Art Ache

by Lucy Arthurs

MARJORY

  What what’s like?

  ME

  My life. Having a child, putting my career on hold, trying to work at my bread and butter job to make ends meet but . . . missing my true job. Him working all the time and expecting me to be . . .

  MARJORY

  What?

  ME

  A wife.

  MARJORY

  But you are a wife. You’re married.

  ME

  I’m like his mother.

  MARJORY

  You wanted to be that sort of wife?

  ME

  No. The exact opposite, but that’s what I’ve become. He’s not aware of it. He’d deny it if I said it, but he just wants a mother. His mother. A stay–at-home wife who looks after him, the house, the child . . . I do everything. I cook, I clean, I look after our son, I shop, I plan, I write Christmas cards. I even thought about making a quilt the other day.

  MARJORY

  You have a problem with that?

  ME

  Yes! I didn’t go to university so I could make quilts. This isn’t what it’s supposed to be like.

  MARJORY

  What is it supposed to be like? Tell me.

  I want to stand up and cross to the other side of the room. I want to put my hands on my hips and stamp my feet, point at her and launch into an Arthur Miller inspired monologue so she’ll understand. But I don’t.

  ME

  It’s supposed to be . . . fulfilling. Connected. Enjoyable at least.

  MARJORY

  What is? Explain the “it.”

  ME

  Being a member of Generation X. They told us we could have it all. The career, the husband, the baby, the home. We could smash that glass ceiling and fly high.

  MARJORY

  Who told you that?

  ME

  Um . . . I don’t know . . . everyone. The women who ran with the wolves, the ones who broke the glass ceiling, Naomi Wolf and the beauty mythbusters, Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan, Germaine Greer, you name it, Julia Gillard. Julie Bishop. Bronwyn Bishop. The Archbishop? I don’t know. Everyone.

  MARJORY

  And how do you think it should be? Do you think you can have it all?

  ME

  Probably not. That’s why I put my career on hold. How can my husband and I both have careers when we have a young child? He can have his turn and I’ll have mine later.

  MARJORY

  Tell me more about Generation X. What’s it like?

  ME

  Crap.

  MARJORY

  What did you think it would be like?

  ME

  Better than this.

  She raises an eyebrow. I take a deep breath.

  ME

  I thought we could have it all. I really did. I believed that slogan and I’ve tried very hard to make it happen. But the expectations are so high. It’s so hard. We’re supposed to have these amazing equal partners who we can talk to and share things with. We’re also supposed to be able to maintain our incredibly fulfilling careers while we raise our incredibly fulfilling children. We’re supposed to be able to have our cake and eat it too. But no one told us we had to bake the cake first. And cover it with gluten-free, low GI, sugar-free icing, sourced from a gender-neutral, sexually- neutral, politically-correct local store with employees who wear aprons made from hemp and wrap your purchases in recycled brown paper that leaves no carbon footprint. Then after we’ve fed the cake to our natural-cotton wearing children, we’re supposed to model inclusion by consuming a slice ourselves, but without gaining a bloody kilo because we’re still supposed to have the body we had before we had children even though we have no motivation to exercise, feel exhausted and barely recognise ourselves when we look in the mirror. And we’re supposed to be able to express these feelings openly to our adoring, committed partners who will help us navigate our way through it all at the same time we’re crashing through the glass ceiling. My husband couldn’t care less. Sorry, I’m raving.

  Awkward pause.

  MARJORY

  You have a very unhappy marriage.

  She’s only just met me. I feel like I’ve taken my dirty undies off and she’s holding them in the air for all to see. There’s a Stanislavski acting exercise all about that. You have to imagine the acting tutor is waving your soiled undies around for all to see and you have to try to grab them back. It was something about intention, motivation. What’s driving the character in the moment, how they respond to internal impulses. I never really saw the point. Now I do. I’d be grabbing those soiled undies in record time.

  MARJORY

  You need to put on your life jacket and learn to swim.

  ME

  Pardon?

  MARJORY

  Prepare for the worst. It doesn’t sound like your husband’s into it. And I doubt he’s going to change.

  ME

  Really? I rave on about Gen X and you tell me to prepare for the worst?

  MARJORY

  You have to take care of yourself. You’re on two different pages. He might change, but you can’t make him.

  ME

  Really?

  MARJORY

  Really. All you can do is take responsibility for yourself and your needs.

  ME

  How?

  MARJORY

  Put on your lifejacket and prepare yourself. Get used to standing on your own two feet. And learn to swim. That way you’re fully protected.

  ME

  Why do I need protection?

  MARJORY

  There’s a problem here, Persephone. You need to surface what’s really going on in this relationship. Give him an ultimatum.

  ME

  An ultimatum?

  MARJORY

  It works. Smoke him out.

  ME

  Sounds a little heavy.

  MARJORY

  Tell him you have three months, both of you, to either make it work, or to end it.

  ME

  I don’t want to end it.

  MARJORY

  He might.

  ME

  But we’re married.

  MARJORY

  That’s a piece of paper.

  ME

  It’s more than that.

  MARJORY

  For you it is. Doesn’t sound like it is for him. Spend three months going on dates, getting to know each other, spending quality time together. Then reassess. If his mood and behaviour don’t improve, he’s giving you a clear sign. It’s over.

  ME

  I don’t want it to be over.

  MARJORY

  You might not have a choice.

  ME

  Don’t you always have a choice?

  MARJORY

  You can choose how you respond. That’s a choice. Do you want to spend your life in limbo?

  ME

  If I have to.

  I think my answers are disappointing her. I no longer feel like I’m in a David Mamet or Caryl Churchill play with rapid-fire dialogue bouncing between us; now, I feel like I’m in an absurdist play. I expect a rhinoceros or some other random animal to stroll through the scene at any moment.

  MARJORY

  Really?

  ME

  I want a family.

  MARJORY

  You have one.

  ME

  I know I raved on about Naomi Wolf and Germaine Greer and stuff, but I don’t want to be a single mother. I want a husband.

  MARJORY

  There are worse things than being a single mother.

  ME

 
Really?

  MARJORY

  Of course. Date each other for three months and see how it goes. He could surprise you.

  And that he did. Now, two months and three weeks later, he just stood in front of me and told me he no longer wants to be married and that I don’t ‘do it’ for him anymore. I’d call that a surprise. Thanks for the heads up, Marjory. Pity I didn’t listen to you.

  He didn’t want to go on the dates. He thought it was a ridiculous idea. We tried the movies once. It was awkward, forced, and inconvenient. He was busy with work and the only time we could find was a Saturday afternoon. Mum and Dad babysat, but they were on a tight timeframe because they had a party to go to that night. And the only movie in that timeslot was some action thing that was dreadful. He was distracted and impatient, but I actually thought that was okay. We were a married couple, I had signed off on forever, we didn’t need contrived dates to prove we loved each other. We had made a commitment. That was the most important thing . . . wasn’t it? Apparently not.

  Please pull yourself together, Persephone. You can’t stay on the kitchen floor forever. Jack needs you. Drag your sorry arse off the floor and take your son to the park.

  Another sob escapes from my mouth as I haul myself up the kitchen cupboard and lean against the bench. I’m wiping my face on my sleeve as Jack comes bounding in from his exciting adventure to the toilet.

  JACK

  I flushed my poo all by myself!

  ME

  Good job!

  Breathe deeply, Persephone. Splash some water on your face.

  JACK

  Now I’m ready for the park. Sunscreen?

  ME

  On the bathroom bench, sweetie. Can you get it for Mummy?

  Why is it kitchen sink water always feels harsher than bathroom sink water? They’re the same pipes and the same H2O, but kitchen always seems more severe than bathroom. Oh well, it’s doing the trick. It’s washing the tears off my face and the snot down the drain.

  Jack totters up to me with the sunscreen.

  JACK

  Here you go.

  ME

  You’re so strong, young man.

  JACK

  I’m not a man. I’m a boy.

  ME

  A big boy. You can nearly touch the ceiling.

  He considers this while I smother Cancer Council approved sunscreen all over his gorgeous little face. His skin is so perfect. Clear. Translucent. In no time at all he’ll have one or two freckles, then the zits will creep in and before you know it, his cheeks will be covered in whiskers that will then be replaced by laughter lines. Turn around and they’re four, turn around and they’re twenty-four.

  ME

  Come on, Master Jack. Let’s get to the park before it closes.

  JACK

  Parks don’t close.

  ME

  I know. Joke Joyce.

  JACK

  Jack. Not Joyce.

  I scoop his delicious, muscular little body into my arms and give him a huge cuddle. He can walk to the park quite easily. We do it most days but today, I want to carry him. I want to feel him close. I actually want to shrinky-dink him and put him in my pocket. Remember how you used to be able to do that with potato chip packets? Put them in the oven for a few minutes after you’d scoffed all the chips. The packets would shrink and you could put them on a keyring or use them as a fun ornament for your pencil case. They looked so cute. Twisties packets were the best. Well, I’d like to shrinky-dink Jack, but it’s probably against the law to do it to children.

  Jack talks the whole way to the park. I nod and grunt in response, hoping he doesn’t catch on to the fact that my mind is miles away. Light years away.

  He climbs onto his favourite swing and I absentmindedly push him back and forth.

  JACK

  Higher, Mummy. Push me higher.

  ME

  You’ll go right over the top of the swing in a minute.

  JACK

  No I won’t.

  I watch the afternoon sun catch Jack’s hair. It’s the same colour as his dad’s. Well, the same colour his dad’s used to be. And his face is open and free, fresh and pure. My hand absently goes up to my face. I touch my forehead and run my hand down my cheek. I wonder what my face looks like right now.

  The face of a Gen X woman who obviously couldn’t have it all. The face of a woman dumped by her husband. The face of the mother of a soon-to-be four-year-old boy, an actor and sometime writer. A daughter, sister, friend, but no longer a wife. The face of a suburban woman burdened with a mythological name.

  In an effort to distract myself from the reality of the drama unfolding in my everyday life, I remind myself of Persephone’s story. Perhaps I’ll gain some insight from it, a revelatory realisation that will explain everything.

  In a nutshell, she’s frolicking in a flowery meadow with some nymph companions one fine day when she’s seized by Hades. He whisks her off to the underworld. Today we’d call it abduction, but then it was seized or transported, or something far more palatable. Anyway, her mother, Demeter, despairs and searches high and low for her. Plot twist here: Demeter learns that pesky old Zeus has actually orchestrated the abduction. Again, in our day he’d be an enabler, a pimp, a creep. Nah, in Ancient Greece he’s a god! But good old Demeter plays the trump card and refuses to let the spring grounds bloom until her daughter is returned. Controlling the seasons, now that’s real power. However, Persephone has already tasted of the food of Hades, a pomegranate I think, so she is now required to spend a part of each year with her husband in the underworld, and the other part in the upperworld. Heavy stuff. A lot to live up to, but I’m not getting any huge revelatory realisation apart from the fact my husband doesn’t want his wife in the underworld or the upperworld. He just wants her gone.

  I let out a spontaneous sigh, push Jack a little higher on the swing and have a fleeting memory of a spinach salad with pomegranate and feta dressing that Boofhead and I shared once upon a time.

  Chapter 3

  Our bedroom later that night. Alone.

  “There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.” William Shakespeare.

  I can’t get comfortable. The pillow is too hard, the sheets are too tight and the doona feels as heavy as a shroud. If shrouds are heavy. I’ve checked the bedside clock every five minutes for the past thirty minutes. It doesn’t make the time go any faster.

  Did this really happen today? Did my husband really end our marriage?

  Yes.

  I get up and check Jack. Sound asleep.

  I go back to bed, but still can’t get comfortable. I turn the bedside light on and sit up. I’m sick of pretending I’m tired. I hug my knees into my chest and contemplate my situation.

  My husband has dumped me and now I have to work with him in less than two weeks. This is worse than it sounds. I don’t mean we have to work together like we have to work in the same building or the same office. I mean we have to work together. In a rehearsal room. It’s a very different kettle of fish. Collaborative, intimate, committed.

  Do I really have to do this? Well no one’s holding a gun to my head, but jobs in the arts are hard to come by. When you work in the arts, you have what they call a ‘portfolio career.’ I’m not sure who coined the phrase, but the funding bodies and government arts departments have picked it up and run with it. It basically means instead of working a traditional full-time job, you work multiple part-time jobs. You suffer for your art. The part-time jobs can range from waiting tables to scrubbing dunnies. Not that I’ve ever scrubbed dunnies, apart from my own, but I have promoted cladding in supermarkets—that’s a plastic coating you put over the wooden boards on your house. I’ve also been a fairy, taught drama to children at youth theatre and young adul
ts at Uni, I’ve answered phones in a call centre, done telemarketing and worked as an appointment setter for a signage business. It was the appointment setter job that did me in and made me take action. I reached saturation point. Never again would I call random strangers or random businesses, suggesting they spend money they didn’t have on a product they didn’t want or need. I decided to focus on voice-overs. Smart move, because they are very well paid, a sensible use of my skills, flexible in terms of time and they’re usually enjoyable or if not, at least they’re brief.

  So now I have a healthy voice-over career and I’m no longer appointment setting for a signage company. I’m doing a hell of a lot better than many artists in terms of financial remuneration, but I still have a portfolio career and it is exhausting. It means I juggle voice-overs, which are my bread and butter, with auditions for acting jobs for theatre or sometimes TV, and writing for theatre commissions and pitches for new projects and once in a blue moon, I’m asked to audition for a feature film. It’s dynamic, creative and fun, but my heart is still with theatre, even though I know it probably shouldn’t be. If I added up how much money I’ve made from theatre jobs, I’d make the dunny cleaners look good.

  Doing voice-overs is terrific. You’re respected as a technician and the people you work with are, by and large, totally lovely. And the goal is clear. Read this script like this. Sell this product. The client has selected you from your demo tape so you know they like your voice and you don’t have to “prove” yourself to them. There is generally no audition required or if there is, they pay you for the privilege. In short, when you get the phone call you know you’ve got the gig. The process is very straightforward. You read the ad, they make changes and suggestions, you read it again and then you all go home.

  Working in theatre is different. It’s creatively fulfilling, but far more subjective. There are many stakeholders in theatre and budgets are always tight. Everyone has a vested interest and there’s little margin for error. Yes, it’s collaborative, but because companies are nervous about funding and audience attendance figures, choices are often safe. Sometimes deadly safe. And it’s an industry based on poverty. There is not enough to go around, so it can become a dog-eat-dog world. I don’t particularly like some of the aspects of theatre, but I love the form. I love the live performance factor. We sit and watch live actors present a story in front of us, a live audience, at this moment in time. There’s something primal, universal, and ageless about it. Magical. Therapeutic. I have had so many moments as a theatre actor when I’ve been on stage under the direction of a good director who has a clue and their vision has merged with the playwright’s intentions. I’ve felt the words and actions just float out of my mouth and body and connect with the other actors. You can feel all the elements of theatre coming together and it’s clear the audience gets it; it has struck a chord with something meaningful, deep inside them. They have been changed in some way. And you can hear a pin drop. There is communion, understanding, and human beings connecting on a deep level in this time and place. Right here. Right now, able to reflect on what it is to be human.