‘Sell. You really want to sell the house.’
‘Yes,’ he said, shrugging as if to say ‘of course’.
‘Tom. This is a separation, isn’t it? Not a divorce. We want to keep our options open. We might . . .’
‘Get back together?’
Her heart warmed a little. He had said it. It was at the top of his mind, too. Her entire body relaxed.
‘Yes.’ She smiled, kindly. Not too kindly, she knew he needed his space, and to feel alone for a while. When he came back, it would have to come from him, it wouldn’t work if he felt pressured to come back. She couldn’t gloat, or be vengeful. She would just be quietly waiting for him, not demanding anything, a purer and simpler version of her former self, until he finally realised . . .
‘No,’ he said coldly. ‘I want to sell. As soon as possible.’
She gaped at him. For a moment she couldn’t speak. Then she could. ‘Tom, this is crazy.’ At the back of the café, a torn shower curtain hung open, revealing a galley kitchen where the waiter leaned towards a mirror and trimmed his nose hairs with kitchen shears. ‘You really want to burn all your bridges like this?’
‘Like what?’
‘It’s one thing for us to have a little time apart. But selling the house, that’s irr-e-vers-i-ble. That’s—’ She stopped and panted for a few seconds. Some creature had reached up a hand from her heart and was choking her. She stroked her throat frantically, trying to relax it, and speech returned. ‘That’s burning all your bridges.’
He gave her a funny look. ‘Is it?’
‘Well, isn’t it?’
‘Only if, like you, you feel married to a person and a house. Instead of a person.’
He wasn’t making sense. She ran through the words again; nope, still no sense. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘Nothing. Here’s the agent’s card. She can get the auction happening next month.’
‘Next month!’ She gazed out the streaked window of Melbourne’s worst café, towards where some of the city’s worst weather, infamous throughout the nation, was on display. Rain lashed the road in drops so big they could bruise, while trees bent sideways in gale-force winds. ‘Where will Lotte and I live?’
‘You can find somewhere to rent. Like I’m doing.’
She tried another tack. ‘Isn’t there no auctions at this time of year?’
‘It will be spring before our house gets to auction.’
Our house. ‘That leak in the lounge room will put off buyers.’
‘I’ll fix it.’
Like you could have done last winter? Grace didn’t say. ‘It’s too soon to sell.’
‘I asked you to sell it a few months ago, even before we broke up.’
She tried again. ‘The market’s low. We’ll lose money.’
‘We’ll lose the house if we don’t sell. The bank will foreclose.’
‘Can’t we ask our families for help?’ She scanned his face for something, anything. He looked slightly puzzled.
‘No. Because we’ve split up. Don’t you get this? So why would we borrow more money from our families to pay for a house we’re not going to live in together?’
She sighed. The waiter, with freshly trimmed nose hair, brought Tom’s coffee and her pot of tea. ‘You like a biscuit?’ he said. ‘We open new packet.’
‘No, thanks,’ said Tom, smiling kindly. Okay, so he did have some warmth left in him, just not for her. He was apparently saving it all for hairy strangers in shabby clothes.
‘Tom, why don’t we—’
‘Biscuit?’ The waiter barked at her.
Grace jumped, startled. ‘No, thank you.’ The waiter looked her over suspiciously and went back through the shower curtain.
Tom stirred his coffee. ‘Or you can buy me out of the house if you want.’ His face was expressionless, he was zombie man. He had left his feelings at the front door of this rancid place, and they were pawing at the glass, saying Tom! You forgot us! Let us in! We like Grace! ‘We get the house valued, you give me half, and it’s done.’
‘You know I can’t do that. I have nothing, and I have no job.’
He put his hands on his gorgeous, denim-clad thighs and shrugged his broad shoulders. ‘Precisely. Neither do I. We’ve used up your redundancy. I can’t meet the next repayment. We have to sell.’
Something he had said earlier started working its way through her brain then, like a hot ember that takes a while to finally start burning carpet. She had asked him if he really wanted to burn all his bridges, and he had said Is it? And Only if you feel married to a person and a house. And maybe that was it. He just wanted to force this sale. He was pushing them to the brink of their marriage to get his way on selling the house. It was a test, to see if she loved him more than the house, or separately from the house. If she passed the test, he’d take her back. For a moment she was furious; the lengths he would go to in order to win an argument! Putting her through all this misery! And then she remembered that she had no income, and nor did he, and, for whatever reason he had done it, they simply could not pay the mortgage.
It was awful, yet it gave her a ray of hope.
‘Okay.’
‘Okay what?’
‘Okay, let’s sell the house then.’ She waited for a flicker of warmth, some moment of gratitude. He had won, he had got his way. But zombie man just blinked and nodded his stony, handsome face and rose to his feet, abandoning his coffee. Apparently, he couldn’t bear to be in her company for a second more than he had to. He was already focused on the rain outside, and on leaving.
‘Good. I’ll call the agent, and let you know you the date.’
Grace forced herself to nod, from her still-seated position. ‘Okey-doke. Well, see you.’
‘You sure?’ He hesitated. ‘You changed your mind very suddenly.’
‘No, no. I just see your point now.’
He looked at her a little suspiciously. ‘Well. Bye.’
Grace watched him leave. She hadn’t touched her tea. Gingerly, she tipped the stainless-steel pot, and hot water poured down its side, pooling over the tabletop. She halfheartedly dropped a serviette into the steaming slick of water, and watched the paper darken around the edges, and in growing spots in the middle. She paid the waiter and told him to keep the change, preferring to carry nothing else away from that terrible place, nothing more than the rock placed upon her heart.
She remembered their eighth wedding anniversary, how they had both forgotten until they woke up on the Sunday morning.
‘Our anniversary! Well, that’s shag-worthy,’ said Tom, rolling over and slipping his thigh in between hers.
‘It could be. You never know. Do you think there’s something wrong with Lotte?’ It was her way, in the early minutes pre-sex, to start listing the worries close to her heart. Sort of as if with opening her legs, she needed to open her soul. A lesser man might have given up immediately, but Tom knew the drill.
‘Probably. She’ll be on the streets by fourteen, I reckon.’
‘Tom. Seriously.’
‘Well, okay, if you insist: thirteen, then.’
She pinched his bicep and he sighed. ‘Take her to see someone. A child psych, whatever they are.’
‘Can we afford it?’ She rubbed his bare tummy, and slid her hand over his hip to cup his buttock. They both knew the question was ludicrous; Tom had no interest in their finances and could not have guessed within fifty thousand the size of their home loan.
‘Of course we can,’ he said soothingly, slipping his hand between her thighs.
‘Should we ask Mum for dinner this week?’
‘Lovely. I’d love that.’ He ran his hand up her flank and cupped her bosom. ‘Mmm, you. Gorgeous woman.’
‘I think she’s hurt we don’t see her enough.’
‘Then let’s see her more. Let’s ask her to live with us.’
‘What about Lotte’s kindy? I just can’t decide.’
‘I think she should go,’ he said thoughtfully, dro
pping little kisses up and down her cheeks.
‘Oh God, Tom, I don’t mean that! Of course she should go. I mean which kindy; St Arnolds or Lady Benedict.’
‘I’m thinking Lady Benedict sounds sexy. That would be my choice. Like mmm . . .’ He rolled on top of her. ‘Lady . . . Benedict . . . full of . . . grace . . .’
She laughed breathlessly. ‘Well, thanks for that considered opinion.’ Now she had offloaded the top layer of clutter on her soul, she could reward his patience by rolling him back over and paying some attention. ‘I’m sure Lady Benedict would be into you too . . .’
‘She’d raise her cassock . . .’
‘Maybe yours, you’d be a priest . . .’
‘And she’d order me into the . . . you know . . . the little room behind the church . . . the bentricle . . . ventricle . . . whatever . . .’
‘And you’d lift your cassock . . .’
‘And she’d kneel down . . .’
‘As if in prayerful worship at the sight of a holy miracle . . .’
‘And she’d take your sacred object . . .’
‘And I would thrust myself . . .’
‘And then the Pope would walk in . . .’
‘And he would want a piece, too . . .’
‘Although I think Lady Benedict might be Anglican . . .’
‘But the Pope was just passing, out to get some milk, thought he’d pop in . . .’
‘To her . . .’
‘And then a few members of the congregation came in . . .’
‘And at first they’d be shocked . . . but then . . .’
And on it had gone. Grace sometimes wondered whether other married couples had grown-up serious sex, and indeed she and Tom had done it like that for a while, until they got bored and started telling stories to help each other get off quicker, useful when a baby was crying for a feed and time was short. And then the stories got sillier and veered between erotica and farce until it ended in a blast of sensation and they would promptly fall asleep, abandoning whatever priest or taxi driver or prostitute or French maid had been accompanying them in bed, these phantoms drifting away as they slept the small death and woke tangled in white sheets and peace.
She missed Tom so much.
A week later, the For Auction sign was hammered up out the front. Grace had hoped to conceal this calamitous and gossip-fuelling turn of events from the kindy mothers, but the three-metre high sign meant the jig was up. Shape this Snug First Home to Your Dreams, or Demolish and Develop as Investment Opportunity (STCA) it read. Three Cosy Bedrooms . . . Baltic pine floor boards . . . Original kitchen . . . She wanted to mock the real estate speak (how was the originality of the kitchen an asset?! God, they should have left the outdoor toilet in place, or maybe there was a cave on the block that Neanderthals had once used), but her heart wasn’t in it. It truly had been a Snug First Home, and it had fulfilled many of her dreams, she thought sadly.
A knock on the door sounded through the house like a gunshot. Grace let in her mother, there to help her clean up for house inspections. Dawn had thought to bring a packet of extra-strength garbage bags and a bootful of cardboard boxes, which was more than Grace had done. She had also brought a plastic container with a freshly baked sponge cake. The kindness of it reduced Grace to immediate tears.
‘Mum!’ Lotte had gone to spend the day with her father and Grace was free to fall apart.
‘Shush, shush, there, there.’
‘I don’t want to sell this house.’
‘No. Well. Life serves up some pretty poor meals sometimes.’
‘It’s all so awful!’
‘There, there. Your marriage has failed, you’ve lost your job.’
Grace snuffled into Dawn’s shoulder, and waited for more. Where was the encouragement?’
‘I didn’t . . . I haven’t . . .’
‘No, no, you’re right. You’re a penniless single mother, abandoned by your husband, without a means of support, your career in tatters. That’s what I told the golf ladies. It’s terrible. Terrible.’
Grace stepped away from her mother and wiped her face dry, suddenly embarrassed. Jesus, was that the best her mother could do? She had been a junior primary teacher for over twenty-five years, so there were probably entire generations of children still in counselling to recover from their first year at school as five-year-olds. No, Dianne, you can’t read. Nor can you tie your laces or cook a sponge or drive a car, like any normal human being. Pretty doomed state of affairs if you ask me.
‘Right, well, I thought we’d start on Lotte’s room,’ Grace said briskly.
‘What? Did I say something?’ Her mother followed her.
‘No, nothing, really, I just wanted to get going on it.’
‘I said something wrong, didn’t I? I hurt your feelings.’
‘Not at all, Mum.’
‘I just like to tell it how it is. I don’t like to butter both sides of the bread — you know me.’
‘What on earth does that mean? Butter . . .’
‘You know. Blow smoke up your—’
‘Mum! It’s fine. Really. And you were so kind to bring the cake, and to come to help. Really.’ She hastily gave instructions for Dawn to pack away Lotte’s toys and fled to the back garden.
The shed door hung open. Grace peeked inside, her eyes needing a moment to adjust to the dim light. The roof was, of course, clad with the opaque plastic tiles that doubled as mini solar panels, but they had been installed at an early stage of Tom’s research, and didn’t work, beyond letting in a little natural light. But then she realised her eyes were fine, that there was just nothing inside. Not the workbench, or the tools, or the pile of scraps of metal, screws, brackets. Tom had taken it all. The shed looked enormous. Grace closed the door shut and wrestled the lock across. She crouched under her clothesline and studied the back of her home. Her mother passed inside like a shadow across the window and disappeared again. The weatherboards flaked and rotted at the edges. A piece of guttering sagged. A pot of rosemary grew beside the door, and a little garden bed held a pool of dry leaves, in the same space in which Lotte’s flower seedlings grew last spring. Buds were bursting out of bare branches, sunlight bathed the grass. The arrival of spring in Melbourne always felt slightly miraculous, as if someone had brought you a holiday and left it kindly on your doorstep.
She could hear the neighbour from two houses away, talking to her grandchild, in a voice that could cut glass. ‘Yes! What you say to Nonna! Ah ha ha ha ha! STOP THAT! Ay!’ And then ‘Awwww’, a musical descent over three octaves, all at 88 decibels. ‘Awwww! Pretty girl! Pretty girl!’ And then a foreign language in between, all delivered like gunfire. ‘Worp worp! Worpa worpa nonna worp!’ Some chatter from the girl, and then the grandmother again, now talking to another adult. ‘Outrage! And then and then and then. Outrage! I said! Why don’t you! Worp worp worp worpa. Ice-a creama!’ And just when you wanted to wipe a whole country off the map, the voice returned so brimful of tender affection that Grace had to resentfully smile. ‘Peek A BOO! I SEE you!’
To sell this house, it would feel like cutting off parts of her body. The way light fell in a certain room, and had illuminated the face of a new baby. The way leaf-shadow played on a wall, and Lotte had watched it. The way the key sounded in the lock when Tom was coming home to her. Grace knew the entire house with not just her eyes but her hands. For the past ten years, since buying the house straight after their wedding, she had got up once a night to go to the toilet. She could make her way around in the dark, knowing every creak and the feel of every surface.
Grace remembered a friend’s grandmother, who had declined with dementia until she had to be moved out of her knick-knack-filled home and into a bare-walled nursing home. The woman had lost all of her remaining memories almost instantly; something Grace understood. Your home was full of placeholders for memories. Tom did not realise that this was irreversible. He just couldn’t.
‘The sale’s in a month?’ said her mother, stepping out
the back. She peeled off plastic gloves and tucked her hair back off her face. ‘You should get a bit of money for it.’
Oh well done, Mum. A positive. ‘Most will go to the bank. To pay back the mortgage.’
‘All of it?’
Grace forced herself to consider it, and did the sums. ‘No. Some will go to the real estate agent for commission, advertising, auctioneering, that sort of thing.’
‘But surely something for you? You’ve been paying this mortgage for ten years.’
‘Maybe,’ said Grace, daring to dream about it. That much? Or even, that much? Enough to put a deposit on a small flat? But no, Tom would come back to her, so she wouldn’t do that. Invest in shares? Start a business? ‘Or maybe not.’
Her mother shook her head like one who’s just had bad news. ‘All those mortgage repayments for nothing,’ she said, patting Grace’s shoulder. ‘Fifteen years in that job and you might as well have stayed home.’
‘Yeah. Right. Jesus, Mum . . .’
‘You can always come and live with me, you know. There’s space for you and Lotte. I won’t get in your way.’
‘Thanks. But I’ll find a new place, and we’ll start afresh,’ she said.
‘You sure now? I’d love to have Lotte.’
‘And me.’ Grace prompted.
‘Well, of course. And you. I’d love you both to live with me.’
‘Thanks, Mum.’ Hell would freeze over first, she silently resolved.
Chapter 13
Melody took the spray can from her bike basket and shook it, the inner pebble knocking inside a full tin. Prussian Blue. Destined for a pale orange wall, visible from an inner-city rail station. The spring full moon had already risen above the northeastern suburbs, most of its ghostly arc ahead, yet to be completed. As was her task.
‘You right?’ she whispered back to Eddy Plenty, on a bike behind her. Some shiny new forty-speed number, straight from the box. He had called her earlier, angry and wanting to contact Van and punch his lights out. There had been more news stories in the papers in the past week, and one on the news, about the city’s celebrity thieves, Cat and Pirate. Melody had gone to visit him. She saw from his pale face and the state of his house that he was not doing well. It was a pity Romy had dropped back in, just long enough to break his heart all over again, by the look of it. But she already knew Eddy’s weakness: he loved to help. She had cooked him dinner, and coaxed him out into the dark night, on their bikes.
The Near Miss Page 14
