Replacement Wife

by Rowena Wiseman

  He actually took off all of his clothes, even his socks. Luke had always been about efficiency and practicality, and since items of clothing on the top half of his body didn’t, in his point of view, restrict his love-making abilities, he’d been known to leave t-shirts on, hoodies, even a cable-knit jumper once when we’d been away in the Dandenong Mountains. He hadn’t cared much for skin-to-skin contact. If the temperature was anything under twenty-five degrees he always got dressed immediately afterwards, as if lying there naked together was a waste of time, or he feared that he’d catch a chill. If the job was done, then it was all about preparing for the next best thing: sleep.

  Now, though, he engaged wholeheartedly in this love-making act of ours. He enjoyed his skin against my skin. I realised that perhaps this was what had been missing from our relationship the whole time: another woman. Maybe the other woman was the missing ingredient in many lacklustre relationships. Perhaps we all need a Suzi on the sidelines to keep things interesting and the socks off in bed.

  28

  After all my carry-on, I was actually able to collate Suzi’s changes within a day and get her book back to the designer. To my surprise, she’d actually been quite thorough and organised with all of the corrections she’d made. This much revision at such a late stage was not ideal, but she’d avoided it being a complete disaster by numbering everything very clearly and being very descriptive about where to move the images. Perhaps I had trained her a little bit, after all.

  Rita, however, was becoming a pain. She was always texting me, inviting me out for charity dinners or Max over for play dates. I felt as though I needed to break up with her properly and tell her that she wasn’t my type. Courting women for my husband had become messy, and I was left dealing with the fallout. I kept on making excuses, saying Max had football practice or maths tutoring or I was on deadline. But when she called me to find out whether I wanted to come along to a Thermomix demonstration at her place, something in me snapped.

  ‘I’m sorry, Rita, I’ve got to be honest. I’m really not into Thermomixes. I don’t know much about them, but I’m very suspicious. I don’t know how all that pulverised food can actually be so much better for us. And if I’m going to be completely honest, I think there are two types of people in the world: Thermomix people and non-Thermomix people. And I’m not sure the two types of people should mix.’

  Needless to say, she stopped texting and calling me after that. It was easy to cut her off at school, because Max was never very interested in Evan anyway. So Annie and Rita were out of the picture, but I was getting the feeling that Suzi had gone underground with Luke.

  I started checking his phone when he was in the shower, but frustratingly I couldn’t find any evidence. He was either being very clever and deleting all of their messages or traces of their calls, or they were playing out their relationship in another sphere. I wondered whether perhaps she was visiting him at the Patch.

  After dinner one night he was working in the study on plans for some new plots at the back of the Patch. I went and sat on the armchair. He looked at me uneasily. I was disrupting his work, and he was probably wary of another discussion that would lead to yet another dispassionate argument.

  ‘I’m excited about MONA next week,’ I said.

  ‘Me, too.’

  ‘Did you hear how Suzi got on? Did she like it?’

  He shrugged his shoulders. ‘I haven’t heard.’

  I looked him straight in the eyes. They were a clear green, nothing signalling L-I-A-R in them. I felt disappointed. I’d thought that the two of them had hit it off at the launch, that now that was it, they were on a runaway train to togetherland.

  ‘You work with her. Did she say anything to you?’

  ‘We’re not really talking, after all those issues with her book.’

  I crept off to our bedroom and lay on the bed thinking. I didn’t know what was going on inside me. One moment I was seething with jealousy about them dancing together, the next I was bitterly disappointed to discover they weren’t having some kind of secret affair. All this was taking a toll on me.

  And was Jarvis actually worth it? Maybe Hattie was right. What did I really know about him? Maybe I should try to discover whether he had some kind of erectile dysfunction. Maybe I should find out how he ironed his shirts and placed them in his cupboard, whether he could use a lawnmower, how he interacted with kids, whether he could cook a decent meal, whether he was a saver or a spender. All this was the sort of stuff that could destroy relationships. The little things. The domestic things. How had I put so much faith in someone whom I hadn’t even spent more than twenty minutes with in real life in the past twelve years? My heart thumped anxiously.

  But was that even the point? Wasn’t my relationship with Luke doomed anyway? I was sure that I would never have fallen down that deep, dark love well with Jarvis if my relationship with Luke had been any good. Jarvis made me feel alive, sexy, desirable, He made me want to turn my whole world upside-down, just for him. Luke, on the other hand, made me feel like the mother of his child, a useful household organiser, someone he could tolerate in his space, just barely. They were apples and oranges, yin and yang. Luke was white and Jarvis black, and I was being drawn to the dark side.

  I felt I’d lost control of the situation though. If Luke was telling the truth and he hadn’t been in contact with Suzi, then I didn’t know how to draw them back towards each other. I’d behaved so badly towards Suzi that there was no way I could pick up the phone and invite her over for dinner again. I’d ruined the courtship by letting my own insecurities get in the way of my plan.

  So I lay there, searching my soul with an industrial-sized torch. What did I really want? A lifetime with Luke, pretending to be happy? Living with Luke was okay. If I had to be with him until my dying day then I could do it. He would be all right. He could still make me laugh. We worked as a team. We were compatible in a domestic sort of way. Or Jarvis? With him, I imagined this beautiful artistic lifestyle: bringing cups of coffee to him in his sunlit studio and talking about themes and ideas in his work. I liked the idea of walking around his exhibition launches, our hands intertwined like lattice, as he’d once said. In the evenings, we would drink red wine by the fire and look through a hardcover, fully illustrated book about Ron Mueck. We could lie in bed naked, his hand softly on my belly, and read passages from Russian short stories to each other. We could travel to New York, just to see a Mike Kelley exhibition. My imagination was expansive and everything seemed possible with Jarvis.

  I could imagine Jarvis and I getting old together, him with thick black-framed round glasses, one of those intelligent older men, with short grey hair, maybe a goatie. I felt as though life would never get boring with him, he would always be able to engage me with his intellect and his views on the world, like he did in his messages to me. Luke, on the other hand, well, our conversation had all but dried up already. We would be like mutes when we were older. I could see us as the old couple who went out for dinner and didn’t have anything to say to each other, except for comments about the menu and ‘what are you having?’ Ugh.

  So that torch of mine shone on Jarvis. I was pretty sure that it was him I wanted, despite everything. It was the harder choice to make. But as he’d often said in his messages to me, he had faith that everything would work out in the end, that everyone would be happy. Sometimes I questioned this. I didn’t know how everyone could be happy in the end, but maybe they could. Maybe Jarvis could be a good influence in Max’s life; he could inspire the artistic side of him. While Luke enlightened Max with sports and horticulture, Jarvis could impress him with the arts. Max could have two great role models in his life. I was actually doubling his experiences.

  Jarvis had a number of nieces and nephews whom he talked about. He seemed to adore them. Because he felt he was never going to have children of his own, he’d showered them with his love. Often he had the boys staying over with him. He’d told me about an expensive pastel set he’d bought for his n
iece just the other week, even though she was only six, and he hardly had enough money to pay the rent that month. That was the kind of person who would make a great stepfather, surely?

  I logged in and checked the email messages on my phone, looking for a sign from the gods, and there it was: a simple YouTube link from Jarvis, to the Bob Dylan song ‘I Want You’. I listened to the track, and it was so raw and sincere, it was just what I needed to reassure me that I had the right man in my spotlight.

  29

  Luke had booked a fabulous warehouse conversion in west Hobart. It had exposed red-brick walls, dark timber beams stretching across the ceiling like whale bones, stainless-steel steps up to the second level, and an industrial hook hanging from the ceiling above the dining table, celebrating the warehouse’s ancestry as a fish factory. There was also a rooftop deck where we all had dinner, marvelling at the view of Hobart below.

  Luke was in fine spirits, having temporarily cast off the shackles of his small business. On the first night he made us fettuccine carbonara and the three of us ate dinner on the rooftop, Luke and Max chatting and laughing as freely as the wind. I had this moment where I never wanted it to end. I wanted to pull down the shutters on this family unit of ours, protect it, heritage-list it, make sure that no one could ever make any alterations to it. This was us, our moment, our life: I wanted to keep it exactly as it was.

  But then I realised that there I was again, being a spectator rather than a participant in my life, always distracted, always analysing. Why wasn’t I simply in that conversation, laughing along with the two of them? Why was I always observing and dissecting? This was what made me feel as though I would never be normal again until I was with Jarvis.

  I was almost demented with all these thoughts and feelings. It was as though Jarvis had me on some fishhook and he’d dragged me out to sea and I could no longer see land. I decided that I wanted to find my way back to land, for Max’s sake, to make sure that we had a good holiday. I texted Jarvis and said that I’d be out of contact for a couple of days, that I wanted to clear my head a little and try to have some proper family time.

  Although it initially felt scary to cut off contact with Jarvis, even briefly, it was therapeutic to not be checking my phone all the time for new messages. I was able to swim back into that family circle of ours, a place that I had loved so much, once upon a time, a place that had been the only place for me.

  We took the hire car down the coast to White Beach. I deliberately left my phone at the warehouse and felt completely free from any kind of distractions. Luke always loved a car journey and he was in a fine mood, talking about plans for future holidays and a redesign of the back garden, including building an outdoor fireplace. Rather than being irritated by discussions of the future, I felt somewhat soothed by it, and joined in with him. Max was excitable, compliant and happy to be away for a week. There was none of that attitude we were getting back at home.

  It was a weekday, so we practically had the whole beach to ourselves. The sun was shining, but the water was icy. The three of us swam out. I remembered the days when Max was a toddler and I’d always felt like a lifeguard at the beach, always on standby, watching him, waiting for some sort of catastrophe by the water. But that day at White Beach I realised I was no longer his lifeguard. He was as strong a swimmer as I was — all those swimming lessons had paid off. I felt so proud of his confidence in the water and proud of the person he’d become. I knew that Luke and I had done a good job of raising him, despite our own shortcomings. Even if we had somehow fallen onto different pages, Max was the binding that had kept us together.

  Panting, tired from our swim, we lay down on our towels, the three of us lined up together, and we let the sun sink its rays into us. I felt a beautiful sense of calm. My head was washed free of torment. It was just me and my two boys.

  ***

  MONA was every bit as fabulous as everyone said it would be. We steered Max around the exhibitions carefully, trying to avoid anything too confronting. He was in awe. This place was nothing like the stuffy galleries he’d visited in Melbourne. ‘Mum, they’ve said “shit” and “fuck” in this,’ he said, pointing to the electronic label device. It made him feel trusted and grown-up to be able to join in with us in this adult wonderland experience.

  I’d been able to clear my head of Jarvis at the beach the day before, but at MONA I lapsed back into narrating everything I saw to him in my head. The voice inside my head was clear like a news reporter’s. I would phrase something, then rephrase it and try to highlight it in my mind. I must not forget to tell him this. ‘There are sculptures on the ferry. The approach to MONA is awesome — it’s built into a cliff. Outside there’s a tennis court by the entry and a rusty life-size truck sculpture overlooking the water. There’s a wine bar in the basement with sandstone walls and antique chairs. I discovered this artist named Henry Darger, he wrote a 15,000-page manuscript and hundreds of watercolours that were only found after he died. Outsider Art. Have you heard of the band The Vivian Girls? His magnum opus inspired them. David Walsh has a car park with a sign saying “God” and right next to it is his wife’s spot, marked “God’s Mistress”. What a guy. Even the toilets are a work of art.’ On and on and on it went in my head, these short soundbites that I tried to memorise for him. When I became conscious that I wasn’t living the day, but relaying the day, I shouted silently at myself to stop, stop. This was my day to share with Max and Luke: get the hell out of my head, Jarvis.

  It was like Jarvis had pitched a tent in my mind, hammered in pegs and fastened ropes to my brain. Always, he was sitting in that tent, invisible, with a glass of whiskey, waiting for these private chats of ours. He was an unhealthy obsession, a delusion; the image of him was stronger than the life I was living. He had a magnetic pull that I couldn’t resist and a power over me that I had never felt before. My thoughts were no longer my own; they belonged to him.

  A few weeks before, my therapist had asked whether I was obsessed with him. I’d asked, despairingly, ‘How would I know?’ And she said obsession would be indicated if I couldn’t stop thinking about him. The word ‘obsession’ had alarmed me. Now I realised it was true, this was some kind of obsessive love, and there was something not quite normal about it.

  I’d always been quite sensible. I’d never had to chase a man before; love had come to me naturally and easily. Luke, especially, was a very straightforward love affair. This thing with Jarvis was far more complicated than I was ready to admit. I wondered if my therapist could hypnotise him out of my brain. I wanted to sweep away those scattered, distracting thoughts of mine that had become as annoying as dirty leaves that blew into the house on a windy day.

  ***

  In contrast to me becoming increasingly wired and uneasy, Luke unwound on the trip. I didn’t even hear him making any calls to Mike to check up on the Patch. At night, after Max was in bed, we turned off the TV and sat on the rooftop, watching the lights switch on around Hobart. We drank a glass of red and talked, like we used to do before life got so hard and busy. We even managed to drag ourselves out of the slump of husband-and-wife conversation and behave like friends, making an effort to engage each other with our wit and observation. After some time, I realised that I hadn’t thought about Jarvis for at least an hour or so. That incessant voice in my mind had gone quiet and I was pulled back towards Luke.

  I wanted to grab him by the shoulders and hold him, and say, ‘This is my Luke. Where have you been? Where have I been? This is why we are together.’ I remembered it all, why I fell for him in the first place. How he could make me laugh and keep me entertained. How we felt so comfortable together, like best friends. Without all the everyday drudgery to get through, the queries over the recycling bin or the status of the gutters, we actually got along really well.

  Max’s bedroom was downstairs and our bedroom was on the top level of the warehouse. We took our time rediscovering each other’s bodies. He continued taking off all his clothes. One night, he didn’t ev
en redress himself afterwards, and when we woke up naked together the next morning he was still holding onto me. I felt as though I had my man back.

  ***

  On our final day, we went to Port Arthur. I’d been umming and ahhing about whether I wanted to go or not, but in the end we decided that we would, because we never knew when we’d get back to Tasmania. I wanted to focus on Port Arthur having been a penal colony, I didn’t feel as though Max needed to know about the Martin Bryant massacre just yet. But somehow he already knew. When we arrived and looked out at the lawn area, he said, ‘Is this the place where that guy shot all those people?’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘I don’t know, I just do,’ he said.

  We crept in and out of the historic buildings, the churches, hospital and penitentiary; we made our way up and down dark staircases, into basements chilled by the spirits of convicts. Max viewed most of the site through the lens of my smartphone, using the Hipstamatic app to create some retro blue-washed shots of the site. I’ve looked back at the record of that day many times. Max took lots of photos of Luke and me walking in and out of the ruins. The blue filter he used creates a sense of calm. There’s this one shot of Luke and I emerging from behind a crumbly pillar, and we are smiling about something. There’s happiness in that candid moment. Years later, even though I can’t remember what we were smiling about, it reminds me that all was not bad between us, there were good times as well, as precious as a native orchid found growing between the cracks in a rock.

  Afterwards, in the hire car, on the way back to the warehouse, we had to stop and get some petrol. Luke walked into the servo to pay for the fuel and I noticed that he’d left his phone in the front console. I don’t know what made me do it, but I picked it up and looked at his sent messages. I didn’t recognise the number of the last message, but it said At Port Arthur. This place is eerie. Thinking of you as always.