Replacement Wife

by Rowena Wiseman

  ‘How’s he going? I wasn’t sure whether or not I should ring to say goodnight to him,’ Luke said. We walked down the hallway and sat at opposite ends of the couch. He looked tired and restless.

  ‘He’s all right. You can ring him whenever you like. He always loves talking to you. He’s doing all right. It’s still sinking in, I think.’

  Luke looked at the television. ‘We’ve seen this one. They don’t even finish the project in the end. They run out of money, remember?’

  ‘I thought it seemed familiar.’ I switched the TV off with the remote.

  ‘How are you going?’ he asked, leaning forward on the couch, clasping his hands between his legs. His face looked so drawn.

  ‘Flat, I guess. I made a few calls yesterday. That was so hard. Have you told your parents?’

  ‘It was horrible. I mean, I didn’t tell them everything. Just that we were trialling a separation. Is that okay?’

  ‘Sure. You can say whatever you need to. I didn’t tell my parents everything either.’

  ‘How’s Max? Tell me, really.’

  ‘He’s being very brave. He misses you, though. And he’s scared about what’s going to happen next. Last night, when I was tucking him into bed, he said he wanted you there all the time. That broke my heart. Because of course he would, you’ve always been such a good dad.’ I reached out and took his hand in mine. Luke squeezed his eyes shut, as though he couldn’t bear to hear such things. We sat like that for some time, neither of us speaking, pain massaging our hearts with cold fingers.

  ‘Suzi said a strange thing to me,’ Luke said to me eventually, lifting his head and looking straight at me. ‘Apparently months ago you said that you wished that I would meet another woman. That some beauty would come along and you could exit stage left. What the hell would you mean by that?’

  Suddenly I felt the universe weighing down on me, pushing me into those old sofa cushions. ‘Do you believe that I said that?’

  ‘Why would she make it up? Besides, you’ve been so odd lately – all those conversations about affairs and being bored, and the way you acted around—’

  ‘How come you’ve been talking with her? Did you stay there last night?’ My stomach twisted. ‘You could at least have let all of this settle.’ I thought of my own lonely, miserable night in bed. Instead, he must have been comforted by Suzi, by her tender touch and her reassuring words. All the other pain I had been feeling felt like a mere graze, this new revelation felt like a slashed stomach. ‘You can go, I don’t know what you’re doing here, telling me this.’

  ‘I’m telling you that was a strange thing to say.’ And he got up off the couch slowly.

  My heart was beating, I felt confused, jumbled and properly angry. I led him down the hallway and opened the door. ‘You know, you’ll never be cruel enough for her. She’s in love with Martin Bryant,’ I sneered as he stepped outside.

  If he heard me correctly, he chose to ignore it. He walked right on out, back to his lover, I supposed: the bitch I had introduced him to. I went and laid back down on the couch, in a truly dramatic fashion, willing hot, passionate tears, but my eyes were dry. All I felt was the deepest misery, fear and depression — that I’d chosen that woman and now she was going to be a part of Max’s life.

  37

  I’d destroyed my castle, substituted Luke’s queen, sneered at the bishop and taken down innocent pawns along the way. Now it was my chance to make this final move to claim my king. I stood on Jarvis’s doorstep, that art deco building he had described to me so many times. It was a Sunday morning soon after I’d shattered Max’s world. Luke had picked Max up earlier to go for a bike ride. So there I was, free to live out my heart’s desire, a single woman at last. I was dressed in my favourite frock, a pretty forest-green dress, with white trim around the bodice, and I was wearing my new black Swedish clogs. My hair was freshly washed and styled, and, although my hair could be pretty hit and miss some days, I felt like it was a hit day.

  I pressed the bell next to his surname. ‘Hello?’ his voice sounded crackly through the speaker.

  ‘It’s Luisa.’

  ‘Really?’ he said, almost breathless with surprise. ‘I’ll buzz you in.’ I heard a loud buzz and the door creaked open. I stood in the dank hallway for a moment, confused, not knowing where he lived. There were three doors on the bottom level and a staircase leading up to the next floor. There was a lady’s bike lent against a wall, one of those retro, big-wheeled ones, pastel blue, with a cane basket. I put my hands into my pockets, suddenly unsure of myself.

  It seemed to take a long time, but finally he appeared out of one of the doors on the bottom floor. ‘I can’t believe it,’ he said. ‘You’re actually here.’ He wasn’t dressed like I’d imagined he would be. But I had to forgive him, because it was a Sunday morning and he wasn’t expecting me. He was wearing grey cotton shorts of all things, and a red t-shirt that was torn at the shoulder. His hair seemed thick and fluffy, like it had just been washed and hadn’t had time to settle, and his beard needed trimming around the lips. When he kissed me on the cheek he smelt like rotting compost of the barley and yeast variety. He must have had a big night.

  He walked me through his door. His place was messy. My vision of him being the type of person to iron and hang all his shirts facing the same way on matching coat hangers in his wardrobe had been wrong. Looking around, I realised that he probably didn’t iron at all. He had a wooden clothes horse in the centre of the living room, piled with his clothes in an unventilated manner. There was a red plastic washing basket full of unfolded clothes on the couch. I could smell a cooked breakfast. In the narrow galley kitchen there were two different pans soaking in the sink, toast crusts, coffee cups, beer bottles and a stack of unwashed plates on the bench.

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t know you were coming,’ he said. ‘I hadn’t heard from you for a few days, I was starting to wonder what was wrong.’

  ‘Luke and I are over,’ I blurted out, standing there in his small dark living room.

  ‘What?’ he said, collapsing into his brown cord couch next to the washing basket.

  ‘We’re over. My plan worked.’ I went and sat beside him, moving the washing basket onto the floor. I touched his hand finally, the hand that I had seen in my mind over and over again. He had said that he had pianist fingers, and he was right, they were long and thin and his nails were short and rounded. He had a dark mole on his middle finger, underneath his fingernail.

  I had waited so long to be in a room alone with him, without any guilt. My heart was pounding, ready to play out all those scenes that we’d written so passionately about. He’d said that he wouldn’t be able to keep his hands off me when we were finally together. He’d said that he’d need to press his lips to mine for three days, just to believe that they were real. And yet, here I was, and he wasn’t doing any of these things.

  ‘We can be together. Luke is with someone else.’

  I felt his hand trembling. He leaned his head back into the couch cushion and shut his eyes for a moment.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s too late,’ he said, finally opening his eyes and looking at me. ‘When you sent me that message from Hobart I thought we were over. I thought maybe you were trying your best to make it work with Luke, that you’d pushed me to the side. I thought you didn’t want the same things that I wanted anymore . . . I’ve started seeing someone else.’

  ‘Are you fucking kidding me? Why didn’t you tell me?’ I reeled back, my heart searching for courage.

  ‘I’m sorry. I thought we both felt the same thing: that it was over. Just neither of us wanted to admit it.’

  ‘I’ve ruined everything,’ I said, feeling suffocated in that bottom floor flat of his. There was so little air. Didn’t he ever open a window? I pulled myself up onto my feet again. ‘Is it that girl in the red dress from the McClelland opening?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, his eyes on the cheap carpet.

  ‘Great, another quean with an “
a”,’ I said. ‘She wears too much eye makeup. You’ll get mascara stains on your pillow slips.’

  I was making no sense to him, but it didn’t matter. I was heartbroken, ruined, a foolish minx. I’d thrown half my eggs into one basket, smashed the rest, and now this basket had been dropped and these eggs were broken, too. He didn’t even try to stop me from escaping out the door with another word.

  Well, what was there to say?

  I couldn’t even blame him. All along he’d had nothing to lose and I’d had everything to lose. Now I had lost everything and he had gained something else entirely. I had no role at all to play in his life, other than the fun he’d had with me in the past months. How long had it even been?

  I found myself staggering up Punt Road, passing bumper-to-bumper football traffic. There were team flags hanging out of many car windows. No one was going anywhere fast, so they all had time to gawk at me, to see the anguish piled on my face. I was limping because those clogs hurt, and my heart hurt and my self-esteem and belief in myself had been pierced with Cupid’s vicious arrow.

  The cars were full of families on their way to an afternoon at the football, family units spending time together. Even though they were stuck in traffic and hardly moving, I envied them. I limped up the hill, looking through those windows as if they were a Myer Christmas display, and I felt how far I had come from the life that I had once cherished. That had been me, once upon a time; all I’d cared about was my family unit. A play at the park, a coffee at a café, an afternoon at the football with Max and Luke; that had been all I had needed to be happy. But somewhere along the way that happiness had dimmed, and I’d gone looking for something else. And now I knew that that something else didn’t even exist.

  38

  My life was an old movie reel that had been going along fine, but then got jammed. I started projecting black spots everywhere I went. It seemed as though there was nothing at all to look forward to: no meal, no holiday, not even a new pair of shoes. Everything felt empty.

  I didn’t want to see anyone, but to save all my energy for Max. I crafted a smile on my face when he came home from school. I orchestrated upbeat notes in my voice for him. I rubbed his back before he fell asleep and told him fifty times a day how much I loved him. Everything else was in shadow, but Max was the light that guided me through those drooping days.

  Max and I stayed in the house for another six months, until Luke and I had no other option but to sell it. By then I had let the garden die. The summer had been hot, and I hadn’t had the will or the energy to water it. Besides, it had always been Luke’s garden. I was dead inside and so were his plants.

  Suzi’s book had to be pulped because of my change to the dedication. Needless to say I never got any more work from that publisher again. But, luckily, the damage was relatively contained. When Dave heard that Suzi and Luke were together, he must have taken pity on me and not badmouthed me to other publishers. So I still managed to pick up other jobs. My world revolved around Max and my work. Suddenly it became even more important than ever to have a steady income coming through the door. I was a sole provider now and I had to provide everything for Max and myself.

  We rented a basic two-bedroom cottage in Thornbury. I was jealous of Luke and Suzi’s beautiful three-bedroom, double-fronted terrace in Clifton Hill — with the sale of her house and his half, they’d been able to get together a decent mortgage. Max and Brodie had their own rooms. They got on well, and I never begrudged the nights Max spent there; I was thankful that he was happy. But I missed him so much. Especially in that first year, I’d cry myself to sleep those nights that I didn’t get to kiss him goodnight.

  ***

  Some months after my life self-combusted I went to McClelland to see Jarvis’s sculpture one final time. It was the last weekend of the survey before they packed it away. Max was staying at Luke and Suzi’s, so I went to say goodbye to that dream I’d once had for my life, a dream I now knew was nothing more than a delusion.

  I walked along the path with a heavy heart, hardly noticing any of the other sculptures. I came to Jarvis’s piece; it had been there for a long time. A lot of the gold tinsel had fallen off and was scattered on the ground. Sitting down in the dirt, I crossed my legs and looked at his zombie. I had never liked it. I’d pretended that I liked it, but I didn’t. However, it seemed that other people had. I’d been wrong about that, too. I’d been wrong about everything. I’d been dazzled by the idea of Jarvis as an artist, the idea of us as a creative couple, but none of it had been reality. It had all been a fantasy, and things played out in my head were better than it ever could have been in real life.

  When I had read how he would touch me, how our bodies would be like flesh-and-bone Lego together, it had felt so powerful. Those words had played my heartstrings more than his touch ever could have. I was an editor, in love with words, and his words had been the most precious I had ever read. They had transcended reality, dug a hole in my head, and planted seeds of what my life could be like with someone who could write such words. But could that someone ever have lived those words fully with me? Probably not.

  I ran my fingers over those scattered pieces of gold tinsel on the ground. They had dropped off, become detached, lost their shine, gotten splattered by mud. Those fallen pieces of tinsel were me. I rescued two strands and put them in my handbag.

  ***

  I kept track of Jarvis’s career through art publications and social media. Those golden zombies of his were a major hit. He followed up with a series of silver zombies and later shiny green zombies. With residencies in New York, Iceland and Spain, he moved on from zombies and into ghosts, and from ghosts into banshees. If it had no soul, then it was his type of thing. A headline in Art Monthly proclaimed him ‘the phantom artist’.

  I never found out what happened with the girl in the red dress. Although I searched for a long time, and became somewhat obsessed with her, try as I might I could never find out if they were together for long or not. Last I heard, Jarvis was living in Dubai. Once he hit the big time as an artist, even my brother didn’t hear from him anymore.

  Last week I saw a new sculpture of Jarvis’s in the Venice Biennale on artnews.com. It was a red tinsel zombie, smaller than usual. In front of the zombie were large silver letters, Emily Floyd-style, saying More than kisses, letters mingle souls. My heart tumbled in dirty laundry. Perhaps I had meant something to him after all? Maybe he did remember everything, too? Maybe this was his way of reaching out to me? But then I saw a small 3D word to the side of the work, a reference. I zoomed in to see what it said. Instead of John Donne, it was the word Done. It was his last goodbye to me. And silver scissors snipped me free from the golden tinsel I’d been hanging onto for years.

  About the Author

  ROWENA WISEMAN writes contemporary fiction, young adult and children’s stories. She was recently named as one of the 30 most influential writers on Wattpad. Rowena’s blog Out of Print Writing, about writing and publishing in the digital revolution, has been selected for the National Library of Australia’s archive program PANDORA. She works in the visual arts sector and lives on the Mornington Peninsula, Victoria.

  Copyright

  Impulse

  An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

  First published in Australia in 2015

  by HarperCollinsPublishers Australia Pty Limited

  ABN 36 009 913 517

  harpercollins.com.au

  Copyright © Rowena Wiseman 2015

  The right of Rowena Wiseman to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000.

  This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

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  ISBN 978 1 4607 0590 2 (epub)

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