her boyfriend was cheating on her.

  Then they’d both been in the girls’ room, reading stories
and tucking in.

  It was cold outside: winter was beginning to settle. The girls wanted an extra blanket. Then a drink of water. Then Rita needed the toilet. Instead of disappearing into the guitar room, Josh loitered as the bedtime tasks tailed off. He and Lou still weren’t looking at each other.

  Finally, the girls’ room was quiet and dark. Lou left, pulling the door to, and found Josh right outside. Now he did look at her, and her stomach flipped in such a clichéd way it made her giggle.

  ‘What?’ she asked him.

  ‘What?’ he said.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  And he moved in on her, her husband did. And he took her face in both his big hands and he bent to kiss her but instead, he stopped just before their lips met.

  ‘You are so fucking sexy,’ he said.

  And Lou, who was wearing the sensible dress she’d been wearing all day, who hadn’t brushed her hair or checked her face since she ran out the door this morning, knew her husband was right. She could see it in the way his eyes were looking at her. She could see herself as he saw her.

  He bent again and bit her bottom lip, gently, firmly. And then he’d kissed her, and run his hands down her body and around her waist, lifted her feet off the floor and carried her down the hallway and into the bedroom, bumping the door closed behind him, and he took her over to the window.

  But now her bum was cold, and her legs were aching, her back fat was a little bit stuck to the window. She gently pushed Josh away and went over to their bed. She watched Josh watching her as she gathered the doona around her, sitting up near the pillows and looking back at him, her husband, naked, their crumpled clothes scattered around the room.

  They weren’t invisible. They weren’t the only two people in the world. She wasn’t a sexy goddess. All their history was still there, even in the dark.

  ‘Well,’ she said.

  ‘Five months,’ he said. ‘I’ve got five months?’

  Lou shook her head. ‘I don’t think so.’

  Josh’s face broke into a smile. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘That was so weirdly beautiful,’ Lou said, and she meant it. ‘What you said at Sara’s about me. And you and me.’

  ‘Well, it’s true,’ he said, sitting on the end of the bed, facing her. ‘It’s all I want.’

  A pang of irritation. ‘I don’t think that’s true,’ she said. ‘I mean, I know you love me – I know that bit’s true – but I think you want lots of other things outside these four walls. I think that’s why you didn’t want another baby.’

  Josh’s face immediately fell. ‘Are we back there?’ he said. ‘Three fucking years ago? Let’s have another fucking baby!’

  Lou flinched. ‘Shut up, Josh. That’s not what this is about.’

  Whatever had happened in the therapist office that afternoon, it had released something. Between them, but also in her. She knew what she was going to say was not what Josh wanted to hear, that it was hard to do and it would ruin this beautiful moment and many more after it. She knew that the words could not be put back in the bottle once she’d said them, but maybe some words had been in bottles for too long.

  ‘You just made it about this,’ he whisper-shouted. ‘You’ve been punishing me for years. Funny how that hasn’t come up at Sara’s office.’

  There you go, thought Lou. There it is.

  ‘And I’m the bad guy,’ he went on. ‘I’m the one who’s disappointing you so very much. But what about me? I gave up a lot for this.’ He gestured around the room. ‘My music, my life. You think I want to be building someone else’s dream house? You think I like being the oldest tradie at the timber yard? You don’t think you have anything to do with that?’

  Lou watched him from the bed, his face twisting as he almost spat the words at her. It almost felt good to have them flung at her. Like, at last, it wasn’t just her.

  ‘And you,’ Josh said. ‘You act like this is all about me and the abortion, and nothing to do with you . . . betraying me.’

  With that, Josh had run out of steam. He sat down on the edge of the bed, his back to her, and pushed his hands through his hair.

  ‘See?’ said Lou, after a moment. ‘I’m not all you want.’

  His shoulders rose and fell in an exaggerated shrug.

  ‘It’s a mess,’ Lou said. ‘I think all our shit has become so tangled up we can’t see where it starts and where it stops and which bit’s me and which bit’s you and what either of us wants anymore.’

  ‘Lou, we just . . .’ Josh was gulping as he spoke.

  ‘So I think we should try to pull it apart a bit, and see what’s there.’

  ‘What the fuck does that mean?’ He turned to face her.

  Lou sucked in some cold air. ‘A trial separation.’

  ‘You’re serious?’

  ‘You know I am.’

  ‘But what about . . .’ Josh gestured to the windowsill. ‘What about that?’

  ‘Well, that’s something that’s there, right?’ Lou pushed on. She was beginning to feel sick. More so whenever she looked at Josh. ‘Something we have.’

  ‘The girls?’ His voice was thick now. ‘Are they in the have column?’

  ‘Of course they are,’ Lou said, trying not to cry at the thought of them. ‘But this is terrible for them. They will be happier in a calmer home. Until we make a call.’

  ‘They’ll be happier without one of us around? And what do you mean, “a call”?’

  ‘On staying together or being apart.’ Lou tried to reach out to Josh but he pulled his arm away. ‘Today was a reason to stay,’ she said. ‘But it doesn’t rub out all the other things. It doesn’t make everything better.’

  ‘Then I have no idea what will.’ Josh stood up. ‘What’s your deadline this time?’

  When Lou looked at Josh, her nerve faded, so she looked away again, kept her eyes on the daisy pattern on the faded doona.

  ‘Five months, still,’ she said. ‘Let’s give our separation five months.’

  Josh

  ‘It’s called bird nesting,’ Josh said to Anika. ‘The kids stay in one place, but we fly in and out.’

  ‘Sounds like wishful thinking.’ Anika was pouring them each a very large glass of wine under the heater at the wooden table in her back garden. It was a heavy red, suited to the cold air. ‘You’re both going to want your own space.’

  ‘It’s only till Christmas,’ said Josh. ‘We’re giving it four more months.’

  Anika made a noise that was almost certainly ‘pfft’.

  ‘Don’t fucking “pfft” me, Anika,’ he said. And thought, We’re not you and Ed.

  ‘Sorry, Joshy.’ She raised her glass to him. ‘Here we all are, hey? Who would have thought we’d all be such losers in love. Oh, wait . . . everyone. Did you meet our parents?’

  Josh didn’t raise his glass. He just looked at the contents. Then took a huge gulp.

  ‘Speaking of which,’ his sister said, ‘when are you going to tell Mum?’

  ‘I’m not.’ He took another swig.

  His sister raised an eyebrow at him. ‘Come on, mate. You two are tight. How are you going to manage that?’

  ‘I’m not telling anyone anything until Lou and I know what we’re doing,’ he said. Also, he thought, she knows too much already.

  ‘You told me,’ Anika said. ‘Because I’ve been there?’

  ‘Because I need your couch.’

  ‘Lovely.’

  Anika was sitting cross-legged in her outsized egg chair, cradling her balloon of wine. She was so thin these days, Josh saw, in her yoga leggings with a blanket around her shoulders and her bare feet resting on her thighs. But rather than it giving her an air of fragility, it gave her an aura of toughness. Sunken cheeks and sinewy biceps tell a story of their own in a woman of Anika’s age, he thought. They say, ‘I’ll show the bastard.’ Which was what Anika was doing.

  She still lived in the family home in Kensington, which was what she’d always wanted, although Josh had no idea why
. If things were really over with Lou, he would never want to set foot in that house again, it would be so tainted by all their tiny failures.

  ‘Why did you stay here?’ he asked. ‘You could have afforded something else with the settlement, right?’

  ‘It’s their home.’ Anika motioned to the boys, who, Josh could see through the sliding glass doors into the house, were lying at two ends of a lounge playing Xbox and eating popcorn. Henry and Wilson. Lou always used to say to Josh, ‘It’s like one person’s name, split between two.’ He smiled at that.

  ‘And I always loved this house. You should see Ed’s new place. I only have from the outside, of course, but it’s the exact opposite – shiny and modern. All sharp angles and glass.’

  They’d had a traditional set-up, Anika and Ed. He’d earned the cash doing something Josh didn’t understand in a skyscraper in the city, and Anika had held the home front and tried a handful of the kind of careers you could dabble in if you didn’t really need the money. She’d opened a book cafe with an old friend for a while, but the hours were a killer. She’d trained to be a florist and did weddings and parties for a bit, but when the boys came along she couldn’t commit to all those weekends. She styled houses for sale for a company that specialised in facelifts, because she’d always had a bloody good eye. Now she did need the money, and she was a yoga teacher. Josh admired both his sisters’ abilities to change direction, not to get stuck somewhere they didn’t want to be. They were bigger risk-takers than him. Why was that?

  ‘Do you hate him?’ Josh asked, surprising himself. And then he looked down at his empty wineglass and added, ‘Because I do.’

  ‘That’s very loyal of you, thank you.’ She smiled. ‘Yeah, I do too.’

  Ed had left in a particularly brutal way, Josh and Lou had agreed. One minute he was all in, or so it seemed, and the next, while Anika and the boys were visiting Emma up the coast one weekend, he’d packed up all his stuff and left. Anika had come home to empty wardrobes and a note that said he wasn’t coming back. Sorry. After almost fifteen years.

  Two weeks before Anika had turned up sobbing at their door, Josh and Lou had been at Anika and Ed’s and he’d been exactly as usual: talking a lot, grabbing his wife around the waist and kissing her head, boasting about the school they were going to send the boys to next year, their big dream trip to Europe.