by Nicole Trope
‘Don’t think, my love. You think too much. Just come home and bring my boy back. Just let us be a family again.’
‘Alex, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have let this happen. Look, I think this was a mistake. We can’t be together again, Alex. We’re better off apart. It’s better for Luke. You have to see that.’ She crossed her arms over her chest for protection and backed away.
He stepped forward, forcing her to step back against a wall.
‘The worst marriage is better than the best divorce, Liz. We’ll scar him for life. How come you can’t see that? He’ll grow up the same way we did. Didn’t we want better for him? Isn’t that what we said? You need to come back home. You need to come back to me.’
‘I can’t, Alex. Please. I’m sorry about this but I just can’t—I . . . I need more time.’
He nodded his head like it was the first time she had ever offered him that excuse. He knew what she was saying. He knew what she meant but he nodded his head as though he imagined that Liz would eventually have had enough time and she could then go back to being his wife and sharing a house and a bed with him. Liz smiled a little to convince him that what she said was true.
‘Yeah, that’s right, you need more time,’ he said. ‘Think it over tonight and we can talk when I pick Luke up tomorrow morning. I’m going crazy without my kid, Liz. I’m going crazy without you.’
‘You go pretty crazy when we’re there,’ Liz thought, but she knew those words would never leave her mouth.
‘Alex, it may not be the best id—’
‘Fuck that, Liz. Fuck the best idea. I need you home. I need Luke with me. I need to see my child every day. He’s my child, Liz. Mine. How would you feel if you couldn’t see him every day? How the fuck would you feel?’
The wine had turned to acid in her stomach now and the nausea rose inside her.
‘You can see him whenever you want to. You know that.’
‘It’s not the same, Liz. I want to be there all the time. This is killing me, you know. I sit at home and try to figure out how to make it right. How come you aren’t doing the same thing? Don’t you miss me?’
‘I just think . . .’
‘Spare me, Liz. I know what you think. Christ, you’re so cold.’ Alex took another step forward. He was close now, too close, but she could not get any further away from him.
‘Nothing can touch you,’ he hissed. ‘I hope you never have to feel the pain I feel. I hope you never . . .’
And then the front door opened and her mother came in. Liz breathed a sigh of relief and moved across the room.
Her mother didn’t greet Alex. She could not abide his presence in her house. It was the only thing her parents agreed on—Alex was the biggest mistake Liz had ever made.
But because of him there was Luke.
As far as Liz could see that ended the argument right there.
‘It can’t all be my fault, Liz,’ Alex whispered to her when she walked him to the door. ‘There’s an old cliché about it taking two to tango and you know that you don’t make things easy, Liz. You know it.’
Liz wanted to tell him that there was no excuse for where his anger took him but she had kept quiet instead. She had closed the door on him without defending herself, without saying anything else.
She had closed the door and hoped that her fuck-up would disappear with the night.
3
Ellen came into the room while Liz was still standing by the door. Liz knew that her mother had deliberately waited in the kitchen until Alex had left. She wondered how much Ellen had heard.
Liz knew that she had a fair idea what had happened last night. She had stayed in the living room while Liz saw Alex out and, even though Liz knew her mother was only protecting her, she couldn’t help but feel like a guilty teenager.
‘When are you going to let go properly, Liz?’ she had asked as they switched off the lights on the way to bed.
‘I have let go, Mum. He just came over to read a story to Luke and I made some dinner, it’s no big deal.’
‘Oh, Liz,’ said her mother and shook her head.
Liz had turned away from her then and taken refuge in the shower, where she washed away Alex’s smell and his touch. She scrubbed until her skin was pink with her resolutions for the future. She would not let this happen again.
For the first time, she had a strong desire to be in a place of her own.
She wanted to be free of being watched, of being judged. She always fell short of her mother’s expectations or Alex’s expectations. She wanted to be somewhere enclosed in her own silent space. If she had not had Luke she could have ended her marriage and gone away. She could have climbed on a plane and finally gone to England or Italy. She could have lost herself and her pain among strangers. If she had not had Luke.
But because she did have Luke she had no choice but to return home, and she knew that right there was part of the reason, a small part of the reason, that she had stayed with Alex so long. Each time she had pictured herself turning up on her mother’s doorstep she had imagined the sting of humiliation she’d feel at being so wrong about her choices.
‘I suppose you need to stay here,’ her mother had said on that summer’s day five months ago, forgoing a smile of welcome in favour of an ‘I told you so’.
‘It won’t be for long,’ she said.
‘I’ll just bet,’ her mother answered. ‘Come on, Lukie, let’s go and get you settled. Now the blue room can really be your room.’
Her mother had warned her about Alex. ‘It’s just a feeling I have, Liz. The boy is too desperate to start a family. What kind of twenty-three-year-old man wants a baby?’
‘Maybe one who won’t fuck off the moment he meets a nice little blonde girl.’
‘It doesn’t get you anywhere, Liz, dragging me down. It doesn’t get you anywhere. I know who I married but it doesn’t mean every thought I have on the subject of men should be discounted. Marry Alex if you will, but I’m not sure he’s the right man for you.’
Of course Liz had ignored her. Hadn’t she been doing that since the day her father left? It had been so many years ago, but Liz could replay every detail in her head.
Her mother had nearly ripped the shirt off her father’s back as he tried to leave. She had clung and wept and degraded herself. Her father had moved resolutely forward, packing his bag and getting into the truck and driving away.
Liz had never imagined that her father would run off with the chubby blonde waitress from the place he got his lunch. The woman was a sad cliché. She talked incessantly about everything and anything. Her balloon breasts puffed out of her low-cut top and her chunky legs were never helped by the length of her skirts. Liz couldn’t fathom the attraction. Her father was not a fan of conversation in general.
On the day Jack left to live with ‘that slut’, Ellen had stood in the street, screaming and cursing. She had picked up some stones from the garden and thrown them at the truck as it roared away. One had bounced off the side, leaving a small dent in the face of a smiling piano. The neighbours had opened their doors and stood in silent condemnation before going back inside their houses away from the crazy woman shrieking in the street. Ellen had stood alone in the empty street watching the sun set and convulsively tearing at her clothes. She had returned to the house to find her tall, gawky daughter silent and horrified.
‘I don’t need your father’s fucking face here right now,’ Ellen had shouted. ‘Just go to your room!’
Liz had never forgiven her. Initially she had blamed herself for her father leaving, but she soon decided her mother was the culprit.
Ellen lived her life perched on the edge of hysteria and Jack couldn’t take it anymore. He was a quiet man who took up a lot of space. His hands spanned a dinner plate and his voice rumbled from deep inside his chest. He was, of all things, a piano mover. He had three trucks on the road and commanded a reasonable amount of respect in their neighbourhood. He’d been in all the big houses and met a few famous faces
. Not that he ever discussed it.
As a child, Liz had gone with him once or twice when he went out to move the large, precious objects from one house to another.
‘Oh, do be careful,’ the owner would say as Jack and his men began shifting the piano.
‘She’ll be right, madam,’ her father would say to the tense owner. ‘Me an’ the boys been doing this awhile. We know what’s what.’ The owner of the piano seemed grateful to be told to basically shut up.
And when the piano was safely in position in the new house the owner would virtually weep with gratitude. Liz had never understood the attachment to an inanimate object. It made music, but so what? She lived in a neighbourhood where getting the rent paid on time could be a major concern.
Her father did well and made money, invested in new trucks and more drivers. Who would have thought the world had so many pianos?
At night her father didn’t go to the pub; he liked to drop his big frame into a chair and just sit. He didn’t even need to watch TV, but he liked the country music channel, filled as it was with the sweet voices of the hard-done-by. By the end of the day he was worn out from keeping up the weight of the pianos and his client’s expectations. Ellen clung and whined and Liz had moments where she followed suit, having only her mother’s behaviour as a reference.
Liz’s mother wanted to do things, see things, go places. She wanted to move to a bigger house and buy a nicer car and go on holiday.
‘What’s the point in making money if all you do is sink it back into the business?’
‘Why can’t we have a holiday? It’s not as if you don’t have Scott to run things for a week or two.’
‘Tell me about your day, Jack—who did you see? Did you see anyone famous?’
‘Please, Jack, you can’t just sit there like a lump of lard. Get up, for God’s sake, and let’s go out somewhere. Let’s go to dinner. I am so sick of being shut up in this house all day.’
On the day he left to ‘shack up with his little blonde whore’, Ellen had mixed some whisky with Diet Coke and been rewarded with the joyful vengeance alcohol allowed her to feel. From then on she woke each day and counted the hours until she could drink again. She dived straight into the whisky bottle and, while she maintained the bitter facade of the dignified divorcee in public, she was incapable of truly functioning for years.
Liz hated her father for leaving, but she understood.
Each time her father came home for an access visit Liz would watch her mother humiliate herself afresh. She would begin, dressed up and drenched in scent, with sexy cajoling and end up crying and spitting venom. Eventually Liz’s father got his daughter a mobile phone so he could ring her to announce his arrival without having to enter the house.
Liz pushed against her father’s union with all the might of her teenage years, but after spending enough time with her father and his waitress, Liz realised that her father had finally found his perfect match. Lilly talked nonstop but her father didn’t talk back. He didn’t have to. She did enough talking for the two of them and she didn’t seem to need him to answer her questions; she just needed someone to talk at. Liz decided her father must see it as pleasant background noise, something to listen to while he sat. Lilly went out with her friends, sold Tupperware, played bingo at the local church and read to the blind on Tuesday afternoons. She was constantly busy and didn’t seem to mind whether Liz’s father was home or not.
To a teenage Liz, this had seemed like the secret to a good marriage—not actually needing the other person. But Liz didn’t mind being needed; in fact, she quite liked it. If you were needed you could never just be left behind.
It never occurred to her that her mother had once been a young bride blind to her husband’s faults.
Liz could not imagine that her mother had chosen to ignore or misinterpret the things that niggled at her when she was dating her future husband; just as she herself had ignored the signs when she and Alex were dating.
As a young bride Ellen had mistaken her husband’s reticence for deep thought and his lack of interest in going out as wanting to be only with her.
‘He’s very quiet,’ Ellen’s own mother had said.
‘You know what they say about still waters, Mum,’ Ellen had replied.
Liz knew intuitively that Alex’s constant reference to his mother and her abandonment of him wasn’t a good sign. His neediness wasn’t a good sign. But she had ignored her misgivings, just as she had ignored so many other signs: the way he planned their evenings without asking her what she wanted to do; his obsessive need to always be on time; his dislike of her friends and parents—all rang alarm bells that Liz now knew she should have listened to. But if she ever expressed concern Alex would take her hand and kiss her palm and she would be sucked right back into the centre of his all-consuming love and she would dismiss the signs as bullshit.
She knew now that she should have seen all of the little things that had sometimes pricked at her as warning signs. She should have written them all down and it was possible that if she had read them on a list she would have walked away from him.
It was possible.
But back then she had fuck all idea of how to interpret those signs. She didn’t want to read anything into them anyway. They could have been pasted on his head and she still would have missed them.
The signs were obscured by jazz evenings and too much red wine and oh, such fucking amazing sex. They were blurred by his charm and his smile and the way he waited for her at lunch, by the care he gave and attention he paid and the way he looked at her.
‘He was the first man who bought me flowers,’ said Glenda.
‘He punched out some guy at work who was bothering me,’ said Rhonda.
‘He told me I was the most beautiful girl in the world,’ said Cherry.
‘He needed me,’ said Liz.
‘So do you want to go out or something?’ asked Ellen, bringing Liz back to the present.
Liz nodded. A few free hours were a bit of a bonus and she knew she should use them. She could get her hair done or call a friend and go for coffee or even shop for some new clothes, but all of that felt like too much work—and it wasn’t like she had money to throw away. Alex was being difficult about money.
‘It’s all about fucking control,’ said Cherry. ‘If I ask him for ten dollars the wanker gives me five so I always ask for double what I really need. If I don’t ask him for money he gets the kids to ask me for something I can’t afford so I have to ask him for the cash. Now that he can’t hit me he needs to keep me under his thumb any way he can. He beat the crap out of some poor bloke who took me for a drink.’ Cherry was only nineteen and the baby of the group but she was already saddled with two-year-old twin girls and enough cynicism to last her whole life.
Her boyfriend entered the loving phase whenever he was high and sucked Cherry back into his dreams of conquering the music world. But when the money ran out and he had no access to the drug he needed he came looking for Cherry to blame.
‘I’d prefer him to smack the kids,’ Cherry said, ignoring Rebecca’s horrified face. ‘It’s about survival, isn’t it?’ Cherry’s bitterness aged her twenty years and she made Liz feel naive.
‘Did you tell the police your ex-boyfriend had assaulted the man who took you for a drink?’ asked Rebecca, and they’d all had a good laugh at that.
Alex and Liz had only been separated for a few months and there was no way he was agreeing to mediation to work out the details of a divorce settlement until the twelve months were up. She would just have to hang on and hope that he gave her enough money to cover everything. Her father had sent her some cash when he heard that she had left Alex, but Luke needed things and groceries cost a lot. Alex put money into her account at the beginning of every month but Liz had noticed that each month it was dropping by a few hundred dollars. She didn’t mention it. He asked her frequently if she had enough money, irritated by Liz’s silence on the matter, but money was an argument that she couldn’t even
think how to start. She needed a lawyer and a proper agreement but she found herself so overwhelmed by the swirl of things she needed to do that she was usually still on the couch by the time Luke needed to be fetched from preschool.
‘You need something to do,’ said her mother, and then Liz did nothing just because there was a pissed-off twelve-year-old somewhere inside her still.
Liz needed a job but she would have to wait until Luke was at preschool full time. It was impossible for her to picture a future in which she lived alone and supported herself and her child. She felt the apathy of limbo pushing her back onto the couch every day.
Her mother didn’t nag but Liz could sense her getting edgy as the weeks went by. They got on better now than they ever had but there would always be the leftover tension from Liz’s teenage years, when her very presence and her likeness to her father were enough to depress her mother.
‘You’re welcome to go and live with your father and his cheap bit of fluff,’ Ellen would say after arguments about everything from curfew to unloading the dishwasher.
The words had stung because Liz knew better than her mother that she was only tolerated in her father’s house as a visitor. A closer relationship was never suggested. At fifteen Liz hated herself for all the same reasons the other girls did but she was always acutely aware that her parents no longer felt compelled to love her either.
She stood up straight and pretended she didn’t care. Now that she had Luke she couldn’t understand her parents’ ambivalence to their own child, but as the years went on she could see a time when her own needs would challenge Luke’s needs. What would it be like to be a single mother to a teenage boy?
Her mother hadn’t mentioned rent—not yet. Liz was going to have to go to her father when she did. He wouldn’t mind. He had always been generous with her. Giving her money meant he didn’t have to get too involved in her life.