The Sparkle Pages

by Meg Bignell

  (Goodness, is this really us? Is my memory distorted by time, or by the contrast of current gloom?)

  For a few long seconds I stopped breathing and time seemed to gather up on itself and falter because there was nothing but us, nothing but the bliss of him and the wonderful thing we were doing together. I held him and pulled him into me again and again and again until both of us cried out. The release was like a pain; my sighs had sobs in them and his hands on my hair were both a giving of thanks and a long-awaited hello.

  That was it, then, really. We weren’t apart again. I mean, we were, obviously, geographically apart, but that was the binding seal. He stopped rushing off all the time; said that was the thing he did when he was having adulterous thoughts about me. ‘I knew that if you and I had too much alone time, I’d step over the boundary fence,’ he said. ‘I just don’t do that kind of thing. Hannah and I had headed in different directions, but she didn’t deserve that.’ I loved that about him, his loyalty. I love that about him.

  Hugh maintains that he turned up that day with intentions to tell me he’d broken up with Hannah, and that it would be best to stay away from one another for a time, until Hannah’s heart was somewhat mended (it was shattered, she had said, ‘Shattered, you moron!’) and she’d stopped wanting to hurt him and his property. But then he saw me in my towelling shorts and Bambi T-shirt and decided that he couldn’t do without me. Hmm, I wonder if anyone sells towelling shorts these days? Actually, perhaps he was being ironic?? Maybe he didn’t think I was adorable and just thought, Dear God, let’s get her out of those hideous clothes.

  He’s mine, though, despite towelling shorts. Really mine. It took me ages to realise that; for so long I felt like a thief, that he might be taken back, reclaimed. Even after we were engaged to be married. It might have even taken babies to make me think I was safe.

  Oh, gosh, I’ve written right into the night and I must go to bed. Next to My Hugh. Mine. I might find it difficult not to jump on him and tell him I love his face. Oh, wait! Tomorrow I’m helping with Healthy Choices breakfast at school and I have to be up by five. So sleep.

  ****Dear Susannah of the Future,

  Refer back to this page for evidence that he is your one.****

  FRIDAY 9th JUNE

  I just kissed Hugh – a passionate kiss with tongue, etc. – with my eyes open. I was a bit terrified he might have his open too and we’d be eye to eye and awkward. But his were closed. And blurred by proximity. That’s about it. Then I realised that it’s supposed to be both of us, that we need to be locking eyes, so to speak. This will be harder than I thought.

  Speaking of eyes, I should get Jimmy’s tested. He said the other day that the board is a bit blurry.

  SATURDAY 10th JUNE

  Three more eyes-open kisses. Have been hoping that his might flicker open and catch mine, but I don’t think they have. It’s a bit hard to tell that close up. At any rate, I’m starting to like the extreme close-up view of Hugh. When he does come into focus (it takes approximately four seconds for my eyes to adjust), I really do love his face. And there’s something quite fun about staring at someone right under their nose without them knowing. None of this is particularly sexy, though, just interesting (and probably weird).

  Anyway, what I’ve discovered is that most of the time my husband kisses with his eyes closed. This is a good thing. It would be uncomfortable to know that he’s been peering at me up close all this time. Or maybe he did once, but stopped when things started to look a bit alarmingly creased.

  He’s very suspicious, though. After the last one he looked at me and said, ‘So is all this kissing about your sparkle thing or is this to make up for selling the viola? If it’s the viola, it’s okay. I’m not angry any more. I can see that you need to move on. You can find a new one whenever you’re ready.’

  He must have been talking to Ria because they’ve both tried the new viola tack. I nodded and smiled, playing the game, but it hurts that the two closest people to me just don’t get it.

  I wonder, could I write them both an official letter spelling it out? (I am getting quite accustomed to putting thoughts and feelings into writings.) What would I say …?

  Dear Hugh and Ria,

  Bless you for your encouragements but honestly I am fine with not playing the viola, composing pieces or making further contributions to the field of music.

  We can reflect all we want on what went wrong (and have, ad nauseam), but it won’t fix things. I know, because subsequent site testing shows the damage to me is irreversible, and that further rusting and scouring has only compounded the problem. Therefore, it must be concluded that those parts of me given to music should now be boxed, memorialised and archived. Or discarded.

  I have learnt to accept this, but your failure to do so, along with your persistent bringing up of the possibility of my return to music, only serves to weaken my remaining supports and hinder the chances of recovery, or at least functional repair.

  As you well know from your work, Hugh, we can learn from disasters, but we can’t undo them.

  Yours very faithfully,

  Susannah

  Hmm, would I ever send that? Perhaps I’ll sit on it a while.

  For now, the next step: eyes wide open during actual sex. After all this kissing, the opportunity will arise very soon, I should think. It will be good for a change of sexual tone, says Dr Folds. Speaking of tone, I should probably get into some sort of exercise routine. If I’m going to encourage eyes-open sex, I’d rather not have jiggly bits. Everyone I know has an exercise routine. Even I did once, before sleep became a scarcity. I was once quite good at Zumba. This is my problem. I’m all enthused about something and then get distracted by the next thing – like Jimmy not knowing what a fraction is, or people coming for dinner, or Eloise’s knotty hair (Isobel recommends hair masks; I wish she’d just get it cut), and so on and on and on … Anyway, presently it’s our sexual tone that needs tightening.

  Eyes-open sex shouldn’t be that hard, but it is, it really is. I’m nervous. I was never this nervous on the stage. Perhaps because you can’t really see the immediate audience reaction. The lights, the distance. Can you do eyes-wide-open sex with lights off?

  I’m not making myself feel any better; I just need to not think and go and play Monopoly with Mary-Lou, who’s been hovering with the thimble and the dog the whole time I’ve been writing this. She’ll want to be the dog. I’m always the bloody thimble.

  But tonight should be the night …

  SUNDAY 11th JUNE

  I did it! I altered our sexual tone. I am so proud of myself.

  I didn’t start all that admirably, though. I thought I should quell the nerves and work myself up to it a bit. So I snuck a look at some porn. I know – actual XXX porn, not the R stuff, which I’m told has pink bits covered. I’ve listened to extrovert friends talking openly about their porn habits and it appears to be a normal part of some marriages. Nothing at all to be ashamed of. And besides, I thought I might observe from afar how eyes-wide-open sex plays out.

  I saw the Monopoly game through ’til the end, then made sure all and sundry were occupied, shut myself in the study, said I was attending to bills and googled ‘porn’. It’s incredible how quickly you can find it – I mean, there’s nothing clandestine about XXX-rated sex videos, apparently. A whole string of porn sites popped up for me to click on. I went for one simply called porn.net because at least it had the class to tell it like it is. Did I just use ‘class’ and ‘porn’ in the same sentence?

  I don’t want to dwell on this too long but OH. MY. GOLLY. GOSH. Immediately there were images of penises and vaginas, penises in vaginas, penises in mouths, penises in bottom holes, two penises in vaginas at the same time and what looked like a penis in one woman’s vagina and another in her bottom hole. ‘Is that one man with two penises?’ I asked myself. But most disturbing of all was that every woman I saw was being pushed about, ordered to their knees or having their hair pulled.

  I didn�
�t feel aroused, I just felt ANGRY. And then a bit scared about being tracked by the government and finding myself named and shamed in the local paper tomorrow morning. I shut the site down, only to find one of those pop-up thingies with a picture of a woman with huge boobs and a telephone saying, I’m Gillian. I’m only five minutes from you and I’m seriously horny. I shrieked, pulled the power plug out of the wall and checked out the window for horny Gillian. The computer stopped whirring and blacked out. ‘Mum, you can’t do that,’ came a stern voice from behind me. I shrieked again and turned to find that Mary-Lou had come into the room. ‘You have to shut it down properly,’ she clucked, clearly imitating me.

  I couldn’t very well ask her whether she’d seen anything. (‘Darling, did you happen to see a bottom with a doodle in it?’) She didn’t appear disturbed, though, just triumphant that she’d found me ‘wuining the computer’. So that’s it between me and porn. I still feel grubby about it, and I’ll be checking Mary-Lou for signs of disturbance for the rest of my life. That stuff can’t be unseen … I washed my hands and had a large glass of water.

  But then later the anger had sort of developed into a kind of assertive determination, and I got into bed beside him, held his penis, opened my eyes wide and looked at him. And I mean right at his eyes, not at his shoulder or his chest or the bit above his eyes, and at that moment he opened his eyes too. It was only perhaps a bit longer than an instant – a few frames. Any longer and one of us might have said, ‘Do I have a booger or something?’ I preferred it to seem like an accidental meeting of the eyes, so I kissed his shoulder in order to hide. Isn’t it amazing how giveaway our eyes are? Little big windows. And is it surprising that even after years and years together, when everything is supposedly shared, we still feel compelled to hide them?

  But then I remembered the potential excitement of a renewed sexual tone and I (clenching my bottom muscles) lifted my hips towards him and looked unswervingly into his face. I must have looked like a possum in the headlights because he did a sort of double take, then gave a chuckly sort of ‘Hello there’, which could have easily been followed by ‘you creepy weirdo’. To give myself some credit, I didn’t cower away into shut-eyed safety; I held my gaze, but at the same time I realised that the intensity of it was a bit much and that it perhaps needed softening. So I un-widened my eyes a little, and then there was the inevitable awkward bit about how to hold my face at such intimate (penetration) moments. (The sex face, I think it’s termed. God knows what mine is. I hate to think.) But then things actually did get tonally interesting …

  I stopped thinking about the peculiarity of the moment and looked at him properly. My gaze softened naturally as my eyes brushed his mouth, his warm skin, the creases in the corners of his eyes; they might be marks of the years we’ve been together. Without trying I started to move slower, with a sort of curious intent. He responded, his expression turning from puzzled amusement to interest. He watched me watch him, and there was such an attraction in his eyes that I almost gasped in surprise at it. It was an expression I hadn’t seen in a very long time. It looked a bit like proper old ’til-death-do-us-part love. Then it occurred to me that I mightn’t have seen this expression simply because I hadn’t looked.

  We do still have some spark. And I had butterflies too.

  I didn’t manage to keep my eyes open during the climax. Actually, come to think of it, I’m not even sure that I did climax. He did, but did I? It didn’t matter either way; just having extreme fizzy bits and a very fuzzy heart was evidently enough.

  Good ol’ Dr Folds, eh.

  PS I tried to sustain the feeling into the day but we had Laurence and Alison over so it was a bit awkward. Alison held Hugh’s face and said, ‘You look tired, darling. Are you overdoing things? I hope you’re getting fed properly. There are some very good supplements out there now. What are your thoughts on apple cider vinegar?’

  I wondered about saying, ‘He’s tired because we shagged all night. What are your thoughts on that, Alison?’

  MONDAY 12th JUNE

  We had morning sex. Monday morning sex! It was a bit, um, forced, and Hugh stopped me for a minute and said, ‘Resolution going well, then?’ so I was a bit embarrassed. Then he said, ‘Susannah, we don’t have to —’ but I kissed away his words because his penis was saying we definitely should. (In hindsight, could it have been a morning wee erection?)

  I didn’t do the Eyes Wide Open thing, mainly because morning light is harsh on wobbly bits. As it happened, Mary-Lou waltzed in mere moments after we’d finished. I knew there was an argument against morning sex beyond stale breath. We were still a bit puffed, but Mary-Lou didn’t appear to notice anything unusual, unless ‘Mum and Dad, do you know that not all monkeys eat bananas?’ is some kind of cryptic code for ‘Oh, my lord, Daddy’s been poking Mummy with his banana.’ I mean, seriously. What child gets up at six to make revelations about monkeys?

  Some monkeys prefer nuts, apparently.

  Could this be a SEX WEEK? This is another of Dr Folds’ suggestions. I scoffed at the idea when I first read it, but we’re well on our way so perhaps I should press on?

  *Buy cranberry juice.

  TUESDAY 13th JUNE

  It’s very late, but I’m just checking in to say we just had some more sex, so that’s four times in three days! He was asleep when I came to bed, and I admit I was completely a little cold on the idea of a sex week in light of the fact that today had nothing remotely sexy in it – we’ve started swimming lessons on Tuesday mornings. I do dread swimming lessons. All those chlorine particles and wart germs and battling children to get in the pool and battling them to get out and knickers rolling up and socks not going on. But if you don’t take your children to swimming lessons, you’ll be marked as a bad parent because they might one day drown as a result. We live on an island, after all.

  Anyway, I was lying there thinking, Let’s forget sex week, and longing for sleep, but then I realised that sex week really only just kicked off, and that it’s been a long time since I actually finished any project that I started. So I woke him up with a little massage and it went on from there, longer than expected. (I guess the sperm isn’t so close to the surface, having been expelled at regular intervals lately.) So now it’s almost midnight. I have to sleep so I won’t go into too much steamy detail but suffice to say, we had sex. Sort of run-of-the-mill sex. I mean, it was fine, but fine is what you say when you’re talking about the weather, or when you’re not happy but don’t want to say.

  He fell instantly back to sleep again, crunched right up against me. So I can’t sleep.

  Sex week is overrated.

  WEDNESDAY 14th JUNE

  Is there such a thing as too much sex? I don’t know, but I’m buggered … Buggered as in tired, not buggered as in poked up bottom, God forbid.

  Speaking of bottoms, I had to buy some incontinence pads for Valda. The care person who does her shopping didn’t get the right ones so Valda asked me. In the chemist, I had a sudden wave of fondness for her and spent $29.90 on a pair of lace-trimmed ‘Contidance leak-proof panties, reassurance with style’. I thought they looked much more dignified than those enormous rustly paper pads. And the chemist woman was so enthusiastic about them. ‘Our oldies deserve a bit of sass,’ she said. I’m not sure I’d describe the knickers as sassy. But the lace had a rose pattern like Valda’s curtains so I thought they’d please her. They didn’t. She said, ‘Well, thank you, Susannah. Those will be very useful when I next go to a dance with my lover and show him my briefs. Will you wash them when I crap myself?’

  I couldn’t believe she said ‘crap’ and I nearly laughed. But she said it in an angry-sad sort of way, then looked at her hands and moved her fingers as though she couldn’t quite believe they were so aged. So I didn’t laugh. I just said, ‘Yes. Yes, I’ll wash them.’ And she looked at me for a moment that went for so long I got all awkward and said, ‘Don’t worry. I shat myself in the supermarket last year. Gastro.’ And she laughed. She has a lovely laug
h. Like bells. We played some Phantom of the Opera and sat for a bit before I had to get to school.

  THURSDAY 15th JUNE

  I’m calling it. Sex week is over. Quantity over quality is never a good idea. Tonight, it was clear that neither of us was at all into it. Well, his penis was but I’ve learnt that that doesn’t mean much. I’m pretty sure I heard him sigh. Not a passionate sort of sigh but an impatient one, of the sort one might do when waiting for the children to put on their seatbelts. And me? Well, let’s just say it’s lucky I knew where to find the Vaseline.

  And then almost immediately afterwards we were having a near-argument about who’d misplaced the wi-fi password. Shouldn’t lots of sex send its charge well into next week, smudging out all mundane domestic events? Instead, any drifts of ecstasy and love evaporated even before I’d got my breath back. (Just realised that all this sex is probably as effective as a bi-weekly Zumba class, so there’s one less thing I need to feel guilty about.)

  So, here’s my theory: there appears to be a sort of saturation point when sex becomes just another thing in the day, not a special, thrilling treat like it might be when you have it only once a week or once every few months. I mean, I don’t want ice cream every day. I don’t want sunny days or sherbet or packages in the mail every day, because they wouldn’t mean as much. Sexual abstinence, or refusal, is possibly imperative to a fresh and sparkly sex life.

  Hugh would probably only refuse sex under extreme circumstances (such as a traumatised penis). He’d fear that it would signal for me to pack up my libido, buy some Horlicks and take up knitting. So even if he doesn’t feel like sex, he will push on. Or his penis will.

  So the upshot is that I don’t think we should have sex tomorrow. The novelty’s worn off. Five days is a working week, so we did sort of have a sex week. It was quite a bit of work. I’m prescribing a sex break.