by Nicki Reed
He’s blushing. So good to know you can still be interested at seventy.
‘Ask her tomorrow.’
He wraps an arm over my shoulder. ‘Margie might not like it. Me away for a couple of months. She likes to look after me.’
‘Dad, you’re talking about a road trip, not space travel. Everyone, including Margie, wants you to have someone special in your life.’
‘Thank you, Peta.’
From inside the house Margie and the kids are calling, it’s time for lunch. We stand. He kisses my cheek and tells me that when I’m ready to talk about the other thing he’ll be there. Keith is smart and he is always right. No wonder Margie hates me. I wouldn’t want to share a man like Keith either.
After lunch the men and boys go to the park to kick the footy. Jasmine stays with us. We clear the table and make the usual noises about women being stuck with the cleaning up. Margie makes the most noise but also does most of the cleaning: ‘Here, Peta, let me do that,’ and ‘Ruby, go and sit down, I’ll finish here.’
Ruby and Theresa sit in the lounge room, Jasmine and I follow them in to play Uno. I used to let her win but these days I’ve got a feeling she’s letting me. Theresa feeds the baby. The baby has a blanket up to his face, only a tiny frown and the top of his nose are visible. He’s making little sounds of suction and slurping. Theresa is looking at him, Ruby is looking at him, and I can’t stop looking at him either. He’s like an open fire, not much action but endlessly interesting.
Birthdays in Mark’s family come with an odd tradition. They don’t just sing ‘Happy Birthday’, they also sing the Carlton Footy Club song. I used to not sing along, but Margie would glare at me. These days I sing it for Keith and for Mark and the kids, especially Jasmine.
Seventy years is a long time to be on this earth, it is special. I bought him a hand-carved box at Warrandyte market and filled it with seventy reasons why I love him. Little curls of paper with things like, your sense of wonder in the world, how big your bombs are—the splash is high as the fence, how you let me adopt you, that I care what you think so much, that kind of thing.
Before bed, when Mark is in the shower, I take the tablet. I don’t bother reading the instructions, all the small print about time and effectiveness. I’m in time. It will be effective. On Sunday we both go to work. We drive in silence. Mark’s not saying much because he has contracts on his mind. I’m not saying much because I can’t bring myself to tell him about the tablet. Mark drops me at my building.
We have lunch at McDonald’s—it’s the only place open on the weekend at our end of town—a Big Mac meal each. Mark has his upsized. He’s brought documents and a highlighter. I chew and watch him read, line by line.
6.
Law reports are boxed and waiting for new homes; legislation in hard copy is unavailable for a few days, a week. Murphy’s Law says you only require a book once it’s at the bottom of a box. Shelves are emptying rows at a time.
There’s a skill in simultaneously packing up a library and using it.
Too busy, I think of the couch only a couple of times. Once when I spotted a cyclist evading the casual thrust of a car door. He shouted fuckwit over his shoulder and went on his way. And getting dressed this morning, same bra and underpants as last Thursday.
When everyone has gone home I turn to Google: homosexuality, bisexuality. Scared, I don’t look for long.
Email is the forum of the pissed off and Ruby doesn’t hold back.
Monday:
Where are you? Are we having lunch this week? Is everything all right? Are you doing some type of woe is me I’m thirty-five thing? If so, get over it, Pete. It’s called life. You old bag. X
Tuesday:
Hello? Lunch today? Or don’t the old and half-dead eat?
Wednesday:
Fuck! Lunch! Don’t make me find you. Out.
I’ve never told a lie Ruby hasn’t found out about, never made an omission she hasn’t picked up on. She’s supernatural. She’s a pain. This week I’m lunching solo.
An email from Taylor:
hi. am I still your best friend? how’s things? long time no speak. you birthday partying by yourself these days? want to go out for breakfast soon? if I plan ahead, get david to remember he has children, anything is possible. the boys are enjoying school (well, they’re not hating it), and mirrie says preschool is for babies. so anyway. breakfast week after next? love you, t. oh yeah, has your phone number changed?
Taylor has a problem with capital letters. I’m normally more talky in my emails but I’m afraid of saying too much. I’ve got five minutes until she figures me out.
Dear Taylor,
My number is the same. Sorry about the lack of communication, I’m in the middle of the relocation, trying to circumvent any wrinkles. I’d love to have breakfast.
Talk soon, P x
In the cafe across the road from my building I immerse myself in the thrust of the lunchtime crowd. Between pairs of conversations—what the boss did, the bloody printer on level twelve, how many toilet breaks can the woman have—I wait at the counter.
‘How are you, Peta?’
Justine. As good as I feel about how we left it, I’m not in the mood. I’m trying to leave the couch in BJ’s lounge room and Justine is just another reminder.
‘What?’
‘I’ve been watching people push in front of you.’
‘Sorry. I was preoccupied.’
‘I can see that.’ Justine props her Coke and Mars Bar on the counter and orders a schnitzel roll from Anna. She takes my pre-packed sandwich from me. ‘And this too, please.’
Her hand is out. ‘Money?’ Her hand is filthy, dirt-worn blue biro, a key dangling off her wrist. ‘So, how have you been, Peta? No lapses?’
‘I’m trying not to think about it. Although, I did Google. Turns out it may have been situational. There’s such a thing as a vortex bisexual.’
‘So, it was one of those things.’
‘That’s right. I hope. Did you talk to Stuart?’
‘I was going to tell him. I made dinner, chicken parma, his favourite. But he came home with a girl from work.
I think they’re just friends.’
‘Well, that’s good.’
‘Peta, he thinks we’re just friends. Believe me, I’m not his friend.’
She leans against a drinks fridge and turns her face into her shoulder. Does she want to be held? The closest we’ve been is when I ran her over. I put my arms around her and she rests her head on my shoulder. It’s awkward. She’s still wearing her helmet and I have to angle my head out of the way.
‘Come on, let it out.’
She does and I don’t care how strange we look.
Thursday, a week since the couch, I stay in and have lunch at my desk. Would hate to run into anyone: Justine, Ruby, Mark, any type of cyclist. On Friday I brave the cafe again. After eyeing off the chips, the smell of salt and vinegar on the tip of my tongue, I order a chicken and salad sandwich and a coffee.
‘Same as usual,’ Anna says.
Anna knows about usual. She wears the same thing every day: T-shirt, jeans, apron. A vest when it’s cold. Her hair tied back in a girlish ponytail, seahorse earrings, she doesn’t look old enough to have a son at uni.
I practise being myself. ‘How have you been, Anna?’
‘Good. Mostly. Sean is studying, Olivia doesn’t want to study, the shop’s busy and I need a coffee.’
‘The usual then, Anna?’
She laughs. ‘How’s Mark? I haven’t seen him this week.’
Anna sees more of him than I do. Mark and I communicate via email, phone calls, text messages. He jokes that if we were on Facebook our marriage would be complete.
It’s too true to be funny.
‘He’s flat out. He’s either on a plane or in a meeting or he’s stressing because the end of the financial year is almost coming. It’s been me and my cat. Still, we’re going out for dinner tonight.’
Anna hands me my change. ‘Yeah, this ti
me of year is Christmas for my accountant. Have a great night, Pete.’
‘You too. And don’t forget to put your feet up.’
I sit at my regular table.
Routine.
Safety in repetition.
Adhere to familiar processes.
Nothing has changed.
I am the same.
Third from the right nearest the window. I can see everyone coming in and everyone walking past. And I can see right down the blouse of the woman opposite. I turn away. Turn back. Find myself looking again. I stand the menu in front of me, that’s better.
This is ridiculous.
I’m aching. I keep picturing the couch. Trying not to. I’m down to watching myself carry it out of my head. Four of me, each with a corner.
Predictable, efficient, occasionally funny, that’s me. Turned on is new.
Before I go back to my desk I stop off at the toilet to remove my underpants. I want to feel it. I slip them into my pocket. I’ve never worn no underpants in the office. Or at home. Anywhere. My underpants are always where they should be: on the line, in my top drawer or under my skirt, present and sensible, how I like it.
Used to like it.
7.
It’s my birthday dinner, a week late, but we go to Mark’s favourite restaurant, favourite because it’s close to work. I’m in the toilet when my phone rings. I let it go. I’ve just endured half of a harsh conversation between the woman in the next cubicle and someone who could only have been her husband. Is he late for her birthday dinner too? Lines I’ve overheard when on a public toilet:
It’s my tumour and I’m keeping it.
I’m naked from the ankles down.
A fool and his money are something I’ll have half of.
Back at my table the bread in the basket is becoming dry and the butter is on the slide. My sparkling white is losing its bubbles. My phone beeps a text from Mark, ten minutes.
The restaurant door keeps opening and I keep looking up to see if it’s Mark. I’m trying to read The Spare Room, but I’m starting the same paragraph over and over. Between the door opening and closing and not thinking about BJ, my concentration is worn out. I open my diary, and read my Mark list.
Top Ten Best Things About Mark:
He looks great in a suit, especially with no tie and the top couple of shirt buttons undone, especially if the shirt is blue and goes with his eyes.
His smooth eyebrows.
They match his demeanour.
His hands.
His predilection for 70s cop movies.
His can-do attitude; he’s always so busy.
How he’s calm when I can’t be, although I don’t know what to do with him when he isn’t calm, and when he’s stressed I don’t know him.
He has interests outside of us; that’s good, it’s important.
His loyalty to his family, friends and me.
I love the way he chews his lip when he’s worried, it’s so cute, he looks like a little boy, how his mother may have seen him.
The door opens. There he is, tall, dark and tired. I refold the list and close it into my diary.
He squeezes a kiss onto my cheek.
‘Sorry, wife.’
‘I’ve made an observation.’
He hangs his jacket on the back of his chair and sits down. Places his phone on the table. ‘Let’s hear it.’
‘Lateness isn’t lateness anymore, not now we can text. Have you noticed how lateness is turned onto the person waiting? Haven’t you checked your phone?’ Momentum is getting the better of me. ‘Would you accept a “b thr in 10” from your heart surgeon?’
‘There was nothing I could do.’
‘There’s always nothing you can do.’
‘That’s right,’ he reaches across the table, holds my hand.
Out the window, the offices of his building are bright. People not seeing their kids’ concerts, missing birthdays, not having dinners with their families.
‘Sorry, Mark. I just wanted tonight to be special.’
It’s only my birthday. I’ve had thirty-four others. Why do I care so much?
‘Pee-Wee, it’s already special. We could be pregnant.’
I have to tell him about the morning-after pill.
His phone rings. His ring-tone is Psycho Killer. He sighs, ‘It’s Carole Smart. I have to take this. Sorry, Pee-Wee.’
Carole Smart has Mark where she wants him. He’s close to making partner. If she wanted him to sleep in the boardroom to save on commuting—a waste of time in her book—he’d have a sleeping bag in his filing cabinet.
He drops an envelope onto the table. Unless it contains a black leather couch I’m not interested. He mouths ‘open it’ on his way out.
The envelope contains a Myer gift certificate. Five hundred dollars is a lot of money for a birthday with no zero on the end. His PA, Sharon, probably suggested it. She probably picked it up with her lunch and her Personal Assistant Monthly.
He walks up and down outside the window.
‘I have to take this,’ I say to myself. What is it? A kidney, a lung, a ransom demand? I consider reading my book but I don’t want to take the edge off the anger. Drum my fingers on the tablecloth. A popping cork at the table in the far corner. Don’t marry his law firm too, love.
He returns.
‘We’ve got ten minutes.’
We haven’t even ordered. This has happened before. The last time, I’d done it to him, left him at the movies with a box of popcorn bigger than his head.
Bet BJ wouldn’t skip out on my birthday.
‘I’m not pregnant, Mark.’
‘Next time.’
‘No, Mark. I took the morning-after pill. You’ll never be around. I’ve seen single parenthood. I’m not doing it.’
His jaw presses together, bulges. He closes his eyes, tilts his head; he could be thinking anything. Strange. He’s holding my hand but, though his upper body is clenched, I don’t feel any tightness. You don’t make partner (nearly) by letting people get to you, not even your wife. He exhales.
‘We’ll be fine, Pete.’
I should let him believe what he wants. Ignorance is bliss and marriage is naivety.
‘Only if we all move into Carole Smart’s place.’
Another exhalation.
‘Let’s start again.’ He stands up, slips his phone into a pocket. ‘We’ll stay at the Sofitel after the party. We can talk, get back to being us.’
‘Party?’
‘Carole Smart’s fiftieth. Remember?’
‘Oh, yeah.’ The things you have to do when you’re close to making partner. The things the spouses of the people about to make partner have to do.
‘What do you think, Pee-Wee?’
Even disappointed and angry, he still uses his pet name for me. I nod. Can’t speak, the lump in my throat hurts.
‘Wait up for me? Or if you’re asleep, I’ll wake you up the traditional way.’ His jacket is back on.
‘Mark, something that happened twice sixteen years ago, can hardly be called traditional. If I’m asleep, I’m asleep.’
‘Sure?’
‘We’ll see.’
There. ‘We’ll see’ does mean no, just as I suspected when I was a kid. Mum, can I get my ears pierced? We’ll see. ‘We’ll see’ and ‘I’ll think about it’ both mean no.
Mark leaves. I order a Caesar salad and a decaf coffee. Get back into The Spare Room. I have no intention of being up when he gets home.
I’m scared. Things have a tendency to hang around if you write them, but my head is full of couch anyway. I don’t give the next list much of a heading and I don’t expect to make it to ten. I write small.
Top ten reasons why I got on the couch:
Because I have low-resolution anger at Mark and myself for not trying hard enough. Because I’m thirty-five and have never been different, not once. Because BJ is gorgeous. She didn’t say one thing, but the attention she gave was incalculable; it felt like we were the only peopl
e in the room. How did she do that?
I date the list, fold it up and stick it in my diary with the Mark list. My decaf comes. Why did I let her? Tomorrow’s Saturday.
I will find out tomorrow.
8.
Cars parked on both sides. Broad Street, Northcote, isn’t as wide as it sounds. I drive down to Number 37, a red-brick single-fronted terrace house. The garden has been sacrificed for a driveway and there’s a black Honda shining in it.
Hands on my steering wheel, I talk myself into action: All you have to do is knock on her door, ask a couple of questions, and leave. That’s all you have to do.
If she asks you if you’d like a cup of tea, you say, no thanks, I’m on my way to work. Anyway, she might not be home.
There’s a knock on my window. BJ. My legs burn. I press the button, the window opens, an electric slide.
‘Are you going to sit out here all morning?’ She’s halfway up the drive before I’m out of the car. Up the steps two at a time, explaining over her shoulder that she’s on her way out.
‘Do you want to come for a drive to Brunswick?’ her Lisa Simpson key ring dangling. ‘I’ve got to pick up a book for an essay, Athenian mothers in mourning.’
She’s smiling so big.
‘Sure.’ Why not? I’m in it up to my stupid neck now. ‘Mourning mothers?’
‘Yeah, Ancient World Studies at Melbourne. My mum says I want to be an expert witness when I grow up. Or a museum tour guide.’
‘What do you say?’
‘I said, they’re called curators, Mum, and I am a grown up. Come and meet my housemate.’
Nerves jangling, I follow BJ through her front door. My rubber-soft, Saturday-morning shoes don’t sound the same as the high-heeled steps of a woman about to have a Friday night of sex.
In the kitchen is a skinny girl with blonde, spiky plaits and dark-rimmed glasses with thick, thick lenses. They make her look like a beautiful robot. Make her look like you could believe everything she says.