Beyond Angel Avenue

by Sarah Michelle Lynch

  “She’s pregnant and happy… and was so glad to see me, for some reason.”

  He turns and pulls me close, his arms wrapping around me. He looks into my eyes, concern in his, and I try to focus on the need that’s growing between us instead.

  I slide a hand over his buttock, begging him, “Just love me. It’s all I need.”

  His smile is modest but lights up his eyes. “Close your eyes then, Julianne.”

  I do so. I feel his hands cup my cheeks and gently tilt my head back. He kisses my throat and along my clavicle.

  “Rick,” I gasp.

  He pushes me up against the shower wall and with his hands in my hair, presses his mouth to mine and kisses all my worries and cares away, his body completely salving my woes.

  We entwine, I lift my leg around him and we make love. He smothers my cries with deep, desperate kisses and I thank the stars for every moment. I’ve not felt this free to love him since our honeymoon and I hope he realises, I need him now more than ever.

  “I’ve been bursting for you Jules. Six months has seemed a lifetime!” He caresses my face with his fingertips afterwards and studies me. “You’re just so beautiful.”

  “Still so infuriating,” I bite back, and he pulls me against him and nips my earlobe.

  Before he slips from me, he says, “Wear something pretty. I booked a table.”

  “Okay,” I grin, and we set about washing each other lovingly, a task that takes long enough – those downstairs might wonder what’s going on. Oh well. We’re alive and whilst we are, life is for living. I’ve always thought so.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Warrick

  We’re back on the Avenue but hopefully it’s safe enough. I doubt Anna will be prowling down here just for us tonight. Sleepers is a café, bar and restaurant all rolled into one, which welcomes people of all ages every night. Families, the elderly, you name it. It’s why I had to bloody book!

  Sat at a table for two, we cosy up adjacent to one another, Jules’ leg over mine beneath the table, her hand in mine. Since we had kids, we normally sit somewhere on a Saturday night just staring at one another, trying to remember we’re still husband and wife, not just Mum and Dad. We normally just collapse in bed back home afterward and fall into a stupor, the kids having been worn out so much by their Granddad and Wendy they sleep through too. However, tonight I’m hoping for more loving like we had earlier. I was so ready for her but I’ve waited patiently since she gave birth and not just for her body to heal, but also for her mind, too. With nausea continuing throughout pregnancy and then twins being the result at the end of it, she’s been exhausted and actually, for her, going back to work has been easier than staying at home all day. She deserves a break now and again and I think she’s getting back to Normal Jules, now. If only that bloody father of hers hadn’t died on us… I sense there are unresolved issues there. Anyway, we’re working through a bottle of red and have just eaten two big burgers. She’s not full, though, no way. She’s waiting for her dessert with anticipation.

  We’ve so far avoided talk of anything serious but I have a discussion for her. People are crammed in on their own chunky wooden tables around us but with jazz playing and everybody else gassing, nobody’s interested in our conversation.

  “The office had an interesting case this week,” I begin and Jules’ ears prick up. I never bring work home with me. One) because I have a duty of care and two) my work is fucking awful some days and I don’t want that in my house, where I escape into a world of children squealing and Jules trying desperately to keep her sanity in check. It’s a beautiful thing, having a family with her.

  “Yeah?”

  “Hmm,” I take a sip of wine and stare at her, “well, Bri had this single dad who’s been referred to us because he’s gone to his family GP on numerous occasions claiming his child, who’s only eighteen months, is ill. He turns up with articles printed off the internet and tells the doctor to treat his kid, so sure the bairn has this disease or infection he’s obviously researched and decided his kid has.”

  Her eyebrows rise and she takes a sip of wine. “Oh?”

  “The GP referred the man for counselling. However, when he goes to his counsellor, he acts completely normal, as if his child is fine and he knows it. He knows the child is absolutely okay.”

  “Weird,” she decides.

  “So, then,” I elaborate, “he went and got another GP and started doing the same things again. Seemed like he wasn’t going for the child, more for himself, like a cry for help I reckon. Case got referred to us and we’ve had specialists in to psychoanalyse him. Guess what he’s got?”

  She purses her lips. “No idea!”

  “Male post-natal depression.”

  “Oh!” She shakes her head, not sure where I’m going with this.

  I sit back in my chair and scratch my head. “I spoke with the guy, he told me stuff. Stuff that made sense.”

  Her chocolate pudding of epic proportions with lashings of cream is delivered and the waitress asks me, “Nothing else for you, sir?”

  I wave my hand. “God, no!”

  She laughs and leaves us to it.

  Looking round the restaurant, I don’t see anyone we know, and nobody on the street outside can see into this place because of the steamed-up windows. I feel like it’s just us, hiding away, the large green awning outside sheltering us like hobbits in a man-sized inn.

  “Go on,” she says with her mouth full.

  “After Anna had Joe, I buried myself in work. Remember me telling you?”

  She nods but her eyes are fixated on her dessert. God, with her head bent over like this, I’m just staring straight at her breasts because they’re beautiful in her navy tea dress.

  “Yeah, the case… undercover stuff,” she mumbles, conscious of people listening in.

  “Right. I was never a big drinker before then. Never took drugs. I hated it when all her attention was on our son and I felt useless. I tried to help out with changing, taking the baby for walks, but she was possessive of doing it all right on her own. I felt left out. I’d lost my mother not so long before that and I was a bit lost, feeling inadequate. I didn’t know how to tell her what I was feeling because sometimes, she’d return my suggestions with vicious remarks and I just thought it was because she was tired, stuff like that, you know?”

  “Vicious?”

  I avoid her question on purpose. “I felt guilty about not being a good enough father. Not loving him enough. Joe took my wife away and I felt like I had no support. It was just how I felt, whether I was wrong to feel like that or not, it was just how I felt.”

  For Jules to put her spoon down and leave her dessert half untouched is noteworthy – she never neglects a pudding until it’s all inside her gut and the bowl is empty. She stares at me, her dessert forgotten however. “Warrick, answer me. In what way vicious? I need to know.”

  “I was like that guy, Jules, you know… the one I spoke to this week?” She cottons on, nodding. “He was fine in real life, doing his job, going to work. However, when he gets home… all that flies out of the window and feeling useless at home escalates so that he feels better at work.”

  She picks her spoon back up and before taking a bite asks, “What was it you couldn’t do at home?”

  While she’s back to enjoying her dessert, I take my chance to just talk. “I couldn’t make decisions. She’d ask if we should go and do this or that at the weekend and I’d say I didn’t know, she should sort stuff out if she wanted to go somewhere or do something. I wasn’t interested in going out anymore. I couldn’t sleep half the time so I’d just lie there and watch Joe sleeping in his cradle, trying to figure out how I could force myself to love him. She used to catch me staring at the boy and she thought I was crazed. I couldn’t hold him during the day but I just stared all night.” I take a deep breath and notice Jules isn’t really enjoying her dessert anymore but she’s eating it anyway. “I was even bulkier then than I am now but I lost weight. Didn’t
eat. I cried in my squad car when I was on patrol alone, not even sure why I was crying. I saw everything grey, everything. It was all blurry and I detached myself from everything I used to enjoy. It was a terrible way to feel because work was my only salvation but in the end, it killed my marriage and killed me. I buried myself so deep in work, I didn’t see it was ravaging who I used to be. Working hard and doing all those hours was the only way to get out of my head… until even that didn’t help anymore, so then I started drinking and when that wasn’t enough, it was the drugs… and I’m saying all this because I definitely had what that guy has, Jules.”

  “What are you… I don’t know why you’re telling me all this?”

  Her pudding is now just a messy pile of slop she’s mixed altogether, her mind trying to cope with what I’m telling her.

  “That guy’s cry for help was his way of telling people there is something wrong, but he just didn’t know what. Whereas I didn’t cry for help, I was lost in the abyss, I told you that loads of times. I was totally lost and then I saw that fatal crash on the Avenue and I realised I couldn’t be doing drugs anymore.”

  “Yes?” She’s struggling to see where I’m going with this.

  “I think Anna’s depression rubbed off on me, I think it did Jules. I never took pills for it, okay? I had counselling when the police made me redundant because it was part of the contract that I had counselling after the work I did. It helped a bit, it did, but I never told anyone how I was made to feel in the early days of Joe’s life. It was just… I can’t describe it, Jules.” I shift in my chair and try to ignore the fact she looks dejected and confused, still. “Imagine if you knew somewhere deep down you did love your child but you had absolutely no way of showing it… imagine being trapped behind bars, invisible bars which are only present in your own mind, and you’re reaching outside of those bars to touch your child and let them know you love them, but you can’t. It’s just not possible. With all your might, you can’t reach far enough outside those bars and you’re just stuck in your own, dank prison cell, watching the world go by around you.”

  “I told you she needs a psychiatrist,” Jules adds, trying to lighten the mood.

  “I think I do need to talk to her, don’t I?”

  “I’ve been saying that for bloody months. She still follows me, you know. I often see her from a distance. She thinks I don’t see her, but I do. It’s beyond a joke. What does she think I’m going to do? Go to my fancy man’s so she can get pictures of me in the act?”

  I snigger. “You better not have a fucking fancy man!”

  Jules bursts out laughing and never one to leave dessert, she manages a few more spoonfuls of the congealed slop in front of her.

  I stroke my stubble and try to summarise all I’ve just said. “It’s like feeling you have no control, so you take control in all the wrong ways.”

  “I can see now why you shook off all that stuff you used to do in your old life.”

  “Exactly. I hated that house we lived in and that’s why I trashed it, top to bottom. It just reminded me of the person I didn’t want to be and I made a conscious effort to not be him anymore and not bury myself under a mountain of other problems. I had to strip everything back and start again.”

  Jules nods, wiping her hands on a napkin, which she places on top of her bowl to signify she’s definitely done. “You should speak with your specialist psychiatrists, those you work with, and explain the whole situation in detail. You don’t want to confront her, only for her to go and do something stupid. You have to be very sensitive if this is what she really has.”

  I take her hands, so glad she understands and is sympathetic to Anna now. “I hate that I still care for her after everything she’s done, but she wasn’t always like she is now. She was better than this and she must be controlled by it so much, she doesn’t see clearly.”

  “It’s Joe I feel for,” Jules remarks, squeezing my hand, “he’s just a boy and the terrible thing is, he’s probably questioned himself too, and he’s just a boy, Warrick.”

  I shift forward and hold the back of her head, our noses pushed together. I peck her lips and in a husky voice reply, “I know, Jules. I know. It kills me.”

  We pull away, so in love with each other, it still hurts everyday we’re together because we love each other so much, we never stop worrying about our lives.

  “I would’ve thought if anyone was going to get post-natal depression, it would be me, after all my body’s been through.”

  “I thought that too and it worried me a little, I have to say. Not to put a label on it, but I did wonder if you’d cope after they were born. Now, I see you’ve more than coped. I’m really proud of you Jules, coming through all this – and we’re still together.”

  She taps her fingers on the table and takes a deep breath. “Depression is vicious. We all go through it, I reckon, at some point or another. I know when I was stalking guys, that was my depression. I wasn’t doing anything sane back then. I was lost to it.”

  “That’s maybe why I approached you,” I take the last sips of my wine, “maybe I just knew, maybe I saw a kindred spirit.”

  The waitress comes over with the card machine for me to pay the bill and Jules and I swap glances throughout. We’ve talked bollocks and we’ve talked serious, and now we’re both just ready for home. It’s easy to say, I had depression, but what’s not easy is to convey how it made you feel. At the time you’re suffering it, you’ll do anything to avoid admitting you have it. You shy away from it and then after you’ve gotten over it (if you’re lucky enough to), you lock that box away and shut down that portion of your life, hoping it never happens again. Still, there’s always the potential there for it to rear its head.

  “I hope everything was good for you guys?” the waitress asks.

  “Brilliant, thanks. We’ll be back,” I tell the girl.

  Jules stands and takes her winter coat from the back of her chair. I help her on with it and shake into my own coat, a lined blazer Jules says is very becoming on me!

  Hitting the night air outside, we hold hands as we stroll down the Avenue towards a taxi rank. There are lots of people wandering about on a Saturday night, whether drinkers or people heading to the shops before they shut.

  When we walk past the bookies, I can’t help but look inside. Yep, he’s there, as always. The man who almost wrecked Jules’ faith in love, Laurie is addicted to gambling. I’ve seen him heading into a squat on De Grey Street and rumour is that his former father-in-law demanded what was owed to him and left Laurie bankrupt and homeless. To add insult to injury, Laurie got rapped by the university for more than flirting with a student and lost his job. Nowadays he’s a bum, begging on the streets for money to go gamble with. I’ve passed him and he often doesn’t smell very nice.

  Jules elbows me, obviously having seen what I’ve seen, and says, “I’ve spotted him out and about, too. He’s an idiot, isn’t he?”

  “I’ve almost gone up to him a million times but why kick a man when he’s down? People get what they deserve.”

  She smiles. “The old Warrick would’ve said everyone deserves a second chance.”

  “That was before I loved you and when it comes to you, I’m blind. Anyone tries to hurt you and they’re stew.”

  She sniggers, wiping her gloved hands under her runny nose, the weather still really cold for March. “I feel sort of sorry for him, I guess, but people always have a choice, don’t they?”

  “They do.”

  Surrounded by all this madness of our cramped city, I can sort of see why she still tries to make moving to Australia sound like a positive thing. We’d have much more land of our own there and space to breathe.

  “I got the day off for your dad’s funeral by the way. Rang Bri earlier.”

  “Oh, right,” she says, her response monotone, “well, Kitty says she can have the twins that day, too. So it seems we’re sorted, doesn’t it?”

  “Seems so.”

  I’ll give her time
– eventually she’ll realise why she was screaming the day she found out he was dead. When my mum died, a part of me went with her and you never get it back. You just learn to live with it. She will have to deal with her feelings sooner or later. He was still her father.

  We get in a taxi home and on the backseat, Jules murmurs, “I think you and I work because we need each other.”

  “You and I work because you’re bloody hot and I’m going to have you again momentarily.”

  I pinch her side and she tries to twist out of my grip, laughing.

  “Be serious!” she demands.

  “I am. I’m very serious about your arse and licking it, all night.”

  She shakes her head at me as we arrive back at the house. While I pay the cabbie, she runs ahead to unlock the front door.

  Shrugging our coats and shoes off in the hall, we see my dad, Wendy and Joe slouched in the front room, a number of empty pizza boxes, bags of popcorn and bottles of pop tossed around. They’re all asleep; Dad with Harry on his chest, and Wendy with Charlie. Looks like they’ve been playing up.

  Quietly Jules and I wink at one another as we tidy away the pizza boxes and other rubbish. She puts the kettle on and loads the toaster while I put the rubbish out the back.

  One child squeaks, and then another, and after taking out the rubbish I go into the living room and take the kids from my dad and Wendy, who are stirring as Transformers part ten or something plays out on the big telly.

  The babies nuzzle me immediately and know their dadda’s back. It gives me the most immense pride to know Jules trusts me to look after our children when she goes to get her hair done or when she goes swimming or shopping. When Joe was a baby, Anna never trusted me and only left him with his grandmother if she had to, most of the time saddling Joe around with her. When he went to school, she finally let go of him, but part of me always wondered if that’s why she married Jake so quickly after we split up – a distraction from everything.