I Give My Marriage a Year

by Holly Wainwright

  He hadn’t managed to avoid Dana the Strangely Straightforward, as he thought of her, over the last few weeks of rehearsals. He’d asked her if she was sure Umbert was in Stella’s class, after his daughter had come up blank about him, and Dana said no, she wasn’t really sure, she’d just thought it was a good icebreaker. Actually, a top-line investigation by Lou had uncovered the truth – Umbert was in the year below, and at school he was simply called Bert, or Bertie.

  When he’d presented this to Dana, she just shrugged and said, ‘Sure,’ leaving Josh to suggest to his wife that maybe Dana was a bit on the loopy side.

  ‘There’s no such thing as loopy,’ Lou had said. ‘She must want something.’ But Lou hadn’t seemed particularly troubled by what it might be.

  Backstage, Dana pushed Josh down onto a steel-framed chair. The noise was building in the room as the crowd grew, and band members dashed in and out, getting ready for the opening songs. Dana took big, globby handfuls of hair cream and slapped it on Josh’s head, raking her fingers through his curly hair to make it sit flat. It felt good. Josh was excited about getting up there and playing, excited to be singing with his wife later. The blue couch of couple’s therapy and their mountain of ‘stuff’ seemed very far away at that moment.

  ‘Your wife’s really going to appreciate this hair,’ Dana said, smoothing her handiwork down with the palm of one hand. ‘It might make her less shitty about singing with you.’

  ‘Oh,’ – Josh shook his head – ‘she’s not that shitty. I think she’s secretly enjoying it.’

  ‘I don’t,’ said Dana, putting her hands on his shoulders. ‘There, finished. But it’s nice for people to do things for each other.’

  Josh got up quickly. ‘I’ll see you out there,’ he said to Dana, who had her blonde hair tied back in a high ponytail with a bow and wore a scarf around her neck, like she was in Grease or something. She waved, and he headed to the bar, where he saw Lou talking to a group of mum-friends, as she called them, standing around a high table with a cardboard Robert Smith from The Cure stuck on top of it, all wild hair and smudged eyeliner. Lou was laughing.

  Josh headed straight over to the table, but just before he got there a tall, broad man stepped into the circle of women and leaned in to talk to Lou. He looked familiar, but Josh couldn’t place him. He must be another teacher, he thought, or possibly the husband of one of the other mums.

  As he got closer, though, just a few steps from Robert Smith’s cardboard head, something about the way this guy was talking to Lou made Josh stop. His lips were just a little closer to her ear than Josh’s would be if he were talking to one of the other women at the table. And, it was hard to tell from this angle, but it was possible one of the man’s hands was on the small of Lou’s back.

  Two more steps. ‘Hey,’ he said, over the pumping sound of ‘Praise You’. ‘Lou.’

  The second she looked up and saw him, Josh knew that this wasn’t one of the other women’s husbands. For a start, Lou stepped away from the man immediately, almost bumping into Yoga Sal as she did.

  And then Josh got a look at the guy. He was tall, as tall as Josh, but broad, a big guy. His eyes registered surprise at seeing Josh, as if he knew who Josh was, but didn’t expect to see him.

  He looked like a man who usually wore a suit but was in a polo shirt tonight because that’s what guys who usually wore a suit wore when it was ‘smart casual’ night.

  ‘Josh,’ Lou said, but her mouth exaggerated the word, because the music was loud. And she gave him a smile broader than any she had been offering him lately. ‘Your hair!’

  The guy nodded at Josh, waved at Lou and the other women and walked away.

  Josh was aware of the three other women at the table as a kind of blur, all of them commenting on his hair and his leather jacket and how much they were looking forward to seeing Lou’s performance. ‘My husband would never sing with me,’ one of them was shouting over Fat Boy Slim. ‘You’re so lucky, Lou!’

  ‘I hardly think so!’ Lou laughed. ‘It’s Josh who made me do it.’

  ‘Well, I think it’s romantic,’ said Yoga Sal. ‘Break a leg.’

  Josh took one more step forward and took Lou’s hand, and the women cooed again as he and Lou turned and he led her to the hallway where the music wasn’t quite so deafening. ‘Who was that?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That guy you were talking to. Who was he?’ Josh let go of Lou’s hand now they were just outside the hall and no longer a picture of romance. They were two middle-aged parents in borderline ridiculous clothes, squaring off.

  ‘It’s just someone I work with,’ Lou said. ‘He’s here for a big fortieth in the other bar. Came to say hello.’

  ‘How did he know you were here?’

  ‘Because I’ve been bitching about the fact my husband’s making me do a duet at the school fundraiser for weeks,’ Lou said, and she looked half annoyed, half amused. Maybe this was okay after all. ‘What do you think?’ she asked him, and her eyes were challenging him.

  ‘I think he likes you,’ Josh said, and he crossed the space between them and put his mouth up to Lou’s ear. ‘The way he was leaning into you like this.’

  Lou’s eyes went wide as Josh put his arm around her waist and his hand in the small of her back and whispered, ‘Like this.’

  ‘Fucking hell,’ Lou said. ‘You’re crazy.’ Then she looked up at him. ‘It’s kind of hot though.’

  She turned her face to kiss his neck, ever so quickly, as people walked past. ‘Is that how Loopy Dana talks to you?’

  He laughed, feeling better. And then it was time for the band to go on, and soon he was up there playing, and he saw Lou in the crowd of parents getting progressively drunker and more appreciative as the covers played on.

  And then Lou came up and they sang ‘Walking on Sunshine’ together. And even though he kind of hated that song, they smiled at each other while they were doing it, and pulled off some cheesy dance moves that a cringing Stella had choreographed for them. When they came offstage, panting and sweating, so many women came over to tell him that they wished their husbands would sing with them, and he and Lou laughed and made vomiting faces, but they felt light, right.

  And then Josh had some drinks and danced, as much as he ever danced, which was really just shaking his shoulders up and down on the spot, and he didn’t think about the polo shirt man again. At least, not until he was packing up his guitar at the end of the night, as the band milled about congratulating each other, collecting instruments and rolling up cables.

  Dana came to give him a hug. ‘You two were great,’ she said, stepping away, ponytail swinging.

  ‘You were great, too,’ Josh said, and then, probably because of the beers, he asked, ‘Where’s your Italian husband tonight, anyway? Doesn’t he like to see you play?’

  ‘Oh, Marco would never come to anything like this,’ Dana said. ‘He has no sense of joy.’

  Why the hell are you married to this guy? Josh thought, but didn’t say.

  ‘He’s at a fortieth tonight, anyway,’ she went on. ‘I think they’re going to the casino, God help them.’

  ‘There’s a fortieth in the bar next door,’ Josh said, picking up his guitar and slinging it over his shoulder. ‘He’s not at that one?’

  ‘There’s no fortieth next door,’ Dana said, looking irritated. ‘We’re the only function here tonight. I had to argue with the club about the bar. They weren’t going to put on as many staff as I knew we’d need. You know parents when they get drinking . . .’

  ‘Yes, I do,’ Josh said. He looked at Dana for a moment, and then leaned in to give her a quick kiss on the cheek. ‘I’m going to find my wife.’

  He found Lou in the crowd of tipsy people hugging each other goodbye just outside.

  He’d given back the leather jacket and the biker boots to whichever band member – cooler than he – had loaned them to him. Now he was just Josh again, in his old Stones T-shirt and his denim jacket.

  �
��I was wrong about that,’ Lou said to him as they stood out the front of the club together, with his guitar, waiting for their Uber. ‘It was actually great fun. I genuinely enjoyed myself.’

  ‘I’m glad,’ Josh said. ‘That’s what I hoped would happen.’

  ‘Well, you were right.’

  ‘Wow.’

  Lou punched him in the arm. ‘We need to get home,’ she said. ‘I have these stupid stick-on chicken-fillet things under my dress. I keep thinking they’re going to come unstuck and my old boobs will go completely rogue.’

  Josh watched Lou, her phone in one hand, the other down her dress, hiking at her stick-on bra. He knew that he had a choice. He could push her about the polo shirt man and send the evening in one direction, or he could stay quiet and trust her in that moment, and keep things where they were right now, in a rare place of non-irritation.

  ‘How much is the babysitter going to be?’ he asked, making the decision.

  ‘Too much,’ Lou replied. ‘I’ll have to do a transfer; I have no cash on me.’

  ‘Worth it, though,’ Josh said. ‘To have some fun together.’

  She looked at him and smiled. ‘Sure.’

  He lifted up an arm. Lou looked at him like she was considering something, and then stepped towards him, accepting his hug.

  He’d stood outside the leagues club with his arm around his wife, with people stepping around them, calling to each other and waving. And he’d known that this minute of everything being alright wasn’t real. But it was enough, right then, not to ruin it. A moment’s peace.

  *

  Why isn’t Trust on this list? Josh wondered, scrolling through the values. Seems like an obvious one to me.

  I value Trust.

  Monogamy was, but that seemed a bit heavy-handed, somehow, when you could only choose ten words.

  Eva Bernard would say that his insecurity right now was less about the idea of his grown-up wife talking to a man in a bar and more to do with his own unfulfilled desires. Eva would say that couples project their own stuff onto each other and it’s important to know the difference.

  Josh clicked on Forgiveness – to be forgiving of others.

  And Passion – to have deep feelings about ideas, activities, or people.

  He felt a sense of dread welling up about tomorrow. After dinner, before bath time, Josh had gone over and put his hands on Lou’s hips as she stacked the dishwasher. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘For the concert.’

  Lou had quickly stepped out of his attempted embrace. ‘I’m glad it made you happy,’ she said, without looking at him. ‘But it’s not the answer, you know.’

  One of the big changes in Lou recently was that she wasn’t going to pretend things were okay in the hope of the pretence becoming reality. She had shifted, ever so slightly, into a determined position of opposition. Well, maybe he should do the same.

  He looked at his list again. Be honest, he heard Sara the therapist and guru Eva Bernard say.

  He clicked on Monogamy. Screw it. She needed to know.

  Lou

  24 December, 2008

  On Christmas Eve, 2008, Lou had the orgasm of her life.

  Honeymoons, Josh and Lou decided, were for ordinary people.

  After their wedding under the tree in Camperdown Park, they waited for the summer holidays then went camping. Along with many thousands of ordinary people.

  They agreed about the romance of road trips versus resorts; agreed that sleeping under the stars was sexy, and that counter meals in country pubs were the kind of Aussie kitsch they approved of.

  By Christmas they were at Pebbly Beach, home to tourist-plagued, tame kangaroos on the sand, raucous flocks of iridescent lorikeets and gums soaring against the bluest of skies. It was, Josh said, just the right side of cheesy for their first holiday as married people.

  They had a double swag, and that night they broke the campground rules and smuggled it down to the beach in the pitch-black and made love. And that was the right term for it: it really was making love.

  I will never forget this moment, Lou had thought. I will bring it to me whenever I need to conjure calm. This night, in this swag with Josh, with the sound of the waves and the sparkle-studded sky above us. I will remember it as being as close to perfection as we’re ever lucky enough to get.

  Of course, in reality, it wasn’t quite perfect. There were sandflies, and the canvas of the swag was too heavy for high summer, and the bottle of champagne they’d brought with them was cheap, warm and flat. But the sex was mind-bogglingly good. She felt that thing teenagers felt when they first discovered orgasms – what, you mean I can do this whenever I want to? And she lay back on the swag and laughed out loud at the sheer joy of it.

  She lay on top of Josh on that swag, sand in every crevice, sweaty and exhausted, her chin resting on her hands resting on his chest, and the two of them made promises to each other that they had never made before.

  ‘I promise you,’ Lou said, her voice thick and heavy, ‘that we will never be boring.’

  ‘I promise you,’ Josh said, ‘to always tell you if you say something stupid.’

  ‘But I never say anything stupid.’

  ‘That’s why it’s a great promise.’

  Lou kissed him.

  ‘I promise,’ she said, ‘never to break your heart.’

  ‘And I promise,’ he said, ‘never to break your heart.’

  The sky began to lighten over the ocean, the darkness slowly lifting, the stars gently fading.

  Their sandfly bites began to itch, a chill edged the air, and Josh and Lou rolled up the double swag and went to meet Christmas morning, with the kangaroos and the lorikeets and all the other ordinary people.

  Josh

  31 December, 2008

  Two-minute noodles for Christmas lunch. Warm beer and mozzie bites in unspeakable places. Tent sex. River sex. Beach sex.

  This honeymoon road trip really was the best of times.

  ‘Maybe we should just keep going,’ Josh said to Lou on New Year’s Eve, as he picked bits of grass out of her hair after an evening swim. They had reached the Snowy Mountains and were camping at Thredbo. They’d wanted to see the new year in sitting by the river, their feet dangling next to their beer bottles in the cool water as the campground buzzed quietly around them.

  ‘Keep going?’ Lou rested her head back on Josh’s shoulder.

  ‘Never go home,’ he said. ‘Make life a road trip. One long adventure.’

  ‘I don’t think the Newtown principal would like that much,’ said Lou. ‘But then again, screw the boss – I’m in.’ She laughed.

  ‘I’m serious,’ said Josh, realising in that moment that he was. ‘We’ve always said we want life to be an adventure, well, here’s our chance.’

  Lou pulled her head back and looked at him. After two weeks on the road, she had a broad sprinkle of freckles across her tanned face. She wore not a smudge of make-up, her hair was always drying from a swim, a singlet and cut-off shorts were her constant uniform. Bare feet. Perfection.

  ‘We can’t,’ she said. ‘We have two more weeks before we have to go back to being normal.’

  ‘Why do we?’ asked Josh, warming to his point. ‘We’re both employable wherever we go. Imagine if we just kept driving. Decided to hop over to Tassie for a while, head up north, whatever . . .’

  ‘You’ve got honeymoon fever,’ Lou said. ‘Life won’t be like this forever. You’ll need other people soon.’

  Josh flung out an arm to the campsite behind them. ‘There are other people everywhere if we want them.’ And he leaned forward to kiss her. ‘I don’t.’

  ‘Now you don’t,’ Lou said, smiling into his eyes. ‘Because we’re sex-drunk, and we’ve escaped our families and our jobs and all the drama of the wedding. Right now’ – she kissed him back – ‘we’re unbearably into each other.’

  ‘And we shall stay that way, I just know it,’ Josh said, in a mock-serious voice. ‘I can’t imagine anyone else I’d rather talk wi
th, eat with, sleep with, drive with, sing with . . .’

  ‘Argue with.’

  ‘Sure, sometimes.’

  ‘Well, me neither. But we have the flat, and Pocket . . .’

  ‘Gretchen will keep Pocket.’

  ‘Are you kidding? She didn’t want to look after her this time. She says an animal is more of a commitment than she’s ready for.’

  ‘My dreams cannot be thwarted by a cat,’ Josh said. ‘We have gypsy blood – we must push on!’

  ‘You have gypsy blood,’ Lou said, laughing. ‘My blood is stubbornly suburban, and I’m in constant battle with it.’

  Josh lay back on the grassy edge of the river, looked at the black outlines of the trees against the navy sky, breathed in the cooling air. ‘Two thousand and nine,’ he said, ‘should be our year less ordinary. We can go anywhere, do anything.’

  Lou lay next to him, her head in the crook of his neck. ‘I love it here,’ she said. ‘But I feel like I love it anywhere you are.’

  And they stayed there, talking about all the versions of the future they could imagine. The one in which it was only a matter of time before they had to move to New York, or London, or LA, because Josh sold his songs to big stars. The one in which they travelled to a remote community in Arnhem Land where Lou taught in the local school and the children also learned from the elders. The one in which Josh built them a beautiful wooden home in a tropical rainforest and they raised a gaggle of wild-haired, barefoot children. The one in which Lou ran marathons and wrote plays while Josh stayed home and played guitar. The one in which Josh became a session musician and toured with rock stars and Lou jetted out to see him play in front of screaming fans in Japan and Scandinavia.

  And then they began to hear their fellow campers cheering and clinking glasses, and it was 2009.

  ‘Happy New Year, Lou,’ said Josh, kissing his wife deeply. ‘Thank you for marrying me.’

  ‘We are entirely insufferable right now,’ said Lou.