I Give My Marriage a Year

by Holly Wainwright

  Josh climbed down the ladder slowly, the chainsaw in one hand, leaves in his hair, dust all over his goggles and his old, ripped Ramones T-shirt.

  ‘I’ll go and get the green bin,’ Lou said, ‘and a rake.’

  Josh pushed the goggles up on his head. ‘Seven months?’ he asked.

  ‘That’s what we’re up to,’ Lou said. ‘Since January.’

  Lou watched Josh’s face as he took the goggles off and lifted both his hands to shake the tree out of his hair. His expression was hard to read.

  He dropped the goggles to the lawn and wiped his hands on his jeans.

  ‘Fuck me,’ said Josh. ‘And I thought I was going mad.’

  Josh

  Tree Day, Josh decided, was a blessing and a curse.

  A curse, because it was the day he found out that his worst fears were real. And a blessing, because now so many mysterious things made sense.

  Sex Month. Camping. Couples therapy.

  But now it had been two weeks, and he couldn’t sleep and he felt physically sick almost all the time.

  On Tree Day, Lou had stopped hiding and said what she really meant. She meant: Leaving you is a live possibility. I am actively considering it every day. In fact, I am keeping a running score of your ability to make me want to stay with you. Just so you know.

  ‘What am I supposed to do with that?’ Josh asked the only person he felt he could talk to about it. ‘The pressure is ridiculous.’

  ‘Josh, I can’t discuss this with you,’ Gretchen said to him.

  ‘But you’ve known us both longer than anyone,’ Josh said. ‘You know what we’ve been through. You were there when we met, for God’s sake.’

  He was on the phone in the guitar room, hiding. Still.

  ‘Yes,’ said Gretchen. Her voice was faint. It sounded like she was at an outside bar, chill techno music pulsing in the background and young voices squawking as loudly as the seagulls. ‘But you know where my loyalties lie.’

  He did. Of course he did. But he wanted to feel close to his wife, who was pushing him away, and Gretchen was closer to her than anyone.

  A moment went by. He could hear a ferry horn in her background.

  ‘Is she going to leave me, Gretch?’ Josh asked. He knew he sounded desperate.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Gretchen said, and paused. ‘I don’t want her to, Josh, I’ll tell you that for free. You two are as good together as any other couple I know. But . . .’

  He held his breath, wondering what the ‘but’ was going to be.

  ‘She’s looking at the next half of her life. And just like men have done forever, she’s asking, Is this it? Is this enough?’

  Josh almost laughed. ‘Are you saying Lou’s having a midlife crisis?’

  Gretchen actually did laugh, a little. ‘Why is that so ridiculous? We all have choices, Josh. Used to just be you guys, now it’s all of us.’

  ‘Gretch . . .’ He didn’t really know what he wanted her to say, but he knew he wanted to stay on the phone with her. Gretchen was a link. A clue. ‘Is this about . . . anything else?’ He couldn’t bring himself to say anyone.

  Gretchen didn’t speak for a moment, and in that moment, Josh’s stomach dropped to his shoes. ‘I think Lou’s just trying to find her “why” again,’ she said eventually.

  ‘Her “why”?’

  ‘Why have you two been together forever? Why should you be together forever?’

  Josh could immediately think of ten reasons. ‘That shouldn’t be so hard,’ he said. Also, he thought, that wasn’t a no. When he’d asked Lou’s best friend if all this was about anything else, she hadn’t said no.

  Gretchen sighed. Harbour noises. Seagull sounds.

  ‘I’ve got to go.’ Her voice had changed, like she was smiling at someone near the phone. ‘I’m meant to be with people.’

  ‘What am I supposed to do with this information?’ Josh asked. He was pacing around the room now.

  ‘Hey, you called me,’ Gretchen said. ‘Look, just don’t lose it, Josh. Staying cool has always been one of your most endearing qualities.’

  Josh was trying to stay cool. But it wasn’t easy.

  Sometimes he was overcome with sadness at the thought of his girls experiencing a childhood similar to his own. Sometimes he just felt disgusted with himself for not being able, after all these years, to keep the woman he loved happy. And sometimes he wondered whether it was possible for anyone, any couple, to unchain themselves from their history.

  Josh had seen Dana two days ago.

  He was working on a new private job – a heritage renovation in the inner west. A music producer had bought a warehouse in Camperdown and wanted to turn it into a state-of-the-art home that still had traditional touches. He and Tyler were doing a staircase, a mezzanine, an internal pool deck, all with rich, dark, knotty recycled timber. It was bloody beautiful, if he said so himself.

  But Josh was finding that every day he went to that job he got a little angrier. Driving north into his old neighbourhoods, fighting choking traffic on narrow roads at 6 a.m., he’d tick off reasons in his head why he wasn’t a music industry professional about to move into a converted warehouse.

  Because I’ve had a family to support for nine years now.

  Because I don’t know all the right people.

  Because I’m not an arsehole.

  He was clinging, he knew, to his deep-held belief that people successful in a field he would quite fancy being successful in himself must be dickheads. So when he briefly met Pearl Hass – a Kiwi woman in her thirties with a pregnant girlfriend and a bouncing kelpie – and she was lovely, it almost irritated him more.

  Mostly, he and Tyler dealt with the architect, who was a bit of a dickhead, really, and who on this particular day had ordered the project manager to send the chippies home early because the French tiler was coming and needed peace in which to make some big decisions.

  So Josh dropped Tyler at the pub and sulked his way back through the traffic to collect the girls from school on the dot of 3 p.m. and take them to the park for a kick-around. He knew Lou was up to her ears in marking and would appreciate two knackered kids who’d fall asleep easily after dinner.

  He was trying to be helpful.

  But as soon as he pulled the ute up to the park – the girls crammed illegally but thrillingly (for them) into his passenger side – he saw Dana with Bertie over near the goalposts, exactly where he was planning to take Stella and Rita.

  His irritation, building since this morning, when he’d seen the techies loading in the home-studio kit at the warehouse conversion, was almost overwhelming. He sat at the ute’s wheel, gripping it tightly and cursing under his breath.

  ‘What are you doing, Daddy? Aren’t we getting out?’ Rita was asking from the passenger side.

  Dana had spotted the car and started waving. Since the Easter camping disaster, Josh had felt so foolish about the whole thing that he’d tried to erase it from his memory and his world. He’d been with Lou once when they’d seen Dana at school pick-up and he’d tried to make a joke about it – ‘Shall we swing over there . . .?’ – and Lou’s laugh had been so sad, so humourless, that he knew it was a mistake.

  He had stopped messaging Dana about music, about anything. Had ignored her texts, had tried his best to avoid places where he thought she might be. But here he was, on this annoying autumn day, having told his girls they were getting a kick-about with Daddy, and he had to deliver.

  ‘Come on, girls,’ he said, opening the door. ‘Let’s go over this way.’ And he motioned in the opposite direction to the other side of the park, but by this time Dana was almost at the car, dragging Bertie by the hand.

  ‘Josh!’ she was calling. ‘Josh!’

  Josh kept walking, but Stella and Rita had stopped.

  ‘Dad,’ Stella said. ‘She’s calling you. That lady from camping.’

  ‘Bertie’s mum,’ added Rita.

  Bugger bugger bugger.

  When Josh turned, he was horrifi
ed to see that Dana was crying. ‘Josh,’ she said again. ‘Josh, please.’

  Stella and Rita just stood there, staring at the crying blonde woman in her leggings and fleece as she came to a stop in front of them. Bertie, clinging to his mum’s hand, looked mortified.

  ‘Josh, I’m so sorry,’ she said, her voice crackly and wet. ‘I’m so sorry. Please . . .’

  Josh looked at his girls – pointedly, he hoped – but she kept going.

  ‘I really miss you.’

  Stella looked at him sharply, and Josh immediately tossed her the AFL ball he’d brought out of the car. ‘Stell, take Rita and Bertie for a kick. I’ll be there in a minute.’

  Stella looked like she was going to refuse, but Josh’s eye contact didn’t break and soon she started towards the oval with a dramatic, ‘Come on, then,’ to Rita and Bert.

  ‘Dana,’ Josh said, his insides roiling with anger, ‘this is really inappropriate.’

  ‘You’ve got it all wrong,’ Dana said, stepping closer to him. ‘Honestly, I’ve been needing to talk to you ever since Easter – it’s really not what you think.’

  ‘Dana, I just think the whole thing was a big –’

  ‘Misunderstanding. It was a big misunderstanding.’

  Josh remembered Dana’s lips pushing determinedly into his. Her husband’s words.

  ‘I just think we should all move on,’ he said.

  ‘We were just drunk, Josh.’ Dana took another step, and she reached out her hands as if he might take them. ‘Marco shouldn’t drink. That’s the truth. Things between us aren’t good. We’re not . . . happy.’

  Josh kept his hands by his side. He looked over to the kids. They weren’t kicking the football. They were a hundred metres away, the girls staring at him and Dana, Bertie looking at the ground.

  ‘I miss you, Josh,’ Dana went on, her hands out flat now, as if she was pleading. ‘I miss our friendship, the music . . .’

  ‘Dana, please. It’s all caused enough trouble already. And’ – he nodded towards the children, and Dana looked quickly too, but didn’t seem perturbed – ‘I’ve got to go.’

  ‘Trouble? With Lou? I’m really so sorry.’

  ‘Dana . . .’ Josh was so fucking angry. Why was this woman still talking to him? His girls were watching, his wife needed no excuse to kick him out, he was still speckled with sawdust from working on someone else’s dream house. ‘Just leave it. Really. I don’t want to talk about it, and especially not with you.’

  Dana looked surprised, but at last her hands dropped to her side in something like defeat. ‘I see.’ And then she just looked sad.

  Josh started walking away towards the girls. He was holding his breath, he realised.

  ‘Josh!’ Dana called after him. ‘Maybe I can talk to Lou, explain everything. Tell her our bond’s about the music.’

  And Josh turned. ‘Don’t,’ he shouted loudly.

  As he resumed walking, Bertie ran past him towards his mother. When he drew level, the boy delivered a quick kick to Josh’s ankle, sending a shot of pain up through his leg.

  ‘Fuck!’ Josh exclaimed, and stumbled a little.

  Stella and Rita looked shocked as their dad hobbled towards them.

  ‘It’s all okay, girls,’ he called. ‘I’m fine.’

  Just keep walking, he told himself. Just keep right on limping forward.

  Lou

  18 May, 2014

  ‘Mocktails are bullshit,’ Lou said to Gretchen down the phone. ‘I miss vodka.’

  ‘The science is in,’ said Gretchen. ‘You are not on the vodkas.’

  ‘Sigh,’ said Lou, who was lying on her bed in her underwear, tracing the thick dark line that now ran from her bellybutton and arced over her pregnant belly and into her pants. ‘I guess I’ll still come.’

  ‘I’ll meet you there at eight.’

  ‘Eight? Are you insane? Six thirty.’

  ‘The place will not even be open at six thirty, Lou.’ Gretchen was laughing.

  ‘I’m a pregnant woman with a preschooler and a job. Being in bed by nine is my religion. I will sacrifice all before it.’

  ‘Fine, I’ll meet the others at nine. You and me six thirty. Can I go and get on with my shallow, selfish, late-night life now?’

  ‘If you must,’ said Lou. ‘But don’t be having any sex. It’s gross. That’s official.’

  ‘Definitely not official. See you Saturday, Lou-Lou.’

  It was Sunday. Lou had two more weeks of work before her mat leave started. She was so tired that the idea of getting off this bed and going downstairs to see if Stell had fallen into their construction site of a backyard seemed all too much. Josh would have yelled up if she had, right?

  The window was open and the tree was blowing the yellowing leaves around outside in a pleasant autumn breeze. Lou closed her eyes, felt the cool air on her bump. She’d been right about this room, right about this house, right about this tree. It was well and truly home now.

  For a while it had looked like it would slip through their fingers as the owners decided on a nerve-shredding auction, and then there was seemingly endless paperwork, money-moving dramas and hidden costs of this and that. Every time, Lou was convinced Josh’s cold feet would turn to ice blocks and she wouldn’t be able to shift him.

  And then there was her mother. When Lou had brought her mum to a viewing to actually see the house that she and Brian were helping them buy, Annabelle said they were aiming too low. ‘This isn’t a forever home, BB,’ she’d said, standing in the empty kitchen and looking out at the concrete yard. ‘You can do better.’

  ‘I don’t want to do better, Mum,’ Lou had said. ‘This is almost manageable. We can be happy here.’

  The way Annabelle tightened her lips as her eyes swept the medium-sized rooms and the bland white kitchen and the tiny strip of front garden told Lou that her mother doubted that.

  ‘Mum, honestly – to me, this place is perfect.’

  ‘I want you to have everything you deserve,’ her mother said. ‘And a lovely big house is part of that. It’s what your husband should want to give you.’

  ‘This isn’t the fifties, Mum; Josh isn’t giving me anything,’ Lou said, looking nervously at the other people who were there for the open-house inspection. ‘We’re a partnership.’ She knew Annabelle was looking at the others too, and had somehow decided they weren’t the right kind of competition. She clearly thought Lou should be in a different contest.

  ‘The fifties! How old do you think I am?’ Annabelle said loudly, with a laugh, and then she pulled Lou closer to her and lowered her voice. ‘When I met your father, I knew he could offer me a better life. That’s what’s supposed to happen, Lou: you’re supposed to get a step up for your family, and they for theirs, and so on . . .’

  ‘I’ve heard this story before, Mum.’

  And she had. It was her mother’s origin story. The legend went that Annabelle had never felt at home in the small northern English town where she was born and raised, with its working men’s clubs and its narrow range of life choices for a girl. But Brian, a young apprentice engineer from Sydney whose family had ties in the region, made the then-bold choice to do his training in Leeds. Annabelle always joked she met the only Australian in northern England on the day he walked into the uninspiring cafe where Annabelle was waitressing and the rest, while not quite worthy of history, was nevertheless passed on to Rob and Lou as if it were a fairytale.

  Now Annabelle, who had graduated from a worker’s terrace in a bleak English town to a semi-detached (and then a detached, mind you) house in the bleached blandness of Australia’s sprawling suburbs, ran a finger down the wall of the Botany townhouse as if judging its cleanliness. ‘I suppose this can be a stepping-stone house.’

  Now they’d been living here for eighteen months, and Josh had stopped grumbling and they were handling the monthly repayments – just – and Stella was growing bigger and louder and more energetic by the day, and soon she would have a deck and a little turfed g
arden to play in, and then there would be another little Josh or Lou, and she wouldn’t be bringing them from hospital to a little bit of someone else’s home, but to her own. And she felt pride in that. Yes, it turned out she was her mother’s daughter.

  Josh appeared at the bedroom door, looked at Lou lying on the bed in her knickers looking at her phone, and smiled. He was dusty, dirty from the deck.

  ‘What are you smiling about?’ she asked him.

  ‘You look beautiful,’ he said, ‘lying there like that.’

  ‘I look like a blimp,’ she said. ‘But thanks. Where’s Stell?’

  ‘In the Night Garden.’ Stella was obsessed with the surreal English kids’ TV program. ‘It’s like she’s fixated on someone else’s acid trip.’

  ‘Then I look more like the Pinky Ponk,’ Lou said, thinking of the green, spotty airship in the show. ‘It’s a weird time for her to be watching TV.’

  ‘Yeah, she kept trying to play with the nail gun, so I had to distract her.’

  ‘I hope you’re joking.’

  ‘Kind of. Can I lie down with you for a while?’ The way Josh was looking at Lou, smiling at Lou, she knew exactly where this was meant to be leading.

  ‘Only if you want to look at my Pinterest boards of deck doors,’ she said, holding out her phone. Lou had read the stories about impossibly horny pregnant women; women who had never felt more sensual, more powerful. She could safely say that, this pregnancy, she did not feel the goddess moving within her. Just a lot of gas.

  ‘I can think of better things . . .’ Josh started taking off his dusty T-shirt. He dropped it on the floor, began to unbutton his jeans.

  ‘You’re not leaving that there, are you?’ Lou said instinctively.

  Josh looked confused for a moment, then at his T-shirt on the floor. ‘Only for a moment,’ he said. ‘The briefest of moments, I promise.’

  Lou squirmed. The effort of even that felt like a lot. ‘Josh . . .’

  ‘Okay!’ He picked the T-shirt up and threw it across the room, where it landed in the washing basket, but not without hitting the white wall, leaving a tiny, dusty plume.