The Mummy Bloggers

by Holly Wainwright

  Something was familiar about the cone of confession that women had created on The Working Mum. It reminded Mark of recovery—of his Narcotics Anonymous Meetings: the declarations of ‘no judgement’, the raw honesty, the rush to support and reassure, the understanding that sharing these stories was a gift to those who were struggling.

  It was kind of beautiful.

  Still. Mark fucking hated it.

  He put a steadying hand out to Harri, who was pulling herself up on the side of the sandpit where her brother was constructing a complex tunnel system.

  Mark hated that Leisel wouldn’t leave this thing alone. Looking through the comments, he was trying to understand why she refused to block a portal that, to him, was just a pipeline chugging angst and negativity into their home.

  • • •

  Mark kept flashing back to the night when Kristen Worther had come to their door. He’d talked about it in therapy and at his Meetings. He’d been urging Leisel to find the same kind of support—but she wouldn’t listen. Mark sensed she saw it as weakness to be struggling, and he was trying not to feel judged about that.

  ‘I can’t make her talk about it,’ he’d said on the phone to his brother, Dan, the night before. ‘She seems to think it’s a problem that can be solved.’

  ‘Says Therapy Guy,’ said Dan. ‘That’s actually how most of us think. We don’t like to make a fuss, we think things will go away if we just get on with it. It’s only guys like you who know that’s not true.’

  ‘Whatever. We have kids who can’t sleep because of what happened to their mum. I think it’s time she asked for some help.’

  ‘Isn’t that what you’re there for?’

  ‘Only a guy who has never been to therapy could ask that question.’

  Dan shifted topics. ‘I keep seeing Leisel on TV—she looks great. She was on The Nightly the other day, talking about trolls.’

  ‘Yeah. She’s doing better than the rest of us. On the outside, at least.’ Mark tried to keep his voice neutral. ‘She’s very focused on these blogging awards.’

  ‘Okay,’ Dan said. Mark knew he wanted to say more.

  The brothers were two years apart, and Dan was Mark’s closest friend. Years of messing people around as an unreliable drug addict had whittled his circle down to those who had no choice but to stick around: family.

  ‘Shut up, brother,’ Mark said.

  ‘I didn’t say a thing.’

  • • •

  When Mark heard a wail, he looked up from scrolling to see Rich banging another kid over the head with his spade. Harri was laughing delightedly from the sidelines.

  He stood to intervene—but before he got there, the little boy’s mother swooped in and gathered him up, glaring at Mark. ‘Keep an eye on your boy,’ she hissed.

  The dad-halo was slipping.

  ‘Time to go, Rich,’ he called over, picking up Harri and brushing the sand off her.

  Being the lone dad at playgroup was enlightening. Women saw him as a safe space—they told him things about their husbands that they wouldn’t say to a ‘normal’ man. Mostly, they complained. Since having children, their previously equal relationships had shifted: the women were in a constant state of physical and emotional stress, while their husband’s lives had barely changed.

  Mark made tolerant noises. His most-often used line was, ‘Maybe he doesn’t feel like he knows what to do. You should talk to him.’

  ‘But it’s not like you and Leisel,’ the women would say. ‘You guys share parenting. It’s beautiful.’

  Yes, but also not strictly true. Mark did the majority of the grunt work. He was the one who knew the names of the kids in Maggie’s class. He was the one who knew that on Rich’s day-care days he needed the green water bottle or there would be a meltdown of epic proportions. He was the one who could soothe Harri to sleep. ‘Maternal instinct’ was a matter of proximity and practice, in Mark’s experience.

  On Leisel’s blog, his alias was Wonder Dad, and he found it—as with most things about the blog—irritating. Would a woman doing what he did be Wonder Mum? Silly question.

  He had more in common with the women complaining to him than with their oblivious husbands.

  But the truth was—as he suspected it was for some of the mothers at playgroup—it suited him to be the one at home. He was good at it. He enjoyed having his day carved into the manageable chunks of gentle parenting rhythms. He appreciated the structure. His work as a carpenter was flexible, more off than on at the moment. And it suited his temperament to focus so completely on the one job in hand: child-wrangling.

  And then there were his kids. He was a grown man who could well up at the thought of his children’s faces. Maggie was a funny, sensitive girl. Rich was a loud, dramatic ball of energy. Harri was all kamikaze confidence and giggles.

  Mark marvelled at the fact that he’d lived almost forty years without these people. And now they were all here, he didn’t need anything else. Nothing at all. They could all live in a dark cave in a hostile forest, and he would have everything he needed right there.

  But he knew that Leisel did not feel the same way.

  • • •

  These days, Mark liked to say that he’d always known Leisel would come back into his life.

  She had been his last girlfriend before his addiction had swallowed him whole. The way he remembered it, when he and Leisel were lovers, he was still dabbling, dancing around the edges of the darkness that was coming for him. He knew she did not remember it so romantically.

  He had been enchanted by Leisel, by her intelligence and her independence. She didn’t seem to need him. But when they were alone, she opened up to him completely. She wrote poems and let him read them. He remembered every story she ever told him about her missing father and her devastated mother, and about escaping the suburbs for a different life. And then, later, he remembered the look on her face every time he let her down.

  After Leisel packed up and left the little Surry Hills studio, he had an excuse to lose himself completely. His disapproving girlfriend had been a tether to normality—once that was severed, he let himself float free. Now, he considered himself lucky that ten years passed before she saw him again. There was no way she would happily let him care for their children if she’d ever met that empty-eyed junkie.

  It was his brother, really, who’d pulled him back: who hadn’t stopped dragging him out of shitty, enabling share houses and dangerous relationships, who had got him into rehab and then another rehab, who had sold his own car and talked their parents out of a large chunk of their savings to fix this grown man.

  They say rehab can need a few attempts to ‘take’, and that was true for Mark. He was so roundly sick of himself, so desperate to change this terrible, sad-arsed script, that he knew Dan’s couch wasn’t the answer this time. That couch was too easy to fall off, to wander from. He had to get away.

  Mark moved to Milton, a small coastal town where the winters were cold and the summers brought a tide of tourists. He returned to something that he had loved way before he hadn’t loved anything except heroin: working with wood. He made picture frames from recycled native timber for the local craft shops and markets, out of a studio that he shared with an old woodworker in exchange for stories and smokes. He lived alone in two rooms above a cafe, working a few shifts a week downstairs for rent.

  Slowly, slowly, Mark built himself back up into an actual person. He felt like he had missed his twenties altogether. Sometimes he felt like he’d slept through his youth in fitful bad dreams and emerged in middle-age—worn, tired, in need of comfort and closure.

  In rehab, in therapy, in group, there were many opportunities to explore why things had gone the way they had. Why he’d made those choices. Like the one to let Leisel walk out of that Surry Hills studio. The answers weren’t satisfying to him or his despairing, guilt-ridden parents, but he believed it came down to biology, a missing internal brake.

  So as a person living in recovery, he had been wa
ry of any extremes. Everything had to be measured: there could be no obsessive plunges. Dan checked on him monthly. Mark made safe, sober friends. He stayed away from the city. He was religious about his Meetings—that was why he’d found a flat in town, he didn’t yet have a car and he was in walking distance of the village hall. He lived a small life.

  And then came Leisel’s message.

  As soon as he saw it, he realised it was the only reason he’d asked the waitress downstairs to help him set up a Facebook page. Social media was an unknown world to him, a world that had emerged during those missing years. He saw it as an enticing danger, a possible plunge, and treated it with suspicion. Until Leisel.

  Moving back to Sydney to be with her had been the most dangerous thing Mark could have done. But it also felt like the only thing that he could do, that he was meant to do.

  Everything he remembered about Leisel was still there—her wit, her humour, her warmth, her curtain of thick, sweet-smelling hair. Her honesty. She was so clear about telling him what she wanted, so honest about telling him what she would not tolerate. Her openness attracted him, her insistence made him feel safe.

  In return, he was honest with Leisel. She would never set eyes on the man he’d been, but he painted her the pictures. In the early days of their reunion, they would lie in bed for hours (oh, how impossible to imagine now) and talk about the years that separated them. Leisel told him about a life full of work and friends and travel and words, and he told her about his world of dope and desperation and sickness and deceit. She listened, without speaking. He expected her to recoil from him, to change her mind. She didn’t.

  He knew that being in a relationship with a recovering junkie was no garden party. Darkness was beneath the surface, a life that the other person could never completely understand, along with a whole lot of tedious self-flagellation. There was temptation and the constant worry of relapse, even after six years. Even after twelve.

  But it had been twelve. Twelve years, and Mark was as proud of that as he was of his marriage and his family.

  • • •

  As an addict, Mark hadn’t known that he was capable of being this person, the man who right now was standing in the kitchen of their flat, cutting up an orange for his baby daughter. He never knew that he could live a boring, beautiful life.

  He was the parent planning Harri’s first birthday party for next week, the one the teachers called when Maggie was sick. Of course, this domestic grind wasn’t perfect—the days could be long, tempers could be short. Small people could be more infuriating and unreasonable and single-minded than jonesing drug addicts. But what peace they brought him.

  That peace had been shattered by the woman at the door.

  Years of therapy had taught Mark that regret was useless. But he was reliving that night over and over, sometimes hourly. He was reliving it even as he stood at the bench, slicing the apple.

  He’d gone to bed early. He always did. He savoured the peace that came when the kids were down, when he and Leisel would eat together, talk about their days. She liked to sit up and write. He had read Franzen for five minutes and was out. He knew not to underestimate sleep.

  He was dreaming about the ocean when he felt Leisel kicking him gently.

  ‘I think there’s someone at the door,’ she whispered.

  Why didn’t he get up? Because he was half asleep. Because he was still half in his dream, wrestling tentacles in the dark. Because he was tired. Because, clearly, he was more concerned with his sleep than his wife’s safety. ‘Shhh, Lee, ignore it, go back to sleep,’ and he rolled over.

  Of course, Leisel had been going through her own nightly ritual—his least favourite thing—of scrolling through her phone. Putting all these strangers and their problems in her head before she went to sleep. He would never understand that.

  The next thing he remembered was shouting. Strange noises penetrating his dream. He stretched out a leg, and Leisel wasn’t there. That made him open his eyes, and it took another few seconds for him to get out of bed. Those few seconds were the ones when Leisel had a knife pushed into her flesh.

  He should have just fucking got up. Fucking lazy useless junkie.

  When he did stumble out of the bedroom door, naked, confused, he saw Leisel on the floor. There was something on top of her—a strange, dark shape. In those muddled moments, it looked like a child. Nothing was making sense. And there was something else, something dark on the ground beneath Leisel.

  It probably took him a split second to understand what he was looking at, but it felt like minutes. Then he lunged, shouting at the dark shape, and it sprang up.

  The shape was a woman. A tiny woman wearing a hooded jacket and holding a large knife. She was breathing heavily, panting like a small dog. She smelt sweet. For another endless split second he was holding her by the shoulders, looking into her face. Her features were close together, and she had big, round eyes that didn’t focus on him. Thin blonde wisps escaped from her hood. Before he even realised he had her, the tiny woman just wriggled free and ran. Right through the open door.

  Later, the police asked him about his ‘decision’ not to chase her. About ‘choosing’ to stay with Leisel. But it hadn’t been a choice—he didn’t even think about chasing the woman. He only thought about Leisel, about getting to her.

  Blood was spilling from Leisel’s arm, though at the time he had no idea where it was coming from. He lay down next to her and looked into her eyes. She was staring at him. She looked like she was trying to smile. He was crying.

  This was their life together. Their second chance. What was happening to it?

  Leisel had to tell him, ‘Call an ambulance. Please.’

  And as he jumped up and ran to find the phone, he suddenly thought to be quiet—the children. They were right behind that door. They had been only metres from the woman with the knife.

  Now, looking back, he had so many critical questions about what he’d done that night. Why hadn’t he thought of his children before that moment? Why hadn’t he already called for help? Why had his injured wife needed to tell him to do it?

  He’d called the ambulance, yelling into the phone. The door was still open, and people began to emerge from their apartments. Wendy, the next-door neighbour in her dressing-gown, hair in a frizzy halo, crouched next to Leisel and pushed down hard on her arm.

  So that’s where it is, he thought.

  Leisel didn’t scream. Her eyes were on the kids’ door—like Mark, she could probably sense the movement behind it. She started calling out quietly, ‘Mummy’s okay, Mummy’s okay.’ And then there was the sound of Rich crying from his bed, and then Harri. So much noise. So much awful noise. Mark asked Wendy to leave Leisel and go to sit with the kids.

  So many minutes passed before the ambulance arrived. Wendy behind the kids’ door. Mark with Leisel. The sound of Harri wailing. So many things he didn’t do when the moment came. At least he’d finally remembered to pull on some pants.

  Now, at the kitchen bench, Mark set down the knife. He put the slices of orange into two brightly coloured plastic bowls.

  The next day, when Leisel had still been in hospital and the kids had been with Dan and his mum, Mark had gone to a Meeting. He couldn’t talk about what happened yet, but he could sit there and begin to process it.

  All he had been doing since was processing it. And he realised that he blamed her.

  He blamed Leisel. He couldn’t help it.

  Why had she invited that hatred into their house? Why hadn’t she asked for help when she needed it most, after they lost their baby? Why was she now running from this trauma, back into the arms of the faceless hordes who didn’t know her, didn’t care, saw her life as a sideshow? Why did she push away his attempts to get her to invest more in her real life, the one that wasn’t inside a machine?

  Why couldn’t all these women stop picking at their scabs? Why wasn’t this life enough for his wife?

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  ABI

&nbs
p; ‘Going into battle is just so invigorating. I feel ten years younger. I just feel so positive about the world.’

  Conflict suited Abi. She would have made an excellent wartime general. Perhaps she was one in a former life—she should ask Rosa, the local psychic.

  ‘You know you sound crazy, right?’ Grace was asking her.

  ‘I am crazy, Gracey, and I don’t give a fuck.’

  They were getting ready for Otto’s parent–teacher night, and Grace was in a state of high anxiety. For her, Otto’s decision to stop being home-educated and head to the local public school had been a personal rejection. Abi knew that Grace couldn’t decide if she wanted the teacher to say things were terrible or excellent.

  ‘Flower crown?’ Abi asked, holding her most extravagant favourite next to her head.

  ‘No, Abi. No flower crown. This evening is not about you—it’s about Otto.’

  ‘Darling, I don’t know what you think a parent–teacher meeting is like, but believe me, we will be in and out of there in minutes. Don’t get your hopes up. These are busy people.’

  ‘That’s exactly what worries me. Otto’s well-being is just one thing on their very long list of priorities. And it’s probably not near the top.’

  ‘Oh, shush.’ Abi wrapped her arms around Grace and kissed her. ‘You need to relax. Want to relax?’ She started pulling Grace towards the bed.

  ‘Abi. We don’t have time for that.’ Grace pushed her away. ‘You are so fucking weird at the moment.’

  ‘What’s weird about being madly in love with you?’ Abi persisted, reaching for Grace as she twirled away.

  ‘Oh, stop it. How can you be in such a good mood with all the shit that’s going on?’

  That was a good question. It was mostly down to a meeting she’d had that afternoon.

  • • •

  After Abi’s call to arms, her followers had attacked the fakery of The Stylish Mumma with gusto. They’d left a million messages on Elle’s Facebook page and relentlessly trolled her Instagram and Twitter. A particularly ingenious Green Diva had hacked Elle’s blog, and for one glorious hour every image was replaced by one of a lipstick-wearing pig. It wasn’t subtle—but fuck, it made Abi laugh.