This Picture of You

by Sarah Hopkins

  But Martin didn’t answer him, because already in his mind he had moved on to anticipate another, larger question, one that Ethan was entitled to ask his father and never had: ‘Why didn’t you come back?’

  How best to frame the answer? In the end, hours after Ethan had taken Laini and Finn home, out in the garden in the middle of the starless night, Martin came up with just this: There are people in life whose strength makes you weak and whose insight makes you blind. For me, that was your mother.

  Chapter 25

  The room was fluorescent-lit, a windowless box. Ethan tapped the table and looked at his watch, then at the empty seat. He shrugged.

  ‘Her phone is off,’ he said. Tina McCarthy was fifteen minutes late to the Family Court mediation that had been scheduled at her request.

  Her husband smirked. ‘She never turns her phone off.’ A different tone, Ethan thought, to the handwritten note he pushed under Tina’s door yesterday as he dropped off little Timmy. ‘There’s enough bad karma around this already,’ the note read, ending with just: ‘Please X’. Capital X: big, begging kiss.

  At the end of the table the mediator smiled reassuringly, said the traffic was terrible, while opposite Ethan, Douglas Mott—Stewart McCarthy’s lawyer—rose from his chair and turned around before breaking into a dry, hacking cough.

  ‘I’m fine, I’m fine,’ he said, blue veins pulsing in his temples. ‘It’s the change of seasons.’

  Ethan suggested they keep the door open, then asked the mediator if they could get another room.

  ‘This was it,’ she said, casting an apologetic look over the walls. ‘All booked up.’

  Pulling at the loose folds of skin on his neck, Douglas suggested Ethan kick it off and explain why they were here, ‘why this couldn’t have been dealt with in a couple of emails’.

  As Douglas tried to get the lay of the land and his client kept watch on the door, Ethan made mental notes of his own. In the eyes of Stewart McCarthy, either side of the scar still crimson in the middle of his brow, Ethan saw a different kind of wound, still raw and untreated, and beginning to fester. He couldn’t remember a dispute where the opponent presented as quite so bent over the barrel, so damned and desperate he almost felt sorry for him . . . When Tina swept into the room in a feigned rush, spouting apologies and excuses, Stewart closed his eyes for longer than the blink required, and just managed to smile. In spite of what was about to happen—in spite of the grenade Tina was about to lob into this shitbox of a room—Ethan felt quietly confident that nothing would sway this man from his quest for immediate closure with his soon-to-be ex-wife. He had come to despise her, and worse still, because of that, he had come to despise himself.

  Tina McCarthy tipped her head at Ethan and held his gaze, as one would to greet an intimate friend. Flushed in the cheeks, with less makeup than he’d seen her wear before—and maybe less a kilo or two—Tina McCarthy was a noticeably more attractive package. The hair was down and the dress was good—a charcoal grey wraparound that gently hugged her freckled, pendulous breasts . . . Standing up and directing Tina to the seat next to Sally—buttoned up to the neck again in her Victorian blouse—Ethan couldn’t help but notice that in spite of the obvious contrast in styles, each called in its own particular way for a particular type of attention. When it came to Sally, he took note, but avoided eye contact. Over the last weeks the blouse had become her sign, her private message to him that should the opportunity arise, the door was (so to speak) open, with the result that the sight of Sally buttoned up all the way invariably implanted in his mind—cordoned off and open for viewing during strictly limited times—a particular image, minus the God-awful blouse and any other piece of clothing: Sally standing on the bathmat after her morning shower, wondering what to wear and thinking of him, dripping wet and bending over to dry her toes.

  It wasn’t just the sex. It was Sally, full stop. At home, Ethan was still twisting himself around in late-night sessions with Laini’s blog, and the rest of the time she was consumed with turning her role as dispeller of darkness into a book deal, so when Ethan’s head got all hooked up in the barbed wire of bad thoughts (take your pick: his dad’s deteriorating brain, the bullshit with Max), Sally was his go-to girl, guaranteed to make him feel less alone, to raise him up and onward . . .

  As per the agreement he had reached with Max, every second Wednesday Ethan was meeting in the boardroom with Marcella, the five-foot-nothing psychotherapist with arms like twigs. He wondered if Max picked her because she made him feel tall.

  ‘So do you know Max?’ he’d asked her. For their first session Ethan asked most of the questions. The answers were that she didn’t know Max (or so she claimed), she wouldn’t reveal who in the firm was her contact, and she only wanted to talk about his childhood if he wanted to talk about his childhood. ‘Ask away,’ she had said, her feet dangling off the ground in the chair that swamped her like a throne would a child queen. This could go on for a long time, he thought: how much do you weigh? But more questions would just mean more lunch dates with Marcella. As she explained her ‘particular kind of process’, he was trying to remember the name of the actress she reminded him of—the one who played the man and got thrown out the window in the Mel Gibson movie.

  When her questions started he answered them as succinctly as he could. She did not seem suitably impressed when he told her he had made partner at thirty-one. Rather, she nodded, like it was a piece of the puzzle and she was mentally moving it into position. Same with his parents’ dinner parties, the fact most Friday nights Ethan lay in bed trying to make out what was being said and what it all meant. That was another piece. Marcella nodded . . . The nodding was the worst part: horrible—fucking excruciating.

  It was Sally who saved him.

  ‘I think she thinks I am so hard on people because I fear my own incompetence. I think that’s where she’s going with this . . . I mean what sort of bullshit is that?’

  Sally stretched out on the floor of the hotel room. ‘Did she say that?’

  ‘Not in so many words.’

  ‘You are the best lawyer I know, Ethan. Don’t analyse it, that’ll just mess you up. Express gratitude for her insight, tick the box. Job done.’

  ‘You are so right.’

  ‘I know I am.’

  ‘I am so the best the lawyer you know . . .’ He dropped the smile. ‘What would I do without you, Sal?’

  She propped herself up on her elbow. ‘Careful, Ethan. I’m not made of stone.’ He went to say more but she put a finger on his lips, shook her head. ‘I’m going to take a shower. We need to get back.’

  And here she was today in the Victorian blouse, Ethan scrambling for a way to schedule it in but coming up empty—the meeting would take them to five, then he was racing home to get Laini and Finn and get them to dinner with the parents, cursed to wonder all the while what Sally was going to do with that pent-up energy.

  As soon as Tina McCarthy took her seat, the mediator began proceedings—explaining the purpose and nature of the process and asking Douglas to recap on the offer that was presently on the table: the Mosman home—the latest valuation had come in at 5.6 million—and the 150K a year seasonally adjusted until the boy was twenty-one.

  ‘And what has the response been to the offer?’ Without looking at Ethan, she kept her pen poised over the page. She knew what the response had been—she had all the paperwork: a request for some further financials, some nitpicking on insurance and expenses.

  ‘They seem like relatively minor matters, would that be right? Is there an issue with disclosure?’

  Douglas: ‘The last request was for the profit and loss of his brother’s cleaning company.’

  ‘Of which he was a director for nine years.’

  ‘Ending in 1986. Ten years before they—’ Mid-sentence, Douglas choked on his words and went into his second coughing fit.

  ‘Sorry, I’m not contagious or anything. This has been hanging around for weeks.’

  ‘Post-nasal drip,
’ Ethan said.

  ‘Thanks for the diagnosis.’

  Ethan shrugged.

  ‘The directorship ended ten years before they even met, that is what I was saying.’

  ‘In any event, they have it now,’ the mediator said. ‘But I understand, Mr Field, that your client has a few remaining concerns?’

  ‘Thanks, that is correct. There are some ongoing expenses we’d like to see paid by your client. We’ve made a list.’ Sally handed three copies to the mediator.

  ‘Hang on a minute. That’s one thing we have made perfectly clear from the word go,’ Douglas said. ‘My client wants a sum to be paid—monthly, quarterly, however Mrs McCarthy wants it. Then she can make decisions about day-to-day expenses, health insurance, maintenance of the property—whatever else you’ve got here—without having to consult Stewart. My client is eager to reduce dealings and avoid any situation that might create acrimony in the future. As you know full well, there is valid basis for his concerns, and as we discussed the sum was arrived at with that in mind. It seems to me that we are going around in circles here.’

  Until this point, Tina had maintained a serene half-smile as she pretended to make notes on her copy of the list. With Douglas’s last words, she shot him a look of pure derision, and when her gaze returned to the page she mouthed something, a word, maybe two; Ethan couldn’t make it out.

  ‘Is there something you would like to say, Mrs McCarthy?’ Douglas asked.

  Ethan raised his hand. ‘My client feels as though she is being left with the burden of financial management, along with the burden of parenting.’

  The mediator tapped her palm on the table. ‘So if I could just understand this. Your client is prepared to take less in the form of a lump sum if it were compensated by way of Mr McCarthy taking over the payment of specified bills?’

  ‘Well, no, given the change in circumstance, we are of the view those payments should be in addition to the lump sum.’

  And there it was, a sprinkling of words—the safety pin pulled, the handle released.

  Douglas pounced: ‘The change in circumstance?’

  ‘My client wanted to explain this herself—the change in circumstances, that is,’ Ethan said.

  Tina looked up from her list, cast her eyes around the table before settling on Stewart. And then, a single overarm throw: ‘I am planning to have another baby.’

  ‘Sorry?’ And after Tina repeated what she had said: ‘You can’t do that. You can’t use it without my consent.’ The it he was referring to was the last remaining embryo of Stewart and Tina McCarthy, sitting frozen and lifeless in a sealed straw numbered 7634 in a cryostorage facility in North Ryde. It was the it Stewart had once prayed would be a sister to his son, an XX, a second miracle . . . Had he not seen the hopelessness in the eyes of the specialist, had he not witnessed what repeated failure and loss had done to his wife, had she not hurled the statue across the kitchen table . . .

  ‘I don’t need your consent. I’m using a sperm donor—anonymous. I start hormones next week.’

  And for just a moment, a pin-drop silence . . . broken by Ethan: ‘So obviously her ability to re-enter the workforce may well be compromised, and your client is aware of the costs of the treatment.’

  Stewart raised his hands slowly and placed them over his eyes, and as Tina continued—a quaver now in her high-pitched homily—he slid them slowly around his face to cover his ears, in what appeared a last-ditch plea to see no madness, hear no madness.

  ‘Timmy needs a brother or a sister and I am going to do whatever I damn well can to see that he gets one.’ She was on her feet, her fists pressing into the table. ‘Sorry, Stewart, if that doesn’t sound convenient to you, if that doesn’t fit in with your retirement plans—if that screws with your next surfing safari.’

  The mediator’s voice rose to the acceptable upper limit: ‘Please, madam, sit down. We are still in mediation, and while we are here I am in charge of the proceedings.’

  Douglas put up his hand. ‘My client is not responsible for Mrs McCarthy’s future plans. The prospect of further children . . .’

  But Stewart wasn’t listening; he was shaking his head, and he was getting to his feet. ‘You think you can look after Timmy while you morph into a fucking basket case again? Who are you going to take it out on this time? You do this, Tina, and I want custody for the duration of the treatment. I will put it all in an affidavit, every fucking crazy thing you did, ending up with this . . .’ Stewart pointed to the crimson scar on his forehead.

  Tina’s response was calmly delivered: ‘At least I didn’t drink myself into oblivion.’

  And without another word, taking his coat, Mr Karma walked out of the room.

  Ethan formed a smile, looked at Douglas. ‘Take the list . . .’

  But Douglas shook his head. ‘Forget the list, Ethan. Our offer is good for seven days. Then it is off the table. All I’d add to that is the fact that following the assault my client didn’t go to the police, as he was well entitled to do . . . as he’s still entitled to do.’

  ‘Mr Mott!’ The mediator slapped the table with her hand. ‘This is a court-ordered mediation. It is no place for threats.’

  ‘Certainly, madam. Though I think we can safely say the mediation is over.’

  When Tina left the room, Sally quickly followed.

  While packing up his file, Ethan could feel Douglas watching him. It was only when the file was in his briefcase that he looked up.

  ‘How are things, Doug?’

  ‘Things are things,’ Doug replied.

  ‘That they are.’ Ethan stood up, satisfied with the exchange. Still, Doug was looking up at him—squinting, like he was having a problem getting things into focus. With no interest in knowing why, Ethan got up and left the room before Doug had the chance to tell him.

  Down on the street, Sally was waiting on the corner with Tina, thirty paces from Stewart, who was standing on the edge of the kerb and smoking a cigarette. The four lanes of traffic were at a standstill both ways, the air humid with idling engines and impending rain.

  When Doug came out of the building, he took Stewart’s elbow like he was more a patient than a client and began to lead him away; then he stopped and turned around and walked back to Ethan, and with the same squint of the eyes said quietly, out of his client’s earshot: ‘I’m just trying to work it out, Ethan. We were that close to settling this thing . . . until she went over to you. I’ve got to wonder, do you put these ideas in their heads? I mean, how do you do that? You just go around with a match and see which fire’s going to light up?’

  The man was attacking his professional ethics, accusing him of misconduct and a failure to fulfil his duty to the client and to the court, but what really had Ethan’s attention was that behind him, watching the one-way exchange, smoke billowing out of his nostrils, Stewart had smoked the cigarette down to the butt, which he now had pincered in his fingers like a joint.

  Ethan’s back was against the wall of the building. Odd, he thought, in a David Attenborough kind of way, how the sweat bubbled on only a particular section of Doug’s balding head.

  One, two . . . he counted the seconds that the man stood there in front of him . . . three, four, five . . . until the bubbles weren’t there anymore, not the bubbles, not the head, not Doug . . . Ethan had closed his eyes, and in place of his vision (and not for the first time) was a screeching black mass—like a flock of flapping magpies—and in that single moment, with the smell of smoke fading and the menace writhing in his brain, all he wanted to do, with every inch of his being, was to go to the hotel and fuck Sally senseless and smoke a cigarette and fuck her again and smoke another cigarette until he couldn’t fuck or smoke anymore.

  That, he thought or death . . .

  It was just a moment, and just as quickly it had passed. But whatever the lead-up in the scenario playing out behind his eyes, when he opened them it had left a poignant blend of fear and sorrow. Having anticipated something quite different—anger, gui
lt perhaps—Douglas Mott was thrown. He took a step back and in the same lowered voice, he mumbled an apology.

  He was out of order, he said; his head was pounding. ‘This sort of thing is par for the course.’ And looking back to Stewart McCarthy. ‘I shouldn’t have played squash with the guy. You never want to know your client is such a bloody good bloke.’

  ‘So what now?’ Tina asked when Ethan joined them on the corner and waved a hand to hail a cab.

  ‘We draft up the settlement. You two go back to the office so Sally can get those last financials.’

  ‘With all the added expenses?’

  ‘Every last one,’ he said. ‘Sally, can we get it to them tomorrow?’

  ‘You’re not coming back?’

  ‘Nah,’ he said. ‘I’m done for the day. I need to get home—family stuff. I’ll walk to the car park; I need a walk.’

  ‘And what he said about custody?’ Tina asked, worried.

  ‘He won’t do it.’ And looking her straight in the eye as the cab door closed: ‘He is too nice a guy.’

  Watching the cab pull away, he was relieved to be alone, to breathe in the fumes of the city and stand invisible on its streets. As he walked into the park, the sun shone through the canopy of elms. Ethan stood beneath the glistening archway and inhaled long and deep—the smell of cut grass and decomposing leaves. He imagined Tina McCarthy in front of a mirror with a syringe full of hormones, injecting her pale, freckled flesh with her life-giving potion, and he imagined them side by side leaning over spreadsheets: Sally in her frill-necked blouse and his soon-to-be ex-client and her wraparound cleavage.

  Sally—that fucking blouse again . . .

  His thoughts faded to the sounds around him, the drilling of taller buildings, the rumble of a million steps and, closer in, buskers strumming bad guitar, the chatter of workmates, birds tweeting on the bird-shitty bench. With a couple of German tourists he stopped to watch the scavenging ibises feuding over garbage—their brutal black hooks, the precision of the swordplay.