Replacement Wife
Page 14
My heart felt unexpectedly singed.
‘I knew it. Is he going to leave me?’
‘I don’t know. We don’t talk about it. You can’t tell him I told you, he’ll hate me, he won’t understand.’
‘Fuck you. You sort your shit out with him. Get out of my house.’
She picked up her handbag with shaky hands and staggered out the front door, her head hung low.
I felt like I couldn’t breathe, like I was underwater, drowning in that sea I’d been floating lost in for so long. My fate had been determined. I felt crazy with hurt, angry, disappointed in myself, fearful of what was to come next.
I did the only thing I could think of to get back at her, to damage one of the things that she loved. I changed the dedication in her book. I took out my red pen and changed her words For Brodie, my son and the joy of my life to For L., I will always be your quean. I circled the word ‘quean’ and made a note to the typesetter: make sure it is ‘quean’ with an ‘a’. I knew that the typesetter would be too rushed to question the correction or to realise that ‘quean’ meant slut.
34
Suzi must have called Luke straight away, because he came home within the hour. It was just after midday. He must have wanted to have the confrontation before Max came home from school. His eyes were red and puffy and his hair looked dishevelled. He burst through the door to the study and knelt at my feet.
‘I’m so sorry,’ he said, placing his head in my lap and sobbing, his shoulders convulsing. ‘I’m so sorry.’
I sat there, mostly numb. This was the scene I’d known was coming all along, but now I was in it, and it didn’t feel real.
‘Say something. I’m so sorry.’
I sat on my ergonomic swivel chair, my arms limply at my side. Suzi’s manuscript was neatly packed in an envelope on my desk, ready for a courier to arrive. Luke’s head in my lap felt heavy and awkward, overly dramatic. I didn’t feel like supporting that head of his on my knees. I didn’t feel like saying anything either, nor did I feel like pushing him away. So I put up with it. He stayed like that for five, maybe ten minutes — until, perhaps, his neck ached — then he pulled himself up and looked at me, eyes red raw, face drained of colour.
‘What are you going to do?’ he asked.
‘What do you want to do?’ I replied.
‘I don’t know. Are we stuffed?’
‘Probably,’ I said.
‘What about Max?’ The mere mention of his name made me feel cold all over, because he was the only thing I truly cared about. Finally, I cried deep, soulful tears from my eyes. It was only Max who mattered. His father and I had made a mess of everything and sacrificed his calm, happy upbringing. I cried so much that I couldn’t talk. Luke had to carry me to bed. He lay me down, rubbed my back and stroked my head.
He stayed with me like that until the doorbell rang. It was the courier who had come to collect Suzi’s manuscript. I heard Luke ask him to wait. I heard his steps down the hallway. He collected his mistress’s manuscript and returned to the front door and gave it to the courier. ‘Have you got all the delivery details?’ I heard him double-check.
Luke returned to our bedroom doorway. ‘I’m going to pick Max up now,’ he said.
I pulled myself up onto my elbows. He was holding a pair of sunglasses, to hide our family secrets at the school gate. ‘Take him for a milkshake and a kick at the park. Give me a couple of hours. I don’t want to rush this. Let me think,’ I told him. Luke came and sat beside me, hope in his eyes.
‘I’m so sorry,’ he said again. ‘I can’t tell you how sorry I am. I never wanted to ruin what we have here . . . I just . . .’
I felt his pain so deeply, like we shared the same wound. I squeezed his hand and lay back on my pillow, suffocated by misery.
I took my time after he left. Eventually I got out of bed and had a shower. I held a warm face-washer to my eyes under the showerhead and sobbed into the downpour of water. I threw on black jeans and a black top and realised afterwards that I had dressed in mourning, like a widow. I dried my hair with the hairdryer, took a couple of Nurofen, drank a glass of wine and started to prepare dinner.
When Luke and Max both came through the door a couple of hours later, it appeared as though it was any normal night in our household. I’d made chicken schnitzel with creamy potatoes, and Max was hungry, devouring everything on his plate. He even ate his vegetables without us having to bribe him with promises of ice-cream afterwards. The exercise after school had done him good. Luke was wary, like he didn’t know the lines that were going to be spoken in this play of ours that night, but he went along with it and followed my lead.
After Max’s shower, we both lay down in his bed, one on either side of him, to listen to him reading his book. We both wanted to be there, for that last night being a normal family together. He read us Diary of a Wimpy Kid so beautifully, his voice full of expression. Our three heads were on his pillow, all of us squished together in his single bed. Occasionally Luke and I would steal a glance at each other over the mound of his body. I could see it in Luke’s eyes — he felt the same as me. Although everything else had become a disaster, we had created the most precious thing together: Max. Whatever else was to come, we would protect him, because he was more important than anything.
As the words rolled out of Max’s mouth, Luke reached over his belly, grabbed my hand and held it. I held onto that hand of his for the last time: that hand that had put a ring on my finger in front of all our family and friends, promising to love me forever; that hand that had held my sweat-drenched one when I pushed Max out into the world; that hand that had built the deck on this home we loved, where we had sat and created so many beautiful memories; that hand that had once stroked my face and made my body sing. It was the same hand that did all those things, but on that night it was a hand begging for forgiveness.
Max finished his chapter and Luke asked him to read another one. Both of us were stalling. Neither of us wanted to face the conversation that was waiting for us beyond his door, the one that would decide his future forever. Max started to read another chapter but he was getting tired by then. He read more slowly, stumbling over his words: ‘that’ became ‘then’ and ‘beak’ became ‘break’. But we let him go on, soothed by the sound of his voice. He didn’t make it to the end of that second chapter. He told us he was tired, and reluctantly we pulled ourselves up out of his bed, gave him kisses and made sure he had a final sip of water from the cup on his bedside table. We lingered in his doorway, our arms pressed up against each other, and we watched quietly, solemnly, as he rolled over in bed and pulled the doona up to his chin and closed his eyes.
Luke skipped his 7.40pm coffee and his chocolate and came and sat with me in the living room. The television was off. One lamp cast an unnerving shadow over the rug.
‘So, have you thought about what you want to do?’ he asked me uncertainly.
‘Maybe we just need some time apart. Perhaps you can go and stay somewhere for a bit, see how we feel? I’m not saying it’s over, I’m just saying that we both need some time to think.’
‘I’m so ashamed,’ he said, starting to cry again, putting his head in his hands. ‘What are you going to tell Max?’
‘What do you want me to tell him?’
‘I don’t know . . .’
‘We should tell him . . . we’ve always shared everything together, you and I. Whatever we say, we should do it together. We don’t have to tell him everything — just the things that he really needs to know.’
‘I don’t know how this happened. I got carried away. This is killing me.’
I looked at the broken man beside me and I felt no anger towards him, only hurt and confusion. This was all my creation, my game, my diversion tactic. This is what I had done to him. I felt pity for him, and I knew then that I would try to make this as easy as possible on him.
‘Maybe you can stay with your brother for a bit? We’ll just tell Max that we’re going to trial some time apart
.’
‘Like a separation?’
‘I guess.’
‘Aren’t you going to ask me some questions?’ I could tell he was desperate to confess, to get everything off his chest.
‘I don’t want to know,’ I said. Truly, I didn’t want to know, I had enough to badger me in my imagination. I didn’t need any visuals he could supply as well.
‘Are you in shock? Are you okay? You seem so calm,’ he said. How could I tell him that I had known this day was coming? That it had been my design all along?
‘We’ve been distant for so long. This is simply the final nail in the coffin for us. I just have to accept it,’ I said. Perhaps he wanted a great big fight, vases thrown across the room, tears, anger. But before the last few weeks we’d been in a sober relationship. Why construct some passion now? ‘I’m going to bed, I’m wrecked,’ I said. My head was throbbing, I felt ill inside, I was dreading the conversation with Max the next day, and the conversations I would have to have with friends and family. My day of reckoning was about to happen; it was time to admit to everyone that my relationship was a failure. The image of a perfect family that people had seen would be revealed as smoke and mirrors. It was time to be dragged through the streets, tarred and feathered.
35
These are the words that changed Max’s life: ‘Your mum and I are having some problems and we are going to try living apart for a while.’ I watched a fault line fracture through my son, one that I know has never been repaired.
Luke packed two overnight bags as Max watched something on ABC3. When he came to say goodbye, Max turned off the TV and went to his room, ignoring him. Luke crumpled by the empty couch and sobbed into the seat.
I put my hand on his shoulder. ‘You should go. It will upset him to see you like this.’
He looked up at me, his eyes burnt with shame, his bottom lip trembling. ‘I can’t believe I’ve done this’ was all he could say.
Max spent those first days floating around his home lost, unsure, keeping an eye on me, making sure I wasn’t about to disappear, too. He held back tears, like the day I first left him alone at kinder. He opened his bedroom door so that he could hear me making phone calls to friends and relatives, trying to find out more about what was really happening. I spoke softly in as reassuring a voice as possible, knowing that he was listening. I tried to downplay everything. I told everyone how well we were both doing, hoping that by saying it, maybe it could be true.
36
The second day without Luke was harder than the first for both of us. I woke in a big empty bed, surrounded by possessions that would most likely have to be itemised, negotiated on and split up.
I thought about how Luke had worked so hard all these years to provide for Max and me — to give me the dream house I had always wanted, in the location I had always wanted. This house had stretched us to our limits, but he had made sure we got by. I had felt for so long that I had lost Luke to the Patch, but I had actually lost him to my own wish fulfilment.
I walked around our house, barefoot, squeezing the carpet between my toes. Max wasn’t awake yet. I ran my hand over our teak dining table, mid-century Australian design, with orange leatherette chairs. Luke and I had fallen in love with this table at the Chapel Street Bazaar. This is where we had sat every night for dinner, where Max learnt how to read and did his homework. He’d created craft on that table from the age of two. If I looked carefully, I could see scrapes from where he’d misjudged the use of his scissors, there were glue marks and indentations from his writing. His very first off-page scribbles were on this table in red texta, spirals like a snail’s shell. I had to have this table.
Our couch in the living room was a vintage Avalon three-seater. We’d always planned to have the cushions recovered. There was breastmilk stains on the carved teak arms from those early newborn days when my breasts had overflown with milk and Max and I were struggling to attach properly. I’d always loved those white splashes on the woodwork. No one else had ever noticed them, but I knew what they were. I’d never wanted to clean them off, because they were so precious to me. Those marks of mine told a story of Max’s newborn days, when I’d sat for hours and hours on that couch, with his face at my breast, his lashless eyes looking up at me curiously, his tiny clenched fist on my bare skin, and I was the only person in the world who could nourish him. I had to have the couch, too.
I lay down on the couch cushions, which needed re-covering, my head on a pillow, and wondered against the odds whether Luke and I could work this out, so that no one needed to lose any of this. Maybe Luke and I could keep Max and this house and everything in it by keeping each other. I could forgive him, we could move on. This would disappear as a mere blip in our lives. I could call him and tell him that everything would be all right.
But then I changed my mind: these things were just things. I still had half a lifetime ahead of me — who did I want to spend this with? And Max, he would be out the door in ten years’ time, it would just be me then, and I had to consider what I wanted life to be like afterwards. Would this couch still be so precious then, or the person who I was with? Who was I going to grow old with? A man whom I would perhaps resent? There was too much water under the bridge now, the crossing was damaged. No, I needed to be with someone I could love forever, who would love me forever. I needed to start fresh, make the break, forget the furniture, the carpet, that red Le Creuset dish. Even if it meant a life of struggle, living on my freelancer’s wage, eking out an existence month to month, at least it would be a true life.
I rolled over on the couch, it wasn’t even all that comfortable, and who knows what was living under those covers since 1970. I thought about all of the boring stuff that I would have to get through in the coming weeks and months. I’d have to see a lawyer. I’d never seen a lawyer before. It sounded horrible. I’d also need an accountant, I’d have to get my head around all our finances and that sounded equally tiresome. How was I going to keep up with all my work and find time to do all this life-changing administration?
Where would Max’s original birth certificate live? At Luke’s place or my place? What if the other parent needed it for something? Who would have his keyboard? He was supposed to do piano practice every night, but where would it live? Maybe we would both have to have one. And what days would we have him? I wanted Max for at least four nights. My heart was going to be so lonely not being able to kiss him goodnight every evening. Both of us should have him for at least one weekend day, so that we could spend good quality time with him. Luke worked Saturdays so maybe he should have him Sunday to Tuesday and me Wednesday to Saturday. We’d have to talk about all of this and reach an agreement. At least with all that had happened, I thought that Luke would try to be as accommodating as possible, because as far as he knew, it was he who had upset all of this.
Max finally awoke and came out in his pyjamas. His body was warm and cosy, his cheeks flushed, he had sleepy breath and he sat on my lap, his long legs dangling down to the ground. I could see that his eyes were puffy and red.
‘You all right?’ I asked.
‘Yeah.’
‘What have you been thinking about?’
‘Just you and Dad. About what’s going to happen.’
‘You can ask us anything, sweetie. If there’s ever anything that you’re worried about, you should speak to one of us. It’s not going to get nasty. Your dad and I are always going to be good friends still. Whatever happens, we’ll both be at all your special things together, sports games, school concerts, that kind of thing.’
***
Breakfast felt particularly solemn. Luke had always taken charge in the kitchen every morning, but that day it was me, trying desperately to pep things up.
‘What do you feel like?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You can have anything. Do you want bacon and eggs?’
‘Sure.’ But it was Luke who always cooked our big breakfasts on Sundays, that was his thing. He’d let me read the weeke
nd supplements, while he worked in the kitchen preparing breakfast for Max and me. He would serve us sides of mushrooms and tomatoes, and give us freshly-made toast halfway through. He would say, with keen anticipation, ‘How is it?’ His pleasures in life were modest: as simple as making us happy by feeding us.
My bacon and eggs was a disaster. The yolks broke and the smoke alarm kept going off because the pan got too smoky. I ran back and forth between the kitchen and the smoke alarm in the hallway, waving a tea towel to blow the smoke away. The alarm was an audible reminder of the chaos in our lives, piercing our ears and warning the neighbours.
‘I’m sorry about the yolk,’ I said, placing Max’s plate down in front of him. His egg was overcooked and there was nothing runny and yellow to dip his toast into. He surveyed his broken egg, cooked by his broken mother, but somehow he held it together and reassured me, ‘That’s okay. Thanks.’
We hired some DVDs, pulled the curtains shut and ate popcorn and chocolate on the couch. One of the DVDs got stuck in the player. Usually I would have waited until Luke could fix it. But in this new life of mine, it was just me. I had to rise to these new challenges. I let Max play with the iPad while I tried to fix the DVD player. It took half an hour to locate and read the instruction manual. When the damned DVD drawer finally popped open I felt a huge wave of satisfaction. For a moment, I felt as though I could conquer anything on my own.
We had fish and chips and a coleslaw salad for dinner. It felt particularly quiet at the table, just the two of us. This was the time of day when Luke and Max would bounce jokes across the table at each other. Luke had always known how to make Max laugh and talk about his day. For the first time I felt dreary, uptight, not sure of how to make conversation; I felt like a mother, not his friend. I tried to recall how Luke did it, but nothing came naturally.
After Max was in bed, I was lying on the couch watching Grand Designs on catch-up TV when I heard Luke’s car arrive in the driveway. I wasn’t expecting to see him. He knocked softly at the front door. I let him in, wondering whether this was the moment when he would beg to come back to me.