Happily Ever After?

by Benison Anne O'Reilly

  I pulled up short. No. That woman needed a wake-up call. Finding myself the victim of adultery had been completely demoralising - stripping me of my confidence and destroying all my trust - but when I compared it to losing William it didn’t even come close. Adultery involves the all too predictable scenario of another human being letting you down and in many ways our lives have always been preparing us for that.

  Try holding your longed for and dead baby in your arms sweetie, I thought at the time, if you need to know something that’s worse than adultery. For me it had been bad enough, Suzanne got the whole deck of cards.

  Not long after this, when Tony was away, I organised to have a couple of Thursday evening drinks with Melanie after work. I sat on two small glasses of wine and left at 7.30pm to pick up Isabel but Melanie was in such sparkling form, lampooning all the old farts in senior management as only she can, that I got a stitch on my right side from laughing so much.

  On the way back to the car park, Melanie said, ‘Welcome back stranger. Did you notice you didn’t mention that bloody husband of yours once tonight?’

  After I’d settled Isabel in her cot I sat down at the kitchen table with a hot chocolate, got out a lined notepad and wrote myself a list, which I called: Counting my blessings.

  • I have a beautiful, healthy, happy little girl, who has made my life complete. Even if I have no other children I will have her.

  • I have a mother and father who love me and care about me.

  • I have a sister and brother who love me and care about me.

  • All my family still like one another!

  • I have wonderful friends who look out for me and make me laugh.

  • I am competent at my job and well-respected at work. My workplace is harmonious.

  • I have enough skills that if my marriage ends I will be able to support myself and my daughter.

  After much deliberation - I scratched it out twice, as though Claire was looking over my shoulder, before adding it back in again - I included one last item:

  • My husband did not leave me for the other woman.

  ***

  Family, friends and work: these were the things that sustained me through this time. Although inevitably some cracks appeared.

  I remained in the same job for years. I didn’t seek a change to a more demanding position. We released a new range of products over this period, which I convinced myself kept my interest fresh but I knew that I would never be considered for a promotion unless I agreed to work full-time. Full-time positions also come with travel and other demands and I thought with Tony away so much I couldn’t manage that. And I would have had to give up my Mondays with Isabel. You didn’t need to be a psychic to know how the self-righteous ‘stay-at-homers’ at our mothers and toddlers’ playgroup would have responded to this:

  ‘Why did she ever bother to have a child if she was going to put it in child care all the time?’

  Hmm, there was a wee bit of justification going on here. I mean, what did it really matter what the other mothers said if I wasn’t there to hear it? And Issy was actually with her grandmother most of the time, not in child care, although when my daughter turned two I did install her in a child care centre near work on Thursdays and Fridays so that Mum could actually have some spare time to enjoy her retirement.

  The truth is I hadn’t been completely successful in quarantining my unhappy marriage from work and family. Ultimately a few self-esteem issues had leached over and I felt I lacked the ability to cut it, to be the person in charge.

  This all came to a head after I’d been back at work about eighteen months or so, when Edward got promoted to marketing manager. He begged me to apply for his old position, claiming I’d be a shoe-in if I did, but I squibbed it. He understood but was disappointed, I feel.

  Stupid, stupid me - because when all the interviews had taken place the successful applicant for the position, my immediate superior no less, was announced to be one Amanda Smith.

  Like Melanie, Amanda Smith’s reputation preceded her. Unlike Melanie, Amanda’s reputation preceded her for all the wrong reasons.

  9

  A lucky scrape

  Amanda Smith turned out to be just as bad as everyone had predicted, if not worse.

  Amanda had come through the sales force ranks, like most people in marketing. I was a rare exception to the rule. The cream always rises to the top, as the expression goes, and so the best and most ambitious sales representatives do end up in marketing before too long. Sometimes, however, the interview panel gets it wrong and elevates someone who is a good salesperson, but lousy at marketing. Amanda fitted this bill completely. She was lazy and unimaginative, paid scant attention to detail, and seemed to have a very hazy knowledge of how the drugs actually worked, which is a bit of a disadvantage when you’ve chosen a career in pharmaceutical marketing.

  But by the time she took over the reins I knew a lot about working in the corporate world. Stuff you are never taught at university. One particular lesson I’d learnt was that:

  Incompetence is no barrier to a successful business career, if combined with:

  • a complete lack of ethics

  • a shameless ability to suck up your superiors, and

  • a penis.

  Now as far as I’m aware, Amanda lacked the last of these qualities but she certainly had the other two in spades. She also had another attribute - or rather attributes - that she used to excellent strategic effect. Yes folks, Amanda had big boobs.

  Dear Amanda was a freak of nature. She was a natural blonde, and good-looking in an over made up sort of way. But she was tiny. Tiny little head, tiny little waist and hips, little twig arms and legs, and teensy-weensy feet that were permanently encased in sky-high stilettos, no doubt to compensate for her lack of height. Everything was in miniature except her ego and those enormous boobs of hers.

  I have to hand it to her, though. She really knew how to work those breasts to best advantage. Unlike Melanie she never wore really low cut tops, I think feeling that, if her most important assets were over exposed, they would lose their value. So, whenever she had an important meeting she would wear a white half-size-too-small t-shirt under her suit jacket or, if it was a really crucial gathering with her male superiors, a silk blouse with an extra button undone. The latter was definitely her trump card. All the middle-aged guys in suits spent so much time trying to catch a glimpse of that Aladdin’s cave of mammary tissue that they failed to notice that not a word of wit or originality ever ushered forth from her mouth.

  If you’re wondering why a lack of ethics is so essential, it’s because you have to be able to simultaneously:

  i) take credit for other people’s good work, and

  ii) blame others for your mistakes.

  This was another area where Amanda was the master; she was absolutely shameless. I often wondered how she could possibly sleep at night, but I guess if your brain is an ethics-free zone these things don’t trouble you. I think she functioned purely on rat cunning; I certainly wouldn’t have called it intelligence.

  In the end, Amanda was my immediate supervisor for just over one year. I was glad that I was in a better state psychologically by then - and had Melanie as my ally - as Amanda surely would have done my head in otherwise. I call this time my Julius Caesar period, as I constantly had to watch my back. I became a meticulous record keeper: any emails, correspondence, promotional material I’d signed off on, and even records of phone conversations, just so I had a back up if things went wrong, as they inevitably did with an incompetent at the helm.

  Fortunately Edward remained Amanda’s superior, so on a few desperate occasions I went directly over her head to appeal to him. A classic technique of Amanda’s (who was childless, although she had a long-term partner) was the exasperated sigh whenever I had to leave on time to pick up Isabel. As a matter of fact, I began to suspect she
might have deliberately organised important meetings for early or late in the day just to spite me, although maybe that was just paranoia on my part. As the afternoon meetings invariably ran over time, I’d be checking my watch every few seconds, fidgeting in my seat, before getting desperate and saying, ‘Look I really have to go’.

  ‘Well, I suppose if you have to,’ was the predictable reply.

  I once overheard her saying to Edward, ‘I don’t see why we have to carry the can for all the mothers around here. Maybe they need to decide what they really want to do with their lives. It’s not like I can leave work early to look after my cat.’

  She doesn’t even own a cat! If she did I suspect it would mistake her for a large rodent and try to eat her. The thing is she was quite stupid here, as Edward loves kids and this sort of complaint didn’t go over well with him at all. I think by this time he had his own opinions about Amanda, but ultimately was powerless to do anything about her just as long as she kept pleasing senior management by wearing those silk blouses with an extra button undone.

  ***

  On the domestic front, it was all about appearances. We contracted some Croatian painters to complete the exteriors, and whilst they were very keen to take on what must have initially seemed a rather lucrative job, I’m sure by the end of the process they regretted ever submitting a quote. I suspect they had never had a more exacting client than Tony. Whenever he’d arrive home from work he’d do an inspection of the house and if anything wasn’t to his satisfaction, which happened about ninety percent of the time, he’d bail up Dusan, the guy in charge, and demand it all be re-done at no extra charge. I could never see the flaws that Tony apparently could see and couldn’t help wondering if the real problem my husband had with the house was the little woman standing next to him as he tore strips off those unfortunate tradesmen. There were many mutterings of discontent during those weeks and to avoid an outright rebellion I would try to make amends by offering the guys proper brewed coffee and chocolate biscuits for morning tea whenever I was around. It was a real shame as I thought them nice fellows and kind to Issy, too.

  Yes, the irony was also not lost on me that as my dream castle neared completion - finally presenting a brightly painted façade to the world - the loving foundations upon which it was based were crumbling. Even my daily joustings with Amanda were preferable to the ominous silences that usually greeted me at home.

  With that in mind I started working to improve my own façade, frequenting the company gym every lunchtime, and visiting Emma’s salon for facials, pedicures and waxing whenever I could.

  One day when she was giving me a bikini wax Emma said, ‘Why don’t you let me give you a Brazilian?’

  ‘I’m not letting you look at my bits, thank you!’

  ‘What, you’d rather a complete stranger did?’

  ‘No, I don’t think I need one in the first place. It’s okay for you young ones but I’m a boring old mum. I’ve been with the same man for ten years.’

  ‘Well it might spice up your sex life.’

  So I took up the idea.

  ‘Would you like me to get a Brazilian wax?’ I asked Tony one evening over dinner.

  ‘Why?’ he asked suspiciously.

  ‘I don’t know. Emma said it might spice up our sex life.’

  ‘So you’ve been discussing our sex life with your sister, have you?’

  ‘No, she was just talking in generalities.’

  ‘I didn’t realise it was so bad anyway. As far as I can see there is nothing wrong with our sex life that a little more enthusiasm from you wouldn’t fix.’

  ‘I didn’t actually mean it that way, although I think the fact you didn’t touch me for eighteen months wasn’t a good sign…but then you still felt the need to touch others.’

  ‘So you had to bring that up again didn’t you? That’s what all this was about.’

  ‘Look, just forget I mentioned anything.’

  Gee, that went well.

  ***

  All about appearances - I’d accused Tony of being just that, but I was just as guilty of it as anyone in the Cooper family. After Melanie had wised me up I’d actually made a conscious effort to mention Tony in conversations with my family, so that they wouldn’t pick up the bad marriage vibes. I’m not sure this was one hundred percent convincing. Mum did seem to ask, ‘So how are you?’ more than I would have thought normal and it hadn’t escaped my family’s notice that Tony wasn’t exactly a hands-on dad.

  ‘Why can’t Tony ever pick Issy up from preschool for you?’ she grumbled one day, when she witnessed me tearing from work to her place to home yet again. (When she’d turned three I’d started Issy at a preschool near Mum’s home on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.) ‘What exactly does he do all day when he’s at home? Does he think it’s still the 1950s or something? I thought modern fathers were meant to be more involved these days.’

  ‘Apparently not all, Mum.’

  ‘Well you should put your foot down,’ she said, ‘otherwise I’ll say something to him one day. Doesn’t he ever consider your wellbeing?’

  I think we all know the answer to that.

  Also, I hadn’t considered everyone in my subterfuge.

  Just before Christmas in 2005, Mimi made one of her lightning raids to Sydney to bag a bunch of presents for her brood of three and catch up with her friends. Tony was away at the time, so I invited her around for dinner at my place.

  After touring my almost finished home and putting my pink-pyjamaed daughter to bed, we sat down to swordfish and salad and a glass of wine.

  As we settled down for a coffee afterwards Mimi asked, ‘So what’s going on in your marriage?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I couldn’t help noticing that all the photos you send me and stuff you write about is of you and Isabel. I mean, I know Tony is away a lot but it’s almost like he’s not in your life at all.’

  She’d got it in one.

  That’s how another of my friends got to hear about my husband’s affair, although I told her quite calmly, the time for tears being past.

  ‘You know, I was always worried that this would happen to me rather than you. I mean Matt and I hardly knew each other when we got married. You two were together such a long time. I thought you would have known each other so well.’

  ‘Huh…I don’t think anyone really knows Tony. Maybe not even himself.’

  ‘It’s probably just opportunity with lots of guys anyway. We heard only the other day that one of Matt’s friends has left his absolutely gorgeous wife for his PA. Lucky for me my husband doesn’t have any temptation - not unless he starts taking a fancy to some of our better looking cattle. Although, some of the heifers have very nice eyes so maybe I should be worried.’

  ‘I wish I’d married a farmer then. I reckon I could turn a blind eye to the occasional bit of bestiality.’

  ‘And how are things now? I’d guess still not great.’

  ‘It’s not so much me - it’s him,’ I said. ‘He seems to me to be very unhappy. I’m just hanging in there for Issy’s sake - hoping it will all come good.’

  ***

  Then, only a couple of days later on a Friday morning, I thought for a dreadful few hours that I was going to lose that last flimsy barricade against total misery and failure - my job.

  I received a phone call from Edward as soon as I walked in the door, saying he needed to see me in his office immediately. When I got there I also found Amanda in attendance. Edward looked uncharacteristically stern. The signs were ominous.

  ‘It has come to our attention that a letter, signed off by the Lo-prez team and clearly on company letterhead, has recently been circulated to several hundred doctors. This letter makes false and misleading claims about one of our competitors. We have been advised that because this is a serious offence, we are likely to receive the maximum fine that can b
e imposed by the industry body, $200,000, and will be required to write to all doctors involved, outlining the misleading nature of these claims. The managing director is, understandably, extremely unhappy about this.’

  He handed each of us a copy of the offending letter.

  ‘What I can’t understand is how this happened. This letter surely hasn’t been through the proper review process, otherwise it would never have seen the light of day. It reflects badly on our department, not to mention the whole company, and we urgently need an explanation of how it happened. I’m not yet sure what the ramifications will be.’

  What happened next was entirely predictable. It was, as they say, like watching a car crash happening in slow motion.

  Amanda quickly glanced in my direction before returning her attention to Edward and saying, in affected casualness, ‘Yes this is a very serious mistake but I don’t remember seeing this letter at all. I must have given it to Ellie to follow up on.’

  ‘You did not. I have never seen this letter, Amanda,’ I said calmly enough, but glaring at her.

  ‘Well who else could it be if it wasn’t me?’ she snarled, bearing her canines at me.

  ‘I don’t know but it wasn’t me,’ I hissed back, my eyes like slits.

  ‘Err…now, now ladies, calm down,’ said Edward. Beads of sweat had appeared on his nose. I was wondering if he had just had a scary vision of his future, when all those little girls of his became teenagers. ‘This is not about attributing blame.’

  Oh yes it was, if Amanda was going to have any say in the matter.

  ‘How about you both go off and investigate how this happened and report back to me later today on what you can find. Then we’ll set to work to see if we can remedy the problem somehow.’

  I hurried off to my office thinking, she is not going to do this to me. I am not going to take the blame. There’d been a series of cock-ups in the Lo-prez campaign in recent months, all of which could have been traced back to Amanda if anyone cared to investigate, but management had to this point been willing to accept her explanations. It wasn’t out of the question they might feel the need to act this time and scapegoat someone. It also wasn’t out of the question that the scapegoat could be me.