Spinning Around

by Catherine Jinks

  Everywhere I turned, there was a horrible source of anxiety to be faced.

  I tried to phone Matt again at work, but he insisted that it was a bad time—that he couldn’t talk. ‘I’m due on the desk in thirty seconds,’ he said. ‘We’ll talk later.’ And since I found it impossible to make any other phone calls, or write reports, or even open mail because of the condition to which I’d been reduced, I decided to leave work early. That was at four o’clock. No-one objected; in fact I got the impression that Cindy might have discussed my tearful episode with some of the other staff, because I was aware of a distinctly sympathetic air about the place as I made my way to the foyer. Kate asked me if everything was all right. Bebe reminded me not to leave my umbrella behind. Even Jean raised a quizzical eyebrow at me when I asked her to take messages, as if to say: ‘Life sucks, but what can you do?’

  Luckily, the Commissioner wasn’t around. While she’s theoretically sympathetic to female employees with family problems, I’ve always had my doubts about her real views on the matter. She might have two kids of her own, but she also has a nanny—and almost no imagination. Plus, she probably doesn’t give a hoot what her husband does with his time. From what I can see, that marriage is more like a company merger than anything else.

  Basically, after the grovelling episode, I didn’t want her thinking I was unstable.

  I caught the 4.15 train to Marrickville. On the way, I wondered if I had ever felt worse, and decided that I had on only three occasions: when my grandmother died, when Jonah stopped breathing for a short time after he was born, and when my first boyfriend dumped me by showing up with my (former) best friend at my very own birthday party. (Even now, I still can’t listen to that song, ‘It’s My Party and I’ll Cry if I Want To’.) Desperately I racked my brain for something positive about my existence, and concluded that I was very lucky really because my kids were fine, my job was okay, and my health was good. Not great, exactly— my nose was still dripping like a leaky tap, and my sinuses were full of sludge—but good. No high blood pressure. No kidney disease. No lumps in the breast. Nothing like that.

  It was something to cling to, anyway. Something to keep me from dissolving while I picked the kids up from day care and took them home. At home, the breakfast dishes were sitting in the kitchen sink, unwashed. The builders’ wheelbarrow, parked outside the laundry door, was full of water. The washing on the clothes horse was still wet. Every room in the place was dim and dispiriting.

  I boiled some noodles and vegetables for the kids. I put on a cassette of fairytales while I fed them. I admired the drawings that they’d done at day care, peeled off their clothes and chivvied them into the bath. I got them out, dried them, dressed them, cleaned their teeth, drew the curtains in their bedroom. I read them Where the Wild Things Are. I sang them ‘Old McDonald had a farm’, and kissed them goodnight. I sang them one more song. I gave them each one more kiss. I said ‘goodnight’ and ‘I love you’. I left the room, then came back again when Jonah dropped his teddy bear. And when Emily had to go to the toilet. And when Jonah heard a car alarm.

  I couldn’t bring myself to think about Jim McRae, or whether I should ring him, or what I should say when I did. It was all too difficult. Instead I ate a piece of buttered toast, a cheese stick, a shortbread biscuit, a Ritz cracker, a couple of dried apricots, a muesli bar and a small tub of yoghurt. Between bites, I would trudge into the living room, stare out the window onto the street, and return again to the kitchen. I was waiting for Matthew. I couldn’t settle.

  Outside, darkness fell. The streetlights flickered on. Cars pulled into driveways. Inside, the clock ticked and the plumbing grumbled. Eight-thirty—I checked the TV guide. (Nothing.) Nine o’clock—I went into our bedroom and rifled through his underwear drawer, his sock drawer, his shirts and jumpers, the pockets of his pants and jackets. (Nothing.) Nine-thirty—I did the same with his toiletries bag, his fancy shaving kit, his backpack, his guitar case, his box full of old computer disks and audio equipment and drumsticks and sheet music, his scrapbook of gig reviews, his collection of Q and Rolling Stone (US edition) and the odd, very ancient, very dog-eared copy of Hustler. (Nothing.)

  By ten-thirty, he still wasn’t home. I called his number at work, and got his voice mail. By ten forty-five, I was beginning to lose it. I was muttering to myself and pacing the floor. It was unspeakably cruel and insulting that he should threaten a momentous ‘talk’, then fail to get home early—or even get home at all. What the hell was going on? Was he with Her? Had he been in an accident? If there was a problem at work, why hadn’t he called me?

  I didn’t know what to do. The nearest hospital was Royal Prince Alfred. The nearest police station was up the road, more or less. What was the usual procedure in these circumstances? Phone the hospital? Phone the police? Was there some kind of traffic accident hotline? Or should I wait until someone else found his wallet or his registration, and phoned me with the news?

  Then it occurred to me that, before I jumped to the worst possible conclusion, I ought to eliminate all the alternatives first. Maybe I wasn’t thinking straight. Maybe I shouldn’t have drunk two glasses of red wine with my buttered toast and muesli bar. Whatever the reason, I was filled with a sudden, urgent desire to call Josephine Cleary. To punch in her number and see what happened.

  I did it, too. It was ten to eleven at night, but I punched in her number all the same. I figured that a party animal like Josephine wouldn’t be tucked up in bed at eleven o’clock at night—unless my husband was tucked up with her. I figured that I wouldn’t be waking anybody unless I called after twelve. And I was right, as it happened, because my old mate Paul answered the phone. Paul of the rough voice and bored, untutored manner.

  ‘Yeah?’ he said.

  ‘Is Jo there?’

  ‘Nah. She’s out. Can I take a message?’ From his distracted tone and the screams in the background, I deduced that he was busy watching something like Re-Animator on video. Unless he was disembowelling someone himself.

  ‘What about Matt?’ I asked, in a voice that wobbled. ‘Is he there?’

  ‘Nope.’

  A pause. I didn’t want to labour the point, in case he became suspicious, but I couldn’t tell if the name ‘Matt’ meant anything to him or not. Fearing that it might, I took a deep breath and continued.

  ‘Okay. Well . . . actually, Jo was supposed to meet me, but I can’t remember where. Do you know? It was a club or a restaurant, I think.’

  ‘Sorry, I dunno. Sandra might. Hey! Sandra! ’

  Sandra? That was a new name. With Paul’s phone pressed to something massive and muffling—like his chest—I could hear very little of the ensuing conversation between him and Sandra. It didn’t matter, though. I got what I wanted.

  ‘Sandra says she’s gone to the Siam Thai in Newtown,’ Paul finally informed me. ‘Who is this, by the way?’

  ‘It’s Helen.’

  ‘Helen?’

  ‘You don’t know me,’ I said, and hung up.

  So Josephine was at the Siam Thai. She was a drug addict who couldn’t get it together enough to hold down a waitress’s job, yet she was frequenting exotic restaurants. I can’t remember the last time I ate at a Thai restaurant. I can’t remember the last time I had Thai takeaway. But I do remember the Siam, because Matt and I went there once, long ago, for an intimate birthday dinner. That was after I’d given Matt a new set of cymbals for his birthday present, and he’d had to wipe his tears away. There had been no fretted screens or crimson curtains, at the Siam Thai, but only a smattering of bamboo, lots of black lacquer, linen tablecloths, silk orchids, and comfortable chairs. We had consumed pad thai and quail and ginger chicken and minced pork salad and a great deal of wine. Matt had worn his leather jacket, and his hair had fallen over his face as he kissed the tips of my fingers, one after the other . . .

  Suddenly I felt the strongest urge to take a pair of scissors to that leather jacket, which my husband still cherished. It also crossed my mind that I co
uld easily burn his Q magazines, or slash up his drum kit, or do something really, really insulting to his shoes. I’ve read about women going mad with a kitchen knife or a can of spray paint. In the past, I’ve assumed that such women resemble Briony, in that they lack a well-developed means of controlling their impulses, while at the same time possessing an exaggeratedly melodramatic understanding of their own life story.

  Now I’m not so sure. Now I realise that a few glasses of wine, a long day at the office and an acute state of nervous tension—brought on by anxiety and fear—can lead even a sensible law graduate to contemplate savage acts of vandalism. I was suddenly angry, with an anger that was more frantic than focused. I wanted to kick something. To smash something. Josephine’s face, perhaps? I had always maintained, when contemplating other cases of adultery, that a wife should never primarily blame the mistress in these circumstances. It is not the mistress, after all, who has betrayed the wife—unless she happens to be a friend. But logic hadn’t long survived the fury of my feelings. I would happily have smashed Josephine Cleary’s head against the wall, had she been available. It gave me some relief to picture myself doing exactly that—much as I’d visualised cracking Jonah’s head open when he was a tiny baby. Oh yes, I used to entertain such monstrous thoughts. I told you that I was a bad mother. Though I’ve always claimed, in my defence, that if I hadn’t found relief in imagining acts of violence against my helpless darling—against my precious boy whom I love so much even though he’s so like me—then I might actually have been driven to throw him across the room (something that I’ve never done and never will do, in case you’re wondering). I once met a mother at Tresillian who confessed, with tears in her eyes, that she sometimes had to put her baby down and step outside because of her overwhelming desire to hurl him off her second-floor balcony. It happens. I’m not the only one. And if it eases the pressure of endless crying to indulge in a few grisly mental images, what’s the harm in that? As long as they stay in your head where they belong.

  So I conjured up a vivid daydream of seizing a handful of purple hair and driving the attached head into a slate floor—one, two, three, four times. Then I imagined throwing a pot of spaghetti bolognaise at Matt, before bashing him over the skull with his own bass drum. Then, because I still felt as one does during a particularly bad bout of PMT (the only time, in the normal course of existence, when I have the courage to snap at someone who takes up too much room on a train seat or throws a cigarette butt into a flowerbed), I picked up the phone book and did a feverish search for the number of the Siam Thai restaurant.

  I found it in the White Pages. It was there in bold face; it positively leapt out at me, hitting me straight in the eye. Eight digits that formed a mocking little tune when I keyed them in.

  As I waited for someone to answer my call, I considered summoning a cab and going to confront my purple-haired enemy, before dismissing the idea. It was nearly eleven. I couldn’t leave the kids. I couldn’t ring someone like Lisa, and ask her to sit for me. I couldn’t wake up the kids and drag them down King Street into a huge marital spat that would probably end up taking place on a public footpath. Perhaps some mothers would have done it, but not me. Not with my upbringing.

  Suddenly I heard a thickly accented voice pronounce the name of the Siam Thai, and ask how I might be helped. I replied that I wanted to talk to one of the restaurant’s patrons. A customer. One of the people eating there tonight.

  ‘It’s an emergency,’ I insisted.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘She has purple hair. Her name is Jo Cleary. Jo Cleary.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Would you mind if I spoke to her? Very quickly?’

  ‘She’s here? She’s eating here?’

  ‘I think so. She has purple hair.’

  ‘I’ll go see. Wait, please.’

  Clunk. I could hear the faint strains of Asian music. A distant buzz of voices. Staring at the dusty south-eastern corner of my bedroom, with our cheap, old-fashioned wardrobe huddled dimly against it, I imagined all the warmth and light and cooking smells on the other end of the line. Trendy couples finishing their coffee. Groups of friends trying to divide up various bills in an equitable fashion (always a doomed attempt). Empty bottles of wine. Bloated stomachs.

  ‘Hello?’

  I sat up straight. It was a female voice. Young.

  My heart took off.

  ‘Hello?’ she repeated, more impatiently. ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Is that Josephine?’

  ‘Yes. Who’s this?’ Her voice, to my surprise, was pitched quite high. It lacked both range and sinew.

  ‘Is Matt there?’ I asked. Each word was like a chip of stone.

  A pause. The longer it stretched out, the more she condemned herself. I held my breath.

  ‘Who is this?’ she said again, but with quite a different emphasis and far more depth of tone.

  ‘You know damn well who,’ I replied.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Is he there?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Is Matt there?’

  ‘Matt who? Matt Muzzatti?’

  ‘Is he there?’

  ‘No, of course not.’ It was almost a whine. ‘Who is this? Do I know you?’

  ‘I’m his wife. His wife, okay?’

  ‘Oh.’ She sounded nonplussed. ‘Are you looking for him or something?’

  ‘You’re bloody right I’m looking for him!’

  ‘Well he’s not here.’

  ‘Where is he, then?’

  ‘What do you mean, where is he? How should I know? What is this?’ Her voice cracked on a plaintive, petulant note. ‘How come you’re ringing me here?’

  ‘Don’t give me that bullshit,’ I said hoarsely. My diction was unsteady—my hands were shaking—but I ploughed on. ‘Don’t even try it. I know you’ve been seeing him.’

  ‘So?’ Anger flared on the other end of the line. I couldn’t believe the gall of the girl. ‘Why shouldn’t I?’

  ‘Why shouldn’t you? Why, you—you little shit! ’

  ‘Hey, fuck you!’

  ‘Fuck you, too!’

  ‘He’s my father, okay? I’ve got a right to see him! And if you don’t like it, you can go fuck yourself!’

  Click.

  She hung up on me.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The first day of the rest of my life

  She wouldn’t talk to me again. I rang back (after recovering a little from the shock) but she wouldn’t come to the phone. So I was left sitting there in the dark, my head reeling and my mouth hanging open. Her father? My husband? Her father?

  What insanity was this?

  ‘No,’ I said aloud. It was a lie. Some sort of excuse. Surely Matt wasn’t even old enough to be her father? He was forty-one. Forty-one minus—what? Twenty? Twenty-two?

  Well, maybe he was old enough—but only just.

  Suddenly I heard the noise of an engine. A jolt of adrenalin went through me before I realised that it wasn’t the sound of our car; it had a deeper, more rhythmic pitch. But it seemed to be growing louder. It was throbbing away right outside our house.

  I got up and went into the living room. Twitching one of the former owner’s lace curtains aside (we can’t afford new ones, yet), I peered out at the rain-lashed street. I saw glowing windows. I saw puddles of watery light pooling under the street-lamps. I saw a taxi pulling away from the curb, its rooftop sign dimmed, its interior empty except for its shadowy driver.

  Though I craned and strained, I could see no-one else. There was no-one walking up the front path. Why should there be? Matthew had taken our car to work. He didn’t need to hire a taxi.

  Then I heard the hinges squeaking on the screen door out back.

  He had gone down the side of the house and around to the kitchen, because he didn’t want to wake the kids. He was soaking wet. His hair was plastered to his forehead, his white shirt was almost transparent, his faded jeans were scattered with darker patches on the knees and around the ankles.
He wiped his nose with the back of his damp wrist, staggering slightly.

  ‘I’m not screwin’ around,’ he blurted out. ‘I thought you were.’

  But my attention was focused on another matter of interest.

  ‘Is Josephine Cleary your daughter?’ I demanded.

  ‘Yes.’

  There it was. The truth at last.

  ‘Shit, Matthew!’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘I thought you were having an affair!’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I just ran into that bloke you hired. That detective.’

  ‘You did ?’

  ‘He was tailing me, Helen. Jesus, how could you?’

  We both of us paused, gasping for breath. I don’t know what my face looked like, but Matt’s looked tortured. His nose was red. His eyes were bloodshot. He kept sniffing and blinking, as rivulets of water trickled down from his hair.

  ‘You’d better get a towel,’ I said automatically.

  ‘Fuck the towel! Jesus, Helen! Goddamn it!’ And all at once he burst into tears.

  Well, he’d been drinking. I worked that out when I approached him, and put my arms around his wet, shaking shoulders; I could smell the smoke and the beer. I said: ‘Where have you been?’

  ‘I’ve been . . .’ He sniffed. Swallowed. ‘I’ve been out with Ray.’

  ‘Getting pissed?’

  ‘What do you think? I . . .’ His voice cracked on another sob. ‘Goddamn, I thought . . . God, Helen!’

  My own eyes filled with tears. I pulled away. ‘Miriam saw you!’ I cried. ‘Kissing Josephine! What was I supposed to think?’