Jacaranda Wife

by Smith, Kendra

  Katie had never known a trip take so long. No Tom, no can-do spirit left in me, she thought, just endless airport queues, a Godalmighty hangover, quarrelling children on the plane, queuing again for taxis. They pulled into a gas station after Katie realised she didn’t have enough money in her purse. She looked worriedly at her balance which was alarmingly low, wondered how much to tip. Don’t fall at the first hurdle.

  Finally, they pulled into Ponderosa Avenue and it all looked comfortingly familiar. It was much cooler in Sydney than in Queensland and Katie felt frozen despite some slight sunburn. It was a wet, dark July night as the taxi pulled up by their front door, the bougainvillea stood wearily in pots on either side of the door, the fuchsia petals soggy from the rain. She yanked her cardigan around her waist as she got out the taxi.

  Silently, she tipped fish fingers onto a baking tray, put some frozen bread in the toaster and sat in silence with Andy and James, eating fish finger sandwiches. Rory was asleep in the car seat. Even he seems to have detected that something was up, she mused; that there had been a step change without him knowing, a shift of gear. Nobody squealed, nobody dared to throw the tomato sauce around.

  Quietly she changed them into their pyjamas.

  ‘Where’s Daddy?’ James asks.

  ‘Had to stay a bit longer, it’s his work,’ she lied. Tom being away for long stretches to Asia will now come in handy, she thought, pulling out the legs of the pyjamas so Andy could step into them. His absences are part and parcel of the boys’ lives, she realised. Saying Daddy’s away on work had become normal for them, what they expected. Daddy not being there in the mornings on their birthday when they woke up; Daddy not there to tuck them up for the fourth night in a row.

  ‘So will he have to go to his meetings in his swimmers?’

  ‘No darling, I’m sure he’ll manage,’ she smiled and flopped down on top of the suitcase. She glanced at Tom’s suit hanging up in the hallway in the dry cleaning cellophane and a pang went through her heart. Oh God. What have I done?

  What she didn’t tell the boys was how she had yelled at their father at the resort. How, slightly drunkenly she had packed all the suitcases, staggered to reception and booked him a single room. Told the young man at the front desk to give Mr Parkes the key to the single room when he came back, to hand over the case she had packed for him which lay behind reception. She didn’t tell the boys about her note to Tom which she also left at reception.

  ‘Dear Tom

  I am taking the boys back to Sydney. I have left your stuff. You’ve given me no choice but to re-consider our whole marriage – my vows, your vows. What marriage means to me. How you’ve broken your promise, broken my heart. I’m not sure we can recover from this, not sure I want to recover from this. How can I trust you again? I will contact you when I’m ready.

  Katie.’

  She also didn’t tell her children, who were looking at her with their blankeys and thumbs in their mouth how she had then lain quietly on her bed and sobbed herself to sleep, had thought about Adam, had wondered if this was her punishment. No, I won’t tell them that, she thought, getting up from the suitcase as every bone in her body ached.

  After she read them a story, she automatically hauled all the laundry from the suitcases and put it into two piles in the laundry room. Sorting out my whites from my coloureds, she mused. An everyday thing; many women do it, many women trawl through pockets and untangle socks and fish pants out of trousers which little boys always take off in one fell swoop, she smiled wearily.

  Then her eyes clouded over. But how many women have images of their husband embracing their best friend looping around their head at the same time? How did it all happen? Where were they? How did it start? Lying on some hotel bed, perhaps, had she met him in town, in a bar? She could suddenly see it … the small, glitzy room with matching bedside lamps, tastefully chosen to go with the curtains. What had been on his mind when he’d kissed her, she wondered? What had he been wearing; was it his best shirt, made sure he’d shaved properly, put on his aftershave reserved for special occasions? Had he pre-booked the room? Did they look out over the Sydney skyline and share a drink, talk about her dreams about of a baby? God, and I know how strong those dreams are, mused Katie, ramming a towel in the washing machine.

  Did she then cry, lean on his shoulder, while he held her? Did he lay her down on the bed, careful to remove the counterpane first, gently lowering her head down first? Listened to her calling him a real man … Did he then run his hands over her breasts? Did he think of me when he was kissing her? When he caressed her, squeezed her thigh so hard it left red marks? Did he imagine what I’d feel as he lowered himself down, pressed himself into her?

  Her clothes would have been thrown to the side on the floor, his trousers left crumpled over a chair. His trousers with his phone in the back pocket, his phone which I had probably just texted him, asking how long he’d be at the office and asking if he was on his way back from the airport … back to his wife. Katie felt herself slump down onto the floor. She sat for an hour watching the clothes swish round and round, when she realised she hadn’t put any soap in the machine.

  *

  Rory had exhausted himself crying and had fallen asleep on Katie’s shoulder. It was 2am. This was after she walked up and down the corridor, swaddled him, re-swaddled him and sung him Humpty Dumpty. Gingerly, she placed him in the Moses basket. She crept, in the dark, finding her way round the room with her hands and into her bed. Maybe he senses my anxiety, thought Katie.

  She sunk heavily into her pillow. Perhaps my kids just know when I am at my weakest and feel vulnerable? Or maybe they hold meetings in the bathroom before just before bed, she mused: Yeah, you do the 1am to 2am, then Andy does the 3am bit, then Rory, yes, you finish off at 5am.

  Katie studied the alarm clock, fell into a light sleep, then woke with her heart pounding. She was confused, thought she was still in Queensland and reached over to Tom’s side of the bed. It was eerily cold; there was no snoring, no harrumphing and coughing. Tom’s not here.

  She drifted into a fitful sleep. She saw a taxi. She hailed it. Must get away. Someone was tugging at her, at her hair, she was trying to get into a taxi and couldn’t get in, her shoes were caught in the door, her hair was being yanked …

  It was Andy, standing by her bed, pulling her Snoopy nightie. ‘Mummy, Mummy… I wet the bed.’ Holding his blankey and standing next to her bed, her heart went out to him. He looks achingly vulnerable, thought Katie, as she sat up and pulled him close.

  3.30am Back to the soft, lovely duvet … There was screaming from the boys’ room. She closed her eyes firmly shut. She hoped the noise would go away, maybe it might, she thought, if I lie here still enough, if I hide from the world. But really, deep down, she knew from experience that there was more chance that a caterpillar could cross the Harbour Bridge without being run over than of silence now.

  She ran through to find James sitting up in bed, drenched in sweat.

  ‘It’s alright sweetheart, it’s alright,’ she shouted. She had no idea what was wrong but was determined that it would be alright very soon. She balanced, chimpanzee-like in the dark, holding on to the bunk beds, stroking his hair whilst her left arm went dead. It was very hard to sound soothing when you were clinging to furniture like an Orang Utan. Oh God, maybe this whole go-it-alone thing will be harder than I thought, she panicked, then breathed deeply, wriggled her fingers, trying to encourage the blood flow. How will I cope without Tom?

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  ‘How are you?’ Lucy was peering into her camera, hadn’t quite got the concept of Skype and webcams. Appeared to think that the nearer you got and the more you shouted, the better it came across. It was 6am, Katie hadn’t been able to sleep, realised she could talk to Lucy. Lucy’s face looked brown, she was chubbier, she’d just come in from the garden she said, had been sitting in the sun. Was a glorious August day.

  ‘Sorry not to have been in touch recently, Luce -’ Katie shook
her head and her voice trailed off. In the last few weeks her homesickness training had come in handy. Pull down the sunnies. Smile, sister. She had held her grin while she stood waiting for the kids at the school gate in front of other mums, as she tied shoelaces and got them in the car. Had kept smiling as she pulled away from the curb, then turned down the nearest side street, put her head on the steering wheel and sobbed her eyes out as the boys sat mutely in the back. Her insides had been crumbling for weeks now, little blood vessels had shrivelled and died.

  ‘How are the kids since we last spoke?’ the concern on Lucy’s face almost made Katie want to cry right there and then. Katie remembered when she’d told Lucy over the phone but had to cut it short as she hadn’t been able to speak for sobbing at the end.

  ‘Was she a good friend?’ Lucy had asked tightly down the phone.

  ‘Yes, suppose so. Was on IVF, I was trying to help her,’ sniffed Katie.

  ‘And she helped herself to your husband!’

  Katie had wrung her hands. God, how she missed Lucy. For all her Laura Ashley ways, she was quite canny. ‘You got it in one.’

  ‘Katie?’

  ‘Oh OK. They’ve been unusually quiet; it’s like animals, you know - sensed something’s up. Are better at going to bed, less tantrums but more hand holding,’ Katie shrugged in front of her camera, attempted a smile. ‘Actually it’s awful Luce, James has even wet the bed a few times, he hasn’t done that for three years …’

  ‘Oh poor you, Katie … and what have you told them?’

  ‘Well, they know that mummy and daddy are living in different houses, that mummy and daddy are cross with each other …’

  She didn’t tell Lucy about how desperately she wanted to protect them, throw a mummy sized blanket of love around them to shield them from all of this hurt.

  ‘Trouble is, Lucy, I get so annoyed with them,’ Katie could feel the tears well up.

  ‘Totally understandable, Katie, don’t beat yourself up too much.’

  ‘I slam doors and I get really cross about yogurt tops being left on the kitchen table. I am angry, so, so angry at him, yet I take it out on them,’ sighed Katie. ‘God, I hate myself.’ As she said this, an image of Adam came to mind and she bit her lip. If I could nearly get myself into that mess, then I suppose Tom …

  ‘Katie?’

  ‘Sorry, yes?’

  ‘You will ring me again in a few days, won’t you? Or text and we can Skype again – promise?’

  She nodded at her friend who filled her computer screen, then clicked the mouse, watching her face vanish. After she’d spoken to Lucy, she reflected on the past month. July seemed to be crawling by. People had asked after her. How are you? Kind people, people who want to be nice, thought Katie. People with frowns and eyes which had bored into her. She had wanted to scream to them I don’t know how I am and I’m scared. My husband may not love me anymore. But Katie hadn’t.

  Instead, she hadn’t sobbed into hot dogs at James’s 7th birthday party in the park last weekend. No, she had smiled cheerily and filled the party bags, and paid ‘Superhero man’ in his blue Lycra and thanked him for leaping and bounding across the park with eight young children in awe behind him. She held her smile as all the parents picked up their children, exchanged pleasantries about the afternoon, the heat, how everyone was growing up weren’t they? She tried her best to ignore the pounding headache, the hot needles behind her eyes, found it really useful that Sydney was so hot, that her tears beneath the sunglasses were mistaken for sweat as she swiped away batch after batch; tried not to miss Tom. But she did slump exhausted into the driver seat at the end of the day. Did drive her family home. In silence. Usually.

  She had been quick to get off the phone when anyone from the UK had called. Kept it short, avoided Skype if she could. She didn’t want anyone except Lucy to see her hollow eyes, the fact that maybe she had been wearing the same T-shirt for three days. The fact that if they had looked closely behind her into the kitchen they would have seen a huge mountain of washing up – more than usual - plates stacked on top of each other, of countless tins of beans. ‘Beans again, Mummy? That’s fine.’ James had said last night. She had looked at him. He was smiling. He was trying to me nice to me, thought Katie, feeling the tears threaten.

  Katie watched the sun come up over the back hedge in the garden. It was 7am, minutes before the day really began. She was snatching some moments before she had to crank into 6th gear as the Mummy Machine. For now, she could just be herself. Yet who am I? She stared at the dazzling colour of the pink frangipanis swaying in the garden as the steady noise of the crickets started up. Why am I not enough for him? Have I not lived up to his expectations of a mother, a wife, she mused, twisting her wedding band around. The hotel had sent them special delivery from the resort. That was a funny old day when she signed for them. She’d placed Tom’s on the dressing table; it seemed to mock her whenever she walked by. Ha! Wedding ring? That won’t stop me … She had taken to wearing hers on her right hand. Wasn’t quite ready to take it off altogether.

  Is married love conditional, conditional on lots of things; on me being like I was before we were married, she thought. Just who is the new Katie? She rested her head on her forearms and sighed. Who am I in the play called My Life? This is the real Katie, she thought. The one right here, dammit. A little bit terrified, a little bit crazy. Like the man with the cross round his neck said before I was covered in confetti: for better, for worse.

  She realised how much she had been going through the motions, sleepwalking in her own life. It’s all changed. The acts are still running in the show, yet I’m not sure who all the actors are. I’m not sure what my part is any more. There is a big question mark over how we reach The Happy Ending, sighed Katie, thinking about Tom, about the last time she spoke to him, about how she couldn’t speak to him when he called. About how she’d found Ann’s earring in his suit pocket, then laid on the floor that day and cried for an hour, woken suddenly and rushed to pick up the boys looking like she’d slept in her clothes for a week. Nobody had said anything. That was worse, nobody at school had mentioned her filthy skirt, the creases in her blouse; the fact that she couldn’t really remember when she’d last washed her hair.

  She had spent the next few days walking around with Vaseline covered glasses on. Like all the old wounds had been opened up; even if there had been a minute green shoot of healing, it had vanished.

  Everything had been the same to the outside world: the house, the kids, the car, the route to school, the radio shows, the swimming lessons: but after the earrings, something so real, in her hands, it was all totally different again, she thought. There was a veil of shadows over her normal world and behind the shadows, fears lurked. Her fears. What will happen? Will he do it again? Can I trust him?

  And yet … has it been me? Her she-devil was seldom quiet - taunting her with what happened with Adam. Katie put her hands over her ears. God, she’s back and she’s raring to go on this one: Maybe the stone and a half you’ve slowly gained put him off, sweetie? He used to tell you that he’d love you forever, didn’t he? That you were the most beautiful girl in the restaurant - remember? When did he last do that? And do you think he saw you and Adam? Did you think you could get away with that one …

  ‘Stop!’ She looked up as Andy stood before her, a puzzled expression on his face. She pulled him close, realising that she and Tom hadn’t spoken for weeks. No phone or text. Nothing. Nada.

  ‘Mummy sad again?’

  Katie nodded.

  ‘I kiss it better.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  ‘Blake - it’s Katie.’

  ‘Oh hi, darl,’ he sounded very surprised on the phone. ‘How are you. Um, Naomi told me -’

  ‘Don’t worry about that, when’s your next ocean swim course?’

  ‘Tomorrow, sweetie; winter is on its way out, thank goodness. You up for it? It’s so soon after -’ he hesitated.

  ‘Totally,’ she quickly said. ‘See you the
re.’

  As Katie put the phone down, she felt just a tiny bit better. It had been three months of hell. She looked out of the window at the sun and felt a skip in her heart.

  Whatever it is, she thought, I’m determined to complete a swim in the sea and Do Something For Myself. She smiled as she washed up a Nemo bowl in hot soapy water, looked at how red her hands turned in the sink. She stared at the faint line where her wedding ring used to sit, the groove on her finger that looked whiter - almost like a ring was still on it; should a ring be on it, she wondered?

  I may be hot and bothered half the time, but I’m damn well taking my ticket to Aussie life, holding it above my head and shouting ‘I am not just a stay at home mum!’ I am going to swim in the ocean and learn to dive. Actually, it’s far too hot, she thought, feeling a bit faint and leaning over the sink.

  The next day she was walking down a crowded main street in a Speedo, swimming cap, goggles on her head, and a sarong tied loosely around her waist. If I can do this, she thought, I can bloody well do anything. She sidestepped a couple of young surfers who looked her up and down. Naomi had dropped her off and was taking the kids to school quickly that day, then coming back to join her. She’s helped me a lot, thought Katie, realising how much she had leant on her over the past two months: the phone calls, the tiny squeeze of her shoulder in the playground which was worth more than a thousand words. Katie realised how she’d totally misjudged her. Ann, on the other hand had been completely silent. Out of the picture, thank God, Katie sniffed, pulling her shoulders back. Ann had tried to call Katie but whenever her number had come up Katie had deleted the text or not taken the call.

  Another group of surfers walked past on the path to the beach; one them let out a wolf-whistle. Startled, Katie looked down. Her nipples were protruding through her custard coloured cossie. Tom had texted her last night, explaining that he’d moved out of the serviced apartments, into a flat. The company were still happy for him to lead the team from there, that in fact it helped as they were ‘growing’ the business in Queensland, but he’d be back in Sydney from time to time. He left his new address and that was it.