by Meg Bignell
I’ll sleep on it.
FRIDAY 21st JULY
I spoke to Hugh. He said, ‘Can you look in the filing cabinet for the superannuation certificates?’ and ‘Did you keep the fuel receipts?’ and nothing about missing us because ‘I have to go. I’ll call you later.’ And I was left with an empty phone, into which I said, ‘Yes, I’m keeping the children wonderfully alive, thank you very much. Oh, darling, I love you too. No, don’t you dare send me flowers. I’ve had more than enough, and no need to organise a surprise adventure. It’s only a month since you took me to Paris and rented that amazing apartment in Cuba. And thank you for talking to the children about not being complete little arseholes in the car. Love you. Bye.’ Then I gave the phone the middle finger. And the dog, who looked a bit judgey for my liking. Then I opened a jar of gherkins.
Oh, I know he’s busy. I shouldn’t be cross. I am stopping this nonsense and going back to record sparklier times.
Speaking of gherkins …
Hobart, 2002
We’d been in the Newtown house for three years and had multiple (keep Susannah happy) trips to the mainland (none overseas) when I sort of gave up on the idea of a marriage proposal. I mean, if it didn’t happen on the Barrier Reef or on Cable Beach or by the Sydney Opera House (celebrating Ria’s first big guest appearance), then it was unlikely to happen at all. I didn’t pester him (still terrified I might frighten him off with adoration) but he must have known how much I wanted it. At weddings, as we stood side by side in churches watching people declare their forevers, there was a palpable frisson of want emanating from me. But the wedding seasons came and went and we did up the house a bit, and supported one another in our blossoming careers. We laughed a lot and talked about how we were the only normal people in a world full of weirdos, and that seemed like enough.
Then one night we went to a fancy-dress birthday party held by Hugh’s fancy new clients. We were riding the wave of a windfall; it was a big, lucrative, exciting job – the Hobart Museum renovation. The concept drawings looked amazing, like nothing Hobart had seen before. (This was way before Mona blew anything remotely avant-garde right out of the cool waters of the Derwent.)
‘Someone in Europe is bound to snap you up after this,’ I told him. ‘Brave, young, dashing engineer.’
‘It’s a team effort, though,’ he said humbly. ‘And we’re not doing this to get into a coffee table book. It’s just a great thing for Hobart.’
‘Yes,’ I said, but thought, Bugger Hobart. What about me?
The fancy-dress party was for Garrett Green, the museum manager. We were asked to go as something starting with G. I overthought it and decided that museum people wouldn’t be the superficial types who’d dress as glamour girls or Goldilocks. I dressed Hugh as a garden gnome and myself as a gherkin.
On the way in we passed a golfer, a goddess, some gypsies, a genie and Goldie Hawn. Everyone looked very Glamorous. I felt ugly and hot and got a bit drunk. I told Greta Garbo a very dirty joke about brussels sprouts, knocked over a plate of meatballs and tripped down a small flight of steps onto Grizabella the cat, whose tail was ripped off in the kerfuffle. Later, after I’d hit the dance floor with Gisele Bündchen, Ginger Rogers and a governess (and felt happily confident in my execution of the Macarena), it became evident that I wasn’t the life of the party, but the laugh of the party. There were people asking me for jokes, challenging me to the chicken dance and sniggering behind their hands. It was very (literally) sobering, and one of the first times I’d felt like a proper misfit. I suddenly wanted my mum. And Ria.
With a furious blush flaring under my green make-up, I went in search of Hugh and found him in the sitting room with his gnome hat off, talking to an impossibly tall female gladiator in a leather bikini. I ventured up to say hello but lost the last of my confidence and tried instead to sink into a couch. But my costume wouldn’t bend and I slid off onto the floor with quite a thud.
‘Oh my God,’ I heard the gladiator say. ‘How embarrassing. That gherkin is really pickled.’ Then she laughed hysterically at her own joke and added, ‘I’ve never seen the point of pickling cucumbers – so revolting.’
‘Oh, that’s a shame,’ said Hugh, coming over to help me up. ‘We can’t be friends, then, because gherkins are my favourite. Especially this one.’
‘Oh, she’s your friend,’ said the gladiator. ‘She’s adorable.’
‘Yes, I adore her,’ said Hugh. ‘But she’s not my friend. She’s my wife. At least she’s going to be, if she’ll have me.’ He looked at my stunned face and said, ‘Will you have me?’
I gaped at him, tried to speak and he said, ‘Wait, sorry, don’t answer, hang on …’ and he pulled me by the hand, away from the gaping gladiator, through the party and out the front door. Outside, he manoeuvred me around the garden to a lit-up marble fountain of a boy with a harp. There, he went down on one knee and said, ‘Susannah Mackay, will you be my wife. Please?’ And with that, most likely for the first time in the history of the universe, a gherkin leapt into the arms of a garden gnome, kissed him all over his rosy-cheeked face and shrieked, ‘Yes!’
As we left, the garden gnome high-fived the harp boy.
It’s a very silly story, but at least it’s memorable. The children love to relate the tale. Mary-Lou has drawn pictures of me as a gherkin and told her class for show and tell. I should be proud …
I feel much more amiable. Just sent Hugh a goodnight text, with ‘Miss you’ and ‘OXOXOXO’. Well done me.
LATER:
As a little reward for summoning benevolence, I have ordered a vibrator online, express post in discreet packaging. It’s pink with pearls inside that are meant to stimulate you right to your very core. Also, it comes with a pair of free Ben Wa balls, whatever they are.
TUESDAY 25th JULY
A discreet package arrived today. I am too frightened to open it.
THURSDAY 27th JULY
The package is still at the back of my cupboard, where I put it yesterday in the hopes that its presence would fade and stop signalling out to me like a scary beacon.
I must distract myself with noble pursuits until Hugh gets back. Then I’ll lob the package into the nearest St Vinnie’s Bin. It’ll give those people who spend their days sorting through other people’s unwanteds a bit of a laugh at least.
Feeling a bit low today. Can’t blame PMS because it’s not that time. Am I lonely? Hugh’s been away for sixteen days and every time I speak it’s to remind children to use commas or manners or floss. Sometimes I lie awake thinking about bits of caught kiwi-fruit skin eating into their teeth.
I thought about inviting all the neighbours over for early dinner but Ava said that Josh is away. I was going to phone Isobel, but then I lost my temper this morning and felt further depleted. Really lost it. This is mostly why I’m so low now. The guilt of it, and the physical low after an explosive fight-or-flight response. Why such a tantrum?
We were late. My fault. I got in a flap about what clothes to wear, and then cross because I don’t have a high-flying job with clear and stylish workwear requirements. My grump just snowballed from there, really:
– Mary-Lou wailed about no time for plaits. How do some mums manage elaborate braids, etc. every day? Do they rise with the birds? Mine are lucky to get a comb wafted in their direction, which is not ideal for the small ones, with their curls.
– Eloise (who has given up entirely on her hair and taken to stuffing it into a bun as if it doesn’t deserve to exist) was huffing about not seeing bus-stop friends, and she didn’t offer to tidy the breakfast things.
– Raffy had tissue fluff all over his windcheater.
– I found another grey pube.
– In the car, Jimmy leaned forward to change the radio and snapped the lid off the compartment between the front seats. A snapped front compartment lid is like a grey pube – a proper devaluer, and irreversible.
– Mary-Lou declared that last week, Jimmy dropped his box of sultanas in the car and many
of them went down the seat cracks.
– Jimmy switched the radio from an interesting conversation about China’s terracotta soldiers to a Justin Bieber song and I felt affronted, which means I am a grumpy old lady.
– Justin Bieber is undeniably sexy. And he would never dream of looking twice at me. Because I am clearly a dirty old woman.
It was too much. I shrieked at Jimmy to get back in his seat and that shriek was like a pressure release valve on a demented balloon. I was awful. Danny the Champion’s dad would be shocked and embarrassed.
Then, from the passenger seat, Eloise reached over and patted my thigh. She didn’t look at me, or say anything, just patted. My snippy little big girl, the one with the deodorant and the sullen silences. And with that pat, I sobbed and sorried all the rest of the way to school, told them I didn’t deserve such lovely children and I should go and sit in the naughty spot for a good few hours. Their silence implied agreement.
I stopped crying only because we were nearly at school and there’s that really chirpy lollipop lady who looks like she’s never even once lost her shit and also that mother whose name I can’t remember but is the one who takes care of crises. You know those ones? Rock-like women with listening ears and glistening eyes and strong, waterproof shoulders who are very busy gathering donations for the school fair and writing newsletters and might, deep down, be thrilled to know the business of others. If she saw my tear-stained face, she’d drag me off for a cup of tea and a chat, which would be intolerable because I’d have to make something up that isn’t anything to do with Justin Bieber or sultanas.
(I hasten to add that Justin Bieber is over eighteen, so I’m not all that creepy. I also have a tiny crush on Taylor Swift. I might as well get that off my chest while I’m here in these murky depths.)
Anyway, I collected myself enough to get the children the rest of the way and myself into town. But I couldn’t collect my dignity. It was back on the side of the road with the broken bits of lid. (I threw them out the window.) It’s a terrible thing to lose your dignity in front of your children, not to mention the littering.
Do I need some sort of mood stabiliser? Butler school? Vitamin D is meant to be good. So is a trip to Paris in the spring. So is masturbating. I should take it up again. The package, the package!
In town, where I was to catch up on birthday presents (two godchildren in the last week, both Hugh’s – why is this part of my work?), there was a woman pushing her babies along in a pram with packages hanging off the handlebars and I cried again because mine don’t need a pram any more. They have gone off to school with their sense of purpose intact and mine shredded up like the washed tissue bits on Raffy’s jumper. Linty old used-up purpose. Then I cried some more because I found those pram days stifling and I was perpetually irritated when I should have been squeezing every drop of meaning from every precious moment and revelling in my plump and juicy raisin d’etre. Oh, wait, is it raison d’etre? I can’t even get that right.
Then I had to sign some papers in the health insurance place and my signature looked suddenly pathetic and feeble, like a person resigned to the fact that they will never amount to anything much. When I married Hugh, I practised my new signature a bit, but not all that much, because I was so married and mature, and practising signatures was for flitty little girls. Oh, that’ll do. Understated elegance, like I’ll soon be, I thought smugly. Well, bugger that. I should have created an autograph, not a boring signature fit only for school diaries and dentist claim forms. No wonder S Parks has never achieved anything other than a stretched vagina, four future delinquents and no actual sparks.
(By the way, the delinquents seemed fine this afternoon, especially after I took them on a guilt trip to the sweet shop after school. Mary-Lou chose a large electric blue lollipop shaped like a diamond ring. I hate to think what they use to make that blue. Vitriol? I’ve let them watch telly again: Anne of Green Gables. I’ll go and join them soon, I think. Sometimes a dose of Anne is just the ticket.)
I think if I had that time again, I’d never have changed my name at all. Susannah Mackay was doing quite well for herself, thank you very much. It was even a bit groovy to keep one’s maiden name when we were married. All the cool people were doing it (although clearly I’m not cool because I just used the word groovy). I claimed that it would be confusing for children, etc. but really I was just so in love, I wanted everything of Hugh, especially his name. I was proud to be rebranded as a Parks. If there was a Parks uniform, I would have gladly worn it. Pathetic. Susannah Parks is just someone’s mum’s name. A parent. A transparent, because I’m almost invisible, like an empty glass vase.
If Hugh and I divorced, would I go back to my maiden name? Sometimes I envy divorced people. Every second week free of children and duty and fights over the computer. I wouldn’t be lonely, and if I were, I’d revel in the loneliness, positively swizzle about in it like Cleopatra in her milk. I could get a little solid brick house with no creaks that never needs painting, put some daisies in the vase …
Now I’m fantasising about divorce!! I think I need to go and dig out that package. It’s probably just what I need, to get my pecker up.
That probably wasn’t the most timely use of the word ‘pecker’.
… No package. Instead I’m joining in on Anne of Green Gables. Anne would understand my wayward brain. I too love dimpled elbows. My elbows are really wrinkly, like scrotums. Sometimes the children pull at them. Another random irritant.
SATURDAY 29th JULY
I’ve just read back over my thoughts over the last few days and am wondering whether all that twiddling with my clitoris has increased oestrogen production. I’m all over the place. Maybe I’ve fiddled my way into hormonal dementia … I should definitely not open the package. Instead I’m going to make a zucchini slice and take the children to the beach. The beach in winter is enchanting and moody.
LATER:
Went to beach. It was cold. Now there is sand all over the floors. I am going to ignore it and phone Ria.
LATER STILL:
Ria is coming over to stay!!! She said, ‘It’s high time I checked in on you before the Sparkle Project comes together and you no longer have the vaguest of interest in me.’ Really it’s because she wangled some sort of promotional gig here so that her agent has let her escape home. She’ll be here in a week and HOORAY!!!
SUNDAY 30th JULY
Late last night, I opened the package. By God did I open the package.
After three gin and tonics (two while talking to Ria), I emptied my mind, steeled myself with affirmation of real-life bravery and homed in on the box in the wardrobe. There, amid a blizzard of those white squishy packaging peanuts, was a resplendent, lavender-coloured vibrator. The lavender almost stopped me. Why not skin colour? Why does everything for women have to be pinkish and pastelly? And then I thought, Well, actually, penises are sort of pinkish and pastelly, and some probably go quite lavender at times. But still, it was all pearlised and ditzy. Looking at it, I felt the same as when I peer into a showbag. Trashy, guilty and disgusted. And the thing actually smelled like showbags – you know, that sweet plastic, manufactured smell. (And, yes, I did sniff the vibrator. I don’t know why. I guess you should thoroughly assess anything you are thinking about putting inside yourself, but it does seem a very strange thing to do.) But soon enough I managed to look past the sickly presentation and see the object for what it was – a toy, in lieu of my husband (who has been away for thirty-eight DAYS): just another item in the Sparkle toolkit. Based on that, I had a go.
It did at first seem seedy. I couldn’t help imagining what teenage Susannah – the one with no thoughts beyond a music room and a viola bow – would think of me brandishing a vibrator. And then I turned the thing on. And, well, it turned me on. I’m still too ashamed/embarrassed to share too much but in mere minutes I was gasping like a trout on a riverbank and it was all over. Intense. Efficient. Could be dangerously addictive. Ria says she sometimes pops home for a little whiz.
I can see why.
What concerns me is that after all this self-sufficiency and efficiency (economy of time and energy, no mess, no emotional involvement, guaranteed outcome), I might not want to bother with anything more complex, like a penis and a man. Will Hugh’s penis be pink and pearly enough?
I think I need my husband to come back.
TUESDAY 1st AUGUST
Hugh will be home tomorrow night. Ria arrives on Thursday. This is very, very good news. I am so looking forward to seeing both of them, I really am.
I mean, I am, but there are several misgivings, if I’m to be totally honest:
1) I have got entirely used to the few hours after the children are in bed when I am alone, with the history channel to watch and the internet to browse. (I’ve developed an interest in 1940s fashion. And sloths.) Sometimes I might search my legs for ingrown hairs. Or have a spoonful of that instant frosting you can buy in little tubs for when birthday cakes are all too much, for Christ’s sake.
2) Will Ria finally see how pathetic my existence is? (Must tidy up bathroom cabinet. It’s a shrine to anti-ageing fads and desperation.)
3) I have told Ria waaaaay too much about the Sparkle Project and now she’ll be on constant lookout for evidence of marital atrophy. I can’t keep things from her even if I’m keeping them from her.
4) No more regular clitoris/vibrator dates.
Other than that, I can’t wait to see them both. I’m sick of myself. And I’m sick of the kids too – it’s only Tuesday and I’m sure it should be Thursday at least. Jimmy’s lost another tooth and the tooth fairy is three days late.
WEDNESDAY 2nd AUGUST
The tooth fairy came. She slipped on a book, knocked over a lamp and woke two of the children. For God’s sake. Can I get anything right?
