I Give My Marriage a Year

by Holly Wainwright

  No. I won’t be sad today, Josh told himself. It’s not bloody helping, sitting here stewing, begrudging.

  It had been six weeks. Almost six weeks since he’d had sex with his wife and then left to sleep in the workshop. Six weeks of waking up and working out which hat he was wearing today – was he his sister’s house guest, trying not to make her life harder, rubbing along with the teenage boys, filling time he wasn’t used to having? Or was he Single Dad, racing to pick-up and trying to remember whether it was gymnastics day or choir day or whether there was a birthday party or a teachers’ meeting?

  It was impossibly sad being in the house without Lou, but also, his girls were there. So it was this weird mixture of abundance and absence, and . . . No. I will not be sad today.

  ‘Hi, Lou.’

  She was sitting on a straight-backed chair in the waiting room when he walked through the door, phone in hand.

  ‘Hi.’ She looked up quickly, gave a little wave. She was wearing some shiny lip stuff. For him?

  ‘How are the girls?’ Such a strange question to ask your wife in this context.

  ‘Rita’s got an earache, Stell’s scared about a maths test.’ Lou was looking at her phone again. ‘But they’re fine.’

  ‘Are you okay to take time off from school this afternoon?’ Josh sat down a couple of seats away from Lou. Next to her would be weird.

  ‘I’m being covered, but I’ll have to get straight back. You?’

  ‘We’re on a different job this week – shop fit-out in Alexandria. Tyler’s on it. It’s fine.’

  Small talk.

  The receptionist acknowledged Josh’s presence with a smile. She must see some things in here, he thought.

  And here came Sara, all smiles, to usher them into her blindingly bright office.

  ‘Did you ever think of getting some blinds in here?’ Lou asked her, before they sat on the couch.

  Josh had to stifle a laugh, because that’s what she’d always said she was going to ask Sara one day, when she’d stopped being a little bit scared of her. Clearly, that day had come.

  ‘I love the view, the natural light,’ said Sara. ‘And, you know, sunlight is cleansing. You know what they say, shame can only exist in shadow.’ She smiled brightly.

  ‘Oh, that’s interesting,’ Lou said, apparently disarmed by the answer. She started tapping something into her phone. Josh was certain she was writing, Shame can only exist in shadow. Then Lou put her phone into her scuffed leather bag and looked up expectantly. ‘Still,’ she said, ‘it’s a bit squinty.’

  Josh did actually laugh, and both women looked at him, Lou swallowing a smile, Sara a bit surprised.

  ‘So, we’re here to check in on the progress of the trial separation,’ Sara said firmly. ‘Who’d like to start?’

  *

  Josh had stopped himself obsessing about whether Lou was sleeping with someone else by sheer force of will.

  His mind was too free to go there when he was working so he’d started wearing headphones on the job.

  Well, she’s done it before . . . Quick, there must be a podcast worth listening to.

  That guy at the fundraising concert . . . Turn up the volume on that song you were studying for chord inspiration.

  She could do so much better than you . . . Radio National, I am finally old enough for you.

  Avoidance, yes. Denial, possibly. But essential if he was to keep moving, to keep from falling into the kind of angry pit that consumed people. Sad men. People like him.

  He worked alongside Tyler most days, but Josh couldn’t bring himself to talk about his marriage with his workmate, who’d been through all this before. If Tyler suspected anything, he never said so.

  ‘Are you lonely?’ Anika had asked Josh when he entered the kitchen one night, having been locked in her garage with his guitar since he got home from work.

  ‘I don’t think so, not yet,’ he answered, and he meant it. He was writing. He had nothing to do with the songs he was creating, no place to take them, but it felt good to get them out.

  ‘Play me what you’ve been working on,’ his sister suggested.

  ‘No way, they’re all break-up songs, sad as hell,’ he said, moving around her towards the fridge.

  ‘My kind of thing, then,’ Anika had said.

  But Josh just shook his head. He wasn’t ready.

  So life revolved around work, the girls, his sister’s house, the guitar. It was small. That was the safest option for now.

  *

  ‘It’s giving me time to think,’ Lou said, in the therapist’s office. ‘I’m really trying to be present with myself, get myself in the strongest possible place to make good choices.’

  Josh looked at her, eyes wide. And she looked at him and raised her eyebrows, like, What?

  ‘Why are you talking like you’ve swallowed a self-help book?’ he asked Lou, a smile tugging at his lips.

  ‘That’s a bit aggressive, Josh,’ Sara said. ‘Remember, this is not an adversarial space.’

  ‘It’s not self-help,’ said Lou. Josh could have sworn that she too was trying not to laugh. ‘It’s self-optimisation.’

  ‘It’s what, now?’

  ‘Lou’s choice to work on herself is perfectly valid, Josh,’ Sara scolded. ‘We don’t mock in here.’

  ‘I’m growing,’ Lou said firmly. Her mouth was definitely twitching. ‘I’ve set goals and I want to achieve them. I’m taking a very disciplined, wide-awake approach.’

  ‘Oh, good for you.’ Josh slapped his knee.

  ‘This is excellent, Lou. You can’t possibly make informed decisions about your relationship and family unit unless you are dealing with your own happiness first.’ Sara seemed truly delighted. She looked at Josh. ‘It’s that whole “put your own mask on first before helping others” idea – you know, from the flight safety instructions.’

  ‘Oh, right.’ Josh felt an overwhelming urge to giggle. He had no idea why he was finding it so funny that Lou appeared to have had a personality transplant, when usually he would find it intensely irritating. Perhaps it was because she didn’t appear to be taking it particularly seriously herself.

  Lou turned to him. ‘Maybe you could handle some self-optimisation yourself. I have some books you can borrow.’

  ‘Now, Lou, don’t push Josh to follow you down this path,’ said Sara. ‘Remember, it’s not uncommon for one half of a couple to feel threatened by the other’s personal growth.’

  Josh spoke across Sara. ‘That would be great, Lou. I’m sure some books on how to be less of a loser would really help.’ His words were harsh, but he wasn’t upset, and he could tell Lou wasn’t either.

  The therapist looked at them, appearing a little confused. ‘Are you two aware that eighty per cent of communication is non-verbal?’ she asked. ‘Many experts think that what you say is not actually as important as how you say it.’

  ‘Really?’ Lou and Josh chorused, then exchanged looks out of the corners of their eyes.

  ‘And right now, you two appear to be disagreeing about something, but the energy is really quite different.’ Sara looked up from her notes. ‘I’d say this is a very positive sign.’

  ‘Hear that, Lou?’ Josh asked. ‘We’re getting better at fighting with each other in our therapist’s office. That’s progress.’

  I will not be sad today, he said to himself, in the pool of bright light on the couch.

  And I’m not.

  Lou

  11 November, 2017

  ‘You are welcome in our house, Mum,’ Lou said. ‘Under strict conditions. And the main one is that you are decent to my husband, your son-in-law, the father of my children.’

  Lou was inviting her parents over for a dinner to celebrate her and Josh’s anniversary. Nine years. It was a thing in their family, she’d decided, to make a big deal out of the unremarkable milestones. So, a big party for your thirty-ninth, not your fortieth; a family dinner for the ninth wedding anniversary, not the tenth. ‘You’re just trying to b
e different for the sake of it,’ her mother had told her sniffily, when the invitation was first proffered. ‘Honestly, BB, there’s a reason for traditions, you know.’

  But if Annabelle was going to come, sniffiness must be put aside. And if she was going to come, a year of tentative avoidance had to be broached.

  ‘It’s not like I haven’t seen him in a year,’ she said. ‘And it’s not like I haven’t apologised.’

  ‘I know, Mum, but you’ve seen him in passing, at family things. This is a sit-down dinner at our house. It’s different. And I need to know it’s going to be okay.’

  ‘It’s going to be okay,’ Annabelle said.

  ‘And it wasn’t much of an apology,’ Lou muttered. ‘I’m going to find Dad.’

  November was a big month in the Poole house, with Josh’s birthday and their wedding anniversary. And almost a year ago, after Annabelle had said what she said at the surprise party, it looked like family celebrations wouldn’t be on the calendar again any time soon.

  But Josh was more forgiving than most – as Lou knew too well, she thought, then pushed the thought away – and Annabelle had her excuses ready.

  ‘I’m on some new blood-pressure medication,’ she’d said to Josh, when Lou had forced them together to talk it out. ‘And I should not have drunk a sip of alcohol, never mind all that champagne. It sent me completely doolally; I can barely recall anything I said.’

  ‘I can,’ said Josh. ‘But let’s move on. We’ve all said things we shouldn’t after a few too many.’

  It was gracious, but it wasn’t game-changing. Josh didn’t rush to spend time with Lou’s family, and Annabelle wasn’t rushing to reverse the perception that she thought her son-in-law could do a better job of providing for his family.

  Today, Lou was at her mum and dad’s place to collect the kids. They’d spent the afternoon there while she’d sorted things out for tonight. Collected a cake, cleaned the house. Why did family gatherings always land on her plate? She knew the answer. Josh would be happy not to have them, and if she wanted them, she had to make them happen.

  She found Brian with Stella and Rita in his shed. It was a space that couldn’t be more different from Josh’s equivalents – the workshop and his guitar room, both of which were chaotic, while this was an impeccably organised area of calm. Brian had been an engineer for his entire working life, and order, structure and detail were what made his world turn.

  He had the girls organising nails into various sizes in a large plastic tray divided into satisfyingly proportional spaces. They were engrossed.

  ‘Um, Dad,’ Lou said, after she’d doled out kisses to all, ‘Rita’s three. Is playing with nails an appropriate activity?’

  ‘The girls are having a marvellous time, darling,’ said Brian, going back to dusting his hanging tools. ‘She’s learned not to spike herself – responsibility. And children love order too, you see?’

  You wouldn’t think so if you saw our house, Lou thought, but she knew better than to say so. She needed to get going; there were still twenty-five jobs that needed doing before she could have people in her home tonight.

  ‘I’m worried about Mum and Josh at the dinner tonight,’ she said. ‘Should I be?’

  Brian looked pointedly at the girls, then took Lou’s elbow and guided her back out through the shed’s door.

  ‘Your mother hasn’t been herself lately,’ he said. ‘She’s worried about me.’

  ‘Dad, that was a year ago, never mind lately.’ Lou looked at him suspiciously. ‘And what’s wrong with you?’

  ‘Nothing, nothing.’ He glanced back at the shed. ‘I’m just getting a bit forgetful, which is completely natural at my age, but I think your mother finds it a bit confronting. You know . . . Life, death. Et cetera.’

  ‘Okay.’ Lou couldn’t tell if her dad was fobbing her off. ‘Life, death et cetera sounds serious.’ She pushed the thought away. She had enough to worry about already. ‘But what about tonight?’

  ‘I want to tell you something about your mother,’ Brian said.

  He put his hands on Lou’s shoulders and pulled her close to him, looking directly into her eyes. This was highly unusual.

  ‘You are everything to her, BB. You and Robert, and me, and the girls. She has no family. You have to remember that.’

  ‘She had Nana Belmore . . .’ Lou vaguely remembered a childhood visit from her grandmother who smelled of toast.

  ‘No. She left all her people behind.’ Brian shook Lou, ever so gently. ‘Her childhood was hard, and she cut her ties. It creates a siege mentality, darling, being rootless.’

  ‘Rootless?’

  ‘You’re not listening. I’m trying to tell you’ – he kissed her on the forehead, something she couldn’t ever remember him doing – ‘your mother’s love is stronger than anything. But it’s exclusive. She sees everyone from outside as a threat. Even your husband.’

  Lou looked at Brian. It was a Saturday afternoon in November, her young children were playing with deadly DIY equipment on a shed floor, and her father had just delivered one of the truth-bombs of her life. Her mother trusted no-one. Everyone was the enemy. The neighbours. The teachers at school. Their friends. Their partners. Everyone but them. She couldn’t remember her father ever talking quite so eloquently about anything as intangible as emotions before.

  ‘Dad,’ she said, ‘that was profound.’

  He let go of her shoulders, turned back towards the shed. ‘Be kind to your mother. There are advantages to that kind of thinking, you know, even if it might seem harsh. Her loyalty is unshakable. I am a lucky man in that regard.’

  Lou felt that comment as a little jab to the kidneys, although she knew he couldn’t possibly have meant it that way. ‘You are, Dad,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’

  She called to the girls to leave the organising and come. And back in the car, with Stella and Rita strapped in, she called Josh.

  ‘Babe,’ she said, ‘I’ve just found out why my mum is such a red-hot bitch to you.’

  ‘Oh good,’ said Josh. ‘Now can you work out how to turn it off?’

  Josh

  Later that month

  Josh had made Lou a picture frame for their wedding anniversary.

  It was long and slender, made from the slats of their old bed, his obsession with never wasting wood at an all-time high.

  ‘Are you telling me,’ Lou asked, as she looked at the frame, which had been divided into a series of smaller frames, containing pictures of the two of them, the girls, their family, ‘that we’ve basically had sex on this picture frame? Like, lots?’

  It was the kind of thing Lou said when she was in a good mood, and he laughed.

  ‘Yes, it’s a celebration sex-frame,’ he said, leaning in to kiss her. ‘Nine years, and we’re still here.’

  Josh always thought of his father on his wedding anniversary.

  It was a shitty memory among a whole host of beautiful ones of that day. His old man walking away with Christine and that crappy little leather holdall. He’d gone over it in his mind any number of times, wondering if there had been another way to play that moment, but he always came up blank. It was what it was, as Maya would say.

  That morning, he brought Lou the frame in bed, with a cup of tea and his kiss. It was a Monday, and everyone had to go to work. The girls were already banging around downstairs; there was no time for sentimentality.

  ‘Happy anniversary, Lou,’ he said. ‘Thank you for organising that family dinner where no-one insulted anyone to death.’

  ‘Pleasure,’ said Lou. ‘May there be many more family gatherings with no blood spilled.’

  And she lay back to look at the frame as Josh turned to head downstairs.

  ‘Wait,’ Lou called. ‘There’s someone missing from these pictures.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Your father,’ she said. ‘He should be here. Especially today.’

  And she looked at him, and for a moment, Josh suddenly felt like he was about to cry.

>   ‘He might have been a bit of a prick,’ Lou said, with a gentle smile, ‘but he made you. He’s part of us. I’ll put in one of the pics of him and baby Stella when I get home tonight.’

  Josh came back to the bed and took the frame from her hands, lay it down on the bed and hugged her hard. So hard.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I love you.’

  ‘Happy anniversary,’ said Lou, her voice muffled in his shoulder. ‘Nine years. We’re fucking insufferable right now.’

  In that moment, from their bed in Botany, Josh could see that other insufferable moment, on the banks of the river in the Snowys. They never had moved to New York. Or Arnhem Land. He had never built them a house in a tropical rainforest, and Lou still hadn’t written a play. Their life had been smaller than the one they’d imagined.

  But he knew, like he’d known on that day nine years before. He’d found someone to help him be strong in the face of the shit that made him weak.

  And they were still standing. Just.

  Lou

  I give my separation four months.

  The weirdest thing, Lou tapped into her phone, is the silence.

  One minute I’m at home, with all the noise and mess and the hundreds of tiny eruptions of chaos that kids bring every day.

  And then I’m here. And there’s no mess. And there’s no noise. And there’s only order. And it’s . . .

  What was it? Lou looked around Gretchen’s apartment, where Gretchen wasn’t. It was beautiful, and white, and relentlessly clean. She had settled into the guest room, complete with TV and Netflix and a gift from Gretchen – a still-boxed vibrator in the bedside drawer.