The Mistake

by Katie McMahon

  ‘Right. You’re having a wine,’ she said, cheerfully. She would be stoic and practical. And also calm, unfazed and reassuring.

  Stuart smiled, his face like a stretched plastic bag.

  ‘Yep,’ he said. ‘It’s time for a wine.’ When they clinked glasses, it felt like a parody of times gone by.

  ‘Have you told your dad about all this?’ she asked, after a few moments. Stuart’s dad thought social media was a waste of valuable time. He was seventy-four and lived with Stuart’s mum in Sydney, where he played golf and bridge, ran popular hypotheticals for medical students about the ethics of health-care – purely to keep his mind active, he said, because he was just a retired neurosurgeon and not one of your clever ethicists. He also wrote charming, perfectly pitched letters and sent charming, perfectly pitched books to all five of his grandchildren.

  ‘No.’ Stuart didn’t look at her.

  ‘Do you think . . . ? Are you going to tell them?’ Her tone was soft.

  ‘God, Bec. I don’t know.’ He slugged his wine. ‘They’ll find out eventually. Have we got any, like, cheese?’

  ‘’Course.’ She brought out some crackers and a slab of smoked cheddar. He never ate cheese during the week. Watching him cut, too quick and too jagged, into the yellow cube made her feel so panicked that she had to look away.

  ‘The kids had a pretty good time at school today, I think.’ Surprisingly, that seemed the logical thing to say. Keep calm and carry on. All that. She launched into a story about Essie’s excursion to the Shot Tower. He nodded along.

  When she got to the bit about the bus ride back, she saw he had a flake of cracker on his cheek. Usually she would have said, ‘Look at you, you hopeless grub!’ or ‘You do realise that is not an attractive look, don’t you?’ but that evening she just finished her story and then walked around to his side of the bench. She gave him a little kiss on the lips and brushed the flake away. He’d never know it had been there.

  Her face was still close to his when he spoke.

  ‘Jane says . . .’ He paused.

  Jane Payne was his practice manager. Bec had never particularly liked her, to be honest, because she was always complaining about the receptionists needing time off when their kids got sick. ‘All these children!’ she’d say, like a noblewoman complaining about overly fertile peasants. Jane Payne seemed to expect the receptionists to stay childless so they could dedicate themselves unreservedly to her roster for their twelve-to-fifteen hours a week.

  ‘Jane says that the clinic needs to take on a locum who can generate more work. The wages for the receptionists, the nurses – they have to be paid.’

  ‘OK then.’

  ‘So, I’ve written to the referrers, saying I’m taking a short sabbatical.’

  Bec looked over at the half-chopped chicken, just to keep the shock off her face. ‘Well, that sounds like a – a reasonable idea.’

  ‘With paying the locum, there won’t be much income left over for me, that’s all.’

  ‘I’m sure we can—’

  ‘And Bec. There’s something else. I – look, as a sort of arse-covering exercise – I’ve been suspended from the Royal. Without pay.’

  The Royal Tasmania Hospital was where he did his public work, the essential operations on people who didn’t have private health insurance. In contrast with his lucrative private clinic, it had always seemed poorly paid, but that, of course, was only relative.

  ‘Income protection doesn’t cover you against this type of stuff,’ he added, as if he was answering a question. But she hadn’t even thought that far.

  To her extreme annoyance, Bec found herself trying to call to mind all the sorts of things Kate would have said. Things about injustice and innocent-until-proven-guilty and risk-averse bureaucracy. But Bec never felt as if she knew enough to say things like that. The thing is, pretty much everyone had always stopped talking and looked at Kate whenever Kate opened her mouth. Even growing up, it had been obvious that Kate was mildly surprised when people spoke over her, or when anyone failed to snap to attention whenever she said, ‘What I think is . . .’ Maybe that was why Kate always sounded so definite. It wasn’t her fault: it was simply what she was used to. If Kate grew up believing that her opinions counted for just a little bit more than most people’s, then that was probably because most people she met seemed to believe that too.

  ‘We can manage,’ Bec said. She was his wife, anyway, not his lawyer. ‘We can drink rubbish wine and go without new clothes for six months.’

  He nodded, glumly. She couldn’t blame him. She sounded fatuous, not cheerful.

  ‘I’m used to being poor, don’t forget,’ she babbled on. ‘I can show you how it’s done.’ (Her childhood had been the sort where there was enough money for both the girls to have piano lessons, but only just. Stuart’s was the sort where his parents didn’t know exactly how much music tuition cost, only that they really must discuss how much to anonymously donate to the Sydney Symphony Orchestra that year, and who the very best cello teachers were.)

  ‘Yeah.’ He was trying – for her sake, she knew – to appear optimistic. It was heartbreaking, actually, much worse than the glum look.

  ‘We can maybe re-mortgage,’ she said. ‘A little bit, we probably could. And I can, you know, cook economical recipes and learn to darn. The kids can have a break from piano and ballet and things, if we need to do that. It’ll be good for them.’ But she wondered if he was thinking of the two investment properties that they’d sold to buy – and to excitedly and oh-so-expensively renovate – their beautiful house. They now had marble splashbacks and bespoke couches and absolutely no source of income except him.

  That was when he smiled in a terrible sort of way and said, ‘And where are we at with the school fees?’

  And her mind suddenly felt blank and stuck, like the roundy-roundy symbol that appears when the internet goes down.

  *

  It was the next afternoon, and she was waiting for the girls to come trooping out of their classrooms. She’d left her phone in the car on purpose, so she wouldn’t be tempted to look at it. So she might catch someone’s eye. So she would seem approachable.

  Allie was nowhere to be seen – she was always collecting Olivia from the side-gate now – but the other mums’ conversation drifted over. Tomorrow, Claire Davis would find it too easy to pick up Anna McIntyre’s children, since Anna’s husband would be in Sydney again all week. Lydia Campbell clucked supportively. (If Bec had Anna’s husband, she would vastly prefer him to be in Sydney on a permanent basis. He was a gymnasium-chain owner who used his Range Rover’s horn in the school car park. Often.) Another mum, who Bec didn’t know but who had expensive jeans and sleek blonde hair, was also standing alone. She gave Bec a tentative smile, and Bec felt profoundly grateful.

  ‘Mummy!’ yelled Essie. Lately, it was always a bit of a relief when the kids came out.

  Mathilda said a more dignified hello, then launched into a story about a missing Freddo frog, and Bec nodded and smiled and said, ‘Bye, ladies,’ to the general direction of the chatting mums.

  ‘Bye, Bec,’ they all said, with antiseptic smiles. Politeness. Sometimes it wasn’t all that great.

  On the way home, they stopped at the corner deli. Today – in addition to the usual bananas and milk – she needed to buy more spanakopita for Mathilda, whose vegetarian phase was lasting longer than expected. Fortunately, all three children were inclined to wait in the car.

  While she was standing in the fruit section, trying to decide about blueberries, a voice said, ‘Bec?’

  ‘Hi.’ She was turning around and smiling before she even realised who it was. ‘Ryan!’

  ‘Hey there.’ He did his slow, sexy grin and she realised that it didn’t matter at all that Claire and Lydia and Anna had been so mean. ‘How’s it going with you guys?’ His voice was very quiet, and he didn’t move his lips much.

  ‘It’s going well,’ she said. She gave him a slightly awkward punch on the arm. ‘I always
quite like getting to Friday.’ She wondered if he’d tell her not to wish her life away. He seemed like the live-in-the-moment type.

  ‘Yeah. Fridays. Always good.’ He was holding two avocados in one hand, and had a box of organic-y looking pasta under his arm. ‘Whatcha up to this weekend?’

  ‘Oh, you know. Soccer with the kids. I’ll probably watch a movie or something with Stuart.’ She met his eyes very steadily as she said Stuart’s name. ‘I think the weather’s going to turn on Sunday. Maybe even a storm.’ Well, what did he expect? She was a married, middle-class mother. It was pretty much mandatory for her to talk about soccer and her husband and the weather. And what did he imagine she’d be doing with her weekend, anyway? Going to a beach party and drinking tequila? Receiving texts containing eggplant emojis?

  (She had only recently found out – from Kate, of course – that eggplant emojis had something to do with penises. What, she’d wondered, was she supposed to do if she genuinely needed to ask a shop assistant whether he had any eggplants out the back? Also, were there any other vegetables she needed to know about? Zucchini, for instance? Carrots? In fact, why had eggplant even been selected in the first place? It seemed rather a bulky choice.)

  Ryan nodded. She got the feeling he was letting the silence run its course. A man in a high-vis vest reached between them for a bag of lettuce. She wondered whether Ryan actually was attracted to her. She knew he could tell what she was thinking, and she didn’t care. In fact, she met his eyes and thought, deliberately, God I’d love to sleep with you. Because she actually would. Kate wasn’t the only one who could think things like that, it turned out. She tried it again. The eff word came into her head. In its non-child-friendly format.

  ‘Come visit me Monday morning,’ he said, as if it was a perfectly respectable suggestion. ‘I’ll brew us up some chai.’

  Kate’s voice sounded. Is there anywhere on the planet a less manly drink than chai? Also, Chai and sex, he means.

  ‘All right,’ she said. Kate could just shut up and keep having her ridiculous-chemistry Melbourne sex. ‘I’ll bring us some biscuits or something.’

  She half-hoped he’d say something pathetic about dairy intolerance or trying to eat clean, but he didn’t.

  ‘Nice. Get chocolate ones.’ He smiled a much too intimate smile and then stepped past her, towards the cheese fridge.

  *

  On Monday, she put on her favourite jumper (very dark red, roll-neck, fitted but not tight) and skinny jeans. Hair in a high ponytail, gloss on her lips. When Stuart told her she looked nice, she smiled a genuine smile.

  ‘Thanks, sweetheart,’ she said, and gave him a pleasant, lingering kiss. She could tell by the way he didn’t put his hands on her straight away that she’d caught him by surprise. Or maybe it was just that he was distracted. He was going into work to ‘finish a few things off’ but there was no doubt that he had a bewildered, pale air about him, and they both knew that soon he’d be home all day. It was a bit like watching a tidal wave coming in.

  She dropped off the kids. She bought a packet of chocolate biscuits – deliberately not thinking about whether he’d prefer caramel or dark or milk. She parked her car brazenly, right on his street, and walked down a concrete pathway alongside a renovated Federation house. It was one of those houses that looked like a cute old-fashioned worker’s cottage from the street, but inside would be all modernity and space and thousands upon thousands of dollars’ worth of sweeping, architectural lines. Rhododendron leaves brushed her face. She threw a glance at the sliding glass doors of the house. Nobody seemed to be home.

  Ryan’s bungalow stood in one corner of the long, narrow backyard. A shallow concrete ramp with a metal rail along one side led to a front door that had been painted a flawless, high-gloss green. Several well-kept pots of herbs were grouped by the door. Two types of parsley. Mint. Rosemary.

  It wasn’t as if she didn’t know this was wrong. Of course she knew. She felt – not twinges of shame or stabs of remorse – but a feeble sort of anguish that she supposed must be guilt. It was like a shadow. But the thing was, the shadow didn’t seem to matter very much. She could easily live under a shadow. The main thing was that she wanted to see him. Nothing else mattered, there, in that garden, on that morning.

  She swallowed and knocked on the door.

  Oh goodness, he was young. Even with the morning sun slanting onto his face there were no lines. Even when he smiled there was nothing in the way of crows’ feet. She fought the desire to shade her own face with her hand and straightened her back in an unapologetic way.

  ‘Good to see you,’ he said. His limbs were loose, his voice pitched low and slow. He stood aside for her to enter. The green door shut behind her with a well-oiled click. The room – a sort of kitchen-dining-living area – smelt of cloves, cardamom and laundry detergent. Sunlight came in. By the window was a wooden clothes horse that held a sandy wetsuit and a clean – at least, she hoped they were clean – pair of brown woollen socks. A door to the left led to a bedroom: she glimpsed the foot of a blue-and-white covered bed.

  She perched on a stool at a breakfast bar while he poured soy milk and loose tea into a pan and stood it on an old-fashioned electric cooker. It would take forever to boil.

  ‘I really like this street,’ she said. ‘Lovely old houses.’

  ‘Yeah, me too.’ He came and leaned against the other side of the bench, and they talked about the weekend (he’d been surfing; she’d watched Mulan, which had proved every bit as bad as she’d expected) and yesterday’s frost and the South Coast. He passed her a shell he’d found. It was broken along one edge, and in a way unremarkable, but when she looked at it for a while she saw that its underside was a very shiny grey, and the ridges along its surface faded magically from dusky pink to cream.

  ‘Beautiful, eh?’ he said.

  She nodded, and noticed that she wasn’t rushing to fill the silence. She’d sort of forgotten how to have a conversation, or something, but that didn’t seem to matter. It felt nice.

  ‘You look pretty in that red,’ he said.

  ‘Thanks.’ She blushed. She knew it would be very noticeable; she’d always been a blusher. ‘I blush a lot, Ryan.’

  ‘Sure.’ He was unapologetic and calm. ‘Very, very pretty, though.’

  Bec remembered a time, just after she’d left her job at the hospital, back when she’d been working at the shoe shop. She’d been on the way to pick Kate up from physio and her terrible old car had broken down. An Englishman had helped her push it to the side of the road and then invited her to dinner (‘Fancy having something to eat with me?’). His accent. Those forearms. That unflustered drift of his eyes. But she’d said no, because Kate was expecting her. She hadn’t even mentioned the man to Kate. Ben, his name had been. An electrician.

  Ryan poured chai from a saucepan into two heavy ceramic cups, the vase-shaped sort that had been popular in the eighties and that had probably been bought from an op-shop.

  ‘Let’s sit,’ he said, indicating the one small couch. Oh goodness.

  Ben-the-Electrician had leaned back against his ute with his arms folded. The thing was, she hadn’t realised, at the time, that it mattered. How could she have known, then, that she would remember him all these years later? That she’d regret not saying yes?

  In the end, they ignored the furniture and arranged themselves on the floor. Bec leaned back against the couch. He lay on his side, propped up on one elbow with his drink in front of him. Biscuits – still in the packet – in between them. It reminded Bec of her parents, who, when she’d been a child, always seemed to end up sitting on the floor when their friends came over. She bit her lips, hard, so they’d be swollen and pinker.

  After two biscuits each he came and sat next to her. Now they both had their knees drawn up in front of them, both leaning back against the couch, their four feet in a line.

  While he was telling her more about his mum – a potter, she hadn’t made the cups, though – he slid a hand around her
ankle. She had a leather boot on, but still. She went right on telling him about her own mum – who would be protesting about climate change the next day – without pausing, without even losing her train of thought. It was as if she was an audacious teenager, the sort who accepts dares to do really scary things on a skateboard and then does them with a shrug.

  They talked a bit about bushwalks in Tasmania, and Ryan’s sore shoulder from labouring until he said, ‘Want more chai?’

  ‘OK,’ she said. What else could she say, really? She didn’t want chai. She wanted him to stay there, with his hand around her ankle. She wanted him to slide his palm up her leg.

  ‘Take your shoes off if you want,’ he added. ‘Be comfy.’

  And then, just before he stood up, he leaned in and gave her a tiny, casual kiss on the lips. Dear God, it was honestly just such a relief, in the end. Out of my system! she thought, hopefully.

  ‘Glad we finally got around to that, Bec,’ he said, as if he’d read her mind. Then he slouched off towards the stove. She took off her boots – and, after a very short hesitation, her socks – and put them off to the side of the couch.

  When he came back with the chai, he sat down next to her again and slid his arm around her shoulders. He was closer this time, so close to her that their hips were touching.

  ‘So what do you think’ll happen about the cable car?’ he asked. (Some developer wanted to build a cable car up the mountain; most people in Hobart had an opinion about it.) He put his hand onto the back of her neck, where her skin was bare, right near her hairline, and moved his fingertips very softly, just behind her ear. Bec thought about how that sort of touching could be extremely irritating, but in this case, very much wasn’t. He took another sip of chai. ‘I don’t think I’d want to go on a cable car.’

  ‘Not your thing?’ she said. She laid her hand on his thigh. Really quite far up. He leaned forward, so his chest nearly brushed the back of her hand, and took another biscuit.