Husband Replacement Therapy

by Lette, Kathy

  I beamed at my older sisters, who were still just staring at me, mouths agape. Sensing they were not as pleased by this romantic turn of events as I’d hoped, I went in for a harder sell.

  ‘Brody’s capable, kind and brave – he worked for Doctors Without Borders, you know, risking life and limb, literally . . .’ I paused, but quickly decided that the whole leg issue was probably a detail too far at this juncture. ‘He’s single, never married, can cook, is emotionally articulate, plays the guitar, laughs at my silly jokes and loves cunnilingus. What’s not to love? I’ve landed on my feet – and my back – at the same time!’ I was now gushing more than a Texan oil well but it was such a relief to let it all pour out.

  But still they stared.

  ‘I’ve never met anyone like him,’ I persisted. ‘He’s the sort of guy who can punch a crocodile to death, rip out its liver for dinner and then bivouac the night away under its flayed hide while trekking in the wilds of the Congo.’

  ‘The Congo? Who takes a holiday in the Congo?’ Emerald narrowed her eyes suspiciously. ‘Are you sure he’s not a fantasist?’

  ‘Where’s he from, this Doctor Love?’ Amber delved, distrust ringing in her voice. ‘Is he a Sydney boy?’

  ‘No, he’s from . . . out of town.’

  ‘Where? The Fifth Dimension?’ Emerald scoffed.

  ‘Maybe we should ask his care-in-the-community worker,’ Amber suggested, sarcastically.

  ‘A little town near Bundaberg,’ I said, not liking the way my big sisters were ganging up on me. Yes, I loved it when they agreed, but not when they agreed that I was wrong.

  ‘Oh, great!’ Emerald’s voice dripped sarcasm. ‘“What do you think of Ruby’s boyfriend?” “He’s a . . . well, if you pardon the expression, a Queenslander!” Part of the bloody redneck brigade who lost us the last election and got us the climate-change-denying dinosaurs who are driving us towards extinction.’

  ‘A banana bender? Oh, Ruby. That’s too, too much. I need another drink. Urgently.’ Amber hauled herself out of the hot tub to seek alcoholic reinforcement.

  ‘Ruby, you don’t need a doctor, you need a psychiatrist,’ Emerald admonished.

  ‘What’s the matter, Emerald?’ I asked her, pointedly. ‘Did you get up on the wrong side of somebody’s bed this morning?’

  ‘Okay, fair enough. We’ve all had some fun in the sun. But it’s just a holiday romance. The high life on the high seas has had its way with you. Once you’re ashore these feelings will evaporate, like sea mist. Pffft!’ She snapped her fingers.

  ‘You don’t understand! I crave his touch. His voice. His eyes.’

  ‘Oh, puh-lease, you sound like a cheesy lyric from a mawkish eighties love ballad.’

  ‘I know,’ I giggled. Again! ‘Isn’t it great? And at my age. All this endless advice women are given about how to deal with menopause: eat more kale, which is really just cabbage with good PR. Drink eight glasses of water a minute. Take up Pilates. Give up yoga. Take progesterone biocompounds. Give up coffee. Whack in vaginal salves. Whack on oestrogen cream. But love is the drug that works. I’ve never felt better! Which is why I’m not going home. My kids have fledged. And clearly Harry’s marriage vows should have said “Till death do us part – or till someone hotter comes along.” When we get to Sydney, Brody’s jumping ship and we’re heading up the coast together to see what happens. I’m going to relaunch myself.’

  ‘You’re not a ship, Ruby. You can’t just break a bottle over your own bloody head,’ Emerald said, sternly. ‘Mind you, the way you’re talking, I think you already have and that this is the concussion speaking.’

  ‘I’m so happy, Emmy. I feel like a wilted plant that’s been watered and cared for and brought back to life.’

  ‘Okay, what have I missed?’ Amber asked, lowering herself back into the jacuzzi, clutching a fresh bottle of champagne.

  ‘Your sister thinks she’s a pot plant, apparently.’

  ‘Chemistry, passion – call it what you will. But it’s there and it’s real. And it’s allowed me to get over Harry’s betrayal.’

  ‘Infidelity is about so much more than sex, Ruby,’ Amber counselled, topping up our glasses. ‘People have affairs because they don’t feel appreciated. They feel neglected, or ignored, and crave intimacy. They enjoy the feeling of being wanted, needed, desired. Harry may have been looking for an emotional connection, someone to open up to. Now you know that, it could be the very thing that fixes your marriage.’

  ‘Amber’s right, Rubes. Listen to your older, wiser sisters. This doctor thing, running away and all, is a very bad idea.’

  ‘It’s all Kev’s fault.’ Amber wiped tears from her eyes. ‘You’re spiralling down a rabbit hole like Alice in Wonderland. None of this is real.’

  ‘Neither of you are in love, so you can’t understand,’ I sulked.

  ‘Okay,’ Emerald said, ‘I admit that it’s better to be in love than, say, in a fatal car crash or an iron lung. But it’s just as painful. Nothing good can come of this, Ruby. Better to end it now.’

  ‘Emerald’s right. It’s nothing more than a mirage.’

  Amber constantly agreeing with Emerald seemed more surreal than anything I was saying. ‘Marriage is the mirage,’ I retaliated. ‘I thought I had a happy marriage. I thought we had a good sex life. I know now it was dull and perfunctory. Yes, we talked during sex, but only to ask when he was going to hang the shower curtain or pop to the shops to buy a new pool sweep. I thought my husband loved me as much as I loved him. But we’ve been away for nearly three weeks now and not one bloody word. We’re just joined together in holy acrimony.’

  ‘Look, keep calm when I say this, Ruby, darling, but maybe Harry’s still coming to terms with the shock of . . . Kev,’ Amber whispered, sombrely.

  The only way I could keep calm about ‘Kev’ was to undergo a lobotomy – but, come to think of it, I’d already had that, the moment I lied to my sisters. Perhaps I’d been sleep-walking and doing sit-ups underneath stationary vehicles that day, I thought darkly, but said, instead –

  ‘Look, just say you contracted cancer tomorrow. What would you regret? Not the things you’ve done, but the things you haven’t done. Right? It sounds trite, I know. But I don’t want to die before I’ve learnt how to live.’

  ‘That is trite. Who are you?’ Emerald asked, perplexed.

  ‘Trite, but true. Why not live every day as though it’s your last? That’s what I’m trying to do. Which is why I’m not going back to my old life. Clearly my husband has moved on.’

  ‘Forgive Harry, Rubes. The Anglo-Saxon attitude to infidelity is so unforgiving. We need to think like Europeans and not drive couples to divorce, causing kids to suffer. What about Zoe and Jake?’

  Amber had successfully prodded my maternal guilt gland. I thought of the frosting of freckles across Jake’s soft cheeks, and the way Zoe liked to wear her wild hair up, in a wiry strawberry-blonde halo. I loved them so much, but . . .

  ‘My kids no longer need me. Anyway, all my life I’ve censored my behaviour – either worried what Mum would think or what my husband would think, or what my kids would think, or what society would think . . . Well, what I think now is that my kids are leading their own lives, so why can’t I live a little? Zoe’s on her gap year. And Jake’s moving in with his apprenticeship pals. As it is, I only ever see them when they want to borrow my car,’ I joked. ‘My ship’s come in – literally. Can’t you be just happy for me?’

  Once more, the only sound was the jacuzzi, fizzing and frothing. Even the hot tub seemed to be hissing its disapproval.

  ‘Haven’t you ever wanted to shake off the labels that have been slapped on you your whole life – loving daughter, doting wife, devoted mother, reliable co-worker – to do what you want and not what is wanted of you? Is that so bad?’

  Hiss, hiss, went the hot tub.

  ‘Can’t one of you say something?’

  ‘What I can say is,’ Emerald began, ‘the only thing you’re divorced from is rea
lity. Running away with a man you’ve known for only a few weeks is the most reckless, insane, stupid bloody idea you’ve ever had. And, as your older sister, I completely forbid it.’

  ‘Seconded,’ said Amber, firmly.

  I shook my head. First, in amazement that my older sisters were agreeing on every goddamned thing; and secondly because, for once, I was not going to do what they told me to. All my life my sisters had known they could get me to do anything, mostly because I so wanted them to like me. I was six years old when they got me to steal money out of Mum’s purse, and seven when they made me hide a visiting priest’s towel so he’d have to streak from the bathroom to his guest bedroom. It had only taken me fifty years to work up the courage to defy them. I’d finally reached the twelfth step of my low-self-esteem program. ‘Hello, my name is Ruby Ryan and I am no longer a low-self-esteem addict.’

  And it wasn’t just my sisters who had a tendency to ride roughshod over me. I thought for a moment of all the career opportunities I’d turned down to look after the kids or support Harry’s business or appease my mother. But now I was the headline in my own news scoop – ‘Betrayed Wife and Jaded Mum of Two Discovers Late-Life Romance – oh, and Multiple Orgasms’. Brody knew how to make a girl wake up smiling. High-kicking and horseback riding might be difficult after the previous night, but smiling – a cinch. And, for once, I wasn’t going to give up what felt right.

  ‘It’s time you both let me make my own mistakes. Only, it’s not a mistake. It’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me.’

  Emerald put her arm around my shoulders. ‘It’s clearly just your fanny talking. And I should know. Mine’s been chatting away for weeks!’

  ‘I think so too, Ruby,’ Amber said. ‘You’re just having a severe libido attack. Time to get real.’

  ‘But, Emerald, you’re the one who said how splendid it is when the sex is so intoxicating that it takes over your whole imagination. You said you’d jump off tall buildings or stop speeding trains just to feel that life force. Didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes, but I wouldn’t throw over my whole life . . . what life you have left, I mean.’ Emerald searched for the right words, other than ‘You are batshit crazy’, which I could tell from her face she felt most succinctly summed up the scenario. ‘Have you told Doctor Love about Kev?’

  My deceit kept catching me unawares. Now was the time to come clean about the misdiagnosis. I girded my loins, drew in a deep breath – then shrank back in fear. I was just too bloody cowardly. I decided to write them an email outlining the whole sorry saga. I’d send it on the first day back on dry land, when I was out of range of their fury – especially now that Emerald sported stilettos sharp enough to perform a labial augmentation with one quick kick. Amber had developed a foul-mouthed tongue sharp enough to cut glass. That would give them time to cool off and hopefully forgive me.

  ‘Well?’ Amber prodded.

  ‘No . . . But it wouldn’t matter. Brody’s in love with me.’

  My sisters sat there, their faces as animated as Easter Island statues.

  ‘And if the kids look at me as if an alien has taken over my body and say “What have you done with our real mother?” I’m just going to smile and say, “Maybe this is your real mother!”’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Emerald’s Easter Island statue moved its judgmental jaw.

  ‘Well, for years you two have been comparing hot flushes and fanning each other, but you never told me the good things about the menopause. I feel, well, liberated! It’s given me licence to behave badly. After decades of mollifying overwrought teens about their pimple breakouts and broken hearts, or pacifying Harry over car dents or shopping bills or whatever, my family will just have to tiptoe around me for a change. The expression “The change will do me good” has never seemed so apt. Yes, I feel guilty that I’m not behaving as a selfless mother should, but maybe I’m feeling guilty because deep-down I’m not feeling that guilty at all!’

  I hadn’t meant to say so much, but I was on my fourth glass of champagne and feelings were bubbling out of me. I was more bubbly than the jacuzzi in which we were poaching.

  ‘Our smashed-avocado-on-toast-munching brunching-snowflake kids are right about one thing, though. We need to live our best lives. Which is why I want to lie in the arms of the man I love and banter in bon mots and down daiquiris, post-coitus, all through Christmas.’

  My sisters gave me a pitying stare that said loud and clear that they now suspected our mother must have drunk during her pregnancy with me.

  ‘Come on!’ I crashed my plastic flute up against their glasses. ‘Be happy for me. It’s our last night at sea and it’s smile o’clock!’

  I beamed, basking in the moonlight, before downing my champagne in one jubilant gulp.

  ‘Oh, and by the way, he’s missing half of one leg.’

  24

  Planning is a vital part of any trip. Just ask Scott of the Antarctic.

  Maybe I was waiting in the wrong place? I had gone out on deck before dawn to watch the ship gliding through the heads of Sydney Harbour, snaking towards the city lights then sliding majestically into port, to dock in the shadow of the Coathanger.

  I’d jumped the queue to disembark early, collected my suitcase then taken up my post at the designated spot. Excitement effervesced in me. I didn’t recognise myself – before this cruise the most spontaneous thing I’d ever done was to buy a vacuum cleaner on the spur of the moment, because it was on special, then pay for a taxi to lug it home.

  My eyes raked the crowd streaming off the ship. I was searching for his mop of tousled hair, inquiring chocolate eyes and those cheekbones a girl could shave her legs on.

  Leaning up against the terminus wall, looking out over the sparkling harbour, I thought back on the past three weeks, which had so seismically changed the lives of the Ryan sisters. Not only were we now friends, but Emerald had gone from dejected, cynical kicked cat to top-order predatory feline, and Amber had stopped being the perfect parent, started laughing at life and learnt to let her heart stop eating itself – as well as other dietary tips involving carbohydrates. And I had found love – oh, and also my G spot. Much to my own astonishment, I was now planning a romantic adventure with a man I’d only just met. I had things in my fridge that had been around longer than Doctor Brody Quinn. And yet, here I was – flying by the seat of my pants. Hell, I had frequent flier pant miles.

  I knew my sisters didn’t approve, but for the first time in my life I was not going to let them dictate my destiny. As my older sisters, Emerald and Amber had always done everything before me and done it better. Compared to my confident, competent siblings, I always felt that I was a runner-up in the human race. Hell, I’d practically worn their hand-me-down clothes while they were still wearing them.

  But now a Fuck it, I’m Fifty! feeling had kicked in. It was time I did something for myself. I mean, if not now, when?

  I checked my watch again, scanning the dock as passengers filed ashore and wandered through the jumble of suitcases, searching for their name tags. But it was my sisters I soon saw striding purposefully towards me. I’d been hoping to escape with Brody before they had time to track me down; I’d already composed an email to them, ready in my outbox, explaining about the misdiagnosis and begging them not to worry and to please forgive me.

  ‘Don’t try to talk me out of this.’ I shook my head emphatically. ‘For once in my life, I’m following my instincts. So what if my behaviour raises a few brows?’

  ‘Ruby.’ Emerald addressed me in the calm voice she used to soothe feral dogs and grieving pet owners.

  I felt as if some terrible fate was gathering, like a storm far out at sea. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Brody’s not coming.’

  ‘Yes, he is. It’s all planned.’

  ‘Last night, after you told us about him, well, we tracked him down and revealed your . . . situation.’

  My heart was like a heavy-metal drummer in my chest. ‘What situation?’

 
; ‘Your Kev situation. It wasn’t fair to let him give up his job and make plans with you when your future is so uncertain,’ Emerald said bluntly.

  I felt a spasm of nausea in the pit of my stomach.

  ‘Darling Rubes, you’re clearly not in your right mind, which is why you’re making such rash decisions,’ Amber added.

  Panic sluiced through me. ‘What did you tell him?’

  ‘That you need to be with your family right now. Which is why I also rang Harry late last night,’ Emerald said. ‘He’s been sulking, big time, at being falsely accused in front of all his friends and family of something he swears he didn’t do. And he was also sucker-punched by news of Kev’s appearance. He needed time to process it all. But he’s forgiven you—’

  My face flushed, as though I’d spent too long in a hot bath. ‘Forgiven me?! That’s a bit rich.’

  ‘He swore to me that he’s never been unfaithful. And, while you’ve been away, he’s realised how much he loves you. He’s arriving any minute now to tell you so himself,’ Emerald went on.

  I felt numbness spread across my lips. ‘What? But Brody will be here any minute.’

  ‘Ruby!’ Emerald barked in a glottal bass. ‘Brody’s not coming.’

  Tears of anger brimmed at my eyelids. ‘But I’ve had a Kev-ectomy. I don’t have cancer. It was all a mistake!’ I blurted.

  ‘You’re in remission?’ Amber asked, her face alight with joy.