by Wendy James
Carly laughs. ‘Oh come on. Love. What crap. You must have something on each other. Something that keeps you together. Some skeleton in the closet.’
‘There’s nothing like that, Carly. You’ve got such a dirty mind...’
‘But it’s unreal, Sue. Nobody lives this way.’
‘What way?’
‘This Doris Day life that you lead. Real people just aren’t this – this wholesome.’
‘We’re just average suburban people, Carly. We’re normal.’
‘Normal? He must hit you.’
‘Ed? Hit me? Don’t be so stupid.’
‘Maybe he’s a cross-dresser; a serial killer; a rapist. Maybe he’s gay and deep, deep, deep in the closet – with a mother like that, I wouldn’t be surprised.’
‘Oh come on, Carly. You have to learn to take people on face value. Not everyone’s got something to hide. Sometimes what you see is what you get.’
‘Bullshit. There’s always something underneath. And if there’s nothing – well, maybe that’s even worse.’
Later, Susan thinks perhaps there’s something to Carly’s observations. In some sense she and Ed are unreal. Their lives have been relatively easy, their only hardships, their only difficulties so minor they barely register on the scale of possible human suffering. Their life together has been too smooth – Life Lite. Like a fairytale life, a life lived happily-ever-after. Only after what?
And then she wonders vaguely, what happens next?
Ed
On Friday nights, Ed cooks. Susan usually takes the opportunity to get out – sometimes she’ll go for a walk in the late afternoon, or a swim; this evening she’s at the gym. The kids are in front of the television, Carly’s in the shower. Ed opens a bottle of wine, gets started.
He dons an apron, clears the benches, sharpens his knives. First, he chops the vegetables precisely. Broccoli florets are split down the middle so they are all close in size, the stem is completely discarded. Beans are topped and tailed, stringed, cut on the diagonal. Garlic, coriander and chilli are minced and scraped into nifty little ceramic bowls. Chicken fillets have been sliced thinly, the wooden chopping board scrubbed immediately in hot soapy water. The shrimp paste has been carefully weighed. Cucumber has been cut at a regular angle and a consistent thickness. The rice has been measured, sits waiting for the water (measured precisely, boiling to just the right degree). The tin of coconut milk has been opened, the correct quantity poured into a jug. The oil in the wok is heating up. Ed leaves nothing to chance.
He likes to cook dinner at least once a week. It’s important, he feels, to engage in such tasks, not only to relieve Susan of some of the heavy responsibilities of nurturing, but to provide a role model for Mitchell. His own father has never cooked a meal in the kitchen – oh, like most Australian blokes, he’s a whiz behind a barbecue, but Ed thinks that it’s all too likely that Mr Middleton Senior has no idea how to light his own oven, and that he wouldn’t have any idea of what to do once it was lit anyway. Ed is determined that Mitchell gets an entirely different view of the male sphere, that he realises that despite the choices he and Susan have made in regards to public and domestic work, these are not the only options. He wants Mitchell – and Stella – to be flexible, to regard male and female roles as largely interchangeable, to consider neither one nor the other as more exclusive, nor more prestigious.
He has been preparing the Friday night meal since he and Susan were first married. Even so, he has developed no real sense of cooking. He always tries to make something delicious, something different to the general run of workaday meals – not bangers and mash, but an exotic curry, or a rich pasta dish – but no matter how often he prepares, for instance Thai green curry (a family favourite), he still follows the recipe to the letter. Never improvises; never makes even an educated guess. He uses the cups, spoons and scales – measures each portion carefully, double-checks – he is as meticulous as a chemist mixing a medicine. And on the odd occasion that Susan suggests there is something missing, something additional required – an extra clove of garlic, the addition of chilli, salt, tomato paste, fish sauce – he is immovable, refuses to follow her advice, sees it as gratuitous interference, stubbornly continues to follow the recipe zealously.
By the time Carly joins him in the kitchen the preparation is all done, the ingredients sit neatly lined up along the bench in order of use. Ed turns, pink-cheeked with exertion, and smiles in response to her greeting. ‘Wow!’ she stands smiling, hands on hips, eyes wide. ‘You’re so organised.’ She has showered and changed – she’s wearing striped Indian-cotton pants that flare slightly at the bottom, a low-cut black singlet. Her hair is damp, silky around her ears. Her feet are bare, and Ed notices that her toenails are painted a semi-transparent blue that matches her eyes. She looks younger than Susan, not ten years older. Carly gazes around the kitchen in wonder, gives a great gusty laugh.
‘I thought Susan was a bit anal, but you take the cake. My God, Ed, I’ve never seen anything like it.’
He is not sure about her laughter, knows that in the kitchen he is slightly absurd, his management skills gone mad.
‘So what can I do to help?’
‘Nothing. You can just relax. Have a glass of wine. I only have to throw all this together now.’
She laughs again. ‘Throw? I can’t imagine it Ed.’ She stands close beside him at the bench, investigates the contents of each bowl.
She smells good as always, a clean musky scent that he recognises but cannot place, it’s quite different to any perfume of Susan’s, darker, heavier, it overpowers even the shrimp paste. He is aware of her scrutiny as he pours carefully measured herbs and spices into the waiting blender.
‘What’re you doing?’
‘I’m grinding them into a paste. For curry.’
‘Ed. Don’t you have a mortar and pestle?’
‘Well, yes, I think so. But that’s so messy. And I’ve never done it.’
‘Since when has that been an excuse not to do something? There has to be a first time, you know, Ed.’ Carly takes the blender jug from his hands, places it gently on the bench top.
‘What do you mean?’ Ed is slightly bewildered, now she’s behind him, unknotting his apron, sliding it up and over his head.
‘You just find me that mortar and pestle, Ed, and I’ll let you into a secret. Some of the best meals are the ones that are messiest to make, or the ones you’ve never made before.’
‘But...’
She places a finger on his lips. ‘Shhh. Just watch.’ ‘Okay. Fine.’ He digs around in a drawer, hands over the mortar and pestle.
Carly empties the contents of the blender into the marble dish, starts grinding, Ed leans back against the bench to watch.
‘It’s a metaphor for life, really, isn’t it?’ She pauses in her work. ‘What? The mortar and pestle?’ he thinks quickly. ‘You mean they represent male and female ... organs?’
‘No, silly. Not the mortar and pestle. I mean cooking.’ Carly dips her finger into the bowl, touches it to her tongue.
‘Cooking’s a metaphor? I’m afraid you’ve lost me, Carly.’
She dips her finger again, offers it to him. ‘Well – in the same way that the messiest experiences, the most unexpected experiences – the things you’ve never done before...’ his lips part, he takes the offering, a delicate brush of finger on tongue, ‘...are so often the most satisfying.’
Ed chokes, splutters, his throat burns, eyes water.
‘Oh, dear. Too hot for you, Ed?’
He shakes his head helplessly, gulps his wine. Carly goes back to her pounding.
‘We’ll have to do something about that, now, won’t we.’
Susan
‘D’you think you could lend me some money, Suse? Just until everything’s sorted out? There are some people I have to pay ... bills ... and no income, at th
e moment. You know.’
‘Oh God, Carly.’ Susan feels immediately guilty, is pained that her sister has even had to ask. That she didn’t realise, didn’t know. ‘Of course.’ She reaches for her handbag. ‘How much?’
‘How much can you spare?’
She scrabbles through the bag, pulls out old dockets, telephone bills, letters, finally locates her chequebook. ‘How much do you need?’ Fishes for a pen.
‘A couple of grand would probably tide me over.’
‘Oh ... two?’ Susan starts to fill out the cheque details, but Carly stops her. ‘Not a cheque,’ she says. ‘I can’t do anything with a cheque, Sue. I haven’t got a bank account.’
‘No bank account?’ Enquires without thinking, ‘How on earth do you survive?’
Carly raises her eyebrows. ‘There are still places where people don’t need all this,’ she takes in her sister’s handbag, the mess on the table, the kitchen full of shiny chrome appliances, with a bemused glance, her sideways smile, ‘all this to survive, you know, Susan. Life can be lived without a bank account. Maybe just not life as you know it, eh?’
Susan shoves the chequebook back in the bag.
‘I’ll organise cash,’ she says quietly. ‘Sorry.’
Saturday morning has always been Susan’s big clean up day. It’s not that the house is ever really messy – or even untidy: she’s a painfully conscientious housekeeper. (Too conscientious, insists a more relaxed Anna, who once presented Susan with a small beaten copper plaque she had had especially made. A Tidy House Is The Sign Of An Empty Life, it read. Though she disagrees entirely with the sentiment, and the implied assessment up of her character – it hangs proudly above the kitchen door, in full view.)
Ed is always a little bemused by the traditional Saturday clean – his mother, he says, never seemed to do such a thing. The house was just always clean. Susan has pointed out that this apparently seamless housekeeping actually requires endless effort. Bathrooms, kitchens, carpets, windows, refrigerators are never actually allowed to get dirty – because they’re in a constant state of being cleaned.
The kids are tidying their room – a frustrating and largely futile process involving a great deal of encouragement and overseeing from Susan, endless reminders, repeated threats (there will be no McDonald’s tonight Stella, if you don’t pick up those Barbies) as the children discover items of interest, dress-ups, toys that have been hidden from view, that they are meant to be clearing up, putting away ready for the vacuum cleaner.
Cleaning is not Carly’s scene either and usually she takes herself off for the day, but today for some reason she has stayed behind, has volunteered to help out. She has dressed for the occasion in overalls and has her hair tied back in an old scarf. Ed, after his usual guilty prevarication, has gone for a surf.
Susan does the kitchen and bathroom, while Carly has taken charge of the lounge room, dusting, vacuuming, straightening and realigning rugs and furniture. When Susan passes through the room, Carly is tidying away the teetering stacks of cds and movies – matching case to disc – that seem to have accumulated on every surface overnight, and is down on her knees in front of the stereo cabinet.
‘Jesus Christ, Susan. There’s some crap here. This is awful. Unbelievably bad. How can you listen to this shit?’ She pulls out disc after disc. Elton John, Toto, Cold Chisel, Simon and Garfunkel, Crowded House, Celine Dion ... ‘Fu-uck. You should toss the lot.’
‘Hey,’ Susan pounces on one in Carly’s pile – Carly Simon’s Greatest Hits. ‘What about this?’
Carly glances at the cover, makes a face. ‘Can’t handle that boring crap. Never could.’ She pulls out a Pearl Jam album left by Derek after some family gathering. ‘Now this I don’t mind...’ she looks up and sees Susan’s face. ‘What? What’s wrong? What did I say?’
‘Don’t you remember? That Carly Simon album. I thought that was why...?’
‘What? I’ve told you there’s stuff I don’t remember. Half my life’s a blank.’ Carly’s voice is brusque, impatient.
‘But this is different.’ Susan is indignant, insistent. ‘I only have this album because it’s one of the few things I do remember. About you. That you had this record. You played it over and over again. Sang along. “You’re so vain”. “Mockingbird”. It’s not something you’d forget.’
‘Tastes change, Sue, you grow up. I don’t remember it. It’s no big deal.’
‘But I thought that was why – why you chose that particular name. Carly. I just assumed you’d named yourself after Carly Simon.’ Susan waits. Carly takes a moment to respond, speaks softly.
‘Well, maybe that was why I chose the name. In the beginning. I wouldn’t know, I can’t remember. I just know I can’t stand that shit now.’ She shrugs and turns away, indifferent. Slides the Pearl Jam disc into the player, turns it up loud.
Carly
Sometimes she’s amazed by the ease of it. She has them worked out almost immediately – they’re so easy to read, so transparent: she knows when to embroider and when to omit; when to manufacture – and what. When to remain silent. This last especially. It’s her particular strength, you could say. She’s always been good at improvisation – she’s had to be.
Ed
Ed is startled by how easily Susan adjusts to using her sister’s new, her preferred, name. It’s easy for him of course, he’s only ever known her as Carly, but for Susan, well, he’d expected a few more slips.
Ed takes the whole business of names very seriously. Ever since the births of his own children he’s been fascinated by the sometimes eerie correspondence of name and character. His own name, Edward, is an old English name that is generally said to mean either rich guardian or guardian of prosperity. His mother, he knows, had no notion of the name’s origin – he was simply named after his great-grandfather, one Edward Robertson, a saddler from Bathurst.
He’d been uneasy with Susan’s choice of Mitchell – traditionally a surname, had preferred Matthew – and had only been persuaded by Susan’s reassurance that Mitchell came from Michael, meaning ‘who is like God’ which, though perhaps a little too biblical for his taste, at least meant something. (And that first child – was there anything more god-like, really? Was there better evidence of a supreme being than the firstborn?) Stella – Estelle – had been his choice – and as he’d predicted, as he’d hoped, the name thoroughly suited his daughter’s radiant personality, her twinkling soul. Somehow only Susan’s name is an awkward fit with her personality.
Susan is an anglicised version of a Hebrew name, a lily, and however hard he tries, however he angles for a correspondence, Ed can’t find a connection. He buys his wife lilies, rather than the usual roses, regularly – and in this way has attempted to manufacture a correspondence, impose a connection. His sister-in-law’s names – both of them – seem entirely appropriate: Karen, her original, her real name, means pure, while Carly is Latin, means little and womanly, and, when combined with the Teutonic male name, Carl, means strong. Pure. Little. Womanly. Strong. The combination of definitions encapsulates those aspects of Carly that most characterise her, quite miraculously. There’s a perfect, an almost divine symmetry.
When as a younger man he’d first investigated the etymology of his own name, he’d been a little disappointed – being defined as a rich guardian is hardly a romantic or powerful proposition, and it wasn’t something he particularly aspired to. But as his responsibilities expanded – first Susan, then the business, and the children – he’d felt the weight and significance of the role, and now he can feel himself growing into it, as if fulfilling the requirements of his name. He is a custodian, a trustee.
And he’s recently come across an extended definition – one that’s less pragmatic, more esoteric. Evidently, Edward is also a guardian of the mists – which is far more suggestive and contains a significance that is still waiting to be revealed.
Susan
Last Christmas, while holidaying together down the south coast, staying in adjoining cabins, Anna had told her about an affair she’d had, years ago. It was late in a boozy evening, husbands and children asleep, the two women sitting alone in the dark.
‘It was crazy,’ Anna had said, ‘and totally unexpected. It was when we were first married, just after I’d had Jimmy, when Tom was still young and handsome and successful – the world his oyster, the world at his feet. But it had nothing to do with Tom himself – or even what I actually felt about him. It was me, I think. And this fellow – his name was Jake, he was younger than me, our mechanic, for Christ’s sake, there was nothing to him really, he was a bimbo – but he made me feel – well something I hadn’t felt for a long time. He made me feel desirable. Young – though of course I was young – only in my early twenties. And when it happened,’ she says a little unsteadily, ‘it just had to happen. There was nothing I could do and no way of stopping it. Even though I knew it was wrong and that I would probably regret it, it just had to happen.’
Susan can remember being shocked, dismayed, and uncertain how to respond. Eventually she’d asked: ‘And did you – do you – regret it?’
‘The funny thing is,’ Anna had answered, ‘I don’t. Put me back there and I think I’d do it again. Funny, isn’t it? I read this report once – they asked some old people in a nursing home what they most regretted in their lives – the most common answer from the old men was that they were sorry they’d cheated on their wives, that it had ruined their relationship, destroyed their marriages – that it wasn’t worth it. But for the women it was different – they regretted that they hadn’t had affairs. Regretted their faithfulness ... We’re a weird lot, aren’t we?’
Susan was not only shocked, but was oddly put out by the confidence, afraid almost. For if such a thing could happen in Anna’s world – steady, sensible, focused Anna – what lay in wait for her? Perhaps the fortifications Ed and she had so diligently built up, their insurance against just such an event, wouldn’t be secure. Wouldn’t be enough.