Happily Ever After?

by Benison Anne O'Reilly

  One night around this time David was in town for a conference and Mum and Dad organised a family dinner at their place. He and Amrita had bought a big house with a pool in Adelaide and looked to be putting down roots. In fact, I had begun to detect a touch of parochialism creeping in. He went on a little bit too long at dinner about the superiority of South Australian reds (he’d brought a couple of bottles as evidence) and got decidedly huffy when Dad made one of his ‘boring Adelaide’ jibes. However, the wine was excellent - so excellent in fact that I had three largish glasses of it.

  Big Brother had been watching me and took me aside later in the evening to lecture, ‘I don’t want to sound like a wowser, but you might want to cut back on your drinking a bit. It doesn’t mix too well with the antidepressants you’re on.’

  ‘Oh God,’ I groaned, ‘can’t Mum ever keep her mouth shut. I told her not to tell anyone.’ There are no secrets in my family where my mum is concerned.

  ‘Don’t get angry with her. She’s been very worried about you. And there’s no shame in having postnatal depression, you know. Amrita sees women with it all the time.’

  According to the official family records of the time I was suffering from postnatal depression, but you all know what I really had was post-finding-out-your-husband-has-been-banging-another-woman depression. That was a secret Mum wasn’t in on and I decided then and there that she would never be told.

  ‘Anyway,’ I reassured him, ‘you don’t have to worry. I don’t drink much at all these days. It’s your fault for bringing the divine shiraz.’

  The truth is I’d knocked back more than my usual share because I’d been sweating about Tony and David being in the same room together, in case the tension in my marriage became obvious, but Tony had turned on the charm all evening, reminiscing with his friend about their rugby days and such. ‘Life of the party Tony’ lasted right up until we got Isabel settled into the car and were preparing to drive off. Then he promptly clicked the ‘off’ switch. Silence.

  It’s hard to explain why but his silences are actually intimidating. In the car I found myself temporarily mute. The spell was only broken when we arrived home and I ambushed him in the bathroom as he was brushing his teeth.

  ‘Would you prefer to be with her than me?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ he asked, creasing his brow as he turned off his electric toothbrush.

  ‘Don’t act dumb - you heard me - your other woman of course.’

  He stood there with his mouth shut. He was holding his toothbrush in a funny way, almost like it was a defensive weapon. It reminded me of something…a light sabre in fact. He was a brave Jedi knight, fighting off that most fearsome of enemies: the woman wanting to talk about ‘issues’.

  I went on, ‘I mean I’m wondering if you are so keen to get the renovations done so we can sell the house and part company.’

  ‘No…I’m just sick of living in the house half-finished.’

  ‘It’s just that I’ve adjusted to the fact you no longer love me, but I’m beginning to feel you don’t even like me.’

  ‘I knew when you got stuck into the wine this was going to happen. When are you going to get over this? I’ve told you before that I am not planning to leave. We can talk about this again when you’re sober but I’m too tired to argue now.’

  He must have been tired because he was already asleep when I climbed into bed a few minutes after him. Pretending to be someone you’re not for a whole evening is clearly exhausting. I tossed and turned most of that night, regretting that last glass of wine and trying not to think about the statements I’d left hanging in the air and whether his failure to respond to them had been deliberate or accidental.

  ***

  We never did get around to having that conversation of course. I found myself as keen to avoid it as he was. With time I discovered that if I placed demands on him and wanted to talk about real issues he would become nasty and hypercritical but if I kept a low profile and restricted our conversations to domestic chitchat he was much easier to live with. The little grub in me much preferred the latter and thus I was complicit in us beginning to lead separate lives. Tony wasn’t around a lot, even when he was, and I found that if I was careful not to interfere with his plans and said yes to sex occasionally he stopped noticing me much at all.

  The thing that hurt most was that his lack of interest extended to Isabel. A lot of men can be uninterested in babies as an abstract concept but once theirs comes along they’re in hook, line and sinker. That never happened with Tony. I think he loved her in a way but he never became the doting dad; you never saw him looking at her with eyes of the besotted, perplexed that others hadn’t acknowledged that his was the smartest, best-looking baby in the world. Superficially he appeared involved but I felt he was just doing what was expected of him. When he was home he’d often take Isabel to his parent’s place, where Pamela would take over the child minding but ‘daddy and daughter’ - just the two of them together - didn’t happen in my recollection.

  And even though she was such a little girl I think Isabel sensed this in a way. She was so eager for daddy’s attention and approval that it seemed almost unhealthy. I used to lie awake worrying that she would grow up to be one of those miserable women who sits by her phone sweating on a call that never comes from Mr Hard-to-get.

  Be careful what you wish for. I had married a man who’d offered me a life of travel and excitement, but had become as much a spectator of that life as if I’d stayed working amongst the lab rats. In an effort to make conversation I sometimes asked about his layovers in Asia and the Middle East, but he might as well have just faxed me the itinerary for all the personal insights he was prepared to offer. And if I dared ask too much, I would likely get this reply:

  ‘I’m not screwing around if that’s what you’re getting at.’

  So he jetted off each month to exotic foreign lands and little Isabel and I stayed home, waiting and hoping that Anthony Cooper, loving husband and doting dad, would one day turn up again.

  No, I never completely gave up hoping.

  Unfortunately hoping is not enough. You have to act. You have to take your life into your own hands and do something. I discovered that eventually.

  And when eventually I acted, he did turn up. I certainly wouldn’t be on this flight to Hong Kong if he hadn’t.

  The trouble is I was way too slow about it. If only I’d acted a year, or even six months earlier, my life might be much less complicated than it is right now.

  ***

  It was almost three more years before I reached that point. A lot was to happen in that time.

  Isabel continued to blossom and Mum continued to adore looking after her. The only trouble was Pamela. When my daughter committed her first social gaffe by including ‘Ganma’ (Mum’s nickname) but not ‘Nana’ (Pamela’s) amongst her first words we almost had to call in United Nations peace negotiators. From then on my mother-in-law demanded that Issy spend one day a week at her house too. This was highly inconvenient for me, as unlike the situation with Mum and Dad’s place, driving to and from work via Pamela’s home involved a lengthy detour in peak hour traffic. It didn’t occur to anyone in the Cooper family to take this into consideration, which gives you a fair idea of my place in their pecking order.

  Then Pamela decided that looking after Isabel during the day was too socially restricting: it interfered with her tennis, committee meetings and occasional lunches with the girls. Instead she suggested that Isabel could sleep over at her house once a week, on Wednesday nights. Officially this was so Tony and I could have some couple time, but considering he generally preferred not to be in the same room as me this didn’t ever happen unless we went out with friends. If he was around he’d more likely be off playing squash with a mate and I would occasionally take the opportunity to meet a friend or my sister Emma at a noodle bar or the movies.

  It’s probab
ly worth talking a bit more about Emma. While I’d been meeting and marrying Tony and losing and having babies, she’d been growing up.

  Emma took the prerogative of the youngest child and was completely without ambition. I figure she thought Mum and Dad already had their high achiever and as a consequence it was okay for her to coast through life on her cuteness. Up until she was about twelve she showed some promise as a dancer and we assumed she was destined for a career on the stage, but not long after she started high school she announced dance was ‘boring’ and gave it all away to play netball and hang out with her friends at the mall. I don’t know who was more devastated, Mum or Emma’s dance instructor, but when she set her mind to something my little sister always got her way.

  Schoolwork was another matter altogether - she never showed any interest in that. Teachers were consulted, tutors hired and fired, and Emma was in turn bribed, begged, cajoled and threatened to apply herself to school. Nothing ever worked. Mum and Dad insisted she stay on until the bitter end but the whole exercise was a waste of time for all parties concerned: my parents, Emma, her school, and the Australian taxpayers who funded the pointless exercise.

  Of course, she’s subsequently turned around and surprised us by becoming very successful at her chosen profession, a beauty therapist. At twenty-three she’s opened her own salon in the local shopping strip and employed her first staff member. She roped all the family into helping with a letter box drop around the neighbourhood and it seems to have paid off, as things are going gangbusters. After all that she turned out to have a head for business, our Em. In twenty years she’ll probably be richer than the rest of us put together and in the meantime Mum and I get all the free facials and manicures we need. I call that a win, win, win.

  Unlike her sad-case older sister Emma never wanted for admirers as a teenager, on the contrary she was the most lusted after girl in her school year. She had a series of boyfriends throughout high school whom she treated with complete disdain. Each lasted about a year before she’d get bored and dump him. Mum and Dad would be left with the job of consoling the grief-stricken youth/potential stalker while she moved on to the next victim (there was never a shortage) to repeat the pattern all over again.

  Then when she started in her first job word quickly spread around our suburb about the hot new beauty therapist. Slick young real estate agents in their aviator sunglasses, buffed mechanics in their greasy overalls, spotty-faced bank tellers in their badly-ironed shirts: they all beat a path to her door. I’m not sure what excuse they made up to visit a women’s beauty salon - I can only assume that a lot of mothers were pleased with, if a little surprised by, their birthday presents that year.

  Not one of these guys was successful in securing her interest, so much so that I began to wonder if, in fact, my little sister didn’t bat for the other side.

  That was until a day around this time. Tony and I had attended the Saturday night wedding of one of his particularly late-straggling-to-matrimony friends and Mum had babysat Issy overnight for us. Thus I was privileged to be actually present at my parent’s house that Sunday morning when my sister made her announcement. Mum and I were having a cup of tea together in the kitchen when Emma emerged from her bedroom just before midday, mascara ringed around her eyes and looking a bit worse for wear.

  ‘Attention everybody! I have an announcement. I am officially in love!’ Obviously an inclination to theatrics hadn’t completely deserted her.

  ‘Really! No way! Who’s the lucky guy - or girl?’ I asked.

  ‘Guy,’ she said, screwing up her nose at me in an offended manner.

  ‘It’s a reasonable question seeing you’ve never seemed very interested in any of the men you meet.’

  ‘Until now that is…I was just waiting for the right one to come along. Besides, I’ve seen enough pussies in my line of work to know that’s not my cup of tea.’

  Mum shook her head. ‘Oh Emma Jane Parkes, must you always be so crude!’ My mother likes to present herself as quite the matron these days, but of course we all know about her dirty book collection.

  ‘So tell us about him,’ I said.

  ‘His name is Daniel. He’s twenty-five and he’s a truck driver.’

  A truckie?

  Mum echoed my thoughts, ‘A truck driver?’

  ‘Yep - he has a huge rig too.’ I think Emma was being deliberately suggestive here but we pretended we didn’t get the joke. ‘Anyway,’ she said, turning to Mum, ‘you can meet him yourself later. He’s taking me to see a new metal band at some pub out west.’

  A metal band? The story got more and more intriguing.

  Mum was fairly bursting when I dropped Issy off at her place the following Tuesday. Her description of my sister’s new love: tall and thin, with long black hair down to his waist and a moustache, plus multiple ‘horrible’ tattoos and piercings. He was dressed head to foot in black leather and was wearing a t-shirt with ‘some violent imagery’ on it. He arrived at the house on his recreational vehicle - a Honda 750. This was Emma’s dream man.

  Can you imagine how delighted my parents were? Over the years I’d heard sporadic and muted grumblings about the condescending attitudes of the Cooper family, but on this occasion the Parkes found they weren’t above a bit of snobbery themselves.

  For a time they consoled themselves that this was just a rebellious phase Emma was going through and that she would eventually come to her senses, but it’s been three years now and Emma and Daniel are still together and still, to all appearances, blissfully in love. Mum, I think, is becoming resigned - although she’d like to get them off the motorbike - and to be fair Daniel is totally devoted to Emma and not in a creepy, controlling way either. Emma has taken to wearing matching leather gear on the weekends but my parents were very relieved to hear that Daniel doesn’t like obvious tats on women. He apparently thinks it looks ‘skanky’.

  Mum’s description was spot on. Daniel certainly did have a lot of piercings. That got me to thinking.

  One evening, when we were alone together, I slyly asked my sister, ‘Daniel seems to have quite a few piercings. Does he have any anyplace interesting?’

  ‘Wouldn’t you like to know?’

  ‘Yes, I would. That’s why I’m asking.’

  ‘I’m not telling you!’

  ‘Which means yes,’ I said triumphantly.

  ‘I didn’t say that. Anyway, haven’t you got anything better to do than think about my sex life. I never ask about yours.’

  I wasn’t going to admit I didn’t really have much of a one to speak of. And when I thought about it, did I really want to imagine my baby sister - who it seemed only yesterday was a seven year old performing in ballet recitals dressed in a pink tutu and pointe shoes - having sex with a hairy, tattooed man who most likely had a ring in his penis? No, I probably did not.

  ***

  Of all the events that occurred around this time, one, in particular, stands out as important for my recovery. Sadly it was no laughing matter at all.

  Even after Isabel was born I remained a member of my miscarriage and stillbirth chat group. Although I’d never met these women some of them were, for a time, amongst the most significant people in my life. Thanks to the Internet, I’d got to know their personal situations and the ups and downs (mostly the latter) of their lives all too well.

  One person I’d grown particularly close to was Suzanne, a forty year old software engineer from Portland, Oregon. She might have lived halfway across the world from me but fertility problems don’t recognise geographical barriers and our experiences were remarkably similar: trouble conceiving in the first place and then a late miscarriage. We got on so well that we started emailing each other privately, outside the auspices of the group. When Issy arrived hale and hearty the first thing I did when I got home from hospital was log on to share my happy news - not to gloat, just to give hope, I thought, to others. Suzanne was th
e very first to congratulate me and was so heartfelt in her sentiments, although I knew underneath that there was probably sadness accompanying her good wishes.

  Eventually Suzanne got pregnant again with IVF twins and every week I looked forward to progress updates on her pregnancy. She made it to twenty weeks before miscarrying and losing them both - a boy and a girl. When I first read those words on my computer screen it felt like all the air had been sucked from my lungs. Then, just when I thought things couldn’t have gotten any worse for her, her husband walked out, unable to live with her and her blighted womb anymore. He found himself a new - young - girlfriend suspiciously quickly. Suzanne admitted there had been cracks in the marriage beforehand and the loss of the twins was the final straw.

  What can you say to comfort someone in that situation? Nothing, is the answer. I tried to compose some sort of message that didn’t sound clichéd and rehearsed but the result was so inadequate that I scrunched my eyes up in shame as I pressed the send button.

  Issy was about sixteen-months old by this stage, toddling around on her chubby little legs with a comical stiff-legged gait. She’d transformed from a fretful baby to a bold and happy toddler and was the joy of my life. I hugged her extra tight that night, inhaling her freshly-minted baby smell as if it was anaesthetic ether, and cried for Suzanne and a life that lay in ruins because of that ruthless bastard known as infertility.

  Earlier, when I’d sought out the writings of other women and men who’d found out their partner had been unfaithful, I had become used to reading along and nodding in agreement: ‘yeah, yeah, that’s me…yeah, yeah…that’s how I feel too…yeah, yeah…couldn’t have put it better myself…yeah, yeah’. That is until one day when I came across a woman who wrote, ‘Adultery is not only a bad thing that can happen to you, it’s the worst thing.’