I Give My Marriage a Year

by Holly Wainwright

  . . . it’s not home. It’s like a holiday from my life.

  Which made it sound nice. Look, don’t be ungrateful, Lou told herself, it is nice. For a few days, it felt like a lifted weight, like a rediscovery of herself. But three nights in a row was enough.

  Too much.

  Lou had a list of reasons why this separation continued to be a Good Idea. She had specifically written it to read in moments of doubt. She read it every fucking night she was at Gretchen’s.

  9. Try the single life.

  Pros:

  1. SPACE to think.

  2. SPACE to not get on each other’s nerves while we think.

  3. A test of what life would really be like if we split.

  4. A chance to miss each other – or not.

  5. A chance to assess whether external influences (this was a euphemism and Lou wasn’t sure why she was bothering to use it on her own password-protected phone) are truly significant, or just distracting.

  6. A chance to test the impact on the girls of zero family time.

  7. Opportunity for therapy to do its work.

  Of course, it was still ‘separation lite’. Life was still being funded by two wages going into a joint account; she wasn’t living in one of those flats she’d been looking at on her Rent app for months. And, crucially, hardly anyone knew.

  Hardly anyone.

  ‘Is it true you’re leaving?’ Lou had asked Theo. She had gone to his office, knocking on the door with her heart pounding, feeling foolish about feeling foolish for talking to him.

  ‘Why?’ he asked her. ‘You haven’t given me any sense you give a shit lately.’ He was sitting at his desk, which was messier than it used to be but still looked too small for him, his jacket on the back of the chair, his shirt sleeves rolled up.

  ‘Well, I don’t, not really,’ she said. ‘But there are some things we need to clear up.’

  ‘I am leaving,’ he said. ‘I’m going back to Melbourne. I can’t keep waiting for Gabbie to die.’

  Lou raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Figure of speech,’ he said, and gave a short, barking laugh. ‘Turns out she doesn’t want that other job.’

  It’s funny talking to people you’ve had sex with, Lou found herself thinking. People who you’re not having sex with anymore. Even when you’ve stopped wanting them, you’ve always got the context that once you did. And you know more about them than you’re comfortable with. Like what face they make when they come.

  Of course, they know that about you, too. Lou found herself doing up her top shirt button as she stood there.

  ‘Okay.’ She shifted her weight from one foot to the other. Why did she feel weird saying this? ‘I feel like all year I’ve been giving you mixed messages.’

  ‘No shit!’ Theo said, a little too loudly. ‘The year got off to such a promising start. And then . . .’ He mimed an explosion, making the whistling noise of a plane going down.

  What a dick. Honestly.

  ‘Well, what I wanted to say, and I should have said this a long time ago, is that it’s really definitely over. It was. It should have been in the first place. January should never have happened. We should have left it when we left it. I want to draw a line. Stop any confusion.’

  ‘You mean the confusion of you messaging and not messaging me, blocking me and unblocking me?’ Theo’s voice was mocking now. ‘Were you genuinely confused? Or do you just like to tease?’

  ‘Don’t be . . .’ Lou pulled a face.

  ‘What? Don’t be what?’

  ‘Gross,’ Lou said. She lowered her voice. ‘I’m not a teenager, and this isn’t the place for this conversation, Theo.’

  ‘Well, you walked in and started having it, Lou,’ Theo said, his fingers drumming on his desk. ‘Just like you were the one who started this thing, all that time ago. And you were the one who invited me over to your house on New Year’s Day. You, not me.’

  ‘Alright, well . . .’ Lou was feeling embarrassed, more than a little uncomfortable about his version of events. ‘There’s no need to be a dick about it.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it, Lou,’ he said. ‘I got bored of this little game of yours a long time ago. And I’m out of this ridiculous, old-fashioned school before the end of term four. So you can stop looking so tortured.’

  ‘I’m not tortured,’ Lou said. ‘I just know that if I were to be with anyone who wasn’t my husband, it wouldn’t be you. It might have taken me longer than it should have to see that clearly, but I have.’

  It was time to go. Lou turned.

  ‘I hear he’s moved out,’ Theo called after her. ‘You’d better get on the dating apps, Lou. That’s where all the action is. If you’ve got the guts for it.’

  ‘Fuck off,’ Lou said, to his face, before she turned again. This time, she left.

  *

  Not my finest moment, Lou reflected. Where was the witty comeback when you needed one?

  Must focus on the positives, she wrote, then padded into Gretchen’s kitchen, wearing nothing but an oversized T-shirt and those expensive midlife slippers they were always trying to sell you on Facebook. Her brother had bought them for her birthday in June, with much sarcasm.

  Gretchen was away on a trip with Kim. An all-expenses-paid trip to some island location with overwater bungalows and vegan orchids on your pillows. ‘I can work anywhere these days, Lou, so I am succumbing to being a trailing spouse for a while,’ she’d said as she packed. ‘My house is your house, as it always has been. Text me if you need me.’

  ‘Do they even have reception in paradise?’

  ‘Of course they fucking do,’ Gretchen said, shoving more shoes into her bulging bag. ‘Their whole business model is based on making people who have to be constantly connected feel like they’re disconnected. Their wifi’s better than you’ve got at school.’

  ‘That wouldn’t be difficult.’

  It really wasn’t so bad, this weird in-between life, Lou told herself again. Three days at Gretchen’s, four days at home, then swap. Four days at Gretchen’s, three days at home, then swap. Half frazzled homemaker, half single-woman-at-leisure.

  The handful of mum-friends who knew what was going on told her they were jealous. She’d had to confide in a few for pick-up/drop-off help on ‘her’ days; she didn’t want Josh picking the girls up from school then – it didn’t feel right for her to get home and him to be there and then leave.

  ‘Oh my God, three days kid-free, you’re so lucky!’

  ‘Not having to worry about your husband! Heaven, he’s like my third fucking child.’

  ‘A whole weekend without the girls! Are you going to go wild?’

  Lou wanted to punch these women in the face. It feels like a holiday from my life was true, but it didn’t look like the brochure.

  Sometimes, if she let the silence wash over her as she lay on Gretchen’s lounge, she was consumed by panic. What was Stella doing right now? What was Rita eating? Josh never remembered to lock the front door. Every night they’d lived there she’d be checking those locks before they went to sleep. Sometimes he’d nod off without remembering to close the sliding doors at the back. Anything could happen.

  Breathe.

  And what if Rita just wanted to go and find the cute puppy from next door and the front door was open?

  Breathe.

  What if they were having a better time with him than they did with her? (They definitely would be; Josh had never been very good at putting his foot down.)

  Breathe.

  What if they didn’t miss her at all? What if they hated her for doing this to their lives?

  Fucking breathe, Lou, she told herself.

  So she couldn’t let the silence get to her, and filled her non-girls days with as much busy-business as was possible.

  In the last month, she’d gone out for drinks with the new young teachers at work more than she ever had previously.

  She’d binge-watched seasons one to five of Mad Men, and resolved to buy more turtlenecks a
nd silk shirts.

  She’d caught up with old friends she’d barely seen since uni days, suddenly feeling the need to ‘reach out’ on Facebook to people entirely irrelevant to her existence. One of those catch-ups had led to a memorable night in Kings Cross, a place she’d forgotten existed, where she was almost certain she had been propositioned by a football player, and had definitely spent twenty-two dollars on one martini. One of many.

  Before Gretchen went away, she’d been taking her to Barre Body classes to try to focus Lou on something positive that involved neither rekindling ill-advised affairs, martinis or panic attacks. And Lou had never felt so old or lumpy as she had when standing next to her friend (who was exactly the same age) on one leg, trying to grab at a rubber band around her ankle.

  Running was a more reliable proposition, an old friend who wouldn’t take her out and get her drunk.

  And then there was her mother.

  Annabelle did not know about her and Josh’s separation, but ever since Josh’s devastatingly shit play-acting at her birthday barbecue, she could smell trouble.

  Annabelle had taken to calling Lou at unusual times, just to ask, ‘Where are you?’ and, ‘What’s Josh doing?’ and, ‘Can I pop around and see the girls?’

  ‘Don’t pop around now, Mum, the house is a state, but Saturday would be good. Or Thursday night, but not Tuesday. No, a surprise visit really wouldn’t be good . . .’

  This holiday from her real life was very complicated.

  *

  In Gretchen’s beautiful kitchen, Lou opened one of the apps everyone was telling her to try.

  The single mums at school – ‘Sex on tap, not much else.’ Gretchen – ‘Absolutely no-one meets anyone the way you and Josh met these days.’ The non-single mothers at school – ‘Oh, I’d love to have a play, it’s like online shopping!’ Fucking Theo.

  She’d downloaded it just to look.

  Swipe. There was a guy with bulging muscles, no shirt and a hunting dog. Swipe. There was a junior teacher from the girls’ school. Swipe. There was a man wearing a Make Australia Great Again T-shirt. Swipe. There was a man with a warm smile whose description said, ‘No fatties.’ Swipe. Was that . . . Anika’s ex-husband, Ed?

  Yuck.

  Lou put the phone back on the bench. Time to go for a run. Sex was not a priority. Dating was unthinkable until she Josh had worked out what the hell they were doing.

  Josh. Josh smiling on the therapist couch. Josh looking at her the way he looked at her.

  What if he was ready? What if she swiped and saw her husband?

  Lou picked the phone back up, held her finger on the app and deleted it.

  Not. Now.

  Josh

  The sound of a chainsaw woke Josh up.

  ‘No.’

  He swung his legs off the edge of the bed and ran to the window. ‘No!’

  He was fumbling with the slatted blind. With Lou gone, he’d been closing it at night, something she’d never do. ‘I like to see the light change,’ she’d said, a hundred times, in the years he’d known her.

  Then the window lock. ‘NO!’ He was shouting now.

  ‘What is it, Daddy?’ Stella was at the bedroom door, in her rainbow pyjamas, hair standing up at angles.

  ‘Wait, baby.’

  Finally, he clicked off the window lock and pushed it open, leaned out, looked down to the base of the tree.

  No-one there.

  Lycra Aiden from across the road, coming back from his morning bike ride, took off his helmet and looked up. ‘You okay, Josh?’

  Josh realised he was bare-chested, leaning out the window, red in the face, breathing hard.

  ‘Yes, mate, sorry,’ he called down. ‘I thought I heard . . . never mind.’

  Josh looked down the street. Nothing – just that woman who always watered her hedge before work, and Ahmed walking out to his motorbike. No chainsaw. No tree man.

  Jesus.

  ‘Daddy?’

  ‘I’m sorry, baby, I must have had a bad dream,’ said Josh. ‘Let’s go and make pancakes.’

  ‘It’s Wednesday, Daddy,’ Stella said, her face very serious. ‘We can’t have pancakes on Wednesday.’

  ‘Really? Oh, I guess not.’ Josh pulled the window back down, flicked the lock. ‘Let me get some clothes on. Is Rita still asleep? What time is it anyway?’

  That fucking tree.

  *

  The school gate was weirder than the dreams Josh had been having.

  Neither Lou nor Josh were meant to be telling anyone that they were separated, but word seemed to have got around, because Josh suddenly seemed to be the focus of some distinctly different attention.

  Women who were friends of Lou’s smiled from a distance and raised a cautious hand but did not approach. The sort of small talk they’d once shared while waiting for the girls was now clearly considered some sort of betrayal.

  Strangers were more likely to come up and ask him outright – ‘Is it true that you and Stella’s mum have broken up?’ The second time it happened, Josh, who didn’t want his sister to say the words out loud, never mind a pitying acquaintance, just shook his head and walked away.

  By the time a woman he’d never met before came up and offered to drop off a lasagne, Josh knew he was going to have to start waiting in the car. Lasagne, after all, was the internationally recognised dish of pity.

  The day the lasagne offer happened, he went home and looked at himself in the mirror for a long time. Did he look terrible? Heartbroken, wasting away, unkempt? He couldn’t tell. Certainly he looked tired. Sleeping was hard at the moment.

  But mostly he was pissed off that word was out. Because how was the word going to go in again when they sorted all this shit out and got back together?

  He suspected Dana.

  A few weeks into the new arrangement, he’d inadvertently had coffee with Dana. Meaning, he was waiting for Rita to get out of gymnastics at the sports and rec centre, nursing a long black in the cafeteria and poking at his phone to try to extricate himself from his Eva Bernard membership, when Dana had sat down next to him.

  ‘I heard Lou’s moved out,’ she said, by way of a hello.

  ‘Not true,’ said Josh, straight away.

  ‘Has kicked you out then,’ Dana said.

  ‘Nope,’ he said, looking pointedly at his phone which, in his rush to flick away from the screen that said, Are you really ready to unsubscribe from the advice that could save your marriage?, had ended up on the backup screen, the lyrics to ‘Here Comes the Sun’, which he’d been optimistically picking at late last night.

  ‘Break-up song,’ Dana said, pointing at his phone. She was certainly close enough to see it.

  ‘You’re insane,’ said Josh. ‘And anyway, no it’s not. It’s a love song. Everyone knows that.’

  ‘Nooooo,’ said Dana, sitting down next to him at the cafe table. ‘He’s pining for a better day.’

  ‘It’s the happiest song ever written!’ Josh pushed his phone into his back pocket. ‘Anyway, got to go get Rita. Bye.’

  ‘Gymnastics doesn’t finish for another twenty minutes, Josh, chill out.’

  ‘Are you stalking me?’ Josh asked, and Dana spat out her latte in a show of shock.

  ‘We have kids the same age, you idiot, don’t flatter yourself,’ she said. ‘I know when gymnastics is.’

  And so Josh had sat back down. He wasn’t really sure why. He knew that if Lou saw him, or even heard that he and Dana had been talking, she would hate it. But, then again, why should he care about that, when she was almost certainly sleeping with someone else, maybe someone called T? Damn it. He hadn’t pushed the thought away, and it caused him to have a physical reaction, a pain in his stomach. Thinking about that was what stopped him from sleeping.

  So he sat back down and changed the subject. He found himself telling Dana about the music producer he was working for in Camperdown. About how interesting it was to see her studio loading in, about how he’d googled her, and the list of the peop
le she’d worked with was incredible. How on the two occasions he’d spoken to her, she was generous and interesting. He told Dana that when he’d started that job, he’d felt bitter and resentful and jealous, but now he felt impressed and maybe . . . if it didn’t make him sound like a total dick . . . inspired.

  ‘That’s awesome,’ said Dana. ‘She’s unbelievable. And you’re working with her?’

  ‘Um. No, I’m planing her pool deck.’

  ‘But it’s destiny! Anyone could be planing her pool deck.’ Dana grabbed Josh’s hand, and he immediately pulled it away, but she kept staring. ‘You have to give her a song.’

  ‘And I repeat, Dana, you’re crazy.’

  ‘I am not. I know you think so. But I need to tell you again: all that camping stuff was nuts. It was not me.’

  ‘It looked like you,’ Josh said. ‘Sounded like you.’

  ‘Marco has left,’ she said. ‘And to be honest, it’s for the best. Nothing has been good between us for ages. I can’t stand him, actually, although I know you’re not supposed to say that. And I have no idea how I ended up married to someone I can’t stand.’

  Josh shifted uncomfortably on his stool. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be. I just worry about the kids. You must, too.’

  Josh still couldn’t tell her what she clearly already knew.

  ‘Anyway, I know that was a bad scene, down the coast. I promise you, I just want to be friends.’

  Josh was sure he must look dubious, but he repeated, ‘Friends?’

  ‘And a friend would tell you to give that music producer a song!’ Dana whacked the Formica table with the palm of her hand.

  ‘I am her middle-aged carpenter,’ Josh said firmly. ‘Do you have any idea how many idiots come up to people like her every day and give them songs or ask for a favour? I’m not that guy.’

  ‘Clearly not,’ said Dana, and she looked at Josh in a way that said this was not a Good Thing.

  As he walked away, she called after him. Loudly. ‘Lou’s mad to give up on you!’