Too Close to Home

by Georgia Blain

  ‘Only just,’ Louise mouths.

  Anna is pregnant and she hasn’t said anything.

  Freya doesn’t know what she thinks of this. She turns to where Anna talks, one hand resting on Paolo’s shoulder, her fine face animated. She is telling Mikhala how wonderful her work is, how excited she is about the painting she has bought. ‘I think I will hang it right above the fireplace,’ she says and Paolo shakes his head as he says that no, this is not the best position, not the most sympathetic for the light it will need.

  ‘Where do you think?’ Anna asks him, and Freya wonders whether she really cares what he thinks, whether she takes his opinion as seriously as she seems to or whether she will just end up hanging the painting wherever she wants and this is all a show, a constructed demonstration of the solidity of their relationship, as she runs her fingers through his hair, smiling at him.

  Pushing her own chair back, Freya looks at Frank. ‘Shall we smoke?’ she asks him.

  He’s surprised. So are the others.

  ‘I didn’t think you smoked much anymore.’ Julia narrows her eyes and wags her finger in reprimand. ‘I thought you’d become as boring as the rest of us.’

  Freya just shrugs her shoulders. ‘I’m in the mood,’ she responds.

  Following her, Frank catches up as she stops under a narrow awning two doors down from the restaurant. ‘What’s up?’ he asks.

  She tells him she wants to get out of here. ‘I’ve had enough,’ she says. ‘Let’s just leave.’

  He laughs, uncertain as to how serious she is. Under the streetlight, his teeth are white and the hollows under his eyes are dark. He is taller than Matt and she finds it strange to look up at someone after years of meeting Matt’s gaze level with her own.

  ‘You coming?’ she asks, losing her nerve as she speaks. ‘We could just walk. Or get a cab.’ And then she falters before suggesting that they can go to his house. The words are there, ready to be uttered, but she doesn’t speak them. She just stops and looks at the ground, rubbish clogging the gutter, and there, where the stormwater drain is, a dead bird, its wing snapped. Wincing, she steps back.

  ‘Are you propositioning me?’ he asks. There’s an attempt to be lighthearted in his tone, but it doesn’t work. He reaches for her, trying to get her to turn and look at him again.

  ‘I guess I was.’ Freya speaks softly. She feels like a fool.

  ‘Why?’ he asks.

  She just shakes her head, willing him to stop talking.

  But he doesn’t. ‘I can’t just leave with you now. You know what that would mean,’ and he nods his head in the direction of the restaurant. ‘You’d be taking a far bigger leap than you really want,’ and he turns her gently so that she is forced to face him. ‘I’m happy to be used as an escape. God knows, I need one too. But don’t go jumping off the cliff. Just a little wander down the side …’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she apologises. ‘I’ve been clumsy and stupid.’

  Across the street, an old man stumbles out of a pub, lurching towards the road and then miraculously righting himself before stepping out into the traffic. The cars stop, their headlights blinding, as he weaves his way to the pavement, raising his hand in greeting to the pair of them, before turning into the laneway running next to the restaurant. Freya watches him, aware of how perilously close he came to having an accident, but strangely unable to move to his rescue. Besides, she is uncertain as to whether there would be any point. There will be other roads to cross. She couldn’t walk him all the way home.

  ‘We should probably have a cigarette,’ she says to Frank.

  He tucks a strand of hair behind her ear before taking the rollies out of his pocket. ‘You’re right,’ he says. ‘I mean, that’s what we came out here for, wasn’t it?’

  Freya smiles. ‘You’ll forget what I said?’

  Frank shakes his head. ‘Unlikely.’

  Freya lets him light her cigarette for her. She looks up at the halo of the streetlight; the rain falls, silvery soft around them.

  IN ALL THE YEARS they have been together Freya and Matt have never promised monogamy to each other. They would both like to think that they are above drawing fast moral boundaries or rules around their relationship with each other. And yet, as far as she is aware, since they have lived together neither of them has ever been unfaithful.

  She remembers when Clara and Julia decided to have an open relationship. It was Julia who wanted this, Clara had confessed. She’d met a younger woman and wanted to sleep with her, but she didn’t want to lose Clara.

  ‘It’s not really an open relationship. It’s just Julia’s midlife crisis,’ Clara had complained whenever she was alone with Freya.

  Some months later, when Clara started having sex with a man, Julia was furious, angrily declaring that had never been part of the deal, and demanding that Clara tell him it was over.

  Matt and Freya had talked about it together, both bemused by the audacity of Julia’s double standards.

  ‘The truth is very few relationships survive affairs,’ Freya said.

  ‘And probably not many survive monogamy,’ Matt had replied.

  She has her hands in the pockets of her coat and she stands at the school gate, watching her daughter disappear into the playground. There is this tight emptiness inside, getting lighter all the time, and it makes her ill. Her mind darts, birdlike, each time she thinks of sharing a taxi with Frank two nights ago, pressed against the warmth of the vinyl seat as she said goodbye, she would see him soon, kissing him not just on the cheek, but on the mouth, until he urged her to come inside and she had told him she couldn’t.

  The colour rises across her skin. It was just a kiss but she shouldn’t have done it.

  She should not have done it.

  Coming home at two in the morning, jittery on the recklessness of her behaviour, she had felt as though she was in a spectacular, terrifying plunge, an exhilaration that was sickening and heady.

  It was nothing, she had told herself as she brushed her teeth in the darkness of her home, unable to face herself in the mirror, and then she had literally shaken her head, before slapping her cheeks, as though this would be a punishment for the silliness of her act.

  Now, as she stands outside the school, she feels embarrassed and wants only to be here – close to home, in the small grid of streets around the house in which they live, around Matt and Ella; grounding herself in this. Because that night, when she had come back, opening the door to their room, she had seen Matt, fast asleep, lying on his back, arms flung out across the bed, and he had seemed a stranger. Standing with one foot still in the hall, she had looked at him and wondered at the width of the divide she had created.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he had whispered when she’d got into bed.

  It took her a moment to realise he was referring to their fight in the car outside the restaurant, almost forgotten since her ride home with Frank.

  ‘It’s all right,’ she said, and she lay there, awake until the first light washed the sky grey.

  She looked terrible, he had told her the next morning. She must have really gone on a bender, and he had peered close to her face, grinning as he did so.

  ‘Don’t.’ She pushed him back, unable to bear the proximity.

  ‘Was it fun?’ Matt asked.

  Freya didn’t respond immediately. She was still angry about their argument, but she also felt she no longer had any right to feel that way. She looked up at him, leaning against the kitchen bench, poised to leave as soon as he had drunk the last of his coffee. She knew every inch of him, the darkness of his eyes, the length of his lashes, the curve of his fingernails.

  ‘It was okay,’ she told him.

  ‘Do you have to rush?’ she then asked. ‘Is it possible to just sit for a moment, to talk?’

  He pulled out a chair and perched on the edge, bending down to do up his shoelaces. But it wasn’t really as though he had stopped; he was still going to get out as quick as he could, heading straight into work.
/>   ‘I really have to hurry,’ he said as she began to cry.

  We never have any time together, she told him. He was always leaving early, he was always getting home late. They hadn’t talked for so long.

  ‘And things are not good,’ she said, sniffing loudly. ‘I mean we haven’t even talked about Lucas. We haven’t even resolved our fight.’

  He sat up now, the tension evident in his neck.

  ‘I don’t know what to say about Lucas,’ he told her. ‘I can’t say any more than I already have.’

  ‘Is he coming here?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Have you spoken to Lisa again?’

  He had. The previous evening, in fact. He wanted to know if she’d had any news.

  ‘And has she?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘You were horrible last night.’ She wiped at her tears angrily. It was the tiredness, she thought. It always made everything worse, and as she suddenly remembered the ride home with Frank, she had felt she was going to be ill. She pushed back her chair, rushing straight to the toilet, afraid that she was about to throw up.

  Holding her hair, Matt had rubbed her back, his hand warm and firm on the fine ridges of her spine.

  When she had stood up again, unable to vomit, he held her for a moment, stilling her panic.

  ‘I have to go,’ he said softly. ‘But we will talk.’ He kissed her gently on the cheek. ‘It will be all right,’ he promised.

  But they hadn’t talked, and she stands now, outside the school, herself but not herself. The morning bell is jarring, and the sound of the children trying to finish conversations as they run to get to assembly is shrill. She turns towards the street, almost colliding with Archie and Darlene as they race through the gates. Shane is at the corner, watching them go. He raises a hand in greeting and Freya waves back.

  ‘Have a good time the other night?’

  She nods. It was a friend’s exhibition, she says, although she is aware she told him this when she asked if he could have Ella for the night.

  ‘Yeah?’ and he looks at her.

  He is going to take the kids for a ride this weekend, to a place out west. A bloke that has a few horses. ‘Lets ’em have a go. It’s just a paddock, you know. You reckon Ella would want to come?’ And looking across the road, Shane grins. ‘She’ll have to sit in my stinky old car though.’

  Shading her eyes from the whiteness of the winter sun, Freya says it should be fine.

  ‘They planned it last night,’ Shane tells her. ‘Told me it was happening. I’m just the driver.’ He shrugs his shoulders, wheezing as he chuckles.

  ‘What time?’ she asks.

  ‘You know. Whenever.’ And then being a little more specific, he adds that ‘early’d be good’.

  She is about to head down the street for home when he asks her how Matt’s going. ‘Haven’t seen him round much lately.’

  Freya says he has been doing long hours at work. She thinks he is okay. And then for one brief moment, she imagines telling him about Lucas, the fact that he has run away and may turn up on their doorstep. She could. He knows about it all. But he is Matt’s friend and it would feel like a trespass.

  Walking down the road, she stops for a moment outside Margaret’s, the old woman who lives a few doors up. She is simply delaying the return home, and being alone in their house, with just her work and anxiety.

  Three cats are curled up in the sun, their sleek fur absorbing the heat, so that as Freya runs her fingers down the back of a large tortoiseshell, listening to the gentle rumble of its purr, its warmth is soothing. Rolling on its side, the cat moves closer, wrapping its body around her ankle as it stands and stretches lazily, only to lie down again. It looks up at her, yellow eyes flickering open for an instant and then closing once more.

  Margaret has lived here all her life. Each morning, Freya hears her calling the cats, her voice a harsh crow caw as she beckons them, waiting until they decide they are ready to come.

  ‘Born in this house,’ she had said when they first met, and she had gestured to the wooden cottage behind her. ‘Used to play on your front verandah.’

  At the time, Freya had found the notion of staying in the one house all your life claustrophobic and stifling.

  ‘I’d like it,’ Ella had said. ‘I don’t want to leave here.’

  Sitting on Margaret’s bottom step, Freya stretches her legs out in front of her and looks up to the end of the street. She now knows about four people, none well enough to call friends, but enough to talk about the day when she passes them. The Arts student who was renting the house next door has left, and it’s now empty, the For Lease sign hanging in the window. She had a cup of coffee with him on the morning that he moved out.

  Like her, he had been doing a PhD.

  ‘But yours is a proper one,’ she said, when she explained the work she’d been doing, slightly flattered that he knew of her first play and had enjoyed it.

  He had been writing about Eve Langley, a writer Freya had always admired. His work had ended up focusing far too much on the possibility she suffered from bipolar disorder.

  ‘It wasn’t what I wanted to do,’ he explained, stirring several teaspoons of sugar into his coffee. ‘Debates about her madness and sexuality have taken over any serious discussion of her work.’

  ‘I’m bipolar,’ he then told her shyly, and she hadn’t known how to respond. ‘And gay,’ he added, smiling. ‘So I suppose the direction I ended up taking is not all that surprising.’

  She had a first edition of The Pea-Pickers. ‘It was my mother’s – one of her favourite books. She left it to me when she died.’

  Freya found it and showed him. He opened it to the inscription from Freya’s father to her mother. Darling Joan, with all my love, always, Ted. And as Freya leant over his shoulder, re-reading those words, she wondered at what they must once have had, wishing, as she had done before, that its loss had not left such a scar for her mother.

  ‘The always bit was a lie,’ Freya said ruefully, and the young student with whom she had never talked before, smiled again.

  ‘Isn’t it usually?’ he said.

  It was a pity he was leaving, Freya had told Matt that evening. ‘I felt like he could have been a friend.’

  She hadn’t felt the same about anyone else on the street. She liked the old Greek man who gave her vegetables and wanted to kiss her on both cheeks whenever his wife wasn’t around. But she would be foolish to think they could ever talk about anything other than the weather and his garden. She had sometimes chatted to a few of the parents at the school while she waited for Ella. In fact, she even felt they held similar political views and life philosophies. But when she tried to explain what she did and why she did it, she felt, as she told Matt, ‘like a freak’.

  ‘I could just see that they thought writing plays is a strange way to live your life. It made no sense to them.’

  He felt she was being harsh. ‘You’ll get to know them,’ he said. ‘I’m sure there are some who could be friends.’

  He is probably right, she thinks. Because as she sits now on Margaret’s step, the cats curled up at her feet, she feels, once again, that strong need to just stay in this neighbourhood, to bind herself to this small block of streets; streets that are trod by her, Matt and Ella and not by Frank.

  She will speak to him, she tells herself, she will impress upon him that this is a mistake. She knows she said this on the night, but she’d been kissing him as she did so, leaning forward and running her hands through the silkiness of his hair, drawing him close. We were pissed, she tells herself. It was like she’d been young again, hopeless and young, stumbling from one man to another with no capacity to draw lines that defined what was good for her and what was destructive.

  Why had she done it?

  She stands now, as Margaret comes out the front door, and she apologises for blocking her stairs.

  ‘I was just patting the cats,’ she explains.

 
‘That one’s Boots,’ Margaret tells her, pointing to the smallest one, which is, of course, black with white socks. ‘Don’t know where she comes from. She just turned up the other day, and it doesn’t look like she’s in a hurry to leave.’

  ‘She’s pretty,’ Freya says, not because she thinks she is, but simply for something to say.

  ‘You could take her,’ Margaret suggests. ‘Give her to your little one. I don’t want her anymore. Can’t feed ’em all. Once you fed her a few times she’d hang around. That’s what cats are like.’

  She couldn’t, Freya says. They don’t really want a pet, she explains.

  ‘Why not?’ Margaret takes a few steps down to where Freya stands on the pavement, one hand holding on to the railing for support, the other so gnarled and twisted with arthritis, it would be impossible for it to grasp anything.

  ‘I just don’t want the responsibility,’ Freya says.

  ‘I’m sure your little girl would love a cat,’ Margaret insists.

  Freya finds herself resorting to a lie. Matt is asthmatic, she says. The cat hair would be terrible.

  Bending down, Margaret scoops Boots up with her good hand, holding her close as she tickles her under the chin. The other cats loop around her spindly ankles in figures of eight, their glossy fur rubbing up against her scaly skin.

  ‘My pretty one,’ Margaret whispers, and the cat rubs its cheek against hers. ‘You’ll stay with me then?’

  Freya says she has to be off and Margaret just nods at her curtly. ‘Thank you though,’ she adds. ‘For the offer. It was kind.’

  But Margaret doesn’t respond. As she turns back to her stairs, climbing them even more slowly than she descended, the two other cats follow, their tails held high, the ends flicking, while Boots stays in her arms, purring loudly.

  TWO DAYS AFTER MIKHALA’S opening, the call finally comes, and Matt realises he has been waiting, in a state of suspense, everything still, for an inevitable shift. It has been like the heaviness of a late February evening, the oppressive build, a slow gathering of thick clouds, the air low, wet and solid. And he has been anxious, each day half expecting to come home and find the boy sitting in their kitchen, sullen, quiet, with Freya trying to talk to him politely and Ella just staring at him shyly. He has been dreading this, not sure how he would deal with it, how they would all deal with it, and he has to confess that he’s often wished he’d never begun this ridiculous journey of trying to find this young man who may not even be his.