The First Year

by Genevieve Gannon

  She shivered, pointed all of the heater vents at her face and listened to the rhythmic ratter-ratter-ratter of the rain lashing the car roof. She turned on the radio to drown out her thoughts and began to drive. The windscreen wipers sheared away sheets of water.

  She turned onto Toorak Road and sped towards the city. A car coming off Williams Road honked its horn as it narrowly avoided colliding with her. Tyres squealed as the driver slammed on the brakes. In the dark, Saskia could make out a wildly gesturing figure giving her the finger and shaking an abusive fist. She realised she had forgotten to put her lights on, and flicked the switch. If Andy had been next to her he would have made some remark about how careless she was. He always believed he knew best, she thought bitterly. She turned right and headed for the freeway that would take her to Randa’s house.

  Day 236, Wednesday, June 3

  ‘What a disaster,’ said Saskia, her hand over her eyes.

  It was 4 a.m. and they were still drinking. Glasses had been abandoned (one had been broken) and they were sucking shiraz straight from the bottle.

  ‘Fuck ’em,’ Randa said, swishing the wine around in the bottle. ‘They made you change. They made you feel like you weren’t good enough. They didn’t even let you pick out your own wedding dress.’

  ‘How ugly was my dress?’ Saskia slurred, splayed on the lounge room floor.

  ‘Uuh-gleee.’

  ‘I wo-woulda chosen something slinky and modern.’

  ‘You have the best taste.’

  A purple scarf was draped over the lamp so that the light in the room was inky. Saskia deemed the gloom appropriate. Every time her thoughts alighted on Andy she felt a pain rear up inside her, like a serpent. When the reptile stirred she poured more wine down her throat to sedate it.

  ‘Millie has a dress that looks like a paper bag. Every time she wears it, I think — bag lady.’

  Randa chuckled. ‘What do you listen to that old sow for anyway?’

  ‘I wanted her to like me,’ Saskia said, wet-eyed.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘For Andy.’ Tears made track-marks down Saskia’s cheeks.

  ‘No, no, no,’ said Randa, coming over and sopping them up with an oven mitt.

  ‘Don’t cry. Don’t cry.’ She thumbed Saskia’s chin. ‘It will be okay. You’ll see.’

  Randa put Saskia to bed with a tall glass of water and a packet of Panadol. Saskia squeezed her eyes shut and tried to imagine herself somewhere else. The fold-out couch in the spare room smelled of cat, even though Tiger had been hit by a car the previous spring. ‘Poor Tiger’, Saskia thought weepily. She wanted to float out of herself and leave her heartache behind.

  ‘Good night, Sas,’ Randa called from her bedroom. ‘Love you.’

  Saskia woke a few hours later. The pleasant fugue state lasted as long as it took her eyes to adjust to her surrounds — yoga matt on the floor, the 2012 calendar on the mustard wall — and she remembered where she was and why. Listless, she picked up her phone. Her heart hardened as she took in the blank screen that told her Andy had made no attempt at contact. She rolled over, elbowing the couch cushion into a more comfortable shape.

  She wanted to stay in bed until October. But there were orders to be filled and paper work to catch up on. Now more than ever, she realised, it would be important to stay on top of orders for Little Hill designs.

  *

  When Andy woke his first instinct was to contact Saskia. The rash things he’d said were playing on repeat in his head. He hadn’t meant them. His thoughts had somehow become twisted between his mind and his mouth. He’d been trying to share with her how he felt under pressure, and to reveal to her how deeply it affected him. He’d wanted to show his best friend and dearest love his turmoil. But anger, fear, he didn’t know what, had somehow smothered his ability to express himself. He — a lawyer who spun arguments from air — had fumbled his words and the next thing he knew they were fighting. It was as if a key piece of what made him him had vacated. And now he was left in despair.

  He thought of loading his car with hundreds of dollars’ worth of peonies and azaleas. Or he could buy her something for the house. Something that was her taste that would make her feel like it was her home too. Hadn’t she always hated the stark walls? He could buy some tins of paint or—

  A key turned in the lock. Andy sat up straight, hopeful anticipation stirring in his chest. He smoothed his hair and tried to arrange himself in a relaxed pose, though his mouth was dry and his heart was pounding.

  Saskia stepped into the room with an empty mesh grocery bag in each hand.

  They looked at each other, neither knowing what to say. ‘Hello’ seemed so small.

  Andy said it anyway. He realised she had brought the bags to collect her things.

  ‘Hello,’ she replied.

  She felt punctured. The speech she’d rehearsed on the drive over was leaking out of her head like sand. She had hoped she wouldn’t have to make it. She had hoped that when she walked through the door he would run to her and sweep her up into his arms. But he didn’t.

  She remembered one line. ‘So much for the first year. We barely made it half way.’

  Saskia was rooted to the spot, standing in this white, sterile room. After six months it still didn’t feel entirely like home. Her painting above the light switch looked out of place. She glanced affectionately at the Pro Hart print, and in a fit of sentimentality took it from its nail on the wall and placed it in one of her bags. Without it in the room, it was as if she had never been there.

  Andy waited, wary of igniting her temper. She seemed docile now. Subdued. But if he said the wrong thing, if he intimated that he felt he deserved her, or that he possessed her, he would make matters worse. He wished she would show him a small smile, a curl of the lip, a sad admission of the state they had gotten themselves into. He needed her to let him know it was okay to go to her, that she would let him take her in his arms.

  He stepped towards her. ‘Sas, you don’t have to go.’

  An unreadable reaction flickered across her face as she analysed his language, weighing up the significance of each word. He had said she didn’t have to go, offering her his permission again.

  She walked to the bedroom and began filling the grocery bags with underwear, jeans, balls of socks, a jumper. She put her arms around a group of her dresses, hugging them like old friends, and lifted them, hangers and all, off the wardrobe rail.

  He followed her in. ‘Sas.’

  She was moving quickly now. She had made her decision. He watched on as Saskia threw her dresses over her shoulder and lifted her supermarket bags full of underwear. She looked at her husband, who had been unable to conjure up anything more convincing than ‘You don’t have to go’, and wondered why he wasn’t trying to stop her. Was his love really as shallow as it currently felt as they stood a few metres apart, seemingly unable to bridge the chasm that had opened between them.

  ‘Sas,’ he said again.

  She needed to get out of the house. She’d given up her job and put her business in his hands. Now she needed to find the person who had started Little Hill in the first place, funding it with money earned labouring over a coffee machine. The person who had clawed her way out of debt and heartbreak, that was the only person she could rely on right now.

  *

  ‘Stay here as long as you need,’ Randa said as she got the spare quilt down from the top of the linen cupboard. ‘In the morning we’ll drive to Mum’s and pick up my futon. We’ll set it up in the study. That can be your room.’ She had adopted a chirpy project-manager tone.

  ‘Okay.’ Saskia knew she would make an excuse in the morning not to collect the futon. It seemed too permanent.

  Randa hugged her. ‘Help yourself to anything in the fridge. Same with the bathroom, if you want to give yourself a facial or something.’

  She lingered at the doorway, her hand on the light switch. ‘Things will look better in the morning.’

  Day 242, Monday, June 8<
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  After a weekend of non-stop work to distract herself from Andy, Saskia lay on her back with the end of a grey-lead in her mouth as Randa watched the news in tracksuit pants. They had both declared themselves temporarily burnt out and in need of a break.

  ‘It can’t be done,’ Saskia said, her pencil hovering over a list of figures on the back of an envelope she hadn’t opened because she knew it contained a bill. At her peak, she could make twenty cuffs a day, which should bring two thousand dollars. That was merchant banker money. Hollywood money. But that pace was unsustainable, and the surge of interest from Leila’s endorsement was already slowing.

  She flexed her fingers causing the joints to crack. ‘I’m going to get RSI,’ she said.

  ‘Can you get an assistant?’ Randa asked.

  ‘I can’t afford one.’

  Randa picked up the remote and started flicking through the channels. ‘Maybe you need to charge more.’

  Saskia twirled a strand of black hair around her index finger. ‘If I jack up the prices too much people will stop buying.’

  It was her perpetual predicament. She needed to make more pieces so that she could sell them, but in order to do that she needed silver, which cost money.

  ‘This is why businesses need start-up capital,’ Saskia said.

  ‘Why don’t you go talk to a bank about a loan?’

  ‘In the words of Groucho Marx, I wouldn’t want to be indebted to any financial institution that would have me as a customer.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s the saying.’ Randa patted her knee. ‘And besides, you’ve got a solid work history, maybe you should try it.’

  ‘I’m not sure banks view three years at Karl’s Coffee Cart as solid. Besides, the whole Seth fiasco completely destroyed my credit. I was in arrears for months.’

  ‘Change of subject,’ Randa said. ‘What shall we have for dinner? Tinned beans or tinned spaghetti?’

  ‘That’s another thing — I should be paying you rent. Then at least you’d be able to afford decent food, like fresh beans, and that fancy spaghetti that comes in three colours.’

  ‘That’s out of the question! Besides, what’s decent food without decent company?’ Randa silenced her with a flick of her hand. ‘Maybe we should splash out and get something from Tiba’s. They do a kebab plate for ten dollars on Tuesdays. We can split it. Five dollars for dinner won’t bankrupt us. I can go pick it up.’

  ‘No,’ said Saskia tossing aside her calculator. ‘Let’s eat there. I need to get out of this house.’

  *

  Andy stretched his arm over the empty mattress. A pillow lying askew made a feminine shape under the doona. He pulled it to his chest and curled his body around it, inhaling the traces of her scent — oranges, coffee, Chloe perfume — until it filled his chest. He felt the beginnings of arousal, but this was soon swamped by the ever-present sadness.

  A bottle of tepid mineral water sat on the bedside table. He swallowed three gulps to serve as breakfast then tossed the pillow onto the floor and swung himself out of bed. He had been spending his days in his study trawling news and job sites, and googling old colleagues. The days were growing cold, and grey clouds had moved in with stubborn permanency. He prowled his flat with the heater turned up full-blast. Saskia would have made him put on socks and a jumper amid a lecture about how pampered he was. The flat seemed to have expanded and lost its warmth with her absence. It echoed with emptiness.

  As his laptop whirred to life he felt the momentary surge of positivity the sound brought with it every morning before the barren job sites crushed his spirit.

  While his computer loaded he performed his other daily ritual, which was to pick up his phone and roll it over in his hand, readying himself to dial, trying to figure out the right thing to say and never quite coming up with anything good enough. His heart pounded every time the device made a noise.

  He was staring at it when, midmorning, its ring caused a cardiac episode. It was Henry Tsu, who, after being cut lose from HM&L, had landed a decent role at Cameron’s, a less prestigious but larger firm that occupied an entire yellow-brick building on Russell Street. Andy answered, wondering if Henry knew he was jobless now.

  ‘Andy, it’s Henry.’ The voice on the other end of the line was a mixture of joviality and sympathy. Andy winced. He knew.

  ‘Henry.’ He forced some humour into his voice. ‘How’s life at Cameron’s?’

  ‘It’s good. We’ve got lots of work. In fact, I don’t know what your situation is, but we need an extra pair of hands on a complex matter. It’ll last a few months. Could even be a job at the end of it for the person who took the role, if the person was interested. I know HM&L continued to shed people even after the original round of redundancies, so I thought maybe I should call.’

  Henry was sparing him the humiliation of outright offering him the position.

  ‘I called you because, well, nobody knows IP better than you.’

  Andy sat forward and raked his fingers through his facial hair. His GQ stubble had gone to seed and his chin was hidden behind an odd-shaped beard that had points and brambles. He pictured the Cameron’s building, not far from HM&L’s headquarters on Collins, and the hundreds of lawyers that filed through its revolving door each day.

  ‘Yeah, of course,’ he said. ‘Let me make some calls.’

  ‘Great.’ Henry sounded surprised. ‘Um, when you do call . . . around, can you let them know we’d need an answer quickly? It’s a mat. leave role that starts right away. One of our senior associates went into premature labour. Imagine if that happened at HM&L? They’d have her billing hours from her hospital bed.’ He chuckled.

  Andy thought of Saskia hard at work in her studio, and his promise. He knew she would refuse to draw down on the joint account, but he needed to ensure she could, if she needed to.

  ‘How long’s the contract?’

  ‘Nine months.’

  ‘I think I might know someone.’

  ‘Oh, great.’

  ‘Yes. You see, I’m no longer with HM&L.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that Andy,’ Henry said, sounding only half sorry and not a little bit surprised.

  ‘I’d be interested.’

  ‘Meet me at the Cameron’s building Monday. I’ll introduce you to my boss.’

  ‘Okay,’ Andy said. ‘And Tsu . . .’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Thanks.’

  *

  Tiba’s was crowded when Randa and Saskia arrived. The family-run Lebanese place was filled with the aroma of hot lamb and garlic and the hubbub of eating, talking and merriment. Orders were being taken and shouted, and the manager bellowed greetings to regulars.

  ‘You could wait tables,’ Randa said, pointing to a ‘Help Wanted’ sign standing up on the counter.

  ‘It’s not a bad idea.’

  ‘Sas, I was joking. You work too much as it is.’

  ‘Says you,’ said Saskia. ‘How many hours a day do you spend locked away with that thesis?’

  ‘I may have Stockholm syndrome.’

  ‘Waitressing isn’t such a bad idea,’ Saskia mused, watching the busy cheer of the restaurant. ‘A little guaranteed cash flow would be good to get me over this hump. Just one or two shifts a week.’ She didn’t articulate her last thought: So I don’t have to take money from the joint account with Andy.

  A girl with large brown eyes and rubies in her ears arrived at their table. ‘Welcome to Tiba’s. May I take your order?’

  ‘I saw you’re looking for a waitress,’ Saskia said.

  ‘Yes. A casual.’

  ‘How’s the pay?’

  ‘Pretty good.’ The girl shrugged. ‘The kitchen feeds you the nights you work.’

  ‘Really?’ She hadn’t seriously been considering taking on a night job, but the prospect of a free meal on top of a regular income made it seem all the more appealing. A dining room bustling with smiling waitstaff and jolly customers promised to be a good antidote to Saskia’s loneliness.


  ‘We’re going to split the kebab plate, please,’ Randa told the waitress.

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Saskia. ‘Who do I speak to about applying for the job?’

  *

  As Andy studied the menu at Maha he couldn’t help but wonder what Saskia was having for dinner.

  ‘Beer, mate?’ asked Rhino.

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘What’s good here? Felfel? What’s felfel?’

  ‘Let’s hold off and order in a few minutes,’ said Andy.

  ‘I’m starving. I’m off carbs, you know. Two more minutes and I’ll be eating this menu. Do you think paper has carbs in it? Sounds like it does. Or is that carbon?’

  ‘We should wait until our whole party is here.’

  ‘Hugh’s coming, is he?’ Rhino took a sip from the beer that had been placed in front of him.

  ‘No. I invited Krystyn.’

  ‘Krystyn?’ Rhino choked on his lager.

  Andy slapped his back. ‘Perhaps I shouldn’t have told you.’

  ‘No, no,’ Rhino said, picking up a butter knife and patting his hair down as he checked his reflection in its blade. ‘I’m glad you warned me.’

  ‘Here she is.’

  Rhino dropped his knife onto his plate with a clang.

  Krystyn, dressed in blue velvet, slid onto the low banquette and greeted the two men. Her hair was cascading down her back and the dress hugged her curves.

  Andy kissed her cheek but Rhino lacked the courage for anything more daring than a handshake. ‘Krystyn, you look very pertinent,’ he said, then turned the colour of a beetroot.

  ‘I heard HM&L made you associate director?’ Andy said, tearing a bread roll apart.

  ‘Not quite,’ Krystyn said. ‘They offered it to me after you left but I told them to stick their job up their arse.’ She smiled.