Wife for Hire

by Dianne Blacklock

  The next day

  ‘You’ve got no one to blame but yourself, Samantha.’

  ‘Mum . . .’ Sam considered hanging up right now, before she had to listen to another word.

  ‘It’s true. You’ve put on weight, you don’t look after yourself the way you used to.’

  ‘I haven’t put on that much weight –’

  ‘When you and Jeff were going out you always made yourself look nice. You went to that little bit of extra effort.’

  ‘I was a teenager, Mum! I had nothing else to do but paint my nails and pluck my eyebrows. Now I’ve got three kids, a house, a job . . .’

  ‘I managed to keep my figure and my house.’

  ‘But not your husband.’

  There was a brief, stony silence.

  ‘Well, Samantha, maybe you’ll curb some of your sarcasm now that you’ve found yourself in the same boat.’

  Bernice Driscoll had single-handedly raised her daughters after their father deserted them. Bernice liked the term ‘deserted’. She wasn’t happy when the government changed the ‘deserted wives’ pension’ to the ‘sole parents’ benefit’.

  ‘How can you tell the difference between someone who is in this predicament through no fault of their own,’ she’d lamented, ‘and someone who, well, brought it upon themselves?’

  According to Bernice, her husband left her because he’d always wanted a son and she hadn’t been able to produce one. Pure and simple. It seemed credible, if somewhat archaic. The girls were named Alex, Sam and Max, and he left his next wife after she presented him with twin daughters, Jackie and Jaime. Well, that was the rumour Bernice had heard anyway. They’d never actually met any second wife or half-sisters. They didn’t hear from their father again, but sometimes conjectured they could probably trace him by following a trail of girls with boys’ names.

  Bernice had carried on, like the tragic Anne Boleyn figure she was, she often sighed to her daughters. Of course, they tried to remind her that Anne Boleyn had actually been beheaded for failing to produce a male heir to the throne and was thus perhaps at least marginally more tragic. But Bernice Driscoll didn’t care to muddy the issue with facts.

  ‘I hope this doesn’t mean you won’t be able to take me out to the shoe warehouse next week?’ Bernice had suddenly realised that Sam’s predicament could have some unfavourable repercussions on her own life. ‘You know I’m desperate for new shoes, and Footrest is the only brand I can wear, but I just will not pay the prices they ask in the shops.’

  Oh, no, Mum, why should my life falling apart stop me from running around at your beck and call?

  ‘Don’t worry, Mum, I’ll see you next week.’

  ‘I’m not going to talk to her about this any more,’ Sam insisted later on the phone to Maxine. She knew she could count on her younger sister for support.

  ‘I don’t know what possessed you to talk about it with her in the first place,’ said Max drily. ‘Why did you, anyway?’

  ‘Force of habit.’

  ‘Would you like me to give you the “what a bastard” response?’ she offered.

  ‘Well, I wish someone would,’ Sam moaned.

  ‘What a bastard!’ Max exclaimed with gusto. ‘Typical bloody male with his brain in his dick. You’re better off without him, Sam. And he’s going to crumple into a pathetic heap without you to run around after him!’ She paused. ‘Do you want more?’

  ‘No, that’ll do for now. Thanks.’

  ‘How are you really?’

  ‘I don’t know. Different to what I thought.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Well,’ Sam tried to explain, ‘when I thought about Jeff having an affair, I didn’t think it would feel like this.’

  ‘You’ve actually thought about what you would feel like if he ever had an affair?’

  ‘Yes,’ she defended.

  ‘Is that normal?’

  ‘I don’t think it’s abnormal.’

  ‘Mm,’ Max mused. ‘So, is he serious about this woman – what’s her name?’

  ‘Jodi.’

  ‘Jodi? Ugh! She isn’t under-age, is she?’

  ‘I don’t think he’d be that stupid.’

  ‘When men let their penises make decisions for them, there’s not a whole lot of rational thought going on.’ Max sighed. ‘Jodi, huh? I bet she draws those little circles over the “i”. How did he meet her?’

  ‘Through work.’

  ‘Mm, typical, statistically speaking.’

  Maxine had a statistic, an anecdote or a theory for just about everything. Often she had all three. She had been studying for a degree in psychology for the last three years, and she was almost finished first year. Not that she’d ever failed. Whenever she actually completed a subject, she usually earned a High Distinction. Max was the smartest of the three girls by far, but stuff kept getting in the way. Bad relationships, lack of money, the travel bug biting now and then. Maxine had a short attention span. She found it hard to stick at anything for long. At thirty-three years of age, she had not had one relationship that anyone could take seriously, least of all her. She avoided normal men like the plague, preferring to take her chances with an assortment of misfits and losers. Sam didn’t know where Max found them, but she did, with alarming regularity.

  ‘Do you want me to come round tonight?’

  ‘I would, but Jeff wants to “talk”.’

  ‘Oh? Didn’t you do enough talking last night?’

  Sam sighed. ‘We did. And I asked him to leave. But he wants to take it more slowly. He’s concerned about the kids.’

  ‘Convenient of him to think of them now.’

  ‘That’s what I said.’

  ‘Does Alex know yet?’

  ‘Oh I’d imagine Bernice would be broadcasting the news to her as we speak.’

  Alexandra was the eldest, and she played that role to perfection. Max and Sam were both frightened of her. She lived in Melbourne now, married to Gordon who was eighteen years her senior. Max theorised it was because she needed a father figure. But Sam reckoned Alex was born old. At ten she acted like she was twenty, and at twenty she had the composure of a forty year old. She couldn’t have married anyone younger than Gordon. They had one perfect specimen child, Isabella, who fitted beautifully into their precisioned life. Alex had crashed through the glass ceiling years ago, she had probably not even noticed it was there. She currently worked as a management consultant for a multinational corporation. Sam and Max had no idea what it was that she actually did.

  ‘Well, call me and let me know what happens. Promise?’ Max insisted.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry, I will. You’re going to be sick of the sound of my voice before long.’

  Six p.m.

  ‘Mummm,’ Jessica said with the tone of voice that almost-thirteen-going-on-twenty-two-year-old girls seemed to have down pat. ‘Everyone else is going, their parents are all letting them! What’s wrong with you?’

  ‘Nothing’s wrong with me, thank you Jessica,’ Sam replied, trying to sound firm, parental, interested. Anything but how she actually felt, which was that she didn’t give a flying fig, not tonight. Things had taken a decidedly surreal turn. She had tried to keep up her normal routine throughout the day, but a vague uneasy feeling had persisted in the back of her mind that suddenly her life had become very fragile, a barely sustainable ecosystem threatened with extinction. She felt like a rainforest species in a South American jungle.

  ‘You know the rule about school nights. I just don’t understand why Brianna’s party has to be midweek?’

  Jessica rolled her eyes. ‘Mu-umm!’ She said the word as though it had two syllables, and as though Sam had a half a brain. ‘I’ve already explained this to you. It’s the night of Tiffany and JJ’s wedding!’

  ‘Who are Tiffany and JJ?’ Sam asked absently, draining the peas.

  Jessica rolled her eyes again. ‘They’re on Beachside! Don’t you ever listen to me?’

  Sometimes Sam felt that all she did wa
s listen to Jessica. She had a lot to say for a twelve year old. On top of that, she was glued to the phone day and night, talking loudly to her girlfriends from any room of the house, shooshing everyone if she couldn’t hear. Other mothers complained that their daughters would lock themselves away in their rooms and stay on the phone. Sam wished.

  ‘Beachside is a television show, right?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘Roll your eyes once more, girl, and it’s a flat no, end of discussion.’

  Jessica gave a petulant toss of her blonde mane and looked balefully at her mother, but at least her eyes did not move in their sockets.

  ‘I’ll have to talk to your father about it.’

  ‘Why? He’ll go along with whatever you say, you’re just stalling.’

  ‘That’s quite enough!’ Sam had all the attitude she could take for now. ‘Be quiet and set the table.’

  ‘But it’s not my turn –’

  ‘Jessica!’ Sam turned back to the stove and took a couple of calming breaths. She heard rustling in the cutlery drawer. Jess had obviously decided not to push it any further for the moment. She usually figured that out, even if it took till half past the eleventh hour.

  Sam looked at her watch. Josh should be home from football training by now, but he was often late these days. When she’d ask him about it, he’d just shrug, mumble something incomprehensible and shuffle off to his room. Getting any information out of him was like pulling teeth. Seemingly overnight Joshua had turned into the stereotypical teenage boy, and Sam feared she was losing him. His relationship with his father was worse. He and Jeff were like two stags butting up against one another to gain dominance. Sam supposed it was a male thing but she didn’t see why Jeff couldn’t just back off a bit. He was the adult after all.

  She wondered how all this was going to affect Josh, and it worried her.

  ‘Mummy? . . . Mummy?’

  Sam looked down to see Ellie’s wide round eyes fixed on her, unblinking. ‘What’s a matter, Mummy?’

  She crouched down to her youngest daughter’s level. ‘Nothing, why?’

  ‘You’ve got sadlines here and here,’ she said, tracing the creases between Sam’s eyebrows with her fingers. Ellie often drew attention to Sam’s ‘sadlines’. They were just like Nanna’s, she said. That should have been enough to stop Sam frowning once and for all.

  ‘Well, I’ve only got sadlines because I haven’t had a hug all afternoon!’

  Ellie smiled happily and wrapped her arms around her mother’s neck, holding on tight. So did Sam. Ellie was her baby, the child that shouldn’t have been here. They had their perfect family, a boy and a girl. Jessica had started school, and Sam was working a couple of days a week. Jeff had just been promoted again and Sam had her sights set on Cherrybrook. It was her dream suburb. If they could buy a house in Cherrybrook, she would never want to move again. She knew she would be happy there. She started driving around the streets after dropping the kids at school, picking out her ideal locations. She figured it would be another twelve to eighteen months before she could talk Jeff into moving again. He was as settled as a cat on a sunny doorstep. Sam knew not to broach it for the time being. But if a ‘For Sale’ sign was to go up in one of those streets . . .

  After Jessica’s birth, Jeff had promised to have a vasectomy. He’d agreed it was only fair, in principle. But a vasectomy in principle was not an effective method of contraception. With two young children, sex was pretty infrequent anyway and so the issue floated, unresolved. Then there was a particularly heady New Year’s Eve party at Liz and Michael’s. They drank a busload of champagne and neither of them could remember much the morning after.

  A month later the nausea started. Ellie was born in the spring, delaying the move to Cherrybrook for the meantime, but Sam couldn’t imagine their lives without their dark-haired, dark-eyed little beauty. She was the only one who had inherited her mother’s physical features, but thankfully she seemed to possess her father’s calmer temperament. Josh and Jess’s babyhood had passed in a blur of colic, inexperience and sleepless nights, until Sam had learned the miracle of routine. And while it made things easier, their life was so regimented into nap times and bath times and mealtimes that there wasn’t any time left just to enjoy the children. But Sam savoured every moment with Ellie. She let her eat when she was hungry and sleep when she was tired, and she ended up being the easiest of the three. She hated when people asked if Ellie was a mistake, noting the age gap between her and the other two. Max, in cosmic mode, said Ellie was a little soul who was always meant to be here. She had just been biding her time until the right opportunity came along. Though she didn’t let on to Max, Sam liked that explanation.

  They heard the front door open and close. ‘That’ll be your brother,’ Sam said hopefully to Ellie.

  ‘Hello gorgeous girl.’ It was Jeff.

  ‘Daddy!’ Jessica exclaimed enthusiastically, throwing her arms around his neck. She knew how to manipulate her father. She would get him on side and he’d say yes to anything. She relished attention from Jeff, but sometimes out of the blue she’d snap and treat him as though he was mentally impaired. Which was the way she always treated Sam.

  ‘You’re home early,’ Sam remarked as he walked into the kitchen.

  ‘I thought it was important tonight,’ he said, throwing a meaningful glance in her direction. He picked up Ellie. ‘How’s my other gorgeous girl?’

  Jeff rarely ate with the rest of the family. He was never usually home before eight, and often it was later than that. It didn’t bother Sam, she managed the afternoon routine fine without him. When Josh and Jess were babies, she’d feed them early and put them to bed before he got home, and then they would have a civilised meal together. But now she ate with the children. Occasionally she sat with Jeff while he had his dinner, maybe over a glass of wine. More often than not, though, she was halfway through a show on TV when he arrived home, so he’d eat alone. It gave him a chance to read his paper undisturbed. If he did come into the family room to join them, he invariably fell asleep on the lounge, and their only contact would be the nudge Sam would give him before she went upstairs to bed.

  The sliding glass doors of the family room opened and Joshua stepped inside.

  ‘Hi Josh,’ Sam called across to him. ‘You’re a bit late, did training run over?’

  He shrugged, not looking at them as he slid the door closed.

  ‘Joshua,’ said Jeff sternly. ‘Your mother asked you a question.’

  Josh glanced briefly at his father, then at Sam. ‘Sorry I’m late,’ he mumbled, walking away.

  ‘Dinner’s ready,’ Sam called after him.

  ‘Joshua!’ Jeff persisted. But he had disappeared up the stairs. ‘You shouldn’t let him speak to you like that,’ he said to Sam.

  She shrugged. ‘Let him be, Jeff. He’s probably tired.’

  ‘You’re too easy on these kids. You’re going to have to set a few ground rules . . .’ he faltered, ‘. . . um, you know, to cope, in the future.’

  Sam looked at him. What did he mean, cope? Without him? She coped without him all the time! In fact it was irritating when he butted in, having an opinion, like he was doing now. They got by with very little input from Jeff. His leaving was going to make next to no difference.

  ‘Rules are not stupid, Jess, they’re in place for a reason,’ Jeff was saying.

  Jessica had started working on her father as soon as they sat down at the table. ‘I don’t have a problem with the rule, Dad,’ she said sweetly, ‘any other time. But this is a one-off.’

  Jeff sighed, putting down his fork. ‘Your mother and I have a few things to discuss tonight and this will be on the agenda, Jess. We’ll let you know in the morning.’

  She looked miffed, but she knew that throwing a hissy fit would sabotage any chance of getting what she wanted.

  ‘Any more?’ Josh grunted.

  ‘Sure Josh, out on the stove,’ said Sam.

  ‘I didn’t hear a “please”,�
�� said Jeff pointedly as Josh walked into the kitchen. ‘Does he really need seconds?’

  ‘Jeff, he’s fourteen years old. I think he’s growing a centimetre a week. Leave him be.’

  Jeff sighed audibly. ‘It’s just an excuse to be greedy.’ What a treat it was to have him home at dinnertime, Sam thought wryly.

  ‘Daddy, I drewed you a picture today,’ said Ellie. ‘For your work.’

  ‘Did you darling?’ he smiled.

  Thank God for Ellie.

  ‘Like I said to you last night, I’m well aware of the shock this will be to the children,’ Jeff began. ‘Let’s not kid ourselves.’

  Sam looked up at him dumbfounded. They were upstairs in the ‘parents’ retreat’, which was not much more than an alcove off the master bedroom. But Sam had made it look attractive, with a pair of tub chairs, an Ikea occasional table and a bookcase. She had stacked it with some old books that no one wanted to read, because they hardly ever used the area.

  ‘Let’s not kid ourselves?’ Sam repeated incredulously.

  Jeff nodded.

  ‘Why don’t you just speak for yourself from here on in, okay Jeff?’ she spat. ‘I’m not kidding myself. I haven’t done anything wrong!’

  Jeff sighed loudly. ‘Oh, so you want to play it that way? Someone has to bear the blame?’

  ‘Well, what do you reckon?’ she cried. ‘And let’s imagine for a moment who it might be? Could it be the one who has been responsible for the primary care of the three children, looked after the house, taken every single worry off the other so that he could go out and build his career?’ She took a breath. ‘Or the one who’s fucking a colleague?’

  ‘Sam!’ Jeff frowned. ‘I don’t think that’s appropriate.’

  ‘Neither do I!’ she retorted.

  He breathed out heavily, sitting forward in his chair and clasping his hands together. ‘It’s a pretty widely acknowledged fact that people in happy marriages don’t have affairs.’

  Sam rolled her eyes. ‘Funny how most of the “people” who do are men having a midlife crisis.’