I Give My Marriage a Year

by Holly Wainwright

  ‘Do you think he had a breakdown?’ Lou asked Josh, more than once.

  ‘No, I think he’s a cock,’ Josh would answer. But of course, even he knew there was more to it than that.

  He reached for the wine. ‘Do you still love him?’

  ‘Maybe,’ Anika said. ‘But the hate is stronger right now. What I hate is what he did to Hen and Wil and me with so little thought. A decision like that changes lives forever. Changes people’s stories, their sense of themselves. Every damn thing. You know it. That’s why you’re in denial. But he just fucking did it.’

  ‘I am not in denial,’ Josh said, passing her the bottle.

  ‘That’s what people in denial say.’ Anika smiled, splashed a little more wine into her glass.

  ‘This is a rough patch, it’s not the end,’ said Josh.

  ‘Okay.’

  Josh tried not to let his irritation at his sister’s tone overwhelm him as they sat in silence for a moment.

  ‘Also, I miss him.’

  ‘You really shouldn’t. He’s a cock.’

  Anika laughed out loud. ‘Yep.’

  She stretched out her legs and wiggled her toes. ‘Anyway, what about Lou’s family? Does the lovely Annabelle know?’

  *

  Two weeks before, Josh had had his own Ed moment, play-acting at a barbecue at Annabelle and Brian’s, and making a disastrous mess of it.

  It was only a few days after the night he and Lou had sex in the window.

  Josh had spent that night at the workshop, not sleeping under a pile of drop sheets on a saggy old couch. It was dramatic, he could see, to walk out like that, but as soon as Lou had said those words to him he needed to leave. He couldn’t be in the house anymore, he couldn’t be in the guitar room, listening to Lou move around on the other side of a door. He couldn’t bear to think about her tapping away at her phone, talking to God knows who, making plans for God knows what. He couldn’t think about the girls, sleeping a few walls away, about to wake up to a new reality.

  The workshop was freezing and bleak, and Josh lay there on the lumpy couch staring at the beams across the ceiling and thinking about how the hell he was going to walk around tomorrow with all this toxic fury whirring around his body, making him twitch. He understood why people punched things. He felt the urge to destroy something, anything, and his fists kept clenching and unclenching, clenching and unclenching.

  He wanted to talk to his dad. It might have been the first time he’d ever actively wanted to do that.

  Weak light started to creep in under the door and Josh knew he needed to get his shit together before Tyler or Mick arrived. He needed to have a shower and get over to the music producer’s house in Camperdown and lose himself in planing a fucking pool deck with his headphones in.

  His phone beeped in the pocket of the jeans he’d been wearing all night. The ones that had been on the floor of the bedroom, the ones Lou had yanked off him with force before he’d carried her over to the window.

  It was Lou.

  Are you okay?

  Will you come home today?

  Can you still pick up the girls?

  He didn’t answer the first question. He couldn’t. To the others he replied:

  Sure.

  Yes.

  Lou wrote back:

  Because we need to talk about how all this will work.

  All night, a particular image had been pushing other thoughts out of Josh’s head: the man at the school fundraising concert, leaning down to talk into Lou’s ear.

  He tapped out:

  Who are you fucking?

  And then deleted it.

  Is it the same person? Or a new one?

  And then deleted it.

  I’ll see you at 5.

  He sent that one.

  A response came back almost immediately:

  Are you okay though?

  Josh pushed the phone back into his pocket. If he got to Camperdown early enough he could shower there.

  Just get on with it, mate, he told himself. You’re a big boy.

  And that’s exactly what he’d done: he’d got on with it. He went to work, left on time, picked up the girls, took them home.

  When Lou arrived, he tried not to look at her directly, as if she were the sun. She bustled, and he moved out of her way.

  He lay on Stella’s bed with a daughter under each arm and read The Gruffalo for the two hundred and fiftieth time, with voices. He could hear Lou downstairs putting away the dinner dishes.

  Rita fell asleep with her head on his shoulder and he told himself that none of this was real, and he’d have every night with his girls, just like this one.

  And then he went downstairs and Lou had the wall calendar laid out on the kitchen table he’d built and she was talking to him about how they could divide their time over the next few months. He felt like he was sleepwalking, tuning in and out.

  ‘This Sunday, I’ve got to be at Mum’s birthday lunch. You could come late and take the girls home and stay for two nights. No-one will think that’s weird if I tell them I’m meeting Gretch for drinks, and then I’ll go sleep at hers . . .’

  How long have you been hatching these plans? he wondered.

  ‘Why can’t I just sleep in the spare room?’ he heard himself asking. ‘Save us all the cloak and dagger.’

  ‘Because that’s not separating,’ she said, and Josh thought she sounded impatient. ‘We need to not see each other. To miss each other. To reset. I’ve been reading about it . . .’

  When? When have you been reading about it?

  ‘So the kids stay here but we come and go. It’s called bird nesting. The idea is that we establish this structure and then we meet regularly to check in. I’m going to call Sara to talk her through it, see if the meetings should be at her office.’

  You’re so busy with all this.

  Josh picked up his keys. ‘Just tell me where you need me to be and when,’ he said. ‘I’ll do whatever.’

  Lou put down the pen she was using to write on the calendar. Softened her voice. ‘You can’t even look at me, can you?’

  ‘Not today,’ said Josh. ‘Not today, Lou.’

  And on the Sunday, just as he’d been instructed, Josh stood on Brian and Annabelle’s doorstep, just as he had fourteen years before. He remembered his first encounter with Annabelle, who had probably liked him more that day than any day since, because she didn’t know him.

  ‘Come in and have a beer, Josh!’ Rob had seen him through the open front door.

  So Josh walked down the hall and into the backyard. Part of him felt like that guy of fourteen years ago, a stranger in a strange land. But also, now he could read every dynamic in the place.

  Annabelle was sitting at the glass-topped table, nursing a Pimms, which seemed very optimistic in July. The sun was bright and strong overhead right now, but as soon as it dropped below the fence line they’d all be freezing. She was talking to Lou, and seeing his wife there gave Josh a little jolt. She was wearing a dress with buttons down the front and the top few were undone. From where Josh stood, he could see her maroon bra strap. He tried not to think about that.

  Brian was at the barbecue, blankly cleaning the plate next to a pile of cooked sausages. Hiding from company with a busy-job.

  Rob, who’d welcomed him so warmly, was trying hard to be cheerful, pretending that everything was great, handing Josh his beer and asking how his Sunday had been so far.

  There were a few of Annabelle and Brian’s friends milling around, golf types.

  Stella and Rita had come flying to Josh’s legs and hugged him tightly. If anyone thought it was strange that his daughters were so pleased to see him, they didn’t let on.

  Lou looked up at Josh and smiled. ‘There he is!’ she said to Annabelle, as if she was delighted to see her husband. Annabelle looked up too, gave Josh a tight nod.

  Lou stood up and came over to Josh, kissed him on the cheek. He could smell her clean hair as she brushed against him. ‘Hi,’ she whispere
d. ‘Thanks for doing this.’

  Josh took a sip of his beer. ‘Can I take the girls now?’

  ‘It would be good if you could hang around a little bit,’ said Lou. ‘More convincing.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Isn’t it good news, Josh?’ Annabelle shouted from the table.

  He was sure that for a moment he must have looked stricken, the bottle pausing halfway to his lips.

  ‘Lou’s job!’ Annabelle said. ‘Her promotion! Aren’t you proud?’ And from the way his mother-in-law’s mouth tightened back into a straight line, the way she cocked her head and narrowed her eyes, Josh could tell that pride wasn’t what she was feeling. That, actually, she was sensing that something had shifted.

  ‘Mum, it’s not official yet,’ Lou called back, and she nudged Josh in the ribs and said to him, ‘Just go with it, okay?’

  Josh had never wanted to go with it less. ‘Please tell me when I don’t have to make an effort with these people anymore,’ he hissed. ‘Put me out of my misery.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Lou whispered back. ‘They’re your family.’

  ‘They’re not,’ he said. And he called to the girls, ‘Stell, Reets, we’re going to leave in five. Have you got everything?’

  Lou frowned. ‘I thought you were staying for a while.’

  Josh could see Annabelle preparing to get up and head over for a chat. ‘What does your new guy do?’ he asked Lou.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The guy you’ve been fucking – what does he do?’

  The look on Lou’s face, like he’d just spat at her, gave Josh a sharp moment of satisfaction.

  ‘Maybe Annabelle will get the son-in-law she’s been after the second time around,’ he said.

  Lou was swallowing quickly and her neck was red. It looked like she was trying not to cry.

  Good, he thought.

  Then he saw Lou trying to compose herself as her mother walked their way, saw Annabelle reading her in the ten steps it took to get from the table to here, Pimms in hand.

  Not good, Josh thought. I don’t want Lou to hate me. I don’t want to make her suffer in front of her mother. I don’t.

  So he put an arm around his wife and pulled her quickly to him as Annabelle bore down.

  ‘I’m so proud of her, Annabelle,’ he said, so firmly and loudly that Brian looked up from the barbecue. ‘She’s amazing, isn’t she? You made a brilliant daughter.’

  *

  ‘I’m going to get those two into bed before I get wobbly,’ Josh’s sister said, unfurling herself from the egg chair and heading towards the sliding glass doors. ‘If I don’t come back, it means I’ve fallen asleep myself.’

  As she walked behind him, she kissed Josh’s head. It felt good.

  ‘You know where the blankets and towels are, little brother,’ Anika said, putting a hand on his head where the kiss had been planted. ‘You’ll be okay.’

  ‘Thanks, Ani,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’

  He watched his brave sister head into the family room, grab Henry’s foot and give it a shake, reach over for the video game controller in Wilson’s hands.

  I’m sorry, sister, Josh thought as he watched her deftly haul her boys up from the couch. This isn’t what I want. I am not as strong as you.

  Lou

  13 February, 2016

  Lou was working hard on forgiving Josh.

  Lou knew Josh was working hard on forgiving her.

  ‘We’re so busy trying not to go to bed angry, we barely sleep,’ she told Gretchen over takeaway coffees, sitting on a concrete step at the edge of a playground, a place about as far from her friend’s preferred habitat as it was possible to get.

  ‘Sounds exhausting.’

  ‘Oh, it is.’ She watched as Rita lurched in front of the swings, only narrowly missing being hit by a bigger kid’s outstretched Crocs. ‘Stella! Can you get Rita, please?’

  ‘And your . . . thing?’ Gretchen asked. ‘Is it really over?’

  ‘It really is.’ Lou took the top off her coffee cup, licked the chocolate-powdered froth.

  ‘But you still see him every day, right?’

  She pushed the lid back down. ‘Well, often. But we just . . . don’t.’

  ‘How is that possible?’ Gretchen asked, as Lou’s eyes tracked Stella and Rita, heading away from the swings and towards the roundabouts, hand in hand.

  ‘It was only ever physical,’ Lou said. ‘You know how it is. You end things all the time.’

  ‘Yes, but I’m not you, Mrs Relationship,’ said Gretchen. ‘Even at uni you had to fall in love with anyone who gave you good head.’

  Lou looked around quickly, checking none of her mum-friends were in close proximity.

  ‘I did not!’

  ‘Hmmmm.’ Gretchen rolled her eyes. ‘Anyway, when I end things, I like the other person to disappear. I prefer to imagine that anyone I’m involved with only exists if I can see them.’

  ‘Nothing narcissistic about that at all,’ said Lou. ‘Look, it’s okay. I can honestly say that it was nothing more than sex. I was working stuff out of my system. It was like punching something at the gym.’

  Gretchen laughed. ‘I’m sorry, but that sounds really, really hot.’

  ‘Yes, well, it’s done. Hotness needs to go back home.’

  Rita was beaming, sitting on the edge of a roundabout that Stella was spinning slowly, carefully, ushering away other kids who came close and wanted to leap on and go fast. ‘Look at that,’ she said, nudging Gretchen in the ribs. ‘How cute are they?’

  ‘Very,’ said Gretchen. ‘You two make good kids, I’ll give you that.’ She looked around the playground. It was a hot Saturday morning and the place was packed with parents hovering around their children, clutching giant coffees and colourful water bottles. ‘I wonder how many of these good people are cheating on each other?’ she asked.

  ‘I am not cheating,’ said Lou. ‘It was a blip. A glitch. A reaction to an action.’

  ‘Okay . . .’ Gretchen paused and they both watched as Stella helped Rita off the roundabout and directed a triumphant smile at them. ‘So what does Josh think about you seeing this guy every day?’

  ‘He doesn’t know.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He doesn’t want to know anything about it.’ Lou rummaged in her bag for a hat for Rita. ‘He says that if I say it’s over, he believes me, and if he knows the details it will torture him. To be honest, he’s already feeling pretty tortured about David Bowie dying.’ A wry smile.

  ‘How is that possible?’ Gretchen’s voice was loud now, and some heads turned in their direction. ‘How could he not want to know?’

  ‘Shhhh, Gretch!’ The girls were heading back in their direction. ‘You know Josh – he keeps things very . . . closed. I actually think he’s afraid of what he might do.’

  ‘But there’s an imminent threat.’

  ‘No, there isn’t.’

  ‘But it’s not like this was a random guy you met at the pub . . .’

  ‘When was the last time I met a random guy at a pub?’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Gretchen. ‘You shat where you eat. Every damn workday.’

  ‘That’s lovely.’

  Stella and Rita arrived, babbling at Lou about snacks and when were they going home and five more minutes.

  ‘He has nothing to worry about,’ she said to her friend as she pulled on Rita’s hat and handed Stella her water. ‘Yes, five more minutes, Stell . . . It doesn’t matter that he doesn’t know. In fact, it’s better that he doesn’t. It’s over. And I don’t want to find a new job. So let’s choose to support Josh’s choice.’

  ‘Like he supported yours?’

  ‘Shut up, Gretch.’

  ‘At least tell me you guys are in counselling about all this.’

  ‘I am. He won’t.’

  ‘Healthy. I assume you’re supporting that choice, too?’

  ‘Shut up, Gretch.’

  *

  ‘We can’t do this any
more,’ Lou had said down the phone, at ten thirty on a Tuesday night.

  ‘Really? Because that’s what people say in movies when they want to be talked out of it,’ Theo had answered.

  ‘That’s a dick thing to say,’ said Lou. ‘I don’t want you to talk me out of it. I know what I want – and I want it to stop.’

  When she first had sex with the deputy principal, it had been over a decade since any lips other than Josh’s, any hands other than Josh’s, had touched her body.

  If men had flirted with her in that time, she hadn’t really noticed. First, because she was thinking only about Josh. Then because she had other priorities. Like getting through the day with a baby strapped to her front. Holding down a job. Not being crushed under a mountain of unfolded washing.

  She found she just stopped noticing men that way. Josh never seemed to lose his desire to have sex with her, no matter how tired she was, or how alien her body felt to her. Whether there was a baby inside it, or milk in her breasts, whether there was more or less of her in general. His desire seemed to be set at a constant thrum, while hers came and went, surging at unexpected times, like late in her pregnancy with Stella, disappearing at others, like throughout her whole pregnancy with Rita.

  But on her first day at Bayside Primary, Lou had noticed Theo. She was coming in as a special support teacher, Rita was a baby, Lou was training for a half-marathon, loving being back running again. She was, she could see now, at a Moment of Change.

  The staffroom was like any she’d ever been in. Cluttered and comfy, home to cracked mugs and biscuit barrels (gluten and gluten-free, labelled). It had its own particular political structure, its own set of unwritten rules, as well as the written ones on a notice pinned up in the kitchenette about personal teabags and showing ‘respect’ by washing cups thoroughly.

  Lou had been given a buddy in the head of stage one, Beth, who was smiley and no-nonsense, and had introduced her around the room to varying levels of welcome and interest.

  ‘This is Theo, he’s our new deputy head,’ Beth said, as a mountain of a man filled the staffroom doorway. Tall and broad and dark, with a smile that took up his whole face, Lou doubted that anyone forgot his name or got him mixed up with anyone else. When he shook her hand and grinned at her, his hand was huge and it made her laugh to imagine telling Stella about the man with the big-bear hands.