I Give My Marriage a Year

by Holly Wainwright

  ‘So, Josh, do you have any big career plans this year?’

  ‘Does anyone really make money out of music? I hear it’s heartbreakingly competitive.’

  ‘Is carpentry really a profession, though? Or is it a trade?’

  ‘Have you ever thought of starting your own business?’

  Josh could tell that Annabelle was making him over in her head: trimming his hair, exchanging his T-shirt for a polo shirt, his jeans for trousers. She wanted Lou to have a boyfriend who would talk about his career ladder and house prices and where her imaginary grandchildren should go to school. Growing up as he did, Josh knew what a woman’s disappointment looked like and it was written all over Annabelle’s face.

  He and Lou had only been back in the country for two weeks when they attended a family dinner at an inner-west club that Annabelle deemed acceptable. Rob and Peter were travelling over from Kirribilli, where they’d recently bought a small apartment with a water view. Josh and Lou had discussed the fact that if Peter were a woman, this development in the family – a harbourside home! – would be the subject of much pride and celebration; instead, it was something to be rushed past with a hasty, ‘How nice,’ and a vague reference to the number of bedrooms.

  Annabelle had seemed upset that evening. Happy to have Lou back safe from a part of the world she considered a dangerous hellhole, but clearly unsettled by the way her family life was turning out. There was no solicitor or accountant or deputy head on the horizon for Lou, nor a picket fence in sight for either of her children. She was taking out her dissatisfaction on the club’s wait staff, who didn’t know where the fish of the day had been caught and insisted that drinks had to be ordered at the bar.

  ‘I’ll go,’ Josh volunteered.

  ‘This is not meant to be a pub,’ Annabelle was saying. ‘We are not eating dinner in a pub.’

  ‘Well, we kind of are, Mum,’ Lou said, gesturing to the beer-laden tables and the screens silently showing football matches, horseracing and Keno. ‘And it’s fine. The steak here’s meant to be great.’

  ‘You must have eaten some great steak in South America,’ Peter offered, trying to redirect the conversation.

  ‘What would you like to drink, Annabelle?’ Josh asked, rising from his seat.

  ‘I wouldn’t trust the meat in South America – would you, Brian?’ Annabelle asked, ignoring Josh.

  Lou’s dad, who was looking defeated, said, ‘I’ll have a pale ale, please, son.’

  ‘Son?’ Annabelle repeated. ‘That’s optimistic.’

  ‘Mum!’ Lou put her face in her hands. Her wrists and hands, Josh noticed, were still tanned from the trip, and she was wearing a frayed friendship bracelet that they’d been given by kids in Peru.

  There was a tense beat before Josh said, ‘I’d be lucky to be.’ He was still looking at Lou, who lifted her head from her hands when he said it. And then, to the table of confused faces, he added, ‘Your son-in-law, I mean.’

  Annabelle started talking very loudly and quickly, and Brian was shaking his head, but Lou just kept looking at him over her hands. She was smiling.

  If this was commitment, if this was what it took to convince the people around your person that you could be counted on, that you were a serious adult human, able to step up – well, here he was.

  Lou, he knew, didn’t wish he was someone else, like her mother did. He’d never been more sure of anything as he was in that crappy club with the sticky carpet and the bleeping slot machines and the winner of the meat raffle being announced over loudspeaker.

  And Josh was still certain now, as he sat on the low wall outside Mick’s impeccably renovated Surry Hills terrace on his wedding day and waited for his father to turn up.

  He was hot in his suit, and his neck itched as a drop of sweat snaked down from his hair.

  It was springtime in Sydney and the jasmine was out. Even the houses on Mick’s street that hadn’t yet fallen to gentrification, the ones that still had sheets hanging in windows and sagging couches out the front, were dripping with the tiny white flowers. It was a beautiful day for a wedding.

  Josh picked at Mick’s guitar. The first couple of bars of ‘Here Comes the Sun’.

  Lou was inside now, getting changed, with Gretchen at her side. Mick was on the phone – to the girl he was seeing, from the sound of it – convincing her she should definitely come to this wedding party tonight, it was going to be sick.

  Where the fuck was his old man? Wouldn’t it be typical of him to say he was coming, against all odds, and then not show up? And why the hell hadn’t he told his mother about this impulsive invitation?

  Josh had been eleven when Emma had finally put the three kids in the old family Bluebird and driven away from the weatherboard house on the coast. By Josh’s count, it was overdue by about three years of unexplained absences and constant bickering and nights of unnerving silence punctuated by screaming outbursts. His dad, Lenny, unimpressed by Emma’s desertion, for a while insisted on seeing the children every second weekend, in keeping with the custody arrangements. This was hellish for everyone, including Lenny, who really had no interest in or aptitude for fatherhood. Josh and his sisters would be driven up to the Central Coast in Len’s smoke-filled, battered Beemer to spend hours watching TV at the homes of women he was ‘seeing’, usually in the company of the children of the house, who were unimpressed by the interlopers and let them know it. Or they were dropped off at a park or beach and told to ‘entertain yourselves’ for a few hours while he headed off to ‘see a man about a dog’ and came back smelling of beer and Winnie Reds.

  Some weekends, the three kids sat outside whichever house or unit they were living in with Emma, waiting for the Beemer to pull up, but it never came. Josh would be listening to his CD Walkman, his most prized possession. Anika would have found neighbourhood kids to hang out with and Maya would have her head in a book as they let an hour tick past before heading back upstairs to Mum. ‘No Dad?’ she’d say, in as even a tone as she could manage. ‘No Dad,’ they’d reply, and pull their pyjamas and swimmers out of their backpacks. The feeling, then, was a kind of toxic swirl of relief and guilt and anger. It was the sensation that Josh associated with Saturday mornings throughout his teens.

  Josh began to feel a twinge of that same anxiety as he sat on Mick’s wall.

  And then, just as Mick emerged from the house saying, ‘Gretch reckons fifteen minutes to go-time, mate,’ a silver taxi pulled up.

  Josh stood, carefully rested the guitar on the wall and straightened his jacket.

  His father climbed out of the front passenger side of the cab, and then walked around to the back door without looking up. He opened it and a woman in a flowery dress and a yellow hat with a ribbon stepped out. She was fiftyish, and smiling. Len reached into the back seat to fetch a small, tired-looking leather holdall. Then he took the woman’s arm and turned towards Josh. ‘Hello, son.’

  ‘Thanks so much for inviting us,’ the woman said in a broad Irish accent. ‘I’m Christine.’

  And Josh had no idea what to say. His dad looked old. He looked like an old man. In his head, his dad was lean and sharp. He had edges that didn’t invite close contact. This guy’s lines were much blurrier, his stomach pushing against his thin blue shirt, his jacket undone, his jaw loose. His suit had a slight sheen and looked like it probably wouldn’t button. His hair – thick and black like Josh’s – had been oiled down and forward, as if to disguise a retreat. But when he finally met his son’s eyes, the recognition was unmistakable. This was his father’s steady gaze, the one that had scared him witless as a kid.

  When was the last time they’d seen each other? It had been years – maybe Maya’s eighteenth? Shit. What had Josh been thinking when he’d called to invite him? And who the hell was Christine? This was going to be like rolling a grenade into a garden party. The familiar panic was back, popping in the pit of his stomach.

  ‘Hello, Dad.’ Nothing about his dad’s demeanour suggested a hug, so Josh offered
his hand.

  ‘Hello, Mr Poole,’ Mick said, stepping forward. ‘I’m Mick. Best man.’

  They just stood there, four figures in the blistering, fragrant afternoon, with no idea how to proceed.

  And then Lou walked out of the front door in her wedding dress.

  ‘Is that the bride?’ asked Christine, looking from Lou to Josh to Lou. ‘Well, how unusual.’

  Lou didn’t respond to that. She just walked into the centre of the four frozen figures, stood in front of Len, and held her arms out as if for a hug.

  ‘Hello, you must be Josh’s dad.’

  And Lenny clearly had no idea what to do other than to hug her, this lovely young woman in a white lacy dress, her wavy hair dusted with jasmine flowers.

  ‘I’m Lou,’ she said, separating herself from the embrace and stepping sideways to stand next to Josh and take his hand. ‘It’s so nice to meet you. And on a day like this!’

  Josh looked at the woman next to him. The woman he was marrying. The one who, less than an hour ago, was shaking with fear and clinging to his neck for reassurance. She looked now, for all the world, like the calmest, most self-assured bride who had ever pulled on a frock. And he knew she was doing it for him. And he knew all over again, in that moment, that this was what was supposed to happen. That you found someone who could help you to be strong in the face of the shit that made you weak.

  Lou looked at him and smiled, almost as if she were amused by how strange this day was becoming. Josh squeezed her hand hard.

  ‘Dad, I just want to tell you how lucky I am,’ Josh said. ‘To be marrying a woman who’s as strong and loving as my own mum.’

  He didn’t know where those words came from. It wasn’t like him, that was for sure, to be so direct, and so emotional. But there was something about the day, and the suit, and the jasmine, and Lou holding his hand, that made him tell the truth.

  His dad flinched a little at this, gave a slight chuckle, looked sideways at Christine. ‘Well, then . . .’

  ‘And Lou and I would love for you to come today, that’s why we asked you,’ Josh rushed on, giving Lou’s hand an extra squeeze on the ‘we’, because there had been no ‘we’ about it and they both knew that. ‘But, honestly, I don’t think it’s going to be appropriate for you to bring Christine, because . . . I don’t want anyone to be upset today. Least of all my mum and my sisters.’

  Lou looked up at him quickly, surprised, and he could see she was proud of him. It was a good feeling.

  Len’s steady gaze settled back on his son. ‘Well, then,’ he repeated, and then seemed to direct his words to Lou. ‘That’s a bit . . . We’ve come down from Newcastle, you know, to be here today.’

  ‘When I called you,’ Josh interrupted, ‘you didn’t mention a guest.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Christine,’ Lou said to the woman, who was now looking a little shocked under her yellow hat. ‘I know you’ve gone to a lot of trouble, but Josh is right, it’s not appropriate.’

  ‘This is bullshit,’ Josh’s dad said, his shocked face twisting into something more like a sneer. ‘You invited us. We came all the way down from the fucking coast, son. Where did all this come from? Your mum get in your ear, did she?’

  Christine was opening and closing her mouth, confused. ‘The bride’s not even supposed to be here,’ she said. ‘Before the wedding. I don’t know how you do things here, but this is all upside down. Telling your own father what he can and can’t do . . .’

  ‘I’m not telling him what he can do,’ Josh said, as evenly as he could manage. ‘My father can do what he likes. I’m just spelling out the rules for coming to our wedding.’

  ‘Rules!’ Len looked angry but also, Josh could see, upset. A flustered old man, trying to take on the shape of the threatening force he had once been to a little boy.

  ‘Well, I’m glad we came all this way to meet your bride on the street,’ Len said, nodding at Lou, his voice gruff but a little shaky now. ‘But you’re kidding yourself, mate.’ His eyes were now back on Josh. ‘You think you’re your mother’s son, but you’re not. You’ve got more of me in you than you’d like to admit.’

  For Josh, who had lived through years of Emma telling him not to be like his father, it was an insult that stung. He gulped. ‘I don’t think so, Dad.’

  ‘You invited me here to embarrass me, didn’t you?’

  ‘I . . .’ Did he? Was that what he’d done? Had he really wanted to punish Len? The heat and the suit felt suffocating now, and his most pressing urge was to leave this messy scene. To run away with Lou, to a place where their families’ tentacles didn’t reach. Where was that? Back to South America? ‘That’s not why I invited you, Dad. It just . . . seemed like something you should witness.’

  Again, Len’s face folded into something of a sneer.

  ‘You two have a chat and decide what you’d like to do,’ Lou said to the couple. ‘Josh and I are going inside to have a cold drink while we wait for the cars.’

  And she just pulled his hand gently and started walking back to Mick’s door. Mick was still standing nearby, looking at the ground, shifting uncomfortably. Gretchen was standing in the doorway, a bottle of champagne in her hand.

  ‘Who even are you?’ Josh whispered to Lou as they walked up the path. ‘That was amazing.’

  ‘I’m your wife,’ she said. ‘And I don’t like your dad much.’

  He kissed the top of her flower-scented head as they followed Gretchen into the house.

  ‘Cars will be here in five!’ Mick shouted after them, phone in hand.

  As Lou grabbed a glass from Gretchen and took a big gulp of champagne, Josh stood at the door watching as his dad picked up the holdall and he and Christine started walking off down the road together.

  ‘Well,’ said Josh. ‘That was a pretty terrible idea.’

  ‘You should really run all your terrible ideas past me,’ Lou said.

  ‘Oh, I will,’ he said. And as the stomach popping began to subside, Josh suddenly had another urge. ‘Let’s go and get married. Are you in?’

  ‘I am so in,’ Lou replied. ‘Clearly you need me more than I thought you did.’

  Josh pulled Lou and her glass into his arms and held her tight. ‘You have never been more right about anything.’ And he kissed her champagne-y mouth, and felt the bubbles on her tongue.

  Lou

  ‘The hard part,’ Lou was saying, her hand shielding her eyes from the blast of afternoon sun that seemed to be beaming directly into her face, ‘is that everything in the world seems so bleak right now. It’s hard to stay positive about us.’

  ‘Everything?’ asked Josh. ‘Our kids? I wouldn’t describe them as –’

  ‘You know what I mean,’ Lou said, a little too quickly and harshly for the setting probably. ‘Don’t be such a Pollyanna.’

  ‘Lou, try not to be aggressive or labelling in your responses,’ Sara, the therapist, chided gently.

  Lou couldn’t help but think that some slatted blinds might really help people to relax in this office. The sun was brutal and the couch was hard on her bum. Didn’t Sara want people to be comfortable?

  ‘I sometimes feel,’ she said, ‘like the planet’s on the brink of catastrophe, lunatics are in charge, and tinkering around with each other’s little foibles is . . . pointless. We’re all on our own, really, aren’t we?’

  ‘Wow,’ said Josh. ‘You’re really fucking nihilistic today. I had no idea you were gripped by so much existential angst.’ His voice was dripping with sarcasm.

  ‘You sound like your father right now,’ Lou snapped, turning her head to look right at Josh, sitting next to her on the rock-hard couch.

  ‘Nice.’

  ‘Lou, Josh, again’ – Sara’s voice was calm and smooth like cocoa; it made Lou want to punch her in the nose – ‘I have to remind you that trading insults is not what we are here for. It’s really not going to help.’

  In a different moment, Josh and Lou would have laughed together at Sara’s meditative tone,
her use of psych speak and her attempts to keep them playing nice, but looking over at him now, it was very clear this was not that moment.

  Lou had rarely seen Josh look as awkward as he did right now, sitting on the blue couch in his jeans and his collared flannel shirt, like he’d made some effort but not too much. His long legs meant his knees were just a little too high, and he looked like a forty-year-old man who was waiting to see the headmaster. She also knew he would be mortified that he’d just lost his cool in front of the therapist and said ‘fucking’.

  And why was she trying so hard to impress Sara? Presumably the couples’ therapist was not going to think she was petty for talking about her relationship at relationship counselling. But as soon as they’d walked in, and Lou had seen how smart and accomplished the therapist appeared in her sheath dress and heels, she’d wanted Sara to like her.

  ‘Sorry,’ Lou mumbled.

  ‘Are you apologising to me?’ asked Sara. ‘Or to Josh?’

  Now Lou felt like she was being reprimanded by the headmaster. ‘Both,’ she muttered, looking down at her fingernails.

  ‘The idea is that you don’t insult each other in here,’ Sara said. ‘You’re here to listen.’

  ‘I’m listening,’ said Lou.

  Josh nodded. He was listening, too.

  ‘So, let’s go back to what brought you here,’ Sara suggested, sitting back in her chair. ‘Lou, why do you think you’re here?’

  *

  I give my marriage 10 months . . .

  This countdown is feeling depressing.

  On 4 March, Lou had typed that into her phone and then flicked over to her settings and unblocked a number. She texted, Are you free right now? Right now was important, because she knew she was going to change her mind if the text wasn’t returned almost immediately.

  But it was.

  Yes. Where?

  Not my house.

  My house then.

  Lou didn’t know where ‘my house’ was. She had never been there before. Oh, she thought. A roadblock. That’s good. Maybe I’ll just cancel. But her thumb hovered just a moment too long and another message came quickly.