His Other House

by Sarah Armstrong

  Adie called from the kitchen, ‘Daddy, do you want a bit of chilli in your hot chocolate?’

  ‘Yes please, darling.’ He said to Marianna, ‘Thank you for letting me stay here with her. It means a lot to me.’

  ‘I’m not doing it for you.’

  He nodded. ‘How are you?’

  She glanced at him and then back to her bag. ‘You’re not my friend, Quinn. I’m not going to tell you how I am.’

  ‘Right.’ From the corner of her eye, she saw him rub a hand over his face.

  ‘You can’t make this good with a few friendly questions,’ she said. ‘It’s irretrievable.’

  ‘I know.’ He sat on the carpet.

  She ran her finger along the plastic teeth of the zipper. ‘I can sort of understand an affair, you know, a few opportunistic fucks.’ The word fucks came out with a bitterness that surprised her. ‘But . . . women don’t just get pregnant. I can only assume you weren’t using condoms?’

  He closed his eyes and sighed.

  ‘Oh, what? So, this is not my business? That you were having unprotected sex with someone you’d just met, and then coming home to my bed?’ Her hands were shaking, so she slid them between her thighs.

  He leaned back against the wall and she noticed something new about his face, a kind of slackness. He looked older, despite the tan. He stared up at the ceiling, his eyes moving back and forth as if trying to find an answer. ‘I didn’t use condoms. She was on the pill. And she forgot to take a couple.’

  ‘I see.’ She watched his face and wondered how she had ever loved him, how she had ever felt tender towards him, ever wanted to make love to him.

  ‘Daddy!’ Adie called as she walked down the hallway. She appeared with two mugs in her hands. He scrambled to his feet and followed her to the verandah.

  Marianna picked up her bag and pulled the bedroom door shut. On the verandah, Adie and Quinn sat on the cane couch, looking out over the garden.

  Marianna kneeled in front of Adie, who smiled over her mug at her mother. ‘Well, my darling,’ said Marianna. ‘I’m going now. Have a great time with Daddy.’ She stroked Adie’s bare leg.

  Adie turned to him with a look of excitement. ‘I forgot to tell you we made jam drops!’ Adie seemed a little too wide-eyed, a little too frantic, and Marianna didn’t want to leave her. But she couldn’t stay.

  ‘Can we eat some now?’ said Quinn. ‘I’m starving.’ He made a ridiculous, clownish face and Marianna was gratified to see his awkwardness when Adie didn’t respond.

  She hugged Adie and the strength of her girl’s arms surprised her. She thought of her own resilience at that age and felt hope that Adie would be okay.

  ‘Bye, Mummy.’

  ‘I’ll talk to you tonight.’ She kissed Adie’s cheek and it tasted of sugar.

  ‘Thanks,’ Quinn said and nodded at her.

  ‘Okay,’ she said and carried her bag down the driveway to her car.

  Once on the main road, she headed to the city and its impersonal skyline. Then the car hesitated and coughed and she looked at the fuel gauge. Shit. She pulled onto the wide shoulder. In her mind it was the worst of luck to run out of petrol and she had no one to blame but herself. With dusk falling around her and cars speeding by, she sat at the wheel of her car and wept.

  Chapter Forty-four

  Adie levered off the lid of the cake tin and looked up at Quinn. ‘I made these for you. But I didn’t tell Mummy they were for you.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell Mummy?’

  She shrugged and leaned against his leg and poked a finger into a dollop of glistening red jam. Marianna had made him jam drops when they first met. In the kitchen of the terrace house he and Bill shared with three others, she had mixed the dough in a saucepan and after laying the discs on the oven tray, used two spoons to drop jam neatly onto the dough. He remembered the way she had glanced across at him with a smile, as if to acknowledge that she was performing for him.

  Adie passed him a jam drop and he pushed the whole thing into his mouth, a crumbly explosion of sugar and butter. He stroked Adie’s hair and it felt unwashed. ‘What would you like to do?’ he said. ‘We can do whatever you want.’

  She examined the half-eaten jam drop in her fingers and looked off towards the window. ‘Let’s take Lucy for a walk,’ she said, crumbs spraying from her mouth.

  They walked out into the muted evening light and turned down the hill towards the shops. A group of kids zoomed by on their bikes and they passed through the smell of barbecuing meat and onions. Adie’s hand was limp in Quinn’s and the labrador plodded ahead of them at the end of her lead, head hanging.

  ‘Let’s buy takeaway for dinner. How about some ravioli from the Italian place?’ said Quinn.

  ‘And caramel chocolate fudge ice-cream?’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Mummy has ravioli in the freezer.’

  ‘I know. You and Mummy can have that another time. Tell me, have you seen Grandpa?’

  ‘Yeah. He comes over. It’s good ’cause he washes up. And we’ve nearly finished the pulley system and we’ll be able to get really heavy things up into the treehouse.’

  ‘What sort of heavy things?’

  ‘Well, we were thinking of a lounge chair. Just for fun. Grandpa said the treehouse is strong enough.’

  ‘He’d know. He’s an engineer.’

  ‘Will Mummy get a boyfriend?’ She spoke quickly.

  ‘Oh. Why do you say that?’

  ‘Zoe from school asked me.’

  ‘Well, Mummy might. One day.’

  She nodded and shook her hand free and strode ahead of him down the hill.

  They ordered their ravioli from the pizza place then went to the little supermarket. In the dairy section, Quinn came face to face with Jo, a science teacher from the school where Marianna had taught before Adie was born. Jo looked startled when she saw him and smiled for a moment before looking away.

  Adie steered him to the chest freezer where the ice-cream was stacked. ‘That one.’ She pointed.

  ‘Will it go with jam drops?’

  ‘Oh yes.’ She grinned up at him and snatched the ice-cream tub and hid it behind her back.

  They queued at the register and he looked up to see Jo watching him. She glared at him and turned on her heel. He glanced down at Adie, who was scratching at the ice on the side of the ice-cream tub.

  Down south, word had got around fast. Quinn had taken Jim aside to tell him and Jim said, ‘I already know. I told Penny it was none of her business and none of mine.’

  Quinn felt ridiculously grateful. ‘Thank you.’

  Jim had the faintest of smiles on his face. ‘You know you’re being torn apart around the kitchen tables of this town, though?’

  ‘Yeah, well, it’ll pass.’

  ‘True enough.’

  Quinn could tell which patients knew as soon as they walked in. For the first few days he’d had a slightly elevated heart rate before going to get the next patient, but now he didn’t think about it. He told himself that he was just their doctor. They had no claim on his private life. If he felt a patient trying to convey disapproval, in his head he’d say, None of your fucking business. Alice, the thyroid patient, had walked in and said, ‘I knew. I saw you with her.’ At least she addressed it directly.

  Quinn and Adie picked up their ravioli and trudged up the hill. In one hand he had the plastic bags of shopping and Lucy’s lead, and in the other, Adie’s small sticky hand. She stopped every so often to dig a finger into the melting ice-cream.

  She put the lid back on the tub. ‘Do you do sex with her?’

  He put the bags down and crouched beside her. ‘What?’

  ‘With the boy’s mummy.’ They were blocking the path and a guy with a dog approached. ‘I’ve seen the Fletchers’ dogs do sex. Mummy said grown-ups do it when they love each other.’ She looked back at him, her eyes slightly squinted.

  ‘That’s right.’ His throat constricted.

  ‘But you don’t
do it with Mummy anymore.’

  He shook his head. ‘No.’

  ‘Where do you sleep at the other house?’

  ‘In a bedroom.’ He lifted her to one side of the path so the man with the poodle could pass. Lucy strained after the dog.

  ‘With her?’ She clutched the carton of ice-cream to her chest.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And where does the boy sleep?’

  ‘In his own room.’

  ‘When can I come to your other house?’

  He nodded. ‘Soon.’

  She started walking towards home and he struggled to his feet with the bags and dog lead.

  ‘Do you have a dog there?’ she turned to ask him.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you miss Lucy?’ Her face in the evening light was crestfallen.

  ‘Yes. I miss Lucy. But not nearly as much as I miss you.’ He reached for her hand.

  •

  As they were finishing their pasta at the kitchen table, the house phone rang. When he answered, Marianna said, ‘It’s me. Can you put Adie on?’ He heard a television in the background and wondered where she had gone.

  He passed the phone to Adie and went to run her bath. He sat on the hard rim of the bath, the water gushing behind him, listening to Adie laughing with her mother.

  He washed her hair, using a cup to rinse out the shampoo. She squeezed her eyes shut and sat pale and shiny-skinned in the soapy water. The house was quiet and peaceful around them and he scooped a last cup of water over her head. Then he saw her arm. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Nothing.’ She put her hand over it.

  ‘What did you do?

  She shook her head and looked away.

  He stroked her wet shoulder. ‘Can I check it out, sweetie? See if it needs a bandaid?’

  She extended her arm but kept her head turned away. On the inside of her upper arm was a three-centimetre inflamed wound, already scarred and scabbed at one end, with fresh bleeding in the middle.

  ‘Have you been scratching your arm?’ He had seen that kind of thing before.

  She didn’t reply.

  He realised he’d seen her scratching there earlier. Over dinner. On their walk. At the supermarket. He swallowed, his throat tight. ‘Does it hurt?’

  ‘A bit.’

  ‘I’ll put a bandaid and some cream on it when you get out.’

  ‘Okay.’ She ducked underwater and blew bubbles, but stayed under for what seemed like too long. He was about to grab her when she surfaced. After drying her, he spread antiseptic cream on the wound and pressed a dressing over it.

  In her room, she pointed to the mattress leaning against the wall. ‘Will you sleep on Mummy’s bed?’

  ‘Mummy sleeps in here?’

  She nodded. ‘And Lucy.’

  ‘I’d love to sleep here. Lucy can too, if that’s what you want.’

  ‘Okay.’ She slid under her sheet and turned onto her side to face him. He sat on the floor and sang her the Gilbertese lullaby his mother used to sing. Tebano had probably taught it to her.

  He woke lying on the carpet beside Adie’s bed, his limbs cool and stiff. Adie had rolled to her other side and her head had slipped off the pillow. He looked at the dressing on her arm; blood had seeped into the gauze. He pulled the sheet up over her shoulders and left the room.

  There was mail for him stacked on the dresser. He flicked through it and found an envelope addressed to him in Adie’s writing. Inside was a piece of A4 scrap paper with the word DADDY written over and over, maybe a hundred times, in her careful writing.

  He poured a slug of Cointreau and helped himself to three of Marianna’s Anzac biscuits that were always in the freezer. He sat at what used to be his kitchen table, looking at Adie’s sheet of DADDY.

  He topped up his Cointreau and called his dad.

  ‘Quinn. Where are you? With Adie?’

  ‘Yeah. She’s asleep.’

  ‘How are you?’ His dad’s voice was sleepy. Quinn looked at the clock. It was almost eleven o’clock.

  ‘Sorry, did I wake you?’

  ‘That’s okay.’

  ‘How does Adie seem to you, Dad?’

  ‘Oh, a bit fragile. But she’s coping.’

  ‘Is she? I’m not so sure.’ He swept the crumbs from the biscuits into a little pile.

  ‘Yeeeah.’ His dad drew out the word. ‘I think she’s okay. What about you, son? How are you?’

  Quinn closed his eyes against the rush of tears and swallowed the sobs that came.

  When his dad finally spoke his voice was soft. ‘We all make mistakes, Quinn. Are you there?’

  He took a shaky breath. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I still feel bad for what I did to you. I’ve been thinking about it the last couple of weeks.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Tears had dropped onto Adie’s letter, smudging some of the DADDYs.

  ‘I wanted your mother to stay. It sounds crazy, but I didn’t think I could live without her, so I was prepared to sell myself short. I betrayed myself as much as she betrayed me. And I’m sorry because it wasn’t good for you and Tom. I’ve . . . I’ve wanted to say that to you.’

  ‘Thanks, Dad.’

  •

  In the night Quinn woke with a fright. Where was he? Then he saw Adie standing over him. ‘Hi, Daddy.’

  He reached for her. ‘Do you want to come in my bed?’

  ‘I was just checking you were still here.’

  ‘I’m here. I wouldn’t leave you alone.’

  ‘Are you here tomorrow night too?’

  ‘No. Mummy will be home tomorrow afternoon and she’ll be with you tomorrow night.’

  ‘Sometimes I go into your study to smell you.’

  He couldn’t speak for a moment. ‘I miss you too,’ he said. ‘I wish I had something that smelled of you.’

  ‘I can give you something. Don’t worry.’ She patted his cheek and climbed in beside him. He tucked himself around her, his nose pressed to her hair that smelled of Marianna’s shampoo. Once she was asleep, he checked the dressing on her arm and left his hand cupped over it.

  He woke, still curled around Adie, the room flooded with sunlight. It took him a few seconds to realise that the sheet under them was wet. He felt around. Adie’s pyjama pants were sodden. She slept on, her dark lashes a heartbreaking crescent on her cheeks. He closed his eyes against the bright sun.

  Chapter Forty-five

  The air coming in the car window carried the smell of decaying leaves and wet earth. Marianna hadn’t realised it would be so overgrown and oppressive down here. The forest grew right to the edge of the narrow winding road and pressed in on her as she slowed and steered around another hairpin bend. The deeper they drove into the valley, the less sure she felt that they should have come.

  In the rear vision mirror she saw Adie staring out the window, a big tin of biscuits on her lap. On the weekend, when Marianna had come home, Quinn had taken her aside, into the laundry. ‘Did you know she’s scratching herself?’ he said.

  ‘What? What do you mean?’ The look in his eyes had frightened her.

  He spoke quietly. ‘She’s scratching herself in the same place over and over.’ He touched his own arm, up high near his armpit. ‘She’s drawing blood. It’s self-harm.’

  She’d reached back and gripped the cold corner of the washing machine. ‘No, it couldn’t be.’

  An oncoming car flashed its lights at her and she slowed. A rock the size of a soccer ball had fallen from the steep hillside onto the road. She steered around it. How had she missed that scratch on Adie’s arm? How could he live with himself knowing Adie was digging away at her own sweet flesh?

  Marianna glanced at Adie again. Her girl still peered intently out the window at this foreign land where Quinn lived now. A wave of fear passed through Marianna. Could she lose Adie to this place too? What if she was left with nothing? Her foot started to shake on the accelerator just as they emerged onto a sunny ridge. A car that had been tailing her overtook with a
roar.

  Marianna cleared her throat. ‘How’re you going there in the back?’

  ‘Okay.’ Marianna could hardly hear her. ‘Will Daddy be there?’

  ‘I hope so. It’s not a work day.’ Even if they weren’t there, Marianna wanted to see the house.

  The road descended into the next valley and they passed a dozen gravel driveways disappearing into the trees. Now that they were close, she felt light, as if only the seatbelt across her body was keeping her tethered. She steered the car over another creek crossing, the water rushing between boulders only a few metres away.

  ‘What’s that mountain?’ Adie pointed to the distant purple mountains visible through a gap in the trees.

  ‘I don’t know.’ The winding road and dense vegetation had disoriented her. She pictured their car going deeper and deeper into the forest, with no map or proper directions. She wasn’t sure she could find her way home now. They should be leaving a trail of those biscuit crumbs behind them.

  A ute sped towards them and rattled by, taking more than its share of the road. Marianna pulled over onto the gravel shoulder. She had to shit. ‘I’ll just be a sec. Wait here.’ She got out and hurried into the bush beside the road and squatted on some damp leaves. She emptied her bowels with a rush and stayed there for a moment, trying to quiet herself, then wiped herself with tissues from her pocket and used her sandal to scrape leaves and dirt over the shit.

  She saw herself: a pale-faced woman in her good silk skirt, hair in a messy ponytail, standing in the damp, weedy bush. She didn’t want Quinn to see how fragile she was.

  ‘Mummy?’ Adie called out the window, her eyes big.

  ‘How far, Mummy?’

  She got back in the driver’s seat and pulled onto the road.

  ‘Can’t be far now.’ They passed an elderly woman pulling letters from her letterbox. The woman lifted her hand. Marianna contemplated going back and asking her for directions, but there was nowhere to turn around.