The First Year

by Genevieve Gannon

  ‘There, there, Charlie, did the silly lady give you the wrong milk?’ The woman rubbed her son’s back in a circular motion. ‘You’d think you could rely on an upscale gallery to employ competent staff.’ She said this last bit loudly.

  The director turned towards the source of the commotion, his eyes settled on Saskia. He shook his head and guided his guest out of the coffee shop. Saskia realised her apron was flecked with milky vomit. Jill burst into laughter as she made a latte and small talk with a blond art student. Saskia burned with rage.

  ‘Jill,’ she called. ‘I need to talk to you.’

  *

  Andy spent the rest of his afternoon refreshing his email account with a permanent lump in his throat. He still hadn’t told Saskia his job was on the line. He couldn’t stop thinking about how they would manage if he was out of work long term. By 5 p.m. the ceaseless column of incoming correspondence had become blurry and the persistent jetlag was starting to weigh down his eyelids.

  Saskia was setting the table when he walked through the door. She was wearing only a bra and knickers and the frilly apron that her cousin Maureen had given them with a cake tin.

  ‘Honey, you’re home.’ She put a hand behind her head and posed like a pin-up.

  ‘What are you wearing?’ he asked, laughing and taking her hand to turn her around.

  ‘This is called sexy housewife. Do you like it? If I’m going to obey you for all eternity, I want to look the part.’

  ‘How very Stepford of you,’ he said, kissing her. ‘What would Gloria Steinem say?’ He loosened his tie and tried to hide the concern on his face.

  ‘I think she’d applaud me for embracing my sexuality. Shall I fix you a gin, or would you prefer if I got you your pipe and slippers first?’

  Andy laughed and kissed her again, then nibbled her ear.

  ‘What’s all this?’ The table was aglow with new silverware given to them by wedding guests from his side of the church. Andy could smell roasting meat. Saskia went behind the breakfast bar and started slicing a baguette.

  ‘That wigmaker I rented my studio to is still in town. You know, the one from the Lion King. The show’s still running. I can’t get back there until next week.’

  ‘You didn’t go into the cafe?’

  ‘Why yes, I did go into the cafe.’

  ‘And you still had time to do all this?’

  ‘I quit.’ She smiled.

  ‘You did?’ Andy felt a vice of anxiety press down on his chest.

  ‘I did.’ She put down the breadknife and came out from behind the counter. ‘I’m going to be a full-time jewellery designer.’ She was gazing up at Andy with a look of adoration. ‘It was such a kind, generous offer.’ She put her arms around his neck. ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t more grateful. I guess I was scared. But I do trust you, of course I do. I love you, and I want to thank you so, so much for allowing me to do this.’ She felt on the verge of tears. Nobody in her life had ever done something so wholly generous for her. She’d never known anybody who would have had the capacity to. This sort of thing simply hadn’t been part of her reality, until she’d met Andy.

  She held him tight and he hugged her back, trying to relax his shoulders. He felt as if the ground was shifting beneath his feet. What if he got an email? What if he lost his job? Had he jeopardised her fledgling business? Were both their livelihoods now in peril? But no, nothing was certain yet.

  ‘So you’ve finished with the cafe for good?’

  ‘Yes,’ Sas said brightly. ‘I thought they’d need two weeks’ notice but Jill said there’d be other staff keen for my shifts.’

  ‘You didn’t want to do the last week, while you can’t get into your studio?’

  ‘I thought you wanted me to quit?’

  ‘I did. I do!’ He kissed her head.

  ‘I’ve been making all sorts of plans but my tools are all locked up so I can’t get started. I don’t want to disturb the wigmaker.’

  ‘When did you say he’s leaving?’

  ‘A week. I’m a housewife until then.’

  ‘Well.’ Andy swallowed, then conjured up a smile. ‘The house is a lucky man.’

  ‘How was your day?’ She began untucking his shirt.

  ‘My day?’ He didn’t want to spoil this scene by talking about the meeting. ‘My day . . . is improving,’ he said, and helped Saskia remove her apron.

  Day 19, Thursday, October 30

  By Thursday Saskia had exhausted her list of domestic duties, even the irregular ones like writing thankyou cards to wedding guests.

  The boxes marked ‘pots’ or ‘kitchen’ had been emptied and flattened, their contents wiped down and put away. She’d found homes for all of the gifts, including the hideous blown-glass plate that Andy loved, and had suggested should be mounted on the mantle, but she had decided looked better in the back of the credenza under the napkins.

  She packed the box of unwanted presents into Andy’s Audi. The leather seat burned the backs of her thighs as she climbed behind the wheel. She opened the sunroof and smeared some SPF50+ onto her knees.

  When Saskia arrived at the narrow brick house that abutted the freeway sound barrier, her brother Aiden was hacking at an overgrown lavender bush with secateurs. He was a year younger than Saskia but almost twice her size, with strongman shoulders, a scruffy beard and long hair, the same crow-black as Saskia’s, that he wore in a top-knot.

  ‘It’s Lady Colbrook.’ He stood and saluted.

  ‘Shut up,’ Saskia punched him in the stomach.

  ‘Oof.’ Aiden pretended to double over.

  ‘I’ve got some stuff I thought Mum could use.’ She nodded at the box balanced on her hip.

  He peered into it and removed the baoding balls. ‘I’ll take these.’

  ‘I think she’ll like these mugs. Is she up?’

  ‘She’s having a lie down.’

  ‘How is she?’

  ‘The same.’

  Saskia put the box down and surveyed the back garden. The grass was short and perfectly even. Terracotta tiles formed a border around flowerbeds that were neat and colourful.

  ‘Maybe she should come out here and do some yard work. It would be better than nothing.’

  ‘Do you think I haven’t suggested that a thousand times?’

  Lorna Hill, nee Kelly, had always been big. It was her ample bosom and generous bottom that first attracted the attention of wiry Ray Hill when she was working as a beer dolly at the Globe Sports Bar. Growing up, Saskia hadn’t noticed anything different about Lorna. She was just mum-shaped. Each time Ray went to prison she inflated a little more, and when she started having problems, Saskia didn’t connect it to her weight. Lorna developed diabetes. High blood pressure. Osteoarthritis. And all the while she kept growing until she could barely leave the house.

  ‘Let’s get out of this sun,’ said Aiden.

  Saskia followed him to the granny flat where he lived at the rear of the house. The blinds were drawn. Apart from a mattress in one corner, the room was devoted to musical instruments and sound equipment. Black cords snaked across the floor. A laptop sat open by the bed.

  Aiden went to the computer and fiddled with the mouse. Saskia jumped as music blasted from the speakers.

  ‘Sorry.’ He turned it down enough that the blaring noise became a discernible, folksy rock melody.

  ‘This yours?’

  ‘Course.’

  ‘Is it new?’

  ‘Laid it down on the weekend. I think maybe it needs a keyboard. It feels bare.’

  ‘I like it. It’s simple.’ She flipped through his vinyl collection. ‘I saw Nash on a Victorian tourism ad on the flight home.’

  ‘Mr Matthew Nash, you mean?’

  ‘Is that what he’s going by now?’

  ‘He corrected me in the pub the other day.’

  ‘Well, Matthew Nash is apparently some sort of rugged tourism symbol. He was sitting on a rock playing a guitar in an Akubra.’

  ‘Nash can’t play guitar! He
can give you a few bars of “Stairway” and the main riff from “Sweet Child”.’

  ‘How’s his song doing?’

  ‘Dunno.’

  Saskia raised an eyebrow at her brother but said nothing.

  Aiden looked away and mumbled: ‘Twelve-year-old girls love it.’

  Matthew Nash had been the lead singer of Aiden’s band, the Tombolas, until he came runner-up on the ninth season of Australian Idol and quit. At the time he paid his bills working as a labourer for a landscape gardener, hauling blue stones and bags of fertilizer in the sun five days a week. The work left him with a tanned, muscular physique that had generated a buzz in certain viewing demographics.

  ‘Didn’t even write it himself,’ Aiden said, kicking the edge of his mattress.

  He took two beers from the bar fridge and gave one to Saskia.

  ‘Oh, you got a new bass.’ She put down her beer and picked up the guitar.

  ‘Yeah.’

  She plucked some chords.

  ‘We’ve got a gig at The Empress on Sunday if you and Andy want to come along. You might want to tell the polo fan to make sure his inoculations are up to date before he crosses the river.’

  Aiden liked Andy but he couldn’t help but poke fun. ‘Aiden, don’t.’ Saskia smiled wryly. ‘Andy prefers motorsports to horses.’

  ‘So how was Rome?’

  ‘So fucking amazing. I came back with loads of ideas. You should take a trip somewhere. Travel is good for generating creative ideas.’

  ‘Can’t. All the money’s going into the new album. So are you going to see Mum?’

  ‘Why, do you have to be somewhere?’

  ‘No.’ He turned the laptop to face him and started fiddling with the mixer settings, bringing the bass up and down on the tune. ‘She’ll like those mugs. You should take them in and show them to her.’

  ‘I will. Let me finish my beer first.’

  ‘It’s cooler in the main house. You know she likes to keep it like a meat locker.’

  ‘Jeez, Aiden, what’s wrong?’

  He was tearing the label from his beer. He rubbed the paper between his thumb and forefinger until it formed a little ball.

  ‘What going on?’ Saskia urged.

  His eyes darted side to side. ‘Uh, Seth’s coming over.’

  ‘What?’ Saskia stood, knocking her beer to the floor.

  Aiden put his bottle to his lips and wouldn’t meet her eye.

  ‘Aiden. Why is he coming around? What are you doing even talking to him?’

  Her brother shrugged. ‘We’ve got work to do.’

  ‘He’s still in your band?’

  ‘I would have kicked him out, but you’re shacked up now, aren’t you? Two months after you were supposed to marry him you took up with Andy.’

  ‘He was the one who cheated while we were engaged, Aiden. He’s the reason we didn’t get married.’

  ‘I’m not saying it was okay. It’s just, he was so miserable when you called it off. Then you found someone else. Didn’t feel right to kick him out of the band as well.’

  ‘I don’t believe this.’ Saskia threw her hands in the air. ‘You should have kicked him out straight away!’

  ‘He didn’t turn up to practice for a few months.’ Aiden’s voice had become high and defensive. ‘Then in March, not long after you and Andy got serious, he just appeared. He had a new amp under his arm. Said his father was throwing it out. He asked if the band could use it and apologised for ditching us. He said he’d been depressed and promised he was ready to focus on the music.’

  ‘And you just let him? You’ve been playing with him this entire time?’

  ‘Well, you stopped coming to our gigs anyway . . .’ He trailed off, quietened by the stormy look on his sister’s face. She had stopped going at first because it had been too painful. Even though Seth wasn’t playing with the band immediately after their split, the dingy pubs and smoky beer gardens where the Tombolas performed had been the setting for most of their romance. It was too painful. And then she’d met Andy, and things had gotten serious so quickly that she didn’t have much time to come anymore.

  ‘I’m sorry, I just felt bad for the guy. Every time I’d try to tell him we were going to kick him out of the band he’d start asking about you. He kept saying the band was the only thing that kept him going.’

  Saskia folded her arms.

  It was true that in the long run she had come out far better. But Seth was wrong, wrong, wrong. And not only that, he had wronged her. Aiden was looking at her with a blend of contrition and understanding. ‘I’d already lost Nash. Without Seth there’d barely be anything left of the band.’

  ‘I’ll go and see if Mum’s awake,’ Saskia said.

  *

  Lorna Hill was stretched out on the bed with a damp cloth over her face. Ice blocks were relinquishing their will to live in a tumbler on her bedside table. Beads of moisture dotted the outside of the glass. A ceiling fan spun rigorously overhead, threatening to fly off its bracket.

  ‘Mum?’

  ‘Is that you, dear?’ Lorna lifted the cloth from her eyes.

  ‘Hi, Mum.’ Saskia kissed her mother. ‘How are you? I’ve got some things for you. Presents.’

  Lorna struggled up onto her elbows. ‘Oh ta, love, ta.’

  ‘It’s a nice day.’

  ‘Too hot for me.’

  ‘The sun’s lovely. Maybe you could do a little gardening? It would be good for you.’

  ‘Oh love, I’ve had the most terrible arthritic pains. Best I stay in bed, I think.’

  Saskia set the box down on the chintz doona. For years she’d been hearing this excuse. It always came in the form of a list of symptoms followed by, ‘Best I stay in bed’. Every time Saskia said to her mother, ‘If you got some exercise it might help alleviate the symptoms,’ Lorna dismissed the suggestion with a wave of her dimpled hand.

  ‘You should come and see the flat,’ Saskia chatted as she tidied. Coke cans congregated on the far bedside table. She gathered them up and took them to the recycling bin in the kitchen.

  ‘But you can see Aiden if you visit me here.’

  ‘I want you to see where I’m living, Mum. We could have dinner. Andy does an excellent Nicoise salad. I’ll pick you up and drive you home.’

  ‘We’ll see, love. Maybe when it’s cooler. I’m no use in the heat. Now aren’t these smart.’ Lorna had picked two of the colourful state mugs out of the box.

  ‘I thought you’d like those. Anything you don’t want you could take down to St Vincent’s.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, love. I don’t know when I’ll be back on my feet again.’

  ‘Are you still helping out down there?’

  ‘Off and on, love.’

  ‘Okay.’ Saskia felt helpless. ‘Is there anything else you need?’

  ‘Oh no, you know Aiden does a good job making sure we have everything.’

  There was no note of reproach in this comment. Lorna was studiously agreeable so that nobody would challenge her refusal to get out of bed. Saskia removed discarded clothing from a chair in the corner of the room and started telling Lorna about Rome. ‘I came up with so many ideas.’

  ‘Did you, dear?’ Lorna said distantly.

  ‘Yes. I want to attract more stockists.’ She touched her fingertips together. Her mother’s eye had drifted back to the mute television at the foot of her bed. Saskia stood. ‘Well, Aiden said Seth’s coming so I’d better—’

  ‘All right, love,’ Lorna said. ‘Thanks for the cups.’

  Saskia bent down and kissed her mother goodbye. She exited via the front door, which nobody ever used, knowing Seth would go around the back. She stepped through the gate just in time to come nose to nose with her ex.

  ‘Oh.’ The shock of seeing her old fiancé made Saskia jump.

  ‘Sas.’ He lowered his sunglasses.

  ‘Hello, Seth,’ she said formally.

  It was strange to see him after all this time and feel nothing. She watched as h
e straightened his back to maximise his six-foot frame. As he did this he folded his arms, employing the footballer’s trick of tucking one hand under each bicep so that the muscles appeared bigger.

  His face twitched. He was clearly taken aback by the sight of her, but he recovered, smiled, and said, ‘How are you, Mrs Colbrook?’

  There was a touch of mockery to his voice, but the past fourteen months had washed away any anger Saskia felt towards him. She felt almost nostalgic looking at her first love, whose self-centredness had put her on the path to meeting Andy.

  Seth didn’t possess Andy’s wholesome, catalogue-ready good looks. He was darker, with a long narrow nose that dominated his face, and dark eyes. His lanky brown hair curled at the ends and often looked in need of a good wash. She had to admit, he was more beautiful than Andy, speaking purely from a visual artist’s perspective. Certainly he was more interesting-looking. But that was not an accident. He never buttoned his shirts higher than mid-chest to ensure the money he’d spent having an anatomical heart tattooed over his sternum wasn’t wasted.

  ‘I’m fine, thanks, but I’m late. Excuse me,’ she said, brushing past him.

  ‘Is that all I get?’ he asked.

  She bristled. Whatever goodwill she had felt towards him disappeared. ‘I don’t know what more you want.’ She kept walking.

  ‘Maybe a minute for the man you ditched at the altar?’

  She squeezed her hand around her bundle of keys. Their serrated edges bit into her flesh. ‘I’m not having this discussion,’ she said without turning around. ‘And you shouldn’t have sent that text message . . . you shouldn’t be texting me at all.’

  She wished she’d driven over in her old beat-up Datsun with its wonky bumper and gimpy back wheel. Instead she clicked the keyless entry on the silver Audi and opened the door. In the reflective surface of the tinted window she could see Seth open his mouth to argue, or make some jibe about her apparent new-found affluence. But he must have thought better of it, because he didn’t speak again. And when she got into the car and finally looked back at where he had been standing, he was gone.

  Day 20, Friday, October 31