I Give My Marriage a Year

by Holly Wainwright

  ‘What’s going on?’ she asked, holding her elbow in an overhead stretch. Stella and Rita were sliding into their chairs at the table, smiling at her in a slightly frozen, unfamiliar way. Rita even looked like she’d attempted to brush her own hair.

  ‘It’s the beginning of your birthday week,’ said Josh, smiling at her. ‘And I think I could do a bit more to make your mornings easier, yes?’

  ‘How was your run, Mummy?’ asked Stella, pouring some Milo loops into her bowl, with something like a seventy per cent accuracy rate.

  ‘Okay, what have you told them?’ Lou eyeballed Josh, and walked over to the girls, putting a hand on each of their heads. ‘Because either I’m dying, or you’ve swapped our kids for some better-behaved clones.’

  ‘Mum!’ Stella scolded. ‘Don’t joke about dying.’

  ‘Are you dying?’ asked Rita, wide-eyed. ‘Like, really?

  ‘She’s dying of love for her family, you two,’ Josh jumped in. ‘And I’ve got to go. I was thinking I could make a curry for dinner, what do you reckon?’

  Stella and Rita nodded enthusiastically. Rita? Curry?

  Lou looked around. The kitchen was clean, the girls’ lunches were in progress on the bench.

  ‘This is . . .’

  ‘Bye, babe.’ Josh kissed her on the head, did the same to the girls, then headed for the door, his ute, the workshop.

  You don’t have to do this, she thought. Be on your best behaviour. Then again, she was hardly going to complain about easier mornings.

  ‘Can I play with the iPad, Mum?’ They felt like the most uttered words in their house. Usual programming had resumed.

  And her reply, as she sat and pulled off her running shoes, felt like the most predictable response. ‘No, it’s a weekday, eat your breakfast.’

  Her birthday week. Since when had a birthday become a week? Lou was going to be thirty-seven on Thursday. It didn’t feel like a big-deal kind of birthday, but it was the second time it had been mentioned to her in twenty-four hours.

  It’s your birthday this week and it’s been six months. Time to treat yourself. The text had come in at 11 p.m., with classic ‘it’s late and I’m lonely’ timing. Lou hadn’t responded, but the message just sitting there, on her phone by her bed, exposed, made her jumpy.

  With some help from Sara the therapist and a little more from Gretchen, Lou had stopped obsessing about the debacle of the Easter camping trip and was instead choosing to focus on the fact that her husband was a man who could lift you out of danger when a storm blew a tree through your window. To focus on the deal she’d made in her head when she wasn’t sure if Rita had been hurt.

  6. Stay positive. That’s what she’d written into her phone at the beginning of the month. Focus on the good. Stop looking for problems.

  ‘I’m trying a clean slate, not keeping score,’ she’d told Gretchen last Saturday morning. They were standing on the sidelines of a kids’ soccer match, watching JoJo pretend to play. Stella and Rita were playing their own game in the sharp morning sun on the other side of the pitch, chasing each other back and forth, tackling and falling into the damp grass.

  ‘Keeping score?’ Gretchen looked up from her phone.

  ‘Every couple does it,’ said Lou. ‘You know, I drop off so you have to pick up. I want to go for a run this morning so you get to go for a beer tonight. I let you lie in last Sunday so it’s my turn tomorrow . . .’

  ‘Sounds tiresome,’ said Gretchen, putting her phone away and pushing her hands into her pockets. ‘One of the things I most enjoy about our conversations about your marriage is how they reaffirm my life choices.’

  ‘Said the woman on the sidelines watching her ex-boyfriend’s child playing soccer.’ Lou laughed. ‘You haven’t escaped all of this shit.’

  ‘I’m just picking JoJo up to get her hair done,’ Gretchen insisted. ‘Plus it’s time for my new colour, so two birds . . .’

  ‘Keep telling yourself that,’ said Lou. ‘Anyway, I’m trying not to do it. See, usually, the fact I’ve brought the girls with me to see you this morning after gymnastics would mean Josh owed me, because he’s getting a quiet Saturday morning at home. He’s probably got his feet up, reading the paper, music loud.’

  ‘But . . .’

  ‘I’m not going to mention it. I want him to be happy. He wants me to be happy. I’m working on that.’

  ‘And how’s it going?’ Lou was sure she could detect an edge of sarcasm in her friend’s voice.

  ‘I’m focusing on the positive,’ said Lou. ‘But I worry we’re stressing the kids out. There’s a lot of tension in the house, I think, with us treading so carefully all the time. They’re either melting down or Stepford children at the moment.’

  She looked at her girls. They were charging about in the wet grass, jumping on each other like puppies. Stella was usually a bit too cool for this kind of rumbling with her little sister these days. It made Lou happy to see. But maybe . . . was Stella regressing?

  Shut up, stupid Mum guilt.

  ‘You should talk to JoJo about it,’ Gretchen suggested. ‘She lived through her parents’ divorce. She can tell you how it felt being a kid in the middle of all that.’

  ‘I couldn’t do that!’

  ‘Why not? Adults should ask kids for their opinions more often, if you ask me,’ Gretchen said. ‘JoJo’s not an idiot.’

  ‘You think adults should ask kids for their opinions more often because you’re not bloody raising any,’ Lou said, still watching her girls. ‘Kids have plenty of opinions, believe me, and they’re not generally backwards about expressing them.’

  ‘I’m serious. Take her for a coffee before our hair thing.’

  Lou looked at her friend. ‘A coffee? Really?’

  ‘She’s a Sydney private-school girl,’ said Gretchen. ‘She’s been on the lattes since she was eight. I’ll take your two shopping. It’s an aunty’s job to treat them.’

  ‘Gretch, you have your own –’

  ‘Shush. Just do it.’

  And Lou had to admit that maybe it wasn’t a terrible idea . . .

  Lou had been remembering it while she was running that morning: the bizarre moment she found herself seeking advice from JoJo, a supremely confident and articulate almost-thirteen-year-old.

  As soon as the ten-dollar cakes and elaborate coffees were set down before them in a chi-chi Double Bay cafe, the girl had asked, ‘Why are we doing this? Is Gretchen doing something she doesn’t want me to know about? Is she surprising me? Am I allowed to look at my phone?’

  Lou had leaped straight in. ‘Gretchen told me to ask you for advice about something.’

  JoJo’s hand had already been sneaking towards her iPhone, lying on the table between them in its bedazzled case, but now she stopped. ‘What?’ she asked.

  Knowing that flattery was the way to get any teen to do anything, Lou continued, ‘Gretchen said that you have a lot of very insightful things to say about divorce, and I need some advice to help a kid I’m teaching. I can’t tell you details, because –’ Lou cast about for an excuse ‘– teachers’ code.’

  ‘Insightful?’ JoJo took a bite of the huge profiterole-looking thing Lou had bought for her. ‘She said that?’

  ‘Helpful, thoughtful, useful.’ Lou threw the words out. ‘I’m worried about this kid, and since you’re close to the experience . . .’

  What am I doing?

  ‘You want me to talk to you about divorce.’

  ‘I do.’

  There was a moment when Lou thought JoJo was going to laugh at her, and she should.

  But the teenager instead took another bite of her profiterole and chewed it slowly. The silence stretched out interminably, then: ‘I was glad when he left,’ the girl said suddenly. ‘I hated the feeling of us living in the same house together.’

  Lou raised her eyebrows and arranged her face in what she hoped was a sympathetic expression. She nodded encouragingly.

  ‘It was like we didn’t have to pretend we were norma
l anymore, when we weren’t. And anyway’ – JoJo pushed her fringe off her forehead – ‘most of my friends live with their mums.’

  ‘But don’t you miss your dad?’

  ‘I see him,’ JoJo said. ‘And now when I do, Mum’s not there making me feel bad for being nice to him or telling him off for buying me things.’

  Lou didn’t know what to say. She looked at the latest-model iPhone and JoJo’s Apple Watch.

  JoJo had another bite of cake. ‘He doesn’t really tell me off at all,’ she said through a mouth full of custard – a rare moment when she did actually look like a kid. ‘And Mum knows that if she does, I’ll go to his place. Or Gretchen’s.’

  Lou had never met JoJo’s mum, but she’d seen pictures of her – a classic eastern suburbs blonde with long slender limbs in skinny cargos, a shiny, shoulder-grazing bob and a perfect pert nose.

  ‘Why do you like hanging out with Gretchen so much?’ she asked.

  ‘Because she likes me,’ said JoJo immediately. ‘And for the same reason you do: she’s awesome.’

  ‘She really is,’ Lou agreed.

  ‘She doesn’t lie.’ For a moment Lou wondered if there was something pointed about that comment, but then JoJo added, ‘I think you should tell your kid that it will be better when it’s done.’

  Now, in her post-run shower, Lou recalled her own girls’ smiles over their supremely organised breakfast. Could they sense the tension in the house? Were they feeling, these little people, like they were part of the problem? Were they trying to make themselves unobjectionable so things would be calmer?

  Or am I massively overthinking this?

  Focus on the positive, Lou, she told herself. At least Josh and I aren’t shouting at each other in the kitchen anymore. Josh was always either hiding in the guitar room, or trying to prove himself as Dad of the Year. He was smiling more, but she knew he was tense. Anxious.

  Remember why you started this, Lou told herself, and what you want to fix. Remember Christmas. Remember New Year. Remember what brought you to be sitting across from a tweenager, asking for advice about your life.

  Lou looked at herself in the bathroom mirror, her familiar face settling into itself. Thirty-seven. No age at all. Still plenty of time to do anything.

  Josh

  My marriage has six months to live, Josh typed.

  The letters began to roll out on the screen in front of him. Why six months?

  My wife has a deadline.

  A deadline?

  Yes.

  Tell me about that.

  It had taken some time for Josh to convince himself he should pay $199 for a one-on-one virtual session with Eva Bernard. Since he’d been watching her videos on YouTube these last few months, information about her personal counselling sessions kept popping up in his email or in his Facebook feed, where Josh was usually only served ads for power tools and guitar workshops. The spiel went:

  Eva’s intimate individualized chat space will allow you to be completely open and honest about your relationship, and get the kind of specifically tailored advice usually reserved for her A-list clients – advice that will only work for you.

  Josh had been concerned about the typing. He wasn’t super-quick on the keyboard, and the session was strictly forty minutes. Why couldn’t it be a video call?

  The FAQ section on Eva’s website was very specific about that.

  This text-only approach allows for a greater sense of intimacy not colored by preconceptions about appearance. It also means a lower-technology requirement, making Eva’s wisdom available to everyone, regardless of their internet speed and data allowance.

  Riiiight, thought Josh. Or it allows for there to be anyone at all on the other end of the counselling session. He wasn’t an idiot.

  They’d thought of that, too.

  At the beginning of your personalized session, Eva will appear briefly in your chat window to say hello and reassure you that you’re getting the highest-quality professional advice, directly from Eva Bernard herself. Then the camera will drop out to leave you to the privacy of your personal session with Eva, right there on your device of choice.

  Josh’s device of choice was his battered old laptop, balanced on his knee in the guitar room. Because Eva was in the US – he’d actually thought she was in Europe, but there you go – the timing was tricky. The slot Josh was allocated after all his deliberation was 3 a.m. on a Wednesday. The day before Lou’s birthday, no less. He couldn’t set an alarm in bed next to Lou to make that time, so he’d told her he was going to sleep in the guitar room that night, for some thinking space, and she had been much less interested in this information than he’d hoped.

  *

  It was Lou’s birthday tomorrow. He wanted to make it special but, also, he was so fucking angry with her he could hardly breathe.

  Josh was doing all the things he knew she wanted him to do. Helping out more. Being proactive with the girls. Not disappearing for hours to play guitar. Noticing. Complimenting. Supporting. He looked at the shoebox by his feet. Clearly he’d bought Lou such a disastrous Christmas present it had led her to consider divorce, but he’d nailed it this time, he was sure. Good boy. Good husband.

  He’d told the girls that they needed to try extra hard not to upset Mummy at the moment, because Mummy was tired. Tired of him, he added in his head.

  These last few days, things between them had been better. They’d made each other laugh dissecting Stella’s ridiculous NAPLAN preparation homework.

  ‘I chose you as my life partner specifically so you could help with this moment,’ Josh told Lou as he tidied up the small mountain of kids’ books on the kitchen table after dinner. ‘The one when my eight-year-old needed to explain the oriented narrative of a text.’

  ‘And I chose you for your arms,’ she said, smiling.

  For a few moments there, it felt like the days before he knew he was on a performance review. Before he knew the clock was ticking.

  But when he’d gone to put the arms she loved around her, she’d performed a neat duck and spin away and back to the sink.

  Tick. Tick.

  *

  Tell me about that.

  Josh wriggled his fingers then typed: She decided to give our marriage a year. In January. She told me.

  Eva: That seems a little aggressive.

  Yes, thought Josh, it does, doesn’t it? Thank God someone else thinks so.

  I’m trying to work out what to do, he typed.

  I can’t tell you what to do, the words came back.

  Then what have I paid for? he thought. She hadn’t finished, though.

  But you need to consider why your wife feels that way. And then you need to . . .

  The tension of watching the messages come through was torturous. Still, he had seen Eva with his own eyes at the beginning of this session, attractive and authoritative and professional-looking in a silk shirt with her hair swept back, waving at the camera and saying only, ‘Let’s get started,’ before disappearing.

  . . . take some responsibility for how these next few months are going to go. What do you want?

  I don’t want her to go. I want her. I want my family, he replied.

  And do you show her that, every day, Simon?

  Who was Simon?

  Who’s Simon? he typed. I’m Josh.

  There was a second’s pause before the reply: Sorry, Josh, slip of the tongue.

  Tongue?

  You need to honor your wife and your marriage vows. You need to show her she’s the most important person in your life. You Can Do It!!!!!

  It was 3 a.m. Josh was exhausted, but he didn’t think Eva Bernard would put five exclamation marks at the end of her statements. She was usually pretty dry, intelligent, serious in her advice.

  You show her she’d be crazy to leave you. This was punctuated with a smiley-face tongue-out emoji.

  I’m crazy for doing this, Josh thought. One more try.

  Can couples move on from their past? he typed.

&n
bsp; The typing bubbles popped up again.

  A few seconds later: Cutting out carbs together can be a healthy joint project.

  Huh? Past. Not pasta.

  You’re a fake, he wrote. I want my money back.

  Again, there was a bubble pause.

  If you talk to your wife like that, I’m not surprised she’s leaving you.

  This is bullshit, Josh typed, banging the keys hard with one finger now. I’m going to complain.

  Calm down, robot Eva typed back. These are hard conversations. Change is difficult.

  That bit was true.

  Then: Anyway . . . Pause. What did you do?

  Josh pushed the keyboard away. Put his head in his hands. He was so tired.

  To make her want to leave you? What did you do?

  He pulled the keyboard back towards him.

  We’ve both done some pretty terrible things, he wrote.

  And robot Eva sent him a frowny-face emoji.

  Lou

  10 September, 2015

  Through a drowsy haze of day-sleep anaesthetic, Lou was dreaming of Josh.

  Grabs of him were sliding in and out of her consciousness like a Facebook Memories slide show.

  His tall, lanky frame waiting for her outside the kebab shop, before she knew his name. His arms around her on the rug at Redfern. Smiling into her eyes as she shuddered with orgasm in the room above the pub in Broken Hill. His tear-streaked, laughing face when he saw Stella for the first time.

  She was sure she said his name as she opened her eyes, but who would she ask? As her mind slid back into her body and she remembered where she was, she looked around to see a nurse’s white-uniformed back at a machine in the corner. A sign above the blue door reminding everyone to treat the staff with respect. Her own toes, with their chipped blue nail polish.

  A hunger pang and a dull ache deep in her belly.

  That’s right.

  She’d just had an abortion.

  *

  There was almost a year there, after Rita was born, when everything seemed good.

  Motherhood wasn’t easier, exactly, the second time around, but it was less of a brutal shock. She knew, this time, that babies didn’t sleep when you wanted them to, no matter how much you jiggled, patted and studied books of complex timetables. That breastfeeding was a punish. That if she didn’t get to the cot within the first twenty seconds of her baby’s whimper, her precious bundle wouldn’t explode.