Husband Replacement Therapy

by Lette, Kathy

  ‘Next morning, the same weather dickhead says, “It rained quite heavily last night,” which kinda understated the ferries sinking to the bottom of the harbour and the soiled undies of the pilots who had to swoop around in holding patterns for hours on end. I mean, this was bloody biblical. The national park nearly joined Atlantis; the streets were covered in yachts . . .’ Harry glanced over to see if I was finding his musings amusing. ‘. . . and chockers with blokes saying “Dude, where’s my car?” Mate, I think you’ll find it’s in Tasmania by now.’

  I clenched the handle of the car door, realising I craved conversation with my husband about as much as I longed for an audition in Harvey Weinstein’s semen-caked hotel suite. I nodded and said ‘Hmm’ but did not look Harry’s way. I just stared at the oncoming suburbs as if it were my own doom that approached with slow, winding inevitability.

  ‘Work’s been good, but. This guy called me to fix something that nobody had been able to work out how to mend. Condescending prick he was, too . . . Anyway, I gave the machine a quick thwack with my sledgehammer and it shuddered into life. I then billed the bastard three hundred dollars. He got all pissy and said, “That’s a bit steep, isn’t it, mate? I want an itemised bill.” So, I wrote – “For giving the engine a good thwack, a buck. For knowing where to thwack it, two hundred and ninety-nine dollars.”’

  I’d heard him tell a similar tale so many times. Harry was set on repeat – just like my life. My head started to throb with the measured insistence of a metronome.

  Walking into my house an hour later felt dreamlike. Gazing through the kitchen window, the shimmering turquoise of our kidney-shaped swimming pool against the bright green grass was so Hockney-esque I felt as though I’d fallen into a frame. Was any of this real?

  Jake leapt up from his position on the couch and embraced me. After expressing his delight that I was home and well, he went straight back to watching re-runs of Love Island. Why would my son want to spend his spare time watching people with nothing to do not doing anything, when he could just watch his parents’ marriage? Although our son was still technically living at home, he was always out partying and then sleeping it off. I felt sure I’d catch up with him again sometime this millennium.

  Zoe Skyped in from Byron and blew me kisses. ‘Wow, Mum, you look great. The cruise really did you good.’ After a quick stopover at home for Christmas she was heading off to Asia and would also probably pop in some time in the next twelve months via India, Sri Lanka, Ibiza or somewhere over the rainbow.

  I walked around my home feeling like a terrapin exploring the familiar edges of its aquarium. Even though Harry had made an effort to tidy up and the warm, late spring sunshine was streaming through the balcony doors, it felt like a holiday home in winter – cold, stale, paling into significance.

  Molasses-slow minutes dripped by as I unpacked my suitcase, opened the mail and put on the washing, stuffing the machine full of clothes he’d touched, unbuttoned, peeled to the side or ripped off in the throes of passion.

  I hated cooking. The last time I’d baked was when I’d accidentally burnt my buttocks while snorkelling. On automatic pilot, I started making a dressing to go with the prawns. The whisk beat against glass bowl: tap, tap, tap.

  I took a shower before lunch, thinking, This is a metaphor for my life – Shampoo, rinse, repeat . . . shampoo, rinse, repeat.

  An hour later I walked heavily into the bright, crisp heat of the sunlit backyard to hang up the washing. Eucalyptus blossoms trembled like soft clouds, translucent and tenuous before my gaze. Although the garden was abuzz with butterflies and bees, and fragrant with frangipani flowers, it felt like a prison wherever I turned.

  Soon would come the long, hot, dry summer, in which tempers frayed as the grass turned brown and the sweet scent of dying jacaranda flowers drenched the heavy air. An emptiness was beginning somewhere within me; I felt a withering, a falling away. Pegging up my clothes, which were now washed clean of Brody’s scent, birds started to chatter in the trees that crowded the garden. I listened to the sound of the crow, its long, forlorn cry. I knew just how it felt.

  I spent the afternoon in the garden, digging energetically at weeds. As the day cooled, I paused to draw breath. With remote fascination I watched a blue tongue lizard pounce on a smaller one, which dropped its tail and escaped, darting away, reborn. The next thing I knew, I was grabbing my handbag and dashing for the door – scrambling, skidding, scuttling across the concrete apron in the middle of the road, running for the train. Running for my life.

  26

  Was it possible to wear off a fingerprint from over-texting? That’s what I wondered all the long, long way back to Circular Quay on the infuriatingly slow, all-stops train.

  At first, I tried wry humour: Brody, I think you’ll find that your mobile phone will generally be more useful when you a) remember the ‘mobile’ aspect and b) not have it on silent – unless you’re in a Trappist monastery, and forgot to mention it, you know, because of the whole non-talking policy, ha-ha.

  Then I tried pleading: Please, please, please answer so I can explain everything. I’m begging you.

  Then anger: Who are you? A hottie-hottie-dumb-dumb? Or maybe you’re president of Trump’s pussy-grabbing academy? Have these past two weeks meant nothing to you?

  It surprised me how desperate I was to see him. It was a hard, physical longing, like a craving for water in the desert. When the train finally shuddered to a stop at Circular Quay station, I pushed through the barrier, hurling other poor passengers out of my way. After a sprint that would have given Usain Bolt a run for his money, I arrived, panting, at the cruise terminal – just in time to see the ship I’d disembarked that morning pulling out into the harbour, newly stocked with passengers.

  Standing at the back of the cluster of friends and family who’d come to farewell their loved ones, my face crumpled like a chip packet. I was blindsided by a queasy swell of emotion. Feeling faint, I grabbed the sleeve of a uniformed man to steady myself. I read his identification badge, discovering that he was, in fact, a water taxi driver. ‘Do you know where that ship’s going?’ I demanded.

  ‘Out there somewhere.’ The bearded boatie gestured to the ocean beyond Sydney Harbour.

  ‘Oh, you mean the largest, deepest water mass on the planet, which covers more than sixty million square miles and is thirteen thousand feet deep, otherwise known as the Pacific?’ I could not keep the edge of hysteria out of my voice.

  He hitched a nonchalant brow. ‘Ah, yep.’

  ‘Could you be just a tad more specific about the Pacific?’ People were starting to look at me strangely.

  ‘I dunno. Ask them.’ The water taxi driver pointed to a couple emerging from a black hire car. A pair of manicured feet encased in diamante-studded high heels led to two impossibly long legs, which disappeared into a leopard-print miniskirt, above which protruded two massive breasts, draped in a sea of shimmering blonde hair extensions, all of which was topped off by a botoxed visage in designer shades. The woman had enough gold jewellery around her neck to induce curvature of the spine, and that was without factoring in the overweight bloke weighing down her arm. With his mashed-up nose, dyed black hair so perfectly smooth it looked plastic and a T-shirt that read ‘I dig Western Australia’, you didn’t have to be Hercule Poirot to deduce he was some kind of mining magnate.

  The taxi skipper explained that these were the uber-rich residents of the ship’s penthouse apartment. The bloke was an iron ore exporter, apparently. Their flight from Perth had been delayed and they’d missed the departure deadline, so had booked his water taxi to whisk them out to the ship. When the harbour pilot was disembarking Brody’s ship near the heads, these tardy passengers would be allowed to board. It was highly irregular, but the captain was making an exception due to the size of their walk-in wallet.

  After clearing customs at record speed, the Glamazonian clattered her way along the gangplank to the waiting speedboat. I leapt the rope barrier, ignoring a raucous �
�Oi! You!’ from a customs officer, and trotted along beside her. ‘The man I love is on that ship,’ I said mournfully. ‘Please, will you let me hitch a ride?’ I let out a choking sob. It was all too much. Since I had turned fifty a month ago, my life had gone from calm, ordered mundanity to reckless, perilous insanity, and I wasn’t quite sure how.

  The trophy wife peered over her saucer-sized sunglasses. ‘Well,’ she adjudicated, ‘you’ve got that jaundiced, ill look, which means you’ve either just eaten a bad oyster, you’re comin’ down with the flu or that you’re truly, madly, deeply in love.’

  ‘It’s love, unfortunately, which is the worst affliction on that woeful list.’

  ‘Ain’t that the bloody truth!’ She laughed and gave her shrugging consent. ‘Hey, it’s no skin off my nose job.’

  Which is how, moments later, I was bouncing and jouncing across the harbour at speed, in hot pursuit of a disappearing ocean liner. Our plucky little boat skimmed past the Opera House in a hiss of spray and then zipped at a loose clip past Shark Island, towards Manly. The cruise ship now loomed before us like a huge white whale.

  The trophy wife, it transpired, had met her future husband while working at a ‘skimpy’ bar in Kalgoorlie – so called because waitresses work in their smalls. Having ascertained the details of my doomed love affair, she asked the water taxi skipper to call ahead to request the presence of the ship’s doctor in the docking area.

  ‘Sorry, no can do,’ he growled.

  The trophy wife gave him a laser death stare. ‘Don’t play dumb with me, mate. I’m much better at it.’

  ‘But . . .’

  ‘I’m also wearing a G-string two sizes too small and feeling mean as fuck, so if you like your scrotum attached, just do it!’

  The water taxi skipper promptly radioed the bridge. As he relayed the message, I wondered what kind of cruise was currently heading out. Brody had told me of the many different themed, niche cruises on offer on the high seas. ‘Bare Necessities’ swingers cruises, with dress code ‘clothing optional’, or the ‘Walking Dead’ cruise, with zombie-related activities, or the ‘Star Trek’ cruise with Klingon pub crawls for die-hard Trekkies. Looking at the gold-plated, diamond-studded couple before me, I couldn’t quite see them opting for the knitting and crochet cruise, or the ‘Meow Meow’ experience for dedicated cat lovers.

  The mining magnate’s main squeeze had had so much work done she gave new meaning to ‘manmade’. But she’d acquired Mother Theresa–like status in my mind because, at her request, Doctor Quinn had been summoned to the boarding area and would be waiting for me. Hell, I was so grateful I’d have given her a kidney if I could. ‘Good luck,’ she said, crunching my fingers in a chiropractic handshake.

  The water taxi steered in next to the chugging behemoth, matching its speed and minimising the gap between the vessels. I watched as the ship’s crew lowered an aluminium stairway. To passing vessels our little skiff must have looked like a remora attached to a larger marine animal. This was a run-of-the-mill manoeuvre for an experienced taxi skipper, but seemed to be somewhat alarming for the magnate, who was quivering like a jelly at the thought of edging his way to the speedboat’s foredeck, which was the closest point to the cruise ship, and climbing aboard rung by rung. He grimaced, flashing a gold-tipped incisor, and firmly shook his head.

  Leaving the trophy wife to coax her anxious hubby aboard the ship, I mountain-goated up the ladder in a few leaps. Two burly crew members immediately clambered down into the idling taxi to retrieve the suitcases of the unpunctual passengers.

  When Brody realised who had ordered his urgent appearance on deck, he gave me the sort of look usually reserved for a strangely vacant person you see sauntering into a fast-food restaurant wearing a ‘Life Sucks’ T-shirt and holding a chainsaw.

  ‘You should be with your family,’ he said brusquely, putting down his medical bag. His dark eyes had gone dull, as if filmed over with layers of disappointment. And his hair, which usually curled in an unruly shock, now lay flat and lifeless.

  ‘But I don’t have cancer!’ I exclaimed. ‘It was all a mistake.’

  Brody’s expression softened to one of baffled delight, then disbelief. ‘But why would your sisters lie to me?’

  ‘Because I lied to them.’

  ‘What? Why?’ His brow pulled into a frown.

  ‘I know it sounds nuts. The truth is, I did receive a cancer diagnosis. Terminal. On my fiftieth birthday. I went into meltdown. I got drunk and told everyone what I really thought of them. All I wanted to do with the time I had left was patch things up with my two warring sisters. That’s why I booked the first cruise I could. Only, then I found out it was a misdiagnosis. But if I’d told my sisters, they wouldn’t have come on the trip. So, I postponed telling them. And then we were all having so much fun that I put it off again. And again. I know it was wrong.’ I grabbed hold of his hands. ‘But the medical scare made me see life differently. It made me want to live in the moment – as though every day is my last. And then I met you and fell in love and forgot all about the cancer, until my sisters told you that I didn’t want to see you anymore.’ I grabbed hold of his hands. ‘But I do! I do! Life is in two acts – the trick is surviving the interval. The cancer misdiagnosis was my interval, and you’re my chance at a second act. It’ll be like adolescence in reverse. A lovely rebirth!’

  I beamed up at my beloved. When Brody’s face didn’t move, I just held my smile in place as if waiting for an unseen photographer to complete his work.

  The trophy wife was finally aboard and was looking at me with a mix of incredulity and pity. The crewmen now scrambled back down the ladder to fetch the seasick mining magnate.

  Brody extricated himself from my grip. ‘Who lies about having cancer?’ Hot anger crackled in his voice.

  ‘Okay, I deceived my sisters and got them to take a three week holiday under false pretences, I lied to them about cancer, then lied to you by not telling you that I’d lied to them. I put my own pleasure and happiness first, and forgot all about my friends and family . . . But name one really important shortcoming?’ I joked, desperately.

  But my normally loquacious, witty, quippy love god was struck dumb. When Brody finally did reply, he said, ‘If Oliver Sacks was still alive, he could have written you up in one of his books, as you clearly have an incredibly rare personality disorder.’

  ‘You’re the incredibly rare one. Which is why I adore you, Brody Quinn.’ I was speaking in a tone of voice I’d never heard come out of my mouth before. It was as though I’d unlocked a secret level of my vocal cords that was velvety and alluring. ‘Can’t we just stick to our plan, head up the coast?’ I persevered. ‘We’ll work it out. Jump ship. Come back with me now in the water taxi . . .’

  ‘Where to? A psychiatric facility?’

  ‘Well, I am crazy – crazy in love with you. Flabba and Boris can forward your stuff.’

  ‘You must have a brain malfunction if you think I’d want anything to do with a woman who lies about having cancer. I’m a doctor, for fuck’s sake. And if you can lie about that, what else can you lie about?’ he added, keeping me fixed in his unflinching gaze.

  ‘I’m not lying when I say I’ve fallen for you. I’m your Saint Bernard, remember? With the whisky barrel?’

  ‘Yeah, and then you bloody well bit me. I told you what a big thing it was for me to trust you. And now I find out you’re a liar.’ His rebuke reverberated across the deck. ‘The chances of my trusting you now are about as probable as Tonya Harding making a return to professional figure skating.’

  The magnate was finally aboard, all flushed and flustered, and the harbour pilot was making ready to leave the ship. It was now or never.

  ‘Please forgive me.’ I seized Brody’s arm. ‘It was all a mistake that started with the misdiagnosis.’

  Brody’s face hardened – he was closing in on himself, like the sea swallowing a skimmed stone. ‘Why should I believe that? You’re clearly a fantasist. I mean, who are you? For
all I know, you do this to all the men you pick up. Just leave me alone.’

  ‘But . . . I love you,’ I said, falteringly, feeling the bump as our relationship hit an iceberg and began to go the way of the Titanic.

  Brody gave me a look that made it clear his love for me had joined a witness protection program and that I was on the list of Australia’s least wanted. ‘I never want to see you again. Men, escort this stowaway off the ship,’ he ordered the crewmen.

  The two seamen frogmarched me back to the ladder and stood watch while I descended to the waiting water taxi.

  After landing aboard with a thump, I looked back up at the ship’s deck, but Brody was gone.

  As the little speedboat peeled away from the mothership, I achieved a personal best for self-loathing. No wonder he didn’t want anything to do with me; I didn’t want anything to do with me either, I thought, bleakly.

  ‘Anythin’ I can get ya, kid?’ the skipper asked, a bit alarmed at my ashen visage.

  ‘Um . . . a sprinkling of Valium and a heroin chaser?’ I replied, weakly.

  ‘Right. I was thinking more along the lines of a sick bag or a bottle of water.’

  ‘Does it come with any strychnine?’

  I craned over my shoulder to watch the huge cruise ship veer right at Watsons Bay on its journey out of Sydney Harbour. My ship had sailed. Panic constricted my trachea for longer than I feared healthy in a human being. The low, thick sky bulged with grey dampness. Seawater hit the bow, hissing like a snake. By the time the next wave had reared up and collapsed in a spatter of spray, I could feel tears starting to well. The sea had turned snot-green and choppy. The wind was carving huge escarpments out of the water before my eyes. A massive wave, like a malicious grin, loomed up before us, its white fangs biting into our flimsy-seeming boat.

  There’d been storm warnings on the radio, but no mention of the emotional gale that had blown me off course. No mood meteorologist had urgently interrupted the scheduled programming to forecast the psychological cyclone that was approaching.