The Last Anniversary

by Liane Moriarty

  Grace rocks the bouncinette with one foot while she pays bills, dutifully pressing numbers followed by the hash key as instructed by the robotic lady.

  Jake frowns as he experiments with a new sound: a low, humming gurgle. He smiles radiantly up at her as he gurgles. 'Did you hear that?'

  He is adorable. She can see that. She just can't feel it. She looks at him and it seems so evil, so dirty, that she feels nothing for this cooing, gurgling child. She can't even smile back at him. Even when she makes a tremendous effort, tries to squeeze out a loving feeling, pushing as hard as when she was pushing him out of her body, she feels nothing. In fact, the harder she tries, the less she feels.

  Grace thinks about the day Sophie came to visit. She stood in the doorway holding the platter, watching Callum lean over Sophie to see Jake smile for the first time. Sophie was pulling a funny face. Callum had his hand on Sophie's shoulder. They were both so natural. Proper, real, feeling people. When she'd made herself walk in, Grace felt like she used to feel on the dance floor as a teenager, surrounded by gyrating figures, her cheek muscles hurting from her fake smile, her body like marble. She'd always known she was a bit unnatural. Now it was proven. Her emotional responses were somehow never quite right. When she met Callum she thought he'd saved her, but obviously it was only temporary.

  Everyone would be better off without her. There would be a lot more laughing. The problem is that Callum wouldn't think so. Mystifyingly, he still loves her. He genuinely seems to miss her if she goes away for one night. He might fall apart. Callum is, at heart, an old-fashioned family man. He loves saying 'My wife'. After they got married he couldn't stop saying it. He needs a wife; and the baby needs a mother, otherwise who would take care of him while Callum was at work? He'd have to put the baby in day-care. Callum would be stressed and he'd eat badly and the house would be a pigsty and Jake would catch colds from all the other children and, no, it wouldn't do.

  Grace needs to have a replacement woman waiting in the wings, an understudy, someone who is already like part of the family, someone who wants the role, someone better qualified for it in the first place.

  Sophie Honeywell is such a perfect, obvious candidate, it's like it's meant to be.

  The vague half-thought Grace had at the funeral begins to solidify into a sensible, logical plan. When she'd seen Sophie looking so longingly at Callum and Jake she'd felt an overwhelming desire to just give them both to her, to see her face light up. Here you go. They're yours. No, really. You can keep them. They'd look better on you.

  It was quite obvious that Sophie liked Callum, and it seemed from the way that they were chatting at lunch that Callum liked her. Grace just needed to fan that spark of attraction into something more. If Sophie and Callum have begun falling in love, Grace can leave them without feeling guilty. She can erase herself.

  Sophie is a sweet, kind, smart girl who would never, ever think of smashing a hairbrush against a baby's head. She makes funny faces. She talks to Callum about music. She would fit right in with Callum's huge circle of extroverted friends, whereas Grace still feels like the new girlfriend even after all this time. Sophie made Callum do his helpless sort of teenage-boy guffawing laugh that Grace hasn't heard in ages and she made Jake smile for the first time ever. She even made Grace smile, for God's sake. Jake will be much better with Sophie as his mum. After all, Grandma Enigma was brought up by Aunt Connie and Aunt Rose, and look what a happy life she's led! Grace is just following a fine family tradition of handing over babies to more suitable people.

  Tomorrow Sophie is moving into Aunt Connie's house, which will make her much more accessible. It should be easy to make sure that Callum and Sophie spend as much time as possible together. Just as they're about to fall in love, Grace will conveniently disappear.

  One spoonful of sesame seeds and she'll be out of everybody's way. No need for sleeping pills or jumping off cliffs. She can already imagine how her throat will feel as it begins to swell and close up. That part will be awful but it will only last a few seconds, and the great clean void of nothingness that follows will be wonderful.

  30

  Bellbirds. Sunlight gentle on her face. Lapping water. Salty air. Pine-O-Clean scrubbed floors.

  Sophie opens her eyes on the first morning of living in Aunt Connie's house and feels almost drunk with first-morning-of-a-holiday happiness. She knows she will remember this time in her life the way you remember the first few months of a new relationship; a time with its own special smell and taste, a time where everything, even ordinary objects like shower curtains, look sharper and more significant, as if you've taken a hallucinogenic drug, as if all your senses had been muted before. She's in love with this house. It's so perfect it makes her want to laugh. The butterflies that suddenly swoop down the hallway in front of her, the way the polished floorboards turn gold in the afternoon sun, the constant background sound of the river, the resident kookaburra, the state-of-the-art dishwasher that leaves glasses sparkling, the funny china toilet-roll holder!

  It is comforting to know that she can experience joy like this without it involving a man. She frowns. Although, then again, there is something a bit sexual about this drunken happy feeling. Her body feels all soft and yielding, as if she's woken up from a night of sleepy lovemaking. This isn't how she expected to feel after moving into an old lady's house. Perhaps Jimmy and Connie had an excellent sex life and all those sighs of satisfaction over the years have soaked into the atmosphere.

  She stretches her arms languorously above her head. She definitely had some rather enjoyable dreams last night. There was a lot of kissing involved. Lovely, romantic kissing. Somebody with wide shoulders. They were in a boat together. Now who was the guy?

  Oh.

  It doesn't mean anything. You can't help who chooses to march into your dreams and start kissing you without your permission.

  Mmmmm.

  Yes, well, no point lingering on that particular topic.

  Anyway, the point is, she feels very happy and right now she does not need a man at all. In fact, perhaps-she grins wickedly at the ceiling-it's time she invested in a nice, expensive...vibrator! Forget all these romantic ideas about sex and get practical. Claire is always offering to buy her one for her birthday. ('They're perfect when you're in a hurry,' Claire told her. 'I'm never in a hurry to have an orgasm,' Sophie had said.) Yes, the bellbirds, the lapping of the river and the gentle hum of an efficient, state-of-the-art vibrator.

  She laughs out loud.

  And who cares about kids anyway? Messy, noisy, ungrateful things. She'll sponsor another World Vision child or something. Connie and Rose never had children and they led satisfying, happy lives. Perhaps they made judicious use of vibrators.

  Oh, that's enough! The prudish side of Sophie's personality slaps her hands together with disgust.

  She should get up. The place is filled to the rooftop with boxes. Her parents will be over later today to see the place. Her father will bring his toolbox, light globes, spare fuse wire and picture hooks. He will frown a lot and bang on all the walls with his fist. He'll worry about things like the hot-water system and security. He doesn't like the fact that she has moved in without the deeds to the property. So far she has only talked briefly to Aunt Connie's solicitor on the phone. Unlike Enigma and Rose, Hans finds paperwork soothing and necessary. Sophie's mother will bring Turkish Delight chocolate, champagne, bubble bath and some new regency romances. Gretel will dance around the house pretending she's Sophie: 'Here I am eating my dinner!' 'Here I am talking on the phone!'

  Just another few minutes and then she'll get up.

  The ceiling of Connie and Jimmy's bedroom slopes at sharp angles with beautifully carved cornices. Her eyes linger on the cornices and she realises that the pattern is actually curved eucalyptus leaves. She remembers Connie telling her that Rose did all the designs for the cornices and tiles around the house and that she got her inspiration from the island. When Sophie lifts her chin from the pillow she can see the river from
a row of uncurtained picture windows. Lying here feels like being in a boat bobbing along the river.

  Sophie has been brought up to send charming handwritten thank you letters on pretty notepaper and it is a terrible pity that she can't send one to Aunt Connie.

  Dear Aunt Connie, thank you for my brand-new life. What a thoughtful gift.

  Sex in the morning. Sleepy, sticky, cosy sex. Like sex in a tent. Or sex in a sleeping bag. Faster, quieter and a bit dirtier than sex at night. A simple, satisfying, tender, loving fuck.

  It is six a.m. on a Saturday and Callum Tidyman is lying in bed, on his side, with an optimistic erection, looking at his mother-in-law's cream curtains and thinking about sex in the morning. He's thinking about how only a few months ago he would have just rolled over and pulled Grace to him, if she hadn't already done the same to him. Now that seems as wildly inappropriate as grabbing a stranger's breast on a bus. (When he was a teenager he used to frighten himself, imagining what would happen if he suddenly went mad and shoved his hand down the front of some woman's dress, how her face would instantly switch from benign to appalled, how he'd no longer be a gawky kid carrying a gigantic cello case but a psycho. You wouldn't be able to go back once you'd done something like that. You'd cross a line. It was like imagining throwing yourself off a cliff-terrifyingly compelling because you could so easily just do it. It was only your self-control that stopped you, and what if you lost it for a second?)

  He can feel Grace's foot against his calf and maybe a few strands of her hair, which always gets all over the place, at the back of his neck. He lies very still.

  It would be highly inappropriate to wake up one's wife for sex when one knows that she was awake at two a.m. feeding one's son. That would be something a Selfish Bastard Typical Man would do. Grace has never called him that, but other women in his past have and you need to be vigilant because it can happen without a moment's notice, when you're not concentrating-all of a sudden they're furious with you, crying even, because you've hurt their feelings, clomping about with your big insensitive ways.

  Sometimes Grace pretended to stay asleep when they had sex in the morning. She'd let her head flop around, even do a few fake snores, and then suddenly she'd open one green eye a fraction and give him a lazy, intimate wink, 'Good morning'. Afterwards she would stretch her legs and arms with luxurious abandon, yawning gigantically. Grace's yawns always end with a strange yelping sound. It sounds like 'iip!' She takes forever to wake up properly, stretching and moaning; while Callum, who wakes instantly (except when he's been drinking red wine) watches this performance with fascination.

  'What a fuss. It's like you come out of a coma each morning.'

  'Yes, and you just had sex with a girl in a coma, you sick pervert,' she'd say without opening her eyes.

  Callum really loves his son but he really misses sex with his wife.

  They have (had?) such a good sex life. That's the thing. Sex with Grace was so easy and uncomplicated, sometimes funny, sometimes beautiful, sometimes nothing special but still satisfying, like spaghetti on toast. All the women Callum dated before he met Grace had ended up using sex like an ace up their sleeves. Louise used to have a special irritable little sigh that meant 'oh not again!'. He can still remember the humiliation of tentatively touching her on the shoulder and hearing that impatient exhalation of breath. 'Forget it if it's a bloody favour,' he'd said once, and Jesus Christ, the drama, the tears, the phone calls to girlfriends! He was such a chauvinist pig. He was so insensitive to her needs. He was such a Selfish Bastard Typical Man.

  Maybe it was because of Louise, or maybe it was some sort of inferiority complex dating back to when he was a skinny, pimply teenager who played the cello and did ballroom dancing on Saturday mornings, but Callum suffers from a mild neurosis about the whole concept of sex as a dull duty women perform for men. He doesn't laugh when sitcom couples do their cliched comedy routines about sex. He doesn't join in jokey dinner-party conversations about husbands 'getting lucky' after they've done the vacuuming. (Grace never joins in with those conversations either. Sometimes he looks across the table at her and her eyelid will lower in the barest suggestion of a wink. One of the hottest things about Grace is her winks. It's because they're so unexpected and out of character. An ice queen winking at you.)

  When Callum had met Grace he'd only just recovered from a very badly broken heart. Pauline. She was the one after Louise. One day, after two years together, while they were eating lunch on a Sunday-toasted ham, cheese and tomato sandwiches-Pauline calmly informed him that she'd accepted a transfer to South Africa and she didn't expect him to come because she 'couldn't be herself' with Callum and she needed to 'get herself back'. He can still remember how his mouthful of sandwich turned into a hard lump in his throat. 'Be yourself! How am I stopping you from being yourself?' he'd said, and she'd just looked at him contemptuously, as if she wasn't going to fall for his sneaky tricks, and in his head he was yelling, What the fuck are you talking about? It was so humiliating. He'd seriously thought they were happy. He'd thought they were going to get married and have kids. It took him months and months to wake up without a sick sense of vertigo when he thought about filling the day ahead. But he got over it; of course he got over it. He decided-and he truly meant it-that he would be a bachelor forever. He would enjoy the company of his nieces and nephews. There was music. There was work. There was travel. There was a whole interesting world out there. He would never even bother asking a woman on a date. He was obviously not good at relationships in the same way that he was not good at tennis. It wasn't his thing.

  And then he'd gone to that wedding and met Grace. She was like a reward for all those months of misery. She was too good to be true. She was like winning the lottery when you hadn't even bought a ticket. Even after all these years of marriage he still feels immense gratitude, relief and surprise when he thinks about how his life could have been if he'd never met Grace.

  Of course, their marriage hasn't turned out to be quite as fairytale perfect as he'd blissfully expected it to be in those early days. They have fights, horrible in their banality. Callum had truly thought that if they ever fought, their fights would be operatic and passionate, over big, complex issues, and they would probably end up in bed. He didn't envisage these petty, pathetic spats. He hates that hatchet-hard tone she can get in her voice over something as trivial as a wet towel left on a bed or a breakfast bowl not put in the sink. And that look she gives him. Sometimes he clicks his fingers in front of her eyes when she does that. 'Grace? Are you in there? Or have you been taken over by a cold-hearted alien?' He's disappointed that she keeps herself a bit aloof from his circle of friends. He wishes they could go out dancing together, or even just dance alone in the living room. He wishes she wouldn't jiggle her leg when they watch TV. But even while he is frustrated with her, or hurt by her, or plain irritated by her, he still loves her, he still has a secret crush on her, he is still awed that someone this beautiful is with him. When she told him she was pregnant he even caught himself thinking, 'She can't leave me now'.

  One of his brothers had told him, 'Don't be surprised if you don't feel anything when you first see the baby. It takes a while to get your head around it. It's different for women. They've got hormones. It's an unfair advantage. The fact is mate, a baby is a baby. They all look the same. You might have to fake it in the beginning. Just do the Proud Daddy act. I just thought about the night we played at the Basement. Remember? Best night of my life. Anyway, when I was holding Em for the first time, feeling absolutely nothing, I thought about that night, and Sara's mum was saying, "Oh look at the proud daddy, he's got tears in his eyes!"'

  But Callum didn't have to fake it. He got his head around Jake immediately. His son. He said it over and over in his head. My son. I have a son. That's my son. I'd like to introduce my son.

  Now should be the happiest time of their lives, so why isn't it? It isn't just that sex has stopped. He was ready for that. His brother had warned him of that too. 'Forge
t about sex. It's a sweet, distant memory.'

  But he thought even if they stopped having sex they'd still be able to laugh about it, or even talk about it all. He thought they'd still be them. Before the baby was born the doctor had told them they could have sex about six weeks after the baby was born. 'Six weeks!' Grace had said on the way home from the doctor. 'I'll go mad without sex for six weeks!'

  It's now been eight weeks. Jake is two months old. Not only has Grace not mentioned anything about sex but she has stopped touching Callum.

  Grace isn't a touchy-feely type. She's not the sort of woman to snuggle and cuddle and lavish him with kisses. But she does (did?) touch him. She gets very cold hands and feet. When they're watching television she has a habit of warming her hands by putting them under his clothes, snaking her hands up his sleeves. She doesn't do this any more. When he was shaving at the bathroom mirror with a towel wrapped around his waist, she used to stop and kiss his back on the three freckles like a triangle that he'd never even known existed till she told him. She doesn't do this any more either. He's started taking note. It's not that she flinches when he kisses her hello or goodnight. She doesn't move away when he hugs her in bed. But she completely avoids touching him at all.

  Is that normal? He wants to ask someone but he can't bear the jokes. He doesn't want his brother to give him that complacent big-brotherly look: 'I told you, mate. Forget sex!'

  Sometimes in the middle of the night he wakes up with his heart pounding, a terrifying thought in his head: Grace doesn't love me any more. He remembers how everything changed in an instant with Pauline, as they were eating those sandwiches. That time of his life was so terrible, and he realises now that he didn't even love Pauline! Not the way he loves Grace. In the morning he laughs at himself. Everything is fine. Everything is perfectly normal. He is thirty-five years old with a beautiful wife, a brand-new baby, a career and a mortgage on a house which is being built when it's not raining.