She remembered the night she told him she was adopted. He had played soccer that afternoon, and had come straight to her place from the game, his skinny legs streaked with mud, and socks pulled lumpy over shin guards. He carried two cold beers, opened one while he talked and handed it to Cath, opened the other for himself, and sat down on the couch. Then he stood to explain how a tackle went wrong and his knee twisted around during the game.
‘You see?’ he said, pressing his muddy knee against her knee, to demonstrate. ‘You see what went wrong?’
They had made pasta together, and he had chipped his tooth on an olive. She had shown him the photo of her real parents later that night. He had run his finger gently over the outline of her parents, and that of the brave burly fireman, and tears had formed in his eyes.
Cath’s eyes blurred as she looked at her watch. It was two o’clock and the blackmailer was nowhere to be seen.
Later, while her class was doing Music, she tried to read her lecture notes from Principles of Statutory Interpretation.
‘Ejusdem generis (she read), “of the same type”,’ and then she had written, cryptically: ‘is a crowbar the same as a mask, disguise or letter?’
Her notes did not explain themselves. Instead, they descended into pictures. She had drawn an elegant mask; a swooping cape; a letter sealed with wax; and a crowbar. Her crowbar was set aside slightly from the other more romantic objects.
It is a crowbar, thought Cath, sadly: it will never belong to the same club as a mask, a disguise, or a letter sealed with wax. All this time she had believed that her affair was something wonderful and clandestine: a detective novel, a cloak-and-dagger mystery. But an affair, she realised now, is as blunt and as common as a crowbar.
That afternoon, she sat in the staffroom correcting school work, waiting for parent-teacher night to begin. Just along the table, Warren and Breanna leafed through Ikea brochures, and giggled at furniture pictures.
‘No,’ murmured Breanna. ‘No, you can’t have chrome in the living room – we’ve got a pine coffee table, remember?’
‘You’re right,’ agreed Warren. ‘I just really like the look of those shelves.’
‘Tell you what,’ suggested Breanna. ‘What about the study?’
‘Or too big?’
‘No! Look. Here’s the measurements. See the scale?’
‘EXCELLENT WORK’ Cath wrote in an exercise book. ‘WELL DONE!’ and she made a monster tick across the page.
‘Hey, Cath,’ said Warren, turning in his seat beside Breanna. ‘We should be getting over there now, shouldn’t we?’
Cath agreed – it was almost five, and the parents would soon begin arriving.
Breanna said, ‘Oh, Cath, before you go – I wanted to tell you something. I was showing a new Year 7 girl around the school this afternoon, and anyway, I introduced her to your Listen Taylor. You never know. Maybe they’ll be friends?’
‘Huh,’ said Cath, ‘that’s great, Breanna. Thanks.’
‘See you at home, okay, Warren?’ Breanna was picking up her bag. ‘I’ll stop by the hardware store and surprise you with curtain rings!’
The 2nd grade interviews were held in Cath’s classroom: Room 2B. Warren set up a table at the back of the room, and Cath used her own desk.
The first parent to arrive was a man who introduced himself as Radcliffe. ‘I’m Cassie Zing’s dad!’ he said, before he had even entered the classroom. He was wiping his feet on the doormat. ‘Call me Radcliffe. And you must be Ms Murphy.’
‘That’s right,’ agreed Cath, and looked around Radcliffe. ‘Your wife?’ she said. ‘She’s not coming? She writes a lot of notes . . .’
‘Does she?’ cried Radcliffe, pausing, and placing his hands on his hips. Then he grinned and walked into the room. He stood still before Cath and continued to grin, shaking his head slowly. Then he remembered himself: ‘Ah yes, Fancy, my wife. Well, something’s come up, I’m afraid, and poor old Fancy couldn’t come. Cassie got – well, we had a little incident with Cassie, but she’ll be fine. Fancy took her to the doctor.’
His words seemed blustery, overexcited, and they hurried in a stop-start shuffle. He picked up a chair, spun it around, and sat down with his arms around the chair back.
‘Well,’ said Cath, straightening her voice. ‘Thank you so much for coming in then, Mr – ah, Radcliffe. We all adore Cassie – she has a great deal of character. In reading, she –’ But she stopped, as the man was gazing at her face, and rocking slightly on the chair.
‘So you’re Cassie’s teacher then?’ he said abruptly, as if she had not just spoken. ‘Cath Murphy, eh? Wonderful to meet you.’ He reached out as if to shake her hand, but she was too surprised to offer her own. ‘Not giving you any trouble, I hope?’ he tried, settling back into his happy rocking motion.
‘Trouble,’ repeated Cath, with an effort. ‘Well, no, not really.’
‘Not really!’ He beamed at this.
‘I just worry a little,’ Cath explained. ‘She seems, sometimes, to be – angry at the world? And she uses – inappropriate words. She chants inappropriate words.’
‘Oh that game of hers,’ agreed Radcliffe. ‘I know! Where she chooses a word and then repeats it? My wife and I don’t have a clue what to do about that.’
‘I’ve tried several different strategies to deal with it,’ said Cath – someone had to be the professional here – ‘but nothing has worked so far. Also, I’ve done a bit of reading, and I found that children sometimes develop a sort of obsession with things that seem forbidden, if they are excluded from – if there is – sorry, I don’t mean that this applies to your family – but, this sometimes happens if there is some forbidden, shadowy region of family knowledge?’
Radcliffe continued to gaze at her.
‘Anyway,’ she added, embarrassed, ‘they’re the words that were used in the article I was reading and I like them – the words – the forbidden, shadowy –’
‘Is that right?’ Radcliffe interrupted, his voice fascinated. ‘You’re saying that kids pick up on family secrets and get – what was your word? Obsessed with things that are forbidden? Is that the case?’
‘Of course,’ blustered Cath, ‘I don’t mean that your family has a secret, I just wondered if . . .’ She tried to change the subject. ‘I was pleased when Cassie offered to write a class play for us. Her writing skills are really coming along. Although she doesn’t seem to have started the play yet . . .’
But the man was simply staring at her. She looked down, searching for other topics, but when she looked back up, he was standing, as if it was all decided. Or as if he was too excited to keep still. Good heavens, thought Cath, and also stood up.
‘Look,’ said Radcliffe, reaching into his pocket. ‘Here’s my business card. Any time you need to talk about our little Cass, give me a call at work. My advice is to leave my wife well out of it. She’s under a lot of stress at the moment – so best, by far the best, if you call me. All right?’ He pressed the card into her hand. ‘Just wonderful to meet you!’
And then he was outside the classroom door, but facing inward and wiping his feet on the mat, confused. ‘Ha ha,’ he said, pointing down. Then he spun around, waving, calling, ‘Looks like rain!’, as he headed out into the night.
‘Good grief,’ murmured Cath, and glanced to the back of the classroom.
Warren did not have a parent with him yet, and had been bowing his head, listening to the interview. He grinned now, opening his eyes wide, and she opened her eyes wide in return. Then he pulled one of those faces of his, one side of the mouth down, the other side up.
Oh God, thought Cath, laughing. I am still in love. He is still in love with me. Then a gathering of parents arrived.
Afterwards, while the last parents were opening their umbrellas at the doorway, ready to run into the rain, Warren joined her at the front of the room. Outside it was dark and heavy with rain. Inside it was warm with a strange orange light. Cath felt his breath and his body next to her, and b
elieved he was going to kiss her. As soon as the parents’ voices faded, he would close the space between them.
But when the voices faded, Warren remained apart from her, watching the rain. In a slow, heavy voice he said, ‘I don’t know what to do.’
‘No,’ agreed Cath.
But she did: close the space, Warren, that’s all.
Warren stood still at the edge of the space, and Cath stood beside him, her arms by her side, and waited.
FANCY ZING
The idea was in the jungle on the dentist’s ceiling, but she did not know how you ended an idea.
‘Can I go back to the dentist, Mum?’
‘Whatever for?’
They had just pulled up outside the school gate on Monday morning, and the engine was running.
‘Nothing,’ said Cassie. ‘But can I?’
‘Does your tooth hurt, darling? You must tell me if it does.’
‘Which tooth?’ said Cassie.
‘Any tooth, Cassie. Any tooth at all. Have you got an umbrella? Have you got your note for Ms Murphy?’
‘Yes,’ said Cassie, listlessly.
‘Yes umbrella? Yes note? Don’t forget the note now, will you? Give it to Ms Murphy the moment you see her, okay? Darling, your uniform’s skewiff!’
Cassie, standing on the footpath outside the car, untwisted her uniform until her mother was content. After her mother drove away, she twisted it back around again. It was warmer that way.
On Monday afternoon, outside the grocery shop, Fancy watched as a fat man in a charcoal suit strode along the street and spotted, in the opposite direction, a thin man. The fat man opened his face and arms wide, stopping in the middle of the footpath. Simultaneously, the thin man called, ‘Hi!’, casual, unsurprised, although friendly enough, and continued his stride. In fact, the stride was so brisk that he had to glance back over his shoulder for the second half of the ‘Hi!’ – and noticed only then as he glanced back that the fat man had stopped and had both arms out ready to embrace. The thin man chose, considered but chose, not to stop, and instead strode on with a grin, slightly apologetic, slightly wry. The fat man readjusted his arms and carried on.
On the drive home from the grocery store, Fancy wept for the fat man.
In Fancy’s opinion, a choice had to be made when your husband said something unkind. Specifically: be cruel, be strong or sulk.
‘Be cruel’ by saying an unkind thing straight back.
‘Be strong’ by firmly choosing not to mind. But to do this, you have to use up a bit of the love that you have for your husband. You have to shave off enough of the love to forgive. After a while, the piece might grow back, but sometimes not. And if you shave off all the soft curves, you’ll be left with sharp-edged love.
‘Sulk’ by sulking. In effect, sulking is simply delaying the choice to be cruel or be strong.
Watching TV on Monday night, Fancy said, ‘That is so disingenuous, the way they do that.’ She was referring to a TV talk show host who was pretending to be alarmed at the arrival of a small turtle on the set. The turtle was followed by its owner, proud but nervous, ready to talk about the turtle.
‘Do you know what I have noticed?’ said Radcliffe. ‘When you use the word ‘disingenuous’, you get a funny smug look around your mouth. You’re pretty proud of yourself when you use that word, eh?’
Be cruel, be strong, or sulk? Fancy usually chose to sulk.
On Tuesday morning, Fancy woke and remembered she had made a counselling appointment. She lay in bed sadly for a moment, realising that she ought to have cancelled it – there was now no point in going. Radcliffe was not having an affair. Still, she thought, it was odd she had believed it for so long.
And then, almost immediately, she found herself imagining a discussion with a counsellor. ‘I set up this meeting because I started to think that my husband was having an affair. Stupid, isn’t it? I had absolutely no reason to think it, but I just couldn’t stop!’
In response, the counsellor flinched slightly and said, ‘Oh, Fancy, I’m so sorry to tell you this, but women do know when their husbands are cheating. Even if there seems to be no evidence, you just sense it.’
‘Really?’ Fancy said, tearfully.
‘Really,’ the counsellor confirmed.
With a flutter of hope, Fancy called out to Radcliffe in the bathroom: ‘Radcliffe! I need to ask you something. Are you busy today? I need to talk to you.’
Radcliffe was surprisingly cheerful about the marriage counselling, even at such short notice. ‘Huh,’ he said, naked, both hands on the shower taps. ‘A refresher course for the marriage, eh? Why not?’
But in the apple-green office of the Winston Hills Family Counselling Centre, it did not go according to Fancy’s plan. For a start, the counsellor was a pale, thin, bald man who crossed his legs, and then twisted his ankles as well. It was as if he wanted to plait his legs.
Bravely, Fancy began her speech: ‘Well, I set up this meeting because I started to think that my husband was having an affair. Stupid, isn’t it? I had absolutely no reason to think –’
Beside her, Radcliffe was gaping. ‘Fance,’ he began, ‘what on earth –’
The counsellor interrupted by slowly unplaiting his legs. ‘Well,’ he said, smiling kindly at Fancy, ‘that’s one thing for us to work through. First, let me assure you, Fancy, that irrational fears like this are common at this stage in a marriage. You’re approaching middle age, and I’d guess you’re fearing that your husband is losing interest in you. You fear that he may be growing bored, looking elsewhere – am I right?’
Radcliffe and the counsellor both gazed at Fancy, waiting for her response. ‘Approaching middle age,’ she murmured. ‘I’m only thirty-four, you know.’
The two men took this to be a joke, and laughed appreciatively.
The counsellor spent some time asking Fancy about her days, and about her coping mechanisms.
‘My coping mechanisms?’
‘The place you go to when you start to panic about things like approaching middle age?’
Fancy admitted that she liked to imagine herself calming a pair of angry seagulls. Also, she liked to imagine herself in a hotel lobby. Finally, she sometimes liked to remember Radcliffe’s marriage proposal.
The men were very quiet as she listed her ‘coping mechanisms’, and when she reached the marriage proposal, she felt a hand squeezing her shoulder. It was Radcliffe: she turned and saw that his eyes had become misty.
‘This is just the opener session,’ the counsellor reminded them. ‘Please don’t expect everything to be solved today. Fancy, we will work through your stresses, be assured, and we’ll work on your coping mechanisms. For now, we’re just laying the table.’ Then he gave them each a notebook and pen and asked them to write letters explaining the things they disliked about the other.
‘Dislike?’ cried Fancy.
‘Dislike. Trust me, okay?’
Fancy and Radcliffe sat side-by-side in the counsellor’s office, resting their notepads on their knees. Radcliffe chewed on the end of the pen, chuckled quietly, and began to write. Fancy hesitated. It could not possibly be right to set out the things that she disliked. Did the counsellor realise the impact that might have? Radcliffe would have to choose to be cruel, be strong or sulk. As would she. If either chose to be cruel, the cycle could go on forever.
You were probably supposed to answer cleverly, pretending to say what you disliked, but actually revealing the depth of your love. Like in a job interview, when asked about your weaknesses.
On the other hand, the counsellor wanted the ‘table laid’. Perhaps he meant them to ‘express’ their irritations, for their own good? Very well, she would express herself, but she would do so in such a way that Radcliffe could never understand.
On Wednesday, Fancy dropped her car off at Valerio Auto for a wheel balance and alignment, and caught the bus home.
While she was waiting on the bus stairs to pay her fare, she noticed the driver’s ID photo, han
ging from his rear-view mirror. The photo showed a man in his fifties with a handsome, well-structured face, and a winning smile. But when it was her turn to pay the driver, Fancy saw a different man. That is, she saw the same man with the handsome, well-structured face – only the face had a glowering scowl.
For the entire bus trip, Fancy watched the driver and his expression remained the same. She imagined to herself the time when the photograph was taken: how the man was perhaps delighted to get the job, how maybe all his life he had wanted to be a bus driver, and here was his dream come true! They were giving him his uniform, and taking his ID photo: he was joking with the photographer and grinning in joy!
And then, what happened? Was it a personal tragedy? Or was it just the daily grinding of the gears, the folding and unfolding of the doors, the beeping of buttons telling him to stop, of tickets, inspectors, teenagers pretending to be younger than they were to get cheap tickets, people leaning forward to ask where to get off, feet on seats, and spilling Coke cans. Was it just the day-to-day that did this?
Fancy cried the whole way home.
On Wednesday afternoon, Fancy was working on her prize-winning novel. Look for characters from everyday life. She remembered reading that somewhere.
She thought of the scowling bus driver and wondered if he could be a character. It could be a sort of public transport novel. Transport could be the language that she taught her readers! Excitedly, she began to research ‘transport’ on the Internet. She scribbled down the addresses of various useful sounding websites: why not just list the URLs at the start of every chapter? Why not – and here she became even more excited – why not just refer her readers to Google? ‘If you are interested in any of the topics raised in this novel, please enter the following search terms in Google: bus, train . . .’
‘Hmm.’ Fancy paused in her frantic scribbling and looked up, frowning to herself.
A faint sound caught her attention. Cassie, she realised, had been standing at her office door knocking gently for some time.
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