Well-behaved Women

by Emily Paull

  ‘Jenny!’ she said. ‘If you’re going to get to work forty-five minutes early, you should at least be bringing me coffee.’

  I grabbed the handle on the opposite side of the trolley and leaned over it, prompting her to lean in too. ‘I think I just saw Peter.’

  She lowered her voice. ‘Shithead Peter?’

  I nodded.

  ‘What’s he doing here? I thought he got to keep the fancy house in Cottesloe?’

  ‘I know. When we sold the holiday home, he said he never wanted to come back to this sleepy town ever again.’

  Sonia picked up a handful of Danielle Steel novels and shoved them roughly onto an overstuffed shelf. ‘Maybe he’s come to win you back?’

  I rolled my eyes. ‘Not likely. I think you’ve been reading too many of these.’ I pointed to the row of Mills and Boon she’d separated off to one side of the trolley.

  ‘It could happen,’ she said. ‘You’re looking the best you’ve ever looked in your life. You’re happy now. Maybe he’s finally worked out that he’s a shithead, and he’s come to beg you to take him back. Won’t it be fantastic to tell him to get lost?’

  I tried to laugh. ‘I haven’t heard from him in two years, Sonia,’ I said.

  Sonia shrugged. ‘Stranger things have happened.’

  * * *

  That night, I lay awake, going over the final death throes of our marriage. It would have been melodramatic to describe it as doomed from the start, but there had been certain signs that would have made life easier had I picked up on them earlier.

  A year into our marriage, Peter had been in line for a big promotion. To help his chances, we hosted a dinner party for a few of his co-workers and his boss, and I had cleaned the house in a frenzy, anxious to make the guests think that it always looked that way.

  The house was far bigger than two people really needed. We had two guest rooms that had never been slept in. I hid the dirty laundry in baskets under the counter in the second bathroom and hid the beer bottles in the recycling bin under a cereal box. I barely had enough time to wash my hair before the guests arrived. I had bought a new dress, searching for the one that would earn me a smile, and a nod of approval. It was red—more of a burgundy, really—and tight. It was ridiculous, I thought to myself as I struggled with the zip, the way a man’s wife was considered a measure of how successful he was. Which made it even more ridiculous that I constantly felt that I was letting him down.

  Throughout dinner, the wives of his co-workers tried to make polite conversation, asking me about my job and where I went to university.

  ‘I wish I had more time to read,’ lamented one of the wives, when I told her I worked in the library. ‘I’m in a book club, but I never get around to finishing any of the books. I used to read all the time when I was a teenager.’

  I smiled into my glass of white wine, holding my tongue.

  Peter, patting my hand on top of the table, chimed in. ‘I keep telling Jenny she should join a book club. She needs to get out of the house more.’

  ‘You’d be very welcome at ours, Jen. I’ll Facebook you the next time there’s a meeting.’

  ‘That’s kind of you,’ I said. ‘I don’t know if I’d have the time, though.’

  Sensing a pause in the conversation, Peter clinked his knife against his glass and stood. ‘If I could just take this moment to say how honoured I am to have you all in my home this evening, and to have this opportunity to introduce you all to my lovely wife. I hope that we have many more opportunities like this in the months to come.’

  He raised his glass in the direction of his boss.

  ‘Thank you, Peter,’ said Mr Wilson, raising his own glass, though not half as enthusiastically as Peter had done. ‘And thank you, Jenny, for this interesting meal.’

  I fixed my eyes on my plate to avoid looking at Peter.

  It was true, the meal had not gone according to plan. I’d been preparing a roast beef dish, but at the last minute, the word had come in that the bank manager’s wife didn’t eat red meat, and so I’d switched to making a curry at the last minute. Perhaps I’d added too much chili. The guests had been refilling their water glasses all through the main course.

  ‘Jenny tries her best,’ Peter said, finally, smiling at me as if all of this were endearing. ‘But, well … this dinner speaks for itself, doesn’t it? It’s a good thing she’s pretty.’

  I said nothing, because they were his friends and colleagues, and to some degree, I believed what he was saying was true.

  The argument, later that night, was vicious and exhausting.

  ‘What were you thinking, serving a tikka masala at a dinner party?’

  ‘If you’d told me earlier that Mrs Wilson didn’t eat beef, I could have planned for something a little more traditional. I ran out of time. I’m sorry.’

  ‘A little more traditional? They probably thought you were serving them takeout, Jenny.’

  Tears pooled in my eyes. ‘I wasn’t trying to embarrass you.’

  Peter sighed. ‘I know you weren’t trying to, but you did.’

  Not long after, Peter got the promotion he had wanted. I had expected things to get calmer—for him to be happier—but the opposite happened. He bought art, furniture; he traded in his car. Meanwhile, I switched to instant coffee and cancelled my yoga membership, aware of how little of the money going into our bank account was coming from me.

  An emotional gap widened between us.

  At first, I didn’t even notice the weight gain, but soon the pencil skirts that had once fitted me would not zip up, and my silk pyjama top strained at its buttons. Exercise was not a part of my routine. Between working and keeping house, I had no time to get to the gym, and the worse things got, the more the idea of squeezing myself into exercise tights worried me. I thought about trying to run around the neighbourhood, but none of the women went above a size ten, and I kept picturing myself running alongside one of them, providing a horrifying visual comparison. Every footfall sounded like fat fat fat. But I couldn’t help myself. I was hungry—all the time. My appetite could not be satiated.

  He’s going to leave you, I thought to myself. The heavier the thought got, the heavier I got.

  I started taking to my bed during my days off, ironing on a little board across my lap and eating trays of Dairy Milk chocolate and bags of Doritos while I watched TV. I set an alarm for 4.30 pm, and when it went off, I would get in the shower and wash away the evidence of my slovenliness, put on makeup, and pretend I was the well-adjusted wife he wanted.

  ‘Why don’t you wear the dress we bought in Melbourne, darling?’ Peter said, hands on my waist, kissing my neck from behind as I dressed a salad for a barbecue.

  Because it doesn’t fit.

  ‘It’s at the dry cleaner,’ I said.

  His eyebrow raised, and I looked at his beautiful face— those dark unreadable eyes, the Roman nose that I loved so much—and I thought it again.

  Peter is going to leave me.

  Watching television one night, he poked at the meat of my thigh with his foot and laughed as it swung back and forth. I looked at my leg in horror, seeing what he was surely seeing, realising that he had begun to notice.

  Later that night, when he embraced me, he grabbed at the skin on the sides of my torso and whispered, ‘Best to cut back on the chocolates, love.’

  The idea of being naked in front of him at that moment made stomach acid rise up in my throat. I pushed him away.

  ‘Not tonight,’ I said, disentangling our arms and reaching for a cardigan to add an extra layer. ‘I’ve got a terrible headache.’

  But at my heaviest point, I did not invent headaches or make sure the lights were turned off before I let him kiss me. I did not have to. Peter did not reach for me, did not kiss me goodbye or hello. A few times, I caught him staring at me, and I knew he was thinking, Who let this big fat woman in my house?

  He told me he was leaving me that November, and a few days later, he brought home the divorce papers.


  ‘I’ve booked you in to a hotel,’ he said. ‘I’ll pay for it until you get back on your feet. But this is it, Jenny. I can’t do this anymore.’

  I signed the papers, packed one bag, and left the rest of my clothes behind.

  None of it fit anymore anyway.

  * * *

  On my next visit to the café, I was on the lookout for his blue BMW in the car park. I made my way to the counter, self-consciously smoothing my skirt.

  ‘You look nice today, Jenny,’ said Ashley, the young hippie girl behind the till. ‘You got a date later?’

  The tips of my ears burned. ‘No.’

  ‘You want the usual?’

  I nodded, handing over my bank card, then made my way to the window seat with the metal stalk of my table number threaded through my fingers.

  Once again, he arrived as I was almost ready to leave. This time, however, he saw me.

  He froze, blocking the doorway, so that the person behind almost barrelled into the back of him.

  ‘Jenny,’ he said, clearing his throat. ‘Hi.’

  I’d been holding a book open in my hands for almost twenty minutes, but not a word of it had stuck. Slowly, I closed the cover.

  ‘Peter,’ I said. ‘This is a bit of a shock.’

  He unwound a grey wool scarf from around his neck and placed it over the back of the chair across from mine, leaning against it without making any move to sit down.

  ‘You’ve lost a lot of weight,’ he said.

  I shrugged.

  ‘You look good. Almost as good as when I met you.’

  I snorted. ‘I know. Thank you.’ ‘I started swimming. I’m training for the Rotto swim,’ he offered, as if there were a prize for coming out of our marriage more whole than the other person.

  A part of me wondered if Sonia was right—was this the coda to us? But as I looked at him, I felt nothing except anger.

  ‘What brings you to Margaret River?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m more surprised to find you here.’

  ‘I live here. But you didn’t answer the question.’

  He paused, and cleared his throat. ‘I’m here finalising the purchase of the holiday house.’

  It felt like my heart was being wrung out by giant hands. ‘What?’

  ‘It came up for sale. I just bought it back from the new owners.’

  My stomach clenched. I’d seen the familiar wooden deck in the photographs in a realtor’s window a few weeks back, and had even thought about buying it myself, but on my salary, I’d known that it would be more than I could afford. Still, it had been nice to dream.

  ‘That’s not fair.’

  ‘It’s done, Jen. I was thinking of selling my place in Perth, doing up the holiday house and moving down here full-time.’

  My eyes steamed up underneath my glasses, and I stared at my knees, trying to keep myself from crying. I tried to picture Peter living down here, buying milk at the IGA, cooking his dinner on our old temperamental gas stove and having breakfast every week at the café. The staff getting to know him by name too, knowing his usual order, having no reason to hate him. Jen and Peter used to be married? I imagined Ashley saying to the other staff. No way! I almost choked on the next sip of my drink.

  His phone rang, and as he pulled it out of his pocket, I saw a woman’s name on the caller ID. He pressed a button to send it to voicemail.

  ‘We should talk about this, Jenny. It’s a small town. We’re going to be running into each other.’

  I turned my face away, feeling my lip wobble. ‘The whole point of my coming here was to avoid that.’

  Peter looked hurt. He sat down on the chair and tried to reach for my hand, but I snatched it out of his way.

  ‘I’m sorry you feel that way,’ he said.

  I wiped my eyes on the sleeve of my cardigan and took a deep breath. ‘You said during the settlement proceedings that it would be best if neither one of us got the house.’

  ‘I did say that, yes.’

  I pushed my chair back from the table and retrieved my bag. ‘I guess that’s another thing you’ve said to me that you didn’t mean.’

  * * *

  The Margaret River house had been our sanctuary—the only place left that held good memories of my marriage to Peter. We’d spent a good part of every summer there, swimming in the pool, reading while curled up together in a hammock that was slung across the far corner of the deck, playing an ancient game of Scrabble where the letters were so yellow they looked like they were made of bone. I loved Peter best when we were there—when he was ‘off-duty’, just a regular guy who wore polo shirts, and sometimes even sandals. I had always felt safe there, like I was tucked into a quiet pocket of the world, where all the expectations back home were held at bay. In the months after our divorce, it was the memories I had of that house that almost made me miss him.

  It was the only piece of property that we’d jointly owned. Peter’s house had been his when he met me, and though I’d been able to add a few touches to rooms here and there, it had never felt as much like home to me as our cottage in the woods.

  In the settlement, I’d asked him to let me buy him out in instalments.

  ‘Give me a year to get the money together,’ I’d said, sitting in a different café, several thousand kilometres away. A lifetime ago.

  ‘We’ll sell it, Jenny,’ Peter had said. ‘Split the proceeds. I couldn’t bear the thought of you living there without me.’

  I had almost felt tender towards him then. Our two coffees—a long mac for him and a mocha for me—were strategically placed between us, though he hadn’t taken a sip yet. The coffee was only an activity to pair with the settlement anyway. It was something to do with our hands.

  ‘All right,’ I said. ‘If that’s what you want.’

  I told myself that would be the last time I ever had to let him get his way.

  With my share of the money, I rented a small place in Margaret River, applied for a job at the library and got on with my life, sans Peter.

  * * *

  Knowing that he was nearby now, the town felt different. As I laced up my running shoes and zipped myself into my puffy vest, the usual calm that I felt on my nightly run was replaced by a lingering feeling of being watched. My anger was a jolt of energy. I ran further that night, determined to make it to the holiday house and to see with my own eyes that Peter was living there, determined to see if his life had changed at all, or if I had been excised from it like a tumour.

  As I strode up the driveway towards the front door, I could see his BMW in the carport, his hiking boots by the front door, a little muddy from a day’s stroll. The front window, looking in to the kitchen, was bathed in warm yellow light. A pretty, dark-eyed woman was leaning over the sink, her hands immersed in the soapy water.

  She was crying.

  I crouched behind the shrubs, watching her, feeling like my ribcage had been cracked open. She wiped her eyes with the back of her arm, smearing suds across her forehead, then picked up a full glass of blood-red wine and drank it like it was water. She turned, spooked by the sound of someone speaking behind her. The woman pulled the plug from the sink and swigged from the glass again. She pulled off her gloves and breathed deeply to compose herself. Then she was gone, deeper inside the house where I could not see her.

  She was nothing like me, the dark-eyed woman, but our situations were the same.

  I did not see him again until a couple of weeks later. Sonia and I headed to the tavern after work, exchanging our sensible work shoes for high heels in the break room out the back. As we walked across the car park under the glow of the streetlights, the cul-de-sac echoed with the sound of our laughter.

  Friday night was happy hour. The only seats we could find were at the bar, and sitting up high I could survey every face in the crowded pub. I kept a lookout for him at most places. I was making a catalogue of what places were still mine. Drawing a line down the middle of the town. It seemed we were still splitting the things we loved
in two, so we could each take a part.

  There was a live band that night, playing Fleetwood Mac covers. Sonia and I wrapped our hands around the bulbs of our red wine glasses and tapped our toes in time to the deep pulse of the drums. This, I thought, was the new normal. We let ourselves get three drinks deep and then headed onto the floor to dance.

  The song was slow and powerful. I shook my hips side to side, threw my hands above my head and spun around. The gentle buzz of drunkenness had yet to fade to exhaustion. I looked good, and I knew it.

  I did not look up until a few songs later, but right away, I locked eyes with Peter. He was nursing a tall beer, his silver watch catching the stage lights, a row of lines on his forehead. The corners of his mouth turned up at the sides. He made no effort to look away once he knew I was looking.

  I knew then, that if I wanted to, I could have had him. I could have started the whole thing again. Instead, I turned back to Sonia, and at that moment, the band began to play those familiar opening bars. We let out a cheer, clapping our hands and singing along as the verse kicked in. When I turned back to the bar, Peter had gone. His untouched drink had been left behind. Outside, it began to rain.

  He would not be staying. And I would not miss him.

  VERSIONS OF HERSELF

  Miss Shirley Carruthers had been quite beautiful when she was young.

  That was not to say that Shirley was no longer beautiful. At ninety, she had a polished look about her, and the face she presented to the world was one that was made up with meticulous care.

  There was a rumour around the halls of the Restful Waters Retirement Complex that she’d once been engaged to the Premier, but had suffered a great heartbreak. The staff speculated that this was why she was so prickly. It almost made them feel sorry for her.

  There was an old photograph on the telephone table, just inside her apartment door. It showed her leaning against the side of her father’s Ford Fairlane in her school uniform. She couldn’t have been more than seventeen. In one corner, a blob obscured part of the image where the photographer had covered the lens with a finger, but no-one ever seemed to notice it. They were all too busy looking at teenage Shirley with her golden hair and her wide bright eyes. She was smiling, looking past the camera at the photographer, as if they were mid-conversation.