How to Be Second Best

by Jessica Dettmann

  I leave them all on the shelf, where their oversized eyes seem to follow me as I wander down the aisle. At the end of the row I’m distracted by yet more nostalgia in the form of some beautifully packaged games. Snakes and Ladders, marbles, the kind of wholesome, old-fashioned games that kids used to play while their parents ignored them in favour of drinking martinis and smoking. The games are six bucks each, so I stack several in my basket. They’ll be good for the present box.

  Forty-five minutes and many pairs of kids’ pyjamas, handballs and packets of coloured pencils later, I have had to swap my basket for a trolley, but when I get through the self-checkout and find out the total is forty-seven dollars, I’m so horrified by the low price that I abandon it all. That was a pricing mistake they made there. They made it so low it alarmed me and reminded me what a lot of mass-produced tat it was, and how it was possibly made by small exploited children in the third world. If the total had been seventy dollars I probably would have bought the lot.

  I check my phone to see if Laura has texted me an apology for last night. Nothing. Martyr. The word gnaws at me. I feel both unfairly accused and completely exposed.

  Can’t a person just go about her life being a good person, helping people who need help, without being accused of being a martyr? It’s not as if I actively dislike helping out with Lola. I don’t go about moaning and complaining, acting all put-upon and big-noting myself for taking her to her activities and having her for the odd sleepover. I love Lola. It’s not that much trouble. And it makes my kids’ lives better to have her around. And the more I look after Lola, the better an example I am setting to their father. And God knows he needs it. So Laura’s wrong and that’s that. Now she just needs to text me and say so.

  I’m having a coffee when her message finally arrives. It’s an apology of sorts.

  Sorry I called you a martyr. Can you mind Bledisloe next weekend? Going to the Jacksons’ holiday house.

  I phone her back immediately. ‘I can’t take your dog for the weekend, as it happens. Because since you drew it to my attention that I am a martyr, I have stopped doing things for other people when it’s not convenient for me.’

  ‘Emma, I didn’t mean stop doing things for me, I meant stop giving Troy and Helen a free ride.’

  ‘No, I think you’re right, I have been too giving and that has to stop. From now on, I am looking out for number one. Which means you’ll have to make other arrangements for Bledisloe.’

  This is very satisfying. I scrape up the last of the froth from my coffee, and I’m licking my spoon when I hear someone call my name. Except they’re more yoo-hooing it than calling it.

  ‘Eeeeee-mmmaaaa?’

  Looking up I see, standing by the counter of the coffee shop, her arms festooned with shopping bags, Suze Albion-Davies, the president of the school P&C.

  I immediately look down again, letting my hair fall over my face like an invisibility cape. I swivel my body away and through the back of my head I send my strongest ill wishes in Suze’s direction, and yet still she comes, barging between the tables like an icebreaker in cropped jeans.

  I look around for a cliff to throw myself off or a handful of cyanide pills, but today’s safety obsessed culture has left the shopping centre woefully lacking in quick ways to end your life.

  ‘Emma! I am so glad I ran into you! How serendipitous. It’s getting close!’

  ‘Hello, Suze. What’s getting close?’ I ask, as if I don’t know. Why am bothering to play dumb? I’m only prolonging the agony.

  ‘Emma! The Shorewood Public Fun Run and Have Fun Day, of course! Social event of the year! We’ve missed having you on the committee this year. So much. It just hasn’t been as much fun without you. But it’s not too late to help out. You know, you’re in luck — today is the last day I’m finalising volunteers for the Run-Up-A-Thon. I can count you in for that, yes?’

  She tricks people, Suze, by ending her orders with an upward inflection and the word ‘yes?’. It fools you into thinking they’re questions. Last year when this happened, I fell for it. I was new. It seemed sporting and community-minded to get on board with the school’s major fundraiser. I had hoped I might make some friends.

  In hindsight, I should have realised that any event with a name like the Shorewood Public Fun Run and Have Fun Day would involve a lot of people who couldn’t agree, refused to compromise, and would turn even the easiest decision into a nightmare. It should have been obvious that these people would require months of agonising meetings that went for two hours when an email would have sufficed. There were subcommittees within subcommittees; motions moved and discussed and seconded and carried just to agree on which of three almost identical quotes for a jumping castle we should accept.

  That’s why I have been avoiding Suze assiduously for the past term. I thought that since we’re only a month out from the event now she’d have finished dragooning people in to help, but now that she mentions the Run-Up-A-Thon it all comes flooding back.

  That’s the name she gave to the last month of organising — the run-up, if you will — when all the original volunteers on the committee (except me) had quit in horror and/or sold their homes and moved away in order to avoid ever being involved in this event again.

  You’d think word would get around that being on such a committee was a nightmare of epic proportions, but she’s a cunning one, old Suze. Last year, a month before the Fun Run, she convinced the principal to implement something called the Be Upstanding Points System, by which the children of people who volunteered would receive special awards in assembly. It was an utter travesty, I thought. Is it not enough that the parents are doing most of the homework? Now the kids are rewarded for the parents doing good deeds in the community. It’s a world gone mad and this year I will be having no part of it.

  No way. So you think I’m a martyr, eh, sister dearest? A martyr would say yes to this, because this will make my life dreadful but will make me feel smug and worthwhile. This is the perfect test of my new resolution to be less giving.

  ‘Thanks for checking, Suze,’ I say. ‘But I can’t help this year.’

  That’s it. Plain. To the point. No excuse. No apology. Just no.

  Suze cocks her head slightly and stares at me. I’m not sure what I’ve said is computing. I look back at her. It’s agony. This is why people say yes to things — because it is against the laws of society and possibly even nature to cause this level of awkwardness.

  But I’ve started now so I might as well see it through. I mean, it has to end eventually.

  Finally Suze seems to snap back into the world and she says, ‘Oh, that’s all right, I suppose. I’m sure we’ll manage without you.’ She’s obviously spent the last forty seconds hearing in her head the apology I failed to give.

  ‘I’ll still be participating,’ I assure her. ‘Troy and I are both planning to run with Tim on the day, so that’s good.’ No, I tell myself. Stop. Don’t undo your hard work.

  ‘Yes,’ says Suze, ‘that will be good.’ But her gaze is unfocussed now and I can tell she’s already moved on in her head and is probably running through her mental database of parents to see who else she can rope in. ‘See you soon, Emma.’

  She walks off, phone in hand, already texting.

  Chapter Six

  Back home, I lie on my bed, feeling depleted. Standing up for yourself is exhausting. I should be elated, shouldn’t I? I’m reclaiming my time. I’ve said no to something I didn’t want to do. But I don’t. I feel like I’ve broken a social contract and I’m waiting for my punishment.

  I want to lie here all day, until the sick feeling I get after an adrenalin rush goes away, but I really should do something. Anything. I start to give myself a stern talking to, but then I realise that’s Laura’s area of special interest, so I phone her instead.

  When she answers, I can tell she’s at a rugby game.

  ‘What’s up now, Em?’ she asks. ‘Come on! That’s a knock-on, surely?!’

  ‘I can’t do an
ything. I’m paralysed,’ I tell her.

  ‘You’re bored,’ she says. ‘Go outside. I know you don’t want him for a whole weekend but come get Bledisloe and take him for a walk. He’s being a bloody nightmare here.’

  ‘I hate your dog.’

  ‘We all hate him, Emma, that doesn’t mean he doesn’t need a walk. If you do something for someone else, you’ll feel better about yourself.’

  This seems to directly contravene what she told me last night about doing too many things for other people. When I mention this she brushes it off.

  ‘Well then, if you won’t do it for Bledisloe, do it for yourself. Just get some fresh air, go for a walk. Or a run. Go for a run, Emma.’

  ‘Do you mean a jog? Because I never know any more. When people say “run” they’re talking about what used to be called jogging, aren’t they?’

  ‘Just put on your sneakers, go out the front door and move your legs until you aren’t in the same place any more.’

  ‘Outside is full of neighbours. They’re all doing family things. I can hear kids riding bikes and people washing cars. I can’t go out there alone. Everyone will feel sorry for me.’

  ‘Call a friend and go for a walk or a run with them.’

  ‘I can’t. I don’t have any friends, and they’re all doing family things. Everyone is doing fun lovely things with their family except me because my family is broken.’ I can feel the tears coming.

  ‘Emma,’ Laura says in her most serious voice, ‘of everyone you know who has kids, at this very moment, at four o’clock on a Saturday, I can guarantee that ninety-five per cent of them would give their left eye to be alone right now.’

  I don’t say anything for a while. She’s right.

  ‘Sneakers on, Em,’ she says, more kindly this time.

  ‘All right,’ I say. ‘Talk later.’

  ‘Bye.’

  * * *

  Before I leave the house, I neighbour-proof myself. I plug my ears with headphones and cover my eyes with sunglasses. I pull a baseball cap down over my forehead. I can’t think of anything, save a hotel ‘do not disturb’ sign, that I can add to make it any clearer that I don’t want to chat.

  I step out my front door, wedge my house key into my bra, and turn left. Left takes me away from Helen and Troy’s house. There’s no way I’m walking past their place today. It’s unlikely I’d see them anyway, because the kids will probably be out the back jumping on the trampoline that’s so huge you could bounce a satellite into orbit from it, but I’m taking no chances.

  I’ve been outside for thirty seconds when I realise no one’s going to talk to me. No one’s even really going to throw a second glance my way. As Mum always said, no one’s as interested in you as you think they are. Everyone’s only interested in themselves.

  On my phone, I open the Couch to Five K app. A polite warning flashes on the screen that it’s been more than a year since I last logged in. This is not news to me. I’ve had this app since Tim was a toddler. Every year or so I have a renewed burst of enthusiasm and decide I’m going to start running. I mean, everyone says it’s the cheapest way in the world to get fit! You don’t need any special equipment! You can do it absolutely anywhere on the planet!

  The theory is that you start out walking, then jog for thirty seconds, then walk again. A very smug voice tells you when to run and when not to run. It’s basically my sister, only I’ve paid $4.99 to Apple for the privilege of having her nag me any time I like. This goes on for twenty minutes.

  Every time you log in and go for another jog — and you’re supposed to run three times a week — the amount of running gradually increases and the walking decreases. You’re supposed to not notice that you’re getting fitter and it’s becoming easier to run for longer periods. Eventually, the idea goes, after nine weeks I’ll find myself running for half an hour, or five kilometres.

  Yes, well. Every time I’ve tried this, I get to the stage of running for ten minutes, which is in week six. I am always elated. This must be what people are talking about, I think. This is the runner’s high. I mean, it’s not a physical feeling of joy and happiness flooding through my body. Obviously it isn’t. I’m running. I’m not actually high. I still feel like vomiting, and the underwire from my sports bra is rubbing under my arms and my legs ache and every single step I want to stop, but maybe the high is a mental high that comes from not stopping when every fibre of your being is telling you to knock off whatever this mad activity is. Maybe they mean a feeling of contentedness that comes from knowing there is not an axe-wielding madman chasing you, which is the only other conceivable reason for running for ten minutes without stopping.

  The second run in week six has you just plain old running for twenty-two minutes. Twenty-two minutes. Is that not quite a big step up from ten minutes? That doesn’t seem like an incremental increase. That’s going from your third violin lesson to performing with a symphony orchestra. It is too much for my mind to manage. Run two, week six is where I have stalled in this Couch to Five K program, for five years in a row.

  The app asks me if I’d like to start again, since it’s been so long since I’ve run. It’s polite about it, but reading between the lines, I feel judged. But if I’m going to do this wretched Fun Run with Tim, I’d like to not disgrace myself in front of everyone, so I agree with the app. Yes, Couch to Five K, let’s start this ridiculous farce all over again.

  ‘Okay!’ says the patronising app voice in my ear. ‘Let’s warm up.’

  So it begins. I head off at a brisk walk towards the park. It’s surprisingly warm and there are people out doing Saturday afternoon-type activities everywhere. But Laura, as much as I hate to admit it, was right: no one looks like they’re having the time of their lives.

  James from number 45 is up a ladder clearing leaves out of the gutters like a man who has been asked more than once to do so. His eight-year-old son is holding the ladder as well as anyone can who is also playing Minecraft on an iPad.

  Louise from 49 nods at me as she staggers into the house laden with shopping. Her fingers look like purplish chipolatas, the circulation is so compromised from the plastic bags cutting into them.

  Esther, three doors along from Louise, is weeding around the base of her magnolia tree, and as I approach she turns and lets fly a stream of invective directed at someone in the house. She stops when she spots me.

  ‘Hello, Emma! I was just saying to my mother-in-law what a beautiful day it is!’

  I smile back and keep walking. My Farsi isn’t up to much, so I can’t be sure what was said, but if my mother-in-law, like Esther’s, had been visiting for four months and showed no signs of leaving, I imagine we’d have quite a lot of aggressive conversations about the weather too.

  ‘Run now!’ my phone orders, and I break into a gentle trot. This isn’t as bad as I remember. I can run. Anyone can run. I turn right at the end of the street, dart across the main road and start a lap of the oval.

  Running around the oval is very dull, but the alternative is to go another kilometre down the road to the patch of bushland, and I’m too scared to run there in case I find a dead body. I’ve watched enough crime shows to know that’s what happens to joggers in the bush. You either find a dead body or become one.

  It’s late enough now that the youth soccer teams have packed up for the day, leaving only the odd chewed orange rind and a large puddle of sausage grease on the sidelines. Apart from a woman flinging a ball for a border collie, I’ve got the place to myself.

  Already my lungs are burning, there’s sweat dripping in my eyes and my knees hurt. By halfway around the oval I’m filled with regret. Why have I come jogging? Why I am alone? Why don’t I have any friends? Why did Troy leave me? Why won’t Wanda hurry up and finish her book? Why don’t I have someone like Philip to do the hard things I don’t want to do? Why didn’t my parents ever buy me a tiger cub? Why hasn’t Adam texted me?

  Adam. Thinking about him — even about his probably fine marriage and his probably non
-romantic feelings for me — starts to cheer me up a little. At least he’s back in my life, in some capacity. Those ever-confused butterflies erupt in my belly and I quicken my pace.

  I really haven’t felt like this about anyone for years. Maybe not since I felt like this about Adam when I first met him. It’s hard to remember if I ever felt this fluttery and romantic about Troy — like I had a proper crush — but I suppose I must have.

  I wonder if I’d be three years ahead in my recovery from Troy if I’d had someone like Adam come along sooner. I’ve been holding on so tightly to the idea that I still love Troy and want him back. Maybe that is what I could be for Adam, someone who shows him that there’s no point clinging to the wreckage of a foundering marriage.

  Maybe I’ll experiment a little with letting the lingering remains of my love for Troy go properly, and have a try at embracing my crush on Adam. But I have to be careful, I know that. Because essentially, I am on the rebound. I’m no fool. I can see that. And rebound flings are always a disaster. Everyone knows that.

  Going right back, I think I was on the rebound when I met Troy. I’d recently been dumped by Patrick, a man I’d been dating for about six months. Patrick and I were just on the verge of getting serious, and I thought that was the direction we were heading.

  Patrick took me to his sister’s wedding at a winery, introduced me to his whole extended family, then broke up with me the next morning. I never really understood why. I didn’t do anything disgraceful at the wedding, he assured me. It was just that he thought we weren’t right for each other. Then we had to take the six-hour chartered coach ride back home with his parents, his siblings, all his aunts, uncles, cousins and childhood friends. I haven’t been on a long bus trip since.