by Nicki Reed
‘Would you like me to order a taxi for you?’ says the nurse.
‘No, not today, dear. My granddaughter is picking me up.’
‘Where does the time go? I remember when Jade used to come with your daughter to pick you up. Now she’s driving.’
‘Too right, Mrs Dean. You must have had a fridge full of blood with my name on it by now.’
‘And it’s such lovely, cooperative blood. I’ll see you next month, Mr Trumble. And no more falling over.’ The nurse picks the next number from the block. ‘Number seven, please.’
I take a seat and hand the nurse my referral. She checks my details and asks if I’m comfortable. I like the smell of antiseptic and fresh plastic and I like the rows and rows of tubes with their coloured lids. ‘Yes, I’m fine,’ I say. ‘That little old man, Mr Trumble, is gorgeous.’
The lab is small, but this woman’s life is all over it. She has about a million thank you cards and birthday cards. There’s a photo of a little African girl on her desk, and a big family photo on the wall.
‘Mr Trumble is a sweetheart,’ she says. ‘He was my second customer and his wife, who passed three years ago, was my first.’
I watch as the needle enters the vein. Peta never watches, she turns her head. Once she asked for gas just so she could have a flu shot. She’s a sad case, my sister.
The nurse removes the needle. ‘Where do I know you from?’
‘Don’t know,’ I say. Could it be YouTube, TV, the Sunday paper, a flash mob at Fed Square?
‘Ruby Wheeler. I know that name.’ She sticks labels onto the vials. ‘Oh, I remember. Unmarryme.’
‘Yes, that’s me.’
She presses cotton wool onto the puncture wound. ‘Hold that. Haven’t you and your husband separated?’
‘Yes, we have.’ I’m holding the cotton wool down.
‘Though you say you still love him.’ She nods at a form on her desk. ‘Sign that form, please.’
‘Yes, I love him.’ I sign, shaky signature, because I don’t like the look of her crossed arms.
‘Well, that’s patently ridiculous.’ She snatches the form from her desk and then sticks tape over the cotton wool.
‘You’re free to disagree,’ I say.
She stands in front of the chair so I can’t move. ‘I don’t just disagree with divorce; I also disagree with gay marriage. They can do whatever at home but why do they have to get married? It’s a desecration of the sacrament.’
‘They?’ I get up. We’re eye to eye. ‘You mean fellow human beings?’
The nurse shakes her head. ‘They’re different. They can’t have children without intervention…’
‘Like couples on IVF.’
‘Their sex is illegal in lots of countries, and they’re promiscuous.’
Before I married Mark, ‘promiscuous’ was my middle name. Why should gay people have all the fun? I appeal to her Christian ideals: ‘Didn’t Jesus say give peace a chance?’
She slams a drawer shut. ‘That was John Lennon. He also said the Beatles were bigger than Jesus. He was hardly a role model.’
‘Mrs Dean,’ I say, ‘I’m not sure about Jesus either, his existence, but if he is true, he was certainly a role model.’
‘Ms Wheeler, you are twisting my words for your own filthy agenda.’
I love it when I’m called filthy. I usually like it better in bed but it’s exciting anywhere. ‘Filthy?’
‘Yes, filthy. We are finished here, Ms Wheeler.’
‘Mrs Dean, why don’t you try living by the words of your leader who said, “As I have loved you, so must you love one another”.’
She’s got nothing. She stands there with her hand on the doorknob.
I open the door and call out, ‘Number eight.’
The sun has said goodbye for the day when I get home, so I don’t see the present on my doormat until it’s too late. It gives underfoot.
‘What’s that?’ A dead rat. It has grey, pointy teeth, its dark hair is matted and oily, and its claws are up under its chin. The rat’s eyes are stuck open and it has a red ribbon around its neck.
‘Fuck!’
I look over the railing, nobody. Maybe the Ps, down the stairs and across the hall, heard something. I knock, wait for a bit, see the peephole darken, then clear. Three locks unlocking. The slide of the bolt and the swing of the chain.
‘Ruby, what can we do for you?’
‘If she needs milk, George, we have plenty.’
‘Thank you, but I’m fine for milk, Mrs P,’ I sing out. ‘You didn’t see anyone hanging around this evening, Mr P?’
‘No, dear. What happened?’
‘Oh, nothing much. I’m sorry to bother you.’
I go back up to my door and deal with the rat. I pick it up with a freezer bag over my hand. The rat is softish and my gut roils, my mouth wets. I’m about to flush it down the toilet when I have a better idea. I double-bag it and stow it at the back of the freezer. You never know. With the front door open, a get-out-quick measure, I check every cupboard and cranny in the flat. I look under the beds and behind the curtains. I check the shower recess and the toilet. Nobody but me. I lock the front door and leave my mobile on triple zero.
I’m hungry but I’m too frazzled to eat. I shower and go to bed. Under the covers, I call Mark.
‘You’re early.’ His voice is beautiful. Calming.
‘I had a stinker of a day, Mark.’
‘What happened?’
God, I hate crying and talking. It’s hard enough in real life, let alone on the phone. I tell him about the nurse and he gets angry, and then I tell him about the rat.
‘It’s got to be the prank-caller.’
I don’t tell Mark I’m scared in my own home, because I want this separation to work. I don’t tell him I’m worried about being paranoid. Suspicion is a slippery, scary slope, and I don’t want to be checking things before I touch them; soon I’ll be asking people to taste my food.
‘Do you want me to come over?’
I’d love to hide myself in his chest. He’d rub his chin on my head, and I wouldn’t take it for granted, like I used to, no way. I’d feel it, really feel it, his bristle grazing my forehead, catching on my hair. ‘Yes, but you better not. Will you call me in the morning, though?’
‘Sure. Late morning. I’ll be on a plane early.’
He’s often on a plane, but that’s okay, I’m always in my office, unless I’m getting busted on YouTube or flash-mobbed.
‘Canberra?’
The Constitution never rests.
‘Yep. You sure you don’t want me to come over?’ he says. ‘I’m ready, it’d be easy.’
His keys would be on top of his overnight bag and his shoes would be at the door. I should say yes. He could help, because tonight I want unmarryme to be over. A dead rat on your doorstep outranks five minutes of flash mob.
‘If I let you in I’ll never you out.’
‘Shit, you’re strong, Rube,’ he says. ‘Good night, I love you.’
‘I love you, too, Mark.’
One last look around, one last locking-up-the-house session. I get under the doona, cover my head and bring my knees up to my chest.
When you live in a small flat, it’s easy to secure it, but it’s also easy to hear every creak, moan and hum. The tick of the grandfather clock. The squeak of a shoe on vinyl, the twist of a doorhandle. Somebody is on the landing. I roll out of the bed and peek out the window.
No cars, nobody waiting in the shadows for his mate to do his criminal worst, just the glow of grey concrete in the moonlight.
A new noise: the squeak of the screen door. I’m too afraid to turn on the light and I don’t know where my phone is. So much for having triple zero at the ready.
The scrape of the front door.
I grab my tennis racquet, swing it; it feels satisfying, heavy. Maybe it’s not heavy enough. What else have I got? My laptop is heavy, but I need it. The rolling pin is too far away. It will have to be the tennis
racquet.
I tiptoe out of my room. I keep close to the wall; my mouth is dry and my tongue is sticking to the roof of my mouth. I lick my lips.
A human shape.
Nobody wets themselves in the movies, but there I go.
I run, tennis racquet raised, aimed at the top of the shape. I connect, feel the give of skin and bone.
‘Argghh.’
I strike again.
‘Ruby! Stop! It’s me!’
‘Bloody hell, Mark! I could have killed you.’ I mess about for the light switch.
There he is on the floor, banged into the foetal position, his hands protecting his head. He’s wearing pyjamas and slippers; it’s like I’ve attacked a hospital patient. I help him up.
‘What the hell did you hit me with?’ He’s rubbing his side. ‘Shit.’
‘This.’
He takes the racquet from me and props it behind the front door. ‘Let’s leave it here. You can game, set and match the next guy to death.’
‘You scared the bejeebers out of me.’
‘I’m sorry, Rube. I should have known what might happen; we’ve seen it enough times on TV, after all.’
‘You’re bleeding.’
He has blood around his mouth and red specks on his flannelette collar. ‘I bit my tongue. Look.’ He hangs his bleeding tongue out.
‘Boydy, I wet myself when I saw you.’
‘That’s okay.’ He kisses my ear, loud, almost painful. ‘You have a shower and I’ll clean up the puddle. Then we can go to bed.’
Who am I to argue? I can snuggle into him and forget about the nurse, and Charlene Hunter, as well as all the people who say they admire what we’re doing but won’t join us.
I make it a super-quick shower. I don’t like showering late at night in case the plumbing wakes up the neighbours. This old block of flats is solid; you don’t hear a lot. But I do hear the bloke downstairs flushing his toilet every morning. I never have to set an alarm because I have Mr Five-a.m.’s bowel to tell me it’s nearly time to get up.
‘Boydy, you look cute in pyjamas, like an overgrown little boy.’
‘First time I’ve worn them.’
‘Let’s get them off.’
‘Let’s.’
‘What’s this?’ He’s wearing a chain around his neck, silver with flat links, and hanging on it are our wedding rings. They hang low like dog tags.
‘Safest place I could think of,’ Mark says. ‘You don’t mind, do you?’
‘I love it,’ I say, and kiss him. ‘I love that you’re walking around with us under your shirt; it makes me cry.’
‘So it does,’ he says, and kisses my tears away.
I can’t take my lips from his face. This is much better than in the car and I could do it all night.
29.
‘Wake up, wake up, you’ve got a plane to catch.’
‘God, have we even slept?’
I smile. I can’t help it. ‘Not much,’ I say, and hold him closer. ‘It’s a little after five. Don’t you have to be at the airport soon?’
‘Six-thirty,’ he says, rubbing his face with both hands.
‘You better get your skates on.’
‘Noooo.’ He twists away from me. ‘Tell them I’m sick.’
‘You haven’t been sick a day in your life. Nobody’d believe it.’ I rip the doona off. ‘Come on, I’ll drive you.’
I make breakfast while he’s in the shower. I need a shower, too, but I’ll do it when I get back. And then I’ll get back into bed and stay there until Monday. Mark’s pyjamas are stowed in his bag, but when his mind is on his breakfast I take them out and plump them under my pillow. He may only have worn them once, but that doesn’t matter; he wore them, and they’re mine now.
‘Look.’ He points to his bruised lip. All my kissing wouldn’t have helped the swelling, but he didn’t complain. ‘What will you say happened?’
‘I thought about that in the shower. I’m going to say an old lady reckoned I was after her poker machine and punched me.’
‘Poker machines. I think that’s the background noise when that dickhead calls me.’
‘Why haven’t you changed the phone number?’
‘I shouldn’t have to make changes because somebody is doing the wrong thing,’ I say.
He’s drinking in drag again, sipping tea from my mug. ‘Okay…’ He nods the slow nod of almost agreeing.
I swipe a piece of his toast. ‘Besides, I want to catch that fucker, especially since I think it’s the same person who left the rat.’
‘I don’t know if that sounds safe.’ He finishes his toast and dusts his hands over the plate. ‘You never think you’ve bitten off more than you can chew, do you, Rube?’
‘Every day since you left. Drink your tea. You’ve got a plane to catch.’
I drive his car, well, Keith’s car. If we kept going we could be in Canberra in seven hours. ‘Would it matter if you were a few hours late?’ That’s not what I want to say next but I’m putting it off.
‘If you’re thinking about driving me all the way, believe me, it crossed my mind, but I’ve got to be at the office by nine o’clock.’
I could drop him at work and then check out what the security guards are up to at the High Court. ‘Mark, I want to stop.’
He looks over his shoulder. ‘Okay, you’re good to pull over.’
The airport glimmers in the distance and everything else is black—the road, the side of the road, the whole landscape—we could be in the middle of nowhere. When I get there, to that glimmering, that will be it. Mark will fly off to Canberra and I probably won’t see him again until somebody we know has a birthday or dies. I can’t wait that long.
‘I don’t mean driving,’ I say. ‘I mean unmarryme. I don’t want to do it anymore. I’m stressed and I’m not sleeping because my love handles are beating me up in bed. And it’s affecting work. I mean, what if I’d been in the office when we got the news about the gala? I may have been able to do something.’
What could I have said? Maya, please don’t be sick right now?
‘Rube.’ He takes my hands in his because he wants me to listen. ‘Babe, we’re practically halfway there. If we stop now it will all be for nothing.’
Practically halfway is not how I’d put it. Sad, lonely, pissed off and stalked is how I’d put it. ‘Yes, we can stop,’ I say. ‘We’ve made a point. We’ve had some good exposure and all that.’
A truck hurtles past and the car wobbles in its wake. It’s scary. This is why I try not to ride my bike on the roads. Another truck. It lights the car for a long, bright second and in the yellow dazzle Mark’s face is clear. He wants to keep going.
‘You said worthwhile things are meant to be hard,’ he says.
I flick the indicator back on, look over my shoulder, and pull back onto the road. Might as well get him to Canberra. ‘That was when I could walk down the street without people looking at me.’
‘It’s important to me, too. I wouldn’t have agreed to unmarrying you if I didn’t believe in it. Even though at the time, I made a legitimate case against us divorcing.’
‘Sshh, I’m driving,’ I say.
Making sure he’s good to go, he pats his pockets. Why? He always has everything he needs. I look at him sidelong, his eyes are on the road, and I don’t have the Jedi mind powers to make him stay. I take the ramp up to Departures. The place is jumping. Taxis everywhere. Taxis, luggage, people, people, hugs and kisses, hello and goodbye.
‘Do you really have to?’
‘You know I do,’ he says. ‘Listen, leave the phone off the hook and watch Cary Grant movies. Don’t make any decisions, not yet. I’ll call you tonight.’
‘Ten o’clock?’
‘Yeah, the usual time. Eat ice-cream. And have a nap.’
My bed is waiting for me. I can pile back in and pretend he never left. ‘Okay, thanks, Dr Mark.’
He leans across and kisses me. Clean-shaven, his face is soft. I sniff his aftershave, wanting to ke
ep it in my nose forever. The car behind us beeps, but we kiss some more, until it beeps again.
‘Okay, okay.’
‘Bye, Rube, I love you.’
‘Sames,’ I say, and he smiles. I watch him go, laptop over his shoulder, overnight bag in his hand, a handsome dark-haired man with big things to do.
At three o’clock there’s a knock at my door. I’m wearing Mark’s pyjama pants, legs rolled to my knees, and a tight white singlet, tighter than it used to be because I’m using chocolate to grow my boobs and it’s working. I tiptoe to the front door and check the peephole. Todd.
‘Hang on.’ I throw Mark’s pyjama top over the singlet and let Todd in.
‘Sorry, Ruby, BJ told me where you live. I hope you don’t mind, but I couldn’t reach you. I have news.’
I can tell he has news by the rushed way he says sorry, and because in no way does he look sorry. He looks like it’s Christmas morning and he got two of everything on his list.
‘I’ve got something to tell you,’ I say. ‘But you go first.’ I sit on the coffee table and watch Todd pace up and down, couch to doorway, doorway to couch.
‘Big things, Ruby. Big things. We have had three couples come forward and say they will divorce for unmarryme. Three. We picked one up last night and two this morning. I’ve already called Justine, and she’s going to write a piece for next weekend’s paper.’
‘Shit! Are you serious? There is a God and she does love fags.’
Todd screws up his face.
‘Sorry, I get prank-phone calls.’
It’s so good to know my phone’s off the hook and my mobile’s switched off. Nobody can get me unless they come at me with a dead rat. Come, I’ll say, I’m a cross between Serena Williams and Chopper Reed, with a lethal racquet.
‘Have you called the police?’ Todd looks like Mark when he’s worried. A younger, better-looking version (and if anyone asks, I never said that). It must be the pouty lips. ‘Stop frowning, I’m working on the prank-caller. What can you tell me about our couples? Would you like a piece of cake? I made it myself.’ I can’t help showing Todd there’s more to me than unmarryme.