The Mistake

by Katie McMahon

  Today I was wearing the same black pants, olive suede flats and a soft dark-brown sweater that I bought second-hand at a market in Hobart. Also really beautiful olive-green lace-edged underwear. I always choose underwear to reflect what I’m doing and my mood. I realise that makes me sound both annoying and tragic, and also indicates that I have way too much time on my hands. In my defence, it sort of started as a way to survive. Anyway, today’s green silk was all about exquisitely worked detail and being gentle with myself. Adam had Not Yet Called.

  The students dribbed and drabbed in. I was definitely old enough to realise that I was pretty much invisible to them, so I didn’t feel self-conscious just sitting silent at the big square table until the clock clicked over to eleven. Then we started. It was a blessed relief to have to give all my attention to something other than Adam Xavier Cincotta.

  I enquired what they had made of the week’s readings and asked if anyone had any thoughts to share. Of course none of them did, so I had to ask some of them directly.

  ‘So, Amy,’ I said, ‘would you call that a primary or a secondary text?’ and, later, ‘Kyra, how else could someone go about finding that information?’ (Some of them had very weird names. Kyra Kiernan, I ask you. There was a Delphine-April too, and yes, she preferred to be called by her full name.)

  ‘You’re on the right track,’ I replied, to all but the most ridiculous answers. Even then I tried to twist their words to make it sound as if they’d said something sensible. It’s hard to talk in front of people when you’re eighteen. I don’t know why everyone makes such a big deal about extreme youth; in real life, most people are far more attractive at thirty.

  ‘Thank you . . . Kate,’ some of the students said, as they left. Mostly they are polite but shy; they’re still learning how to use teachers’ first names.

  ‘Nice earrings, Kate!’ said one of the more confident girls.

  ‘Bye. Thank you. My pleasure. Bye. Yes, no problem. Bye, now,’ I said.

  As the last student left – ‘Thank you very much!’ – I realised how very, very intensely I wanted to hear from Adam. The worst of it was the shame: I was bordering on forty and still waiting breathlessly for a text from a guy I’d pretty much had a one-night stand with. The kids I tutored probably imagined I was respectably shacked-up with a sustainable-design architect. They surely believed I had a more prestigious place in the world than spinster aunt, casual tutor, Masters candidate. I looked down at my posh suede shoes in an effort to steady myself, but everyone knows that only the most horrible sort of people rely on expensive possessions to feel good about themselves, so that was no help. I reminded myself about not being defined by a man and blah-blah-liberated-effing-blah, but by the time I was outside, the mild euphoria of the ‘Thank you very much!’ had worn off. I was fighting a grey, dragging sense of being pathetic.

  My favourite route home is also the longest, past nice cafés and through a park that, for some reason, always makes me think of an American ivy league college. I wouldn’t be all that surprised if a couple of twenty-something girls with big white teeth and that straight, bouncy American hair appeared out of the undergrowth, flicking their bangs and chatting about sororities.

  I was walking past the fountain at the same time as I was remembering the moment Adam undid my bra (one-handed) at the same time as I was battling the all-consuming-ness of the hope that he’d text me at the same time as I was thinking I really should try to eat at least one piece of sushi for lunch. My phone rang. I managed to grab it and swipe to answer before it stopped.

  ‘Hi, Kate,’ said Adam. ‘It’s Adam Cincotta.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. I peered quickly at my phone screen. NO CALLER ID, it said. I sat down at a handy park bench. He said something about eating lunch at his computer, and I said something about just being on my way home from work myself. ‘I’m in that park with the fountain and the elm trees.’

  ‘Pretty.’ Did I imagine a compliment?

  ‘Yes,’ I managed.

  ‘You want to have dinner tonight?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘With me, I mean,’ he said. I couldn’t quite tell if he was joking.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Seven? At that Japanese place near yours?’

  My mind scrambled around. He must mean the one we’d walked past the other night.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘OK. I’ll book. Bye, Kate.’

  ‘Yes. Bye.’ I hung up.

  No wonder everyone texts. At least you have time to think about what you’re going to say.

  *

  ‘The problem,’ Adam was saying, ‘is that she point-blank refuses to ask for help.’ He was acting all droll, but there was real concern on his face.

  ‘Bugger,’ I said. We were at the Japanese place, and he was telling me a story about his grandmother in a nursing home and her tendency to fall over a lot. We’d been talking about our families.

  ‘Indeed. The nurse told me she’s supposed to press a buzzer when she wants to go for a walk, but Nonna just hops up and gets going. I said, she’s ninety-one, I don’t think there’s any chance of turning things around at this point.’ He half laughed, half grimaced. ‘She had to have an X-ray of her wrist today.’

  ‘Your poor nonna,’ I said. It can be hard to ask for help, I almost added.

  ‘Yeah. Anyway, that’s her. My papa died seven years ago; Mum and Dad and my sister are in Ballarat; my brother’s in Adelaide. They can all walk very competently.’

  I nodded.

  We were leaning towards each other. The table was small and the restaurant, even though it was almost full, felt subdued and tranquil.

  Adam was wearing a different fleecy top, one of those expensive quick-drying things that you buy from outdoorsy shops. It had a short zip at the top, with a bit of navy T-shirt visible underneath. Jeans and work boots. It would not have worked on everyone, but he managed to look attractive in a non-fashionable way. In my view – which I know is sexist and old-fashioned, but I can’t seem to change it – there’s nothing that says unmanly like a guy who follows trends.

  I thought: it would be way too soon to invite him to Stuart’s fortieth.

  I re-crossed my legs and accidentally brushed his shin with mine. He looked up from his teriyaki at me and smiled his quick and really rather lovely smile.

  I moved my leg a tiny bit, and let it relax against his. We were still looking at each other. He took quite a big swallow of his beer. His throat, when he tilted his chin up, was all of a sudden mesmerising. I found myself still staring at it when he placed his glass back on the table.

  He put his hands on his cutlery. We had both stopped eating.

  ‘I had a really nice time the other night,’ he said.

  ‘Me too.’ A pause.

  ‘Really nice, Kate.’

  Oh God, the look he gave me.

  In my mind, I was the kind of woman who could say things like, ‘Adam, why don’t we go home right now?’ or ‘I think we probably need to find a bed sooner rather than later.’ But in real life it seemed I couldn’t say any of that stuff, not even just, ‘How about we skip dessert?’ I’ve also lost the ability to do my trademark ‘sultry’ pout. The best I could manage was to flip my hair back and smile in a way I hoped was inviting, warm and confident, as if I was doing a turn-of-millennium-era ad for organic skin care. (Never did those. My look was considered too sexy. Ha.)

  ‘We should go,’ he said, very quietly. The organic skin care look has its niche, clearly.

  ‘Yes.’ I turned to find my coat, saw it wasn’t on the back of my chair, and then remembered that the waitress had whisked it away. It seemed to take ages for her to bring it back and it was a bit of a fluster to put it on with her trying to help and Adam sort of watching. He said he’d pay and I had to fumble around to find cash for my half, which he said he wouldn’t take, but in the end did.

  He held my hand as soon as we stepped out into the very-much-colder-than-earlier night. We started walking pretty quickly towar
ds my house. To my un-surprise and pleasure, he did not make any ridiculous exclamations about how on earth did I manage to walk in those shoes. (Subtext: you are vain and frivolous and/or I’m threatened by your height and/or you’re obviously not a proper feminist.) Of course, before sleeping with him I had formed the view that he was not the sort of person to make high-heel-judgement remarks, but it was good to be reassured. Also: he was taller than me, even in my heels.

  This time, when we got to my apartment building, I made the effort not to look at my reflection in the glass doors. Instead, I looked at the path that leads to them. Box hedges grow on either side, so tidy and perfect that they don’t even look alive.

  Quick mental appraisal of my underwear. I had gone the whole hog: black floral lace bustier with attached suspenders, black V-string, black stockings. I was wearing a really quite short stretch-knit black skirt. Bec has a sweet-slash-annoying friend called Allie who talks frequently about how you have to make the most of your assets. Well, Allie would approve.

  I beeped open the door; we got into the lift; I beeped the lift security thing. He took my hand again and pressed the button to my floor. I assumed we would start kissing as soon as the lift doors slid closed. Instead, he looked at me and said, ‘Seventeen floors.’

  Wry. Complicit. Wanting me. God.

  I couldn’t look at him, but I could feel that, like me, he was watching the numbers above the doors. They illuminated, one by one, as we ascended. I read the various round buttons. STOP said a red one. ALARM said another. I had often wondered what would make anyone press STOP. Surely few emergency situations could be improved by the elevator grinding to a halt.

  The doors opened.

  ‘After you, Kate,’ he said. I have a special identification code thingy for my front door. As I was zapping it unlocked, he stood very close behind me and laid one of his hands on my hip bone. He smelt nice. Something herbal and ethical.

  My apartment was dimly lit – after all, his being there was not unforeseen – and nice and warm. He closed the door behind us with one hand and held my hip with the other. Then he leaned back against the door and pulled me in. I turned to face him and he pressed me up against him.

  ‘Kate,’ he said, still very quietly.

  His face was near to mine. I felt desperate to kiss him. I brushed my lips on his, and he said, ‘Mmmm,’ and started kissing me. He does the ravenous-yet-controlled, communicative sort of vibe that is, in my opinion, the essence of excellent kissing.

  His hands slid down to the hem of my skirt, slipped up under it, and skimmed along my legs. He broke off the kiss for long enough to murmur, ‘I’ve been thinking about this all day.’ Right tone, too. When he got to the top of my stockings, he made a small sound of pleasure in his throat.

  ‘Shall we go to bed?’ I mustered.

  ‘Mmmm,’ he said again, this time in a way that meant, yes, definitely, that sounds like a truly excellent idea. Still kissing, still with his hands on me, we sort of veered through the lounge room, past my beautiful umbrella plant – I talk to that plant sometimes; in fact, I call her Philomena, and I had a ridiculous spasm of embarrassment that Philomena was seeing us like this – and into my room. Somehow we both ended up lying on the bed facing each other. He slid down my skirt and I kicked it off.

  ‘Come here.’ He took hold of one of my thighs and pulled it between his legs. Still in his jeans. The whole me-more-naked-than-him thing was proving to be quite arousing. Surprising.

  ‘Out of this,’ he said. His hands moved to the buttons of my shirt (caramel-coloured, silky, Zara) and he undid them one at a time, starting from the top. Pretty slowly. Whenever he undid a button, he’d look down my shirt, then up at my face. When my shirt was completely open, he swished it back over my shoulders and off. I made a definite effort not to think about how my stump must have felt under his hand. It wasn’t that difficult, because I was pretty much swept up in the way his fingertips had begun skimming along the top of my bustier.

  ‘Goodness me,’ he said, as he pulled the lace down. How he managed to make that sound sexy, I will never know, but he did. He flicked a glance into my eyes, kissed my lips once – no tongue, teasing – then brought his mouth down onto my breasts. It felt so delicious I said, ‘Ohhh.’

  After that, we both started saying ‘goodness me’ a lot, and it meant things like what you’re doing feels quite glorious and please do keep going and that feels so nice you’d better stop pretty soon. Eventually I said, ‘Take off my. . .’ Then I paused. Undies was what kids call them, knickers sounded a bit old-fashioned-governess, panties would scream escort-service advertisement, he wouldn’t know what a V-string even was – ‘. . . Undress me.’ I settled on. I wriggled up against him so he’d know which bit I meant.

  ‘Yep,’ he said. Not casually.

  I thought he might get all tangled up with the suspenders but he snapped them open as easily as Bec flicks up lids on the kids’ drink bottles, grabbed my knickers by the front bit and slipped them down. I could feel the aching loveliness of his warmth all along my side. My stump was in close to him, where it wouldn’t be all that visible. He was looking – with yearning, it has to be said – along my body.

  ‘Goodness me,’ he said again, as he stroked me. (You look beautiful. You feel wonderful. I’m glad you’re enjoying that. I am going to have to have sex with you almost immediately but I am making a reference to our earlier teasing, which I know you will like.)

  He stood up and finished taking off his clothes. Looking down at me all the time. I rolled a bit further onto my side, so my stump was pressed down invisibly into the mattress. I kept forgetting about it then remembering.

  I hadn’t properly looked last time but he had really quite a nice body. Wiry and long-limbed. Good amount of dark hair. He had a condom in one of his many pockets and he rolled it on, lay on top of me, took hold of my wrist, held it against the pillow, took hold of himself with his other hand and eased into me.

  ‘Oh,’ he said. His voice was all thick and crackly. ‘Oh. Kate. Jesus.’ It was very obvious that the time for goodness-me banter had passed.

  He started moving, and I moved too, and it felt so, so lovely, and I was so very, very into it. He was kissing me; he had one hand on my face, it was all unbearably gorgeous, but I just couldn’t seem to get the right bit on the right bit. I wriggled around more and felt a bit nearer to coming but I could feel that it wasn’t going to work because I needed to be rubbed somewhere altogether else.

  ‘Kate,’ he said, after a bit. Then, ‘I’m going to . . .’ and then, ‘Oh, oh, ohhhh.’

  He flopped on top of me for a moment, then propped himself up and dropped two gentle kisses onto my lips.

  ‘You all right?’ he said. Very tender. Hand still on my face. Quick smile. Then, ‘Did you . . . ?’

  I was nowhere near ready to tell him the whole truth. I hesitated for a split second, which of course is all it takes. He grimaced.

  ‘Unchivalrous,’ he said. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘It’s totally fine,’ I said.

  Obviously (or perhaps not) it had occurred to me, at some point, that I could re-arrange us so that I was on top, in what had always been my most orgasm-friendly position. But I don’t think I can be up there, anymore. Face intent, hair swishing, breasts bouncing. I would look ridiculous, like a lovely old house with a tasteless extension or a sweet young man with terrible acne. I’d be that thing that makes people look away to either wince or smirk. Embarrassing. Pitiable. The essence of un-sexy.

  ‘Well,’ he said, in a what-on-earth-shall-we-do-now? sort of a voice. He started nuzzling me, and in the end I came very quickly.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, after a little while, my hand still in his hair. I wondered vaguely whether ‘thank you’ was too effusive. Probably oral sex is standard Aussie bedroom fare nowadays. No doubt it’s one of those things – like lattes and men wearing scarves – that used to be slightly European and edgy but has been commonplace for years.

  I gripped A
dam’s hair a bit tighter.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said again. Too bad if I was being too effusive. I’d just had my first orgasm with another person since before the amputation. Adam was my first lover since then.

  Fourteen years.

  Chapter Four

  Bec

  ‘What’s more annoying?’ Kate said.

  It was the night of Stuart’s fortieth, and they were in Bec’s en suite doing their make-up. Kate was applying bronzer along one of her formerly famous cheekbones.

  ‘Women who talk about how they never bother wearing make-up or blow-drying their hair,’ Kate went on, ‘or men who say they think women having Botox is terrible?’

  ‘I thought we weren’t doing tearing-down-of-other-women?’ Bec loved their ‘What’s More Annoying?’ game, but Kate always encouraged her to listen to podcasts about being a good feminist, so surely the least Kate could do was follow their advice.

  Kate put down her make-up brush and turned to Bec. ‘Or women who insist on living their bloody values every single second of every single day for ever and ever? That’s not tearing down, anyway.’ She picked up her brush again and pouted at her reflection. ‘Is this too much?’

  ‘No,’ Bec said, aware she was already blending a bit more highlighter onto her own cheekbone.

  ‘You look nice,’ Kate said. ‘Wearing a dress like that when you’ve had three kids is just showing off.’ She always said things like that, presumably so Bec would know she wasn’t at all jealous of the children. Bec would’ve understood if Kate had been jealous. It wouldn’t have been a crime.

  ‘Thank you,’ Bec said.

  To be honest, standing next to Kate in front of a mirror was not all that easy. It wasn’t that she begrudged Kate her looks. Not exactly. And Bec knew she looked pretty enough, in her beautiful bronze silk dress. In fact, she looked a bit like Kate’s first draft, which was still quite nice. They both had blondy-browny hair and undemanding, tanned skin. Bec’s legs were normal (Stuart said they were gorgeous); Kate’s very long (Stuart made a closed, I-hadn’t-noticed-them face). Bec’s boobs were small and perky; Kate’s were big and perky. Bec’s eyes were averagely blue; Kate’s were enormous and aqua. Bec’s features were ‘regular’; Kate’s were ludicrously enjoyable to look at. Occasionally, Bec lost track of what Kate was saying because she was too busy marvelling at Kate’s cheekbones – not envying them, but actually marvelling at them. And Kate was her sister.