‘I forget sometimes and then make up for it when I remember. The days don’t align anymore because I guess I’ve forgotten it a couple of times.’
DB considered this.
‘But it’s four days off.’
Sylvie spat toothpaste into the sink, then shrugged. DB did not know a great deal about contraception but he knew enough to know that it was meant to be taken every day. That if you didn’t, the baby might be made. And if the baby was made, the baby was often born, and the baby being born was not part of their current schedule, and certainly not part of their current budget. It wasn’t part of the plan. Suddenly, his heart seemed to be racing. If they abandoned the plan, they wouldn’t be able to keep up with the mortgage, not on his current wage. And if they couldn’t keep up with the mortgage they would have to go further into debt. And Rudy wouldn’t ever be able to go to private school because they’d have to dip into the money DB had been saving for this, and this meant he would most likely do drugs, or sell drugs or, as was increasingly the case, cook drugs, and then sell them and do them, and then they’d never sell the house because no one wanted to buy a former crack house. He watched his wife calmly flossing around her top left incisor.
‘How often does this happen?’
‘Does what happen?’ she slurred through the floss.
‘The forgetting. Are you . . .’
Suddenly everything seemed to click into place. The mood swings, the fighting, the perpetual displeasure at everything he did. He stepped back, surveying his wife with shock.
‘You’re pregnant! This is why you’ve been so grumpy.’
Sylvie’s hands dropped from her mouth and she spat into the sink.
‘That’s why you think I’m grumpy?’
DB thought backwards.
‘When was your last period?’
Sylvie glared at him. ‘I don’t know. I skip them sometimes. A month or two?’
DB sank down onto the edge of the bathtub, head in hands.
‘Stop being so dramatic,’ Sylvie sighed. ‘It hasn’t happened before and I’ve been forgetting for years.’
‘Years?’ The whole carefully planned timeline of their life was now flashing sporadically. It could have happened at any time?
‘Would it be such a bad thing, anyway?’ Sylvie asked. ‘We certainly don’t want Rudy to be an only child.’
Sylvie thought only children were emotionally fragile. DB was an only child.
‘It would be terrible timing,’ DB wailed. ‘We’re not ready for this. Our finances aren’t ready. Rudy isn’t ready –’
‘– what has Rudy –’
‘– and you’ve been drinking and eating all that salami your father keeps hawking on us and –’
‘– do you hear yourself right now –’
‘– and I haven’t done the maths. I’m not ready. My spreadsheets aren’t –’
Sylvie’s hands flew up and she stormed out of the bathroom, shutting him in. DB slid gently backwards until he rested in the bathtub, curling his legs to fit. He stayed there, his head alive with figures, as he tried to adjust their life to this potential – probable? – new course. Sylvie would take maternity leave – that was fine – but there’d be a shortfall if she went the full year, but by that time he’d have the promotion so presumably he still had another, what, eight months until the birth plus thirty-two weeks mat leave, which was surely enough, provided they took no holidays and did no more renos, which meant they’d have to wait on the plan to upgrade the second car, which wasn’t ideal, but perhaps they could look at some kind of refinancing of the current car . . . Eventually, DB awoke from what had been an unexpected exhausted slumber. The cool of the porcelain had crept into his skin and his neck ached from the strange angle it was on. He eased himself awkwardly out of the bath, washed his face under the tap, then made his way out of the bathroom. The house was empty. He glanced at the clock on the microwave. Ten am. Bugger. He’d have to drive. He dressed hurriedly, then made his way to the garage. Sylvie had taken the good car, so he folded himself into the little sports car. They’d joked when they bought it that it would never fit a baby seat and this suddenly didn’t seem so funny anymore. Shit shit shit. As he sped towards the city, DB tried to calm himself by running numbers through his head again. He hurried into the office, avoiding eye contact.
‘Breakfast meeting,’ he announced loudly, though no one was listening. ‘That’s where I’ve been.’
He slid into his office chair and roused his computer to life.
‘I didn’t realise you had a meeting,’ Nell said, peering over her computer screen.
‘I did,’ he assured her, then pretended to take a phone call.
A few hours later, he felt himself caught up enough on work that it was okay to take a little break. He opened a new internet tab and typed in, Can you get pregnant if you skip the pill? Then he searched, How many pills do you need to skip to get pregnant? Then, What happens if you are pregnant and are on birth control pills? This last one, at least, relieved him. At least it wouldn’t be a mutant baby. Just a regular run-of-the-mill money-guzzling baby. He scanned a few more paragraphs, anxiously angling a wedge of Turkish Delight into his mouth.
‘Are you working on the Miller file at the moment?’ Nell asked.
‘Yes,’ DB replied, and minimised the tab.
He made himself focus on work, which wasn’t hard as there was enough of it to get through. The day dragged on and eventually the clock hit 6.00 pm.
‘Madeline’s just emailed through her new affidavit,’ Nell announced, her eyes on the computer screen. ‘Do you want to see it or do you want me to go through it first?’
DB’s mobile vibrated beside him and he glanced down. It was a text from Sylvie. Rudy and I are staying at my parents’ tonight. DB stared at the message, imagining his maybe-pregnant wife curled up in her childhood bed with their son breathing softly beside her. Nell cleared her throat. She was watching him, waiting for an answer. The pro bono case. It needed their attention now or else. Or else. If they got this right it might mean the promotion, which meant more money for the maybe-baby that was maybe on its way. He watched Nell watching him, one hand hovering near his mobile and the other at his mouse.
‘What do you want to do?’ she pressed, raising her eyebrows expectantly.
Columns shifted in his head, worlds, lives, pathways too.
‘You start on it and I’ll get the pizza,’ he decided, pushing his mobile into his pocket.
22
Nell
Notes for affidavit – Madeline Murray
How do you even start this? Where do you begin? There are distinct points, obviously, like the first glimpse across a crowded Carlton pub or the slide of a diamond ring down a foolishly eager finger. But those are a bit too obvious, aren’t they? A bit too same same, like a made-for-TV movie. Because that’s what it is, really, when you look at the basic structure of my life. The big house – actual picket fence and all – the charismatic couple. I’d be played by some middle-aged actress who the audience recognises but can’t quite place, whose Hollywood offers dried up alongside the spread of her crow’s feet. Eric would be the male equivalent, only he’d probably get nominated for an Emmy and skyrocket back into the A-list. So typical it doesn’t seem real or interesting at all.
Perhaps, for me, it all started at the breakdown of my parents’ marriage when I was eight, my father relocating to continental Europe for a sabbatical that never ended. I blamed my mother, of course, for making him leave, never considering for a moment that he may, in fact, have chosen to leave and that it was, as I found out many, many years later, his decision entirely.
He was a genius, my father, or at least that was how people liked to portray him, a man of high standing whose infamous stubbornness and pig-headed perseverance saw a number of notable breakthroughs in whatever scientific research he spent muc
h of his time immersed in. Physics of some sort is all I know because my mother never bothered to ask too many questions and he apparently wasn’t that forthcoming with information. She knew he was important and won awards, and I suspect that was as much as he needed her to know.
I wonder sometimes if this was where it started, because his leaving so early meant I didn’t truly have the opportunity to age in his presence and see for myself the impact of his moods at home which would, I imagine, have vastly changed my perception of him. Instead, I was left with an entirely unreasonable portrait of what to me was a normal functional relationship, and the blueprint for what I would come to accept in my own life. Brilliant mind = patient wife. This is not to say he was an abusive man exactly, but more that his stubbornness and temper fluctuations seemed to me a basic and acceptable hallmark of every relationship. My mother only spoke of these things decades later, at the time employing the fortitude and resilience often found in generations of women raised on the land. I suspect this influenced me too, this lineage of long-suffering women, there in our veins and pulse, helixed into our DNA and stored on the stiff starched shelf of our stout upper lips. Taught by my mother to just get on with things because that was how they were. He was a genius, she long maintained, and brilliance needed to be accommodated.
Eric was my first proper boyfriend. I didn’t have much to measure him against except that to me, and those around me, he seemed perfect. Handsome and clever, the two of us raced each other for top marks each semester like some kind of legal studies power couple. The other girls in my share house were smitten with him too. He would show up at all hours unannounced, with flowers or longnecks or expensive items from the Lygon Street delis that none of us could afford. Checking in to see that I was okay, that I didn’t want for anything, that I had everything I could need – the way we’d always imagined our boyfriends would be, but never seemed to happen in real life. Like a prince, as embarrassing as that sentiment is when put down on paper.
It’s an insular little world that cloisters around the residences and share houses of Parkville, everyone in and about each other’s business like the gossip columns of 1920s Hollywood. We would happily have been the golden couple if this was a title on offer, as if it were entirely natural and expected that the two students ‘most likely to’ were among other things most likely to end up with each other. And we were proud of this – both of us – because those things matter so much when you’re young, don’t they?
We had tremendous fun in those days, inventing games to aid our study, buying buckets full of sour warheads to keep us going and rewarding ourselves for our all-night study with a second full night down at the Tote listening to Magic Dirt or Spiderbait. We’d styled ourselves on the Clintons initially, his’n’hers lawyers set to take the world by storm, only to later use them as a cautionary tale for all that we wouldn’t become. This was the time of his impeachment and I’d judged her so readily for her choices in a way I would never do now. ‘I’d die before hurting you,’ Eric told me at the time as we watched a media-lashed Hillary stand by her man, and I’d taken this as proof of his love. I sometimes wonder how early I knew things were wrong, somewhere deep beneath the excuses and accommodations I occasionally made for him.
When our final results came out I hid mine from him, letting him believe that he’d bested me for the fourth year in a row, sensing this was important. How prophetic that turned out to be, as it eventually became part of his arsenal of insults to hurl at me throughout our marriage. Second best, he would taunt, unaware he was mistaken.
Engagement seemed the natural next step, something our friends around us seemed to be doing, and seemingly inevitable when you’d reached the point our relationship was at. How proudly he displayed me around his office, his clever beautiful wife – second best, but nonetheless! – with her impressive job in politics and the promising future this conveyed. His colleagues’ jealousy comforted him, as if I was a secondary validation for his achievements in life. They would joke at barbecues about stealing me away with jewels and travel and towering houses – as if that was all it would take – and he’d play along with the suggestion that the heavy gem on my finger was a security investment to keep me by his side. I would play too, despite my reservations, careful not to come across too flirty or coy because where once he had laughed at this, soon it aroused suspicion and irritation, particularly after we’d married. He couldn’t bear to live without me, he told me, so I wasn’t to joke about it. Besides, he was recently promoted and it was important he look the part, and what kind of man couldn’t keep control of his own wife?
Marriage changed everything. It was as if that ring bound me to him in a way that allowed no room for independence or difference. Where once his suspicions had been endearing, they now became unreasonable, and he monitored every exchange I had with a male in his presence with the thoroughness and precision of a scientist. You were flirting with the butcher, he’d say, disgusted and wounded, as if a half-kilo of lamb chops was a euphemism for something unseemly. You do it to make me jealous, he’d say, convinced I’d made lingering eye contact with strangers I never even noticed.
Nonetheless, we bought the big house and the fancy furnishings to go with it, and things progressively got worse from there. He never actually hit me. He was clever like that. You don’t actually need to, though, do you, if you go about it the right way. What he would do was punish me if I did something wrong. First with things like silence or a sudden feigned lack of hunger in the middle of an exclusive restaurant, then eventually with unexpected work emergencies that left me solo at family occasions, hurriedly untangling plans for couples’ weekends away with friends or unpacking clothes from suitcases as planes took off without us. Then, after some unpredictable amount of time – two hours, one day, an excruciating weekend – things were suddenly back to normal and we’d giggle about his silliness. It was always little things – insignificant things – that led to these huge reactions. This is what caused the separation. I had a porcelain statue – an ugly little thing – but it had been my grandmother’s and her grandmother’s before that. A quaint hokey little eggcup shaped like a duck. It lived on the mantle by a framed photograph of my grandmother and was one of the few possessions of hers I had. I’d worked late one evening, arriving home to find him sulking about his spoiled plans to surprise me with a candlelit dinner. We fought, as we often did at that time, and when I got home the next day the eggcup was gone. It took me a while to realise, sitting on the sofa watching the television, but eventually my brain settled on why things looked ever so slightly off. I turned the house upside down, scouring each of its giant vacuous rooms after work each night, until one day I found it in the back of a drawer in one of the guest rooms. It was crushed into a fine dust, identifiable only by a few bright red shards. He never mentioned it but I could tell when I returned to the living room that night that he knew I knew. His smirk. You wouldn’t understand, but it was his smirk that always gave him away.
Why did we get back together? What a wonderful question that is. I went to stay with my mother and no one – not she or my friends – could really understand what the fuss was about. Surely eggcups, even ancestral ones, aren’t worth a whole marriage? they’d say. Eric too had started a campaign of redemption, showing up at my mother’s door, emailing my friends, trying – they all told me – to work out what he had done wrong. He loved me unbearably, they relayed, and just wanted to make me happy. Perhaps, they suggested – his words in their mouth – it was the stress of my job. It wasn’t right to work such long hours and my wellbeing was more important than any employer. Eventually, I too decided I was overreacting. It was, after all, a hokey old eggcup and not worth losing my marriage over. So I went back. And soon enough I was pregnant. And it wasn’t hard, then, to be convinced that I needed to leave the job that had caused so much strain on my marriage and wellbeing.
The boys were a gift to both of us. To me they were these wondrous, helpless li
ttle creatures who needed to be loved and encouraged and cuddled. To Eric, they were the perfect conduit through which to berate and control me. You see, I was never very good with them. Latching issues, teething troubles, reflux, sleeplessness and nappy rash; these were all evidence that I wasn’t doing it properly. I didn’t go back to work – children needed a mother at home, Eric believed – and besides, I’d lost my confidence by then. If I couldn’t handle getting two kids under three to sleep each night I certainly couldn’t manage a politician’s office anymore.
Eric was a great father, except when he wasn’t. Then he would mutter and moan, as if the boys’ inability to keep their food down was a personal insult to him. It was always on his good work shirts, he once told me, as if they did it on purpose. He worried, too, about their intellects and milestones. They didn’t do things fast enough for his liking and he was sure I didn’t provide enough mental stimulation during the day. He would email me articles from work with instructions on the types of games to play with children to ensure the highest level of cognitive development. No play for play’s sake, but targeted activities ‘proven’ to produce the most intelligent of children. Once, when he thought I was in the other room, I watched him playing with Josh, who in the middle of his terrible twos had decided everything around him was an idiot. ‘You’re the idiot’, Eric snapped back at him, then became red-faced and angry when I reprimanded him. I was imagining things, he told me, projecting my insecurities onto him. He was worried about my mental health again – was I coping all right?
He worried about my wellbeing a lot. He knew how wearing finances were so he took care of all this himself. It was unnecessary stress – why would I argue with that? At the time I thought him generous and caring. Who wants to worry themselves with that kind of thing? But I realise now that I know absolutely nothing about our finances. They are, in a practical sense, his finances. The house, the cars, the savings – we could be on the verge of financial collapse or be completely mortgage free for all I know. And this makes me feel so incredibly stupid, how little I know of these things. Spending was similar too. Rather than bore me with all the various accounts, I simply had access to a debit card linked to a little household account from which to buy all our daily expenses. It was topped up automatically from his wages – I needn’t worry about that, he said – and I didn’t. I didn’t need to. If ever big purchases were to be made I would do all the research then he would go out and buy them on his credit card, which was linked to his work or something; there was a complicated reason why it wasn’t in both our names. And this was never a problem, until now.
The Book of Ordinary People Page 24