Fairway to Heaven

by Lily Malone

  I will call you when I have things straight in my head.

  J.

  The paper slips from my fingers and slides across the kitchen table.

  I anchor it under an African Violet and look around one last time at the sparkling kitchen, the sparkling house.

  My gaze lingers on the casserole pot. It was a present from my parents when I finished my media degree. Jack doesn’t deserve his favourite dinner and he doesn’t deserve my favourite pot — which reminds me: there’s an ice-cold bottle of Yarra Burn bubbles in the fridge. Buggered if he’s getting that, either.

  Chapter 2

  There’s a breeze that cools the Perth coast in summer that locals call the Fremantle Doctor. It churns the fronds of the palm trees lining Emmy Culhane’s street as I park on the verge outside her two-bedroom Cottesloe cottage.

  After the leafy streets of Nedlands, Cottesloe feels scorched. The lawn where I park is patchy in places, seared by salt winds, sun-baked a yellow-brown.

  Sebby has his nose pressed to the screen door. Emmy’s behind him, her face ripe with curiosity and a hint of concern. She doesn’t open the door until she’s sure my car has stopped, so I have time to get out and adopt brace position before my son totters to me, shrouding me in the scent of shop-bought baby food and banana.

  I hug him so tight he squirms. His cheeks wipe a sticky mix across my collarbone and it’s the sweetest stickiness in the world.

  ‘So what happened to date night?’ Emmy asks. Her gaze flicks to the bags, the portacot and the pram, all stuffed in the back of my car, and her eyes narrow. ‘That looks serious. What’s he done now?’

  Emmy never liked Jack. She thinks he’s possessive and controlling. She says I’m a different person when Jack’s around. The feeling’s mutual. Jack calls Emmy “Nancy Drew”. Says she’s always sticking her nose where it isn’t wanted.

  Later I’ll tell Em everything, but it’s all too raw right now.

  ‘Is it okay if I stay here tonight, Em?’

  ‘Of course, sweetie, you know that.’ Then she sees my feet. ‘Hold that thought, what happened to my shoes?’

  I love how some things in this world never change, like Emmy’s love of shoes and shopping, and the softness of my son’s skin.

  ‘They’re in the car.’

  Emmy catches my eye around Seb’s blonde curls. ‘I just need to know one thing. Are you okay?’

  ‘I’m working on being okay. I’ll get there. Can you take him?’

  I hand Seb to Emmy so I can open the hatch and pull out the things I need for the night: the cot, Seb’s baby bag, my bag — then I follow Emmy’s swinging pony-tail into the house. This week that pony-tail is auburn.

  Emmy’s house smells of banana muffins, possibly on the burned side of perfect. I need two trips to bump all my gear through her front door and wrestle it into the spare room.

  The cottage looks different, and it takes me a few minutes to figure out why. Usually, she has knick-knacks and pretty things on her side tables and coffee table, hair and fashion magazines everywhere, incense sticks and fragrant oil burners, souvenirs from a million Saturday garage sales. All these have been packed away and her surfaces are surprisingly clear.

  Then I get it. She’s Seb-proofed it.

  ‘We’ve been baking,’ she says, sitting Seb on the kitchen counter and playing This Little Piggie with his toes, making him giggle. ‘I know baking wasn’t on your list, but I improvised because his Lordship got bored with Peppa Pig, and I got bored losing Hungry Hippo.’

  ‘The list was just a suggestion, Em. It wasn’t set in stone.’

  She quirks a dainty eyebrow at me, but says nothing. Emmy mocks my penchant for making lists, but she’s far more fly-by-the-seat-of-her-pants than me. She’s a hairdresser by trade, something she wanted to do since we met in high school in Karratha, where both our fathers worked in the mines. She ran her own salon for a while in Subiaco. Now she has a mobile hairdressing service, dealing cuts, perms and colours to the Western Suburbs blue-rinse brigade.

  ‘According to the list we just had dinner. Next on our agenda is a bath,’ she announces. ‘Do you want to do the honours, or shall I?’

  I look at my watch. It’s six-thirty. Jack should be getting home about now. I wonder what he’ll think of my note.

  ‘If you don’t mind doing the bath thing, Em, I’ll get this stuff unpacked.’

  ‘I don’t mind,’ Emmy nuzzles Seb’s cheek. ‘Come on gorgeous boy, come with Aunty Em.’

  Emmy doesn’t have kids of her own, but her parents have foster-cared for families in need for years. She was the one who changed Seb’s very first nappy when I was still recovering from the emergency caesarean — he was breech — and Jack had left the hospital to celebrate Seb’s birth with his mates. Wet the baby’s head, he called it.

  Seb’s head bobbles as they disappear towards the bathroom. Seconds later I hear water pounding the bathtub. I take another trip out to my car, lock it behind me this time, and return carrying the casserole pot and the bottle of bubbles. These go on the stove, and in the fridge.

  In the bathroom, Emmy’s switched to Five Little Ducks. From all the splashing, I’d swear she was washing a baby elephant in there.

  Next, I tackle the portable cot assembly.

  The cot falls apart on the carpet of Emmy’s spare room as I pull it from the bindings, black plastic legs sticking everywhere, like a dead spider on its back. It takes forever before I get the thing standing up properly, and as I struggle to get the sides to slot in and click like they’re supposed to, I get even madder.

  Finally as I clench two connecting pieces, squeezing at a button the instructions declare is there but I can’t feel, the bars jolt into place and it’s up.

  I shove it a bit with my knee. When I’m convinced it’s not going to implode, I dig out Seb’s pyjamas, a nappy, his bottle and sleeping bag and bring them all out to the kitchen. In the bathroom, Emmy has switched to The Grand Old Duke Of York, mixed with pleas for Seb to ‘stand up honey, it’s time to pull the plug.’

  In real estate terms Emmy’s house is what I’d call “snug,” but it’s so much more cheerful than the dark timber and cool halls of Jack’s place. The kitchen splashback is bright sky-blue tiles with a painted sunflower tile trim, and the walls are sunshine yellow. Even in the middle of winter, sitting in Emmy’s kitchen is like being at the beach.

  Eventually Em emerges with my freshly-scrubbed son wrapped in a towel. He holds out his hands for me. I put on a fresh nappy, get him dressed, and he sits on Emmy’s carpet, playing with my keys.

  Emmy gets two wine glasses from her shelf — they’re more like buckets — and a bottle of red.

  ‘I bought bubbles, Em. The bottle’s in the fridge.’

  ‘I don’t get the feeling we’re celebrating.’

  She gets the cap off with a practiced twist. Red wine spills into the glass. Then she opens the lid of my casserole pot, sniffs the contents.

  ‘It’s beef ragout. I made it for Jack. You weren’t expecting to have my company for dinner, so I brought it over.’

  ‘You could have had Lamb Rogan Josh in a jar. You left me enough of the stuff.’ She slides the lid on and lights the burner under the stove.

  I bury my nose in the glass and inhale the rich, ruby scent. Emmy does the same, sips, then puts her glass on the countertop with a clink, and fixes me with hazel eyes that want answers. ‘So what’s going on?’

  Seb hurls the keys under Emmy’s couch and crawls after them, until he gets distracted by the plastic bag that is holding Emmy’s shoes.

  ‘Jenn?’ Emmy prompts.

  A quick slug of wine gives me courage. ‘I found Jack screwing one of his golf students in a sand bunker at Sea Breeze today.’

  ‘In a sand bunker?’ Emmy screws up her nose. ‘Which one?’

  Does it matter? ‘The one on the twelfth.’

  She giggles. ‘I meant which student.’

  ‘Oh.’ Smiling, just for a second, it is funny. �
��Marnie James. She’s the club president’s daughter.’

  Emmy takes a slow sip of her wine and her brow furrows. ‘When you say you found them screwing…are you sure? I mean. You know it was him?’

  I nod, twirl the stem in my fingers.

  ‘You actually saw them?’ Emmy’s eyes grow wide and soft and she stretches her hand across the stone countertop to cover mine.

  ‘My set of clubs was next to Jack’s golf bag on the green. He asked me if Marnie could buy them a few months back.’ I hadn’t wanted to sell my clubs, but Jack had been so persistent. ‘He said I never played anymore and that we could use the cash. I didn’t need to see them, Em. I heard them. I know who was in there.’

  Emmy hisses a breath through her teeth and sits hard on her barstool, making the cushion whoosh air. Through tight, hard lips, she says, ‘Brayden will rip Jack’s head off.’

  My glass slips the last centimetre and hits the counter with a hollow clang. ‘You don’t have to tell him.’

  ‘He always asks after you. I can’t lie. I’m not telling him you’re fine when you’re obviously not.’

  I wish the thought of Brayden Culhane asking after me had lost its power to make my stomach churn. Brayden made his choice eight years ago and that choice didn’t include me. He moved on. He started a new job two thousand miles away in the Newman mines. Five weeks at a time living at the site, on the job, then two weeks off, back in Perth, before heading back to the mines again. They call it FIFO. Fly in, fly out.

  So I moved on. To Garry, or Barry, or whatever the arsehole’s name was — the loser before Jack.

  I slip off the barstool and cross the floor to my son. ‘Just tell him it didn’t work out. No big deal. He doesn’t need the gory details.’

  Emmy doesn’t press.

  I tug the plastic bag from Seb’s chubby hands. ‘This one’s not a toy, mate.’ He doesn’t want to let it go, and he cries, sitting on Emmy’s lounge-room mat rubbing his knuckles in his eyes.

  I check my watch. ‘It’s his bedtime, Em.’

  Emmy makes a show of consulting the notepad where I wrote my list. ‘200mls of milk, bedtime at 7.30 p.m. Check.’ Ticks it with an imaginary pen.

  I poke my tongue at her.

  After I heat a bottle of milk in the microwave, I zip Seb into his polka-dot sleeping bag and nurse him on the couch. His dark blue eyes — mirrors of his father’s — stare into mine as he takes rhythmic swallows. Tiny air bubbles rise on the milk.

  I miss breastfeeding him, but Jack insisted twelve months was long enough. I didn’t argue. Jack had his reasons.

  Emmy gets up to stir the ragout, filling the living room with the scent of rich beef and mushrooms. ‘This will be ready soon, Jenn.’

  Suddenly, I’m starving.

  Seb’s eyes are almost closed. ‘I’ll be back in a moment, Em.’

  She blows Seb a goodnight kiss.

  Standing, I carry him into the spare room and lay him in the portacot, bending low, doing my best not to jostle him awake.

  ‘Night, night, little man.’ I leave the room, propping the door open.

  Steam climbs from two deep-sided bowls of ragout that sit side-by-side on the countertop, flanked by a set of salt and pepper shakers.

  Emmy has demolished her auburn pony-tail. Now her hair hangs past her chin in the type of casual messy tumble I would kill for. She’s always been a hard act to follow — Emmy looks gorgeous when she’s putting out the trash.

  We’re a similar height and build, both on the tall side for a woman, and slender in the way a girl gets when she walks a lot and swims but doesn’t lift weights — neither of us is particularly muscular. Right now, Emmy has a definite edge on me. When I was breastfeeding, I could eat like a horse. Now, I still want the food, but there’s no baby to suck away all that weight.

  I fork a piece of beef into my mouth. The meat falls apart.

  For a while, the only sound is the metallic clink of forks in bowls, the hum of the fridge, and the liquid glug as Emmy refills our glasses.

  ‘Go easy, Em. I’m out of practice.’ I didn’t drink when was I pregnant, and only had a couple of glasses here or there while I was breastfeeding.

  She puts the bottle to the counter and pins me with a look that says, out with it. ‘You and Jack should have worked. You were good at the start. What went wrong?’

  Tension fills my shoulders. The red wine, the company, the food, they haven’t done much to ease it. Inside I’m coiled like a spring.

  Emmy’s twenty-fifth birthday pops into my mind, when Brayden was there, and Jack. And Emmy said —

  I can’t tell her that. Emmy was too drunk to remember her birthday speech, though enough people told her about it she apologised to me a few days later. If I bring that up now, three years after, she’ll think I blame her.

  It’s not Emmy’s fault.

  ‘Things haven’t been great for a while.’ Picking up my wine, I swirl it for a few seconds and watch the legs make tears inside the glass. My eyes are on the liquid, not Emmy, when I say: ‘Jack and I have hardly slept together since Sebby was born.’

  ‘Serious?’

  ‘We tried a few times, you know, a couple of months after he was born… but, now, aah hell. It’s at least six months since we had real sex.’

  ‘Clarify “real sex”’.

  I wave my hand at her, vaguely. ‘You know, properly.’

  ‘Properly?’

  I squirm in my seat. ‘I mean, like, head-jobs aren’t counted. Proper making love, S-E-X.’

  ‘You’ve got a new baby, Jenn. I’ve heard heaps about new mothers having trouble with their libido. I’m sure it’s normal.’

  ‘Trust me, it’s not normal,’ I force out. ‘I fancy him, and I think he still wants me, or he used to, but — ’ tears threaten now, the ones I couldn’t spill in Jack’s bedroom, in Jack’s house. ‘It hurts like you wouldn’t believe. It’s like I’m splitting apart down there when he comes anywhere near me.’

  As a hairdresser, Emmy’s heard everything. She winces at my description, but in sympathy, not shock. ‘Have you talked to your doctor?’

  I nod. ‘She thought breastfeeding might have something to do with it, something about my hormones. She said to wait a month or two after I stopped breastfeeding and try again. That’s why Jack pushed me to quit when Seb was twelve months old.’

  I don’t tell Em that Dr Stanlake also said I should rub the skin near the entrance of my vagina with olive oil twice a day and have a glass of wine or two before Jack and I had sex to see if that helped me relax. I skip the bit about the anaesthetic gel she suggested. My candour has limits, even with Emmy.

  ‘I think you should get a second opinion,’ Emmy says. She tops up her wine, but I put my hand over my glass. I’m already feeling light-headed.

  ‘I’ve had three opinions, Em. I’ve been told it is hormonal, thrush… a urinary infection. I’ve been on antibiotics. I’ve even seen a naturopath.’

  Of everything I’ve said so far, it’s this that surprises Emmy most. ‘You saw a naturopath? Wow. What did she say?’

  ‘She asked whether I had any allergies. She said I should stop using soap, wear loose cotton clothes, try everything the other doctors said and come back if it wasn’t better in a few months. Then she’d try acupuncture.’

  ‘They always say try acupuncture.’ Emmy slaps the table. ‘If this sort of shit happened to men, you bet doctors would have found more of a cure than “wear loose clothes and wait a few months.”’

  There’s a moment where we sit, me fiddling with the pepper shaker and Em with the salt, until she looks up: ‘And the problem only started after Sebby was born?’

  ‘I didn’t even know it was a problem for a few months. Remember I had the caesarean? I wasn’t in shape for much and Seb was waking up three times a night.’

  It hurt the first few times, but at least it was possible. By the time Seb was six months old, making love with Jack felt like being a virgin all over again, only worse, because th
ere was no give in my skin at all. I’d lie under him and pray for it to be over.

  I got good at giving head-jobs.

  I don’t tell Emmy that either.

  ‘What did Jack say while all this was going on?’ She asks.

  ‘We didn’t really talk about it much.’

  It sounds thin, and Emmy has that Culhane bullshit look in her eyes as she says, ‘If you loved each other that wouldn’t be a deal breaker. You’d work through it. So there’s more to it. I mean… seriously, I’ve been waiting for the day you came to tell me he’d popped the question. You’ve got the house together, the kid…’

  Not the mortgage, thank God. That’s one good thing about Jack having a rich grandmother to gift him a house.

  I take a sip of my wine. ‘I’m glad he never asked. It makes this easier.’

  ‘Makes what easier? Leaving?’

  I nod and she waits, but I don’t elaborate.

  ‘You have Seb to think about though, Jenn. You know there’s no love lost between me and Jack and it’s your decision, but I think you have to talk it through with him. You can’t just run away.’

  ‘I’m not running away. I just need some space. I can’t be near him right now. The thought of him and Marnie together, it makes my skin crawl. If you’d heard them, Em…’ My throat works, but I can’t make a sound. The bright yellow walls swim, I’m not sure if it’s the wine, or my tears.

  ‘How long do you think this has been… going on, with Marnie?’ Emmy asks.

  There’ve been times when I’ve smelled perfume on Jack. I even asked him about it once. He said he gets close to a lot of his students when he’s helping correct their swing.

  I twist the stem of the wineglass. ‘He’s been late home from work more and more…’

  It’s not just that. Jack used to pressure me — had I seen the doctor, had I made another appointment — was I feeling better down there, or worse? What were the doctors doing… didn’t they know anything?

  The nagging drove me nuts, and it was worse because I didn’t have answers. Hell, the doctors didn’t have answers, and it wasn’t Jack who had to front up, tell the sorry story and inevitably end up on an examination table with legs spread.