by Nicky Webber
CHAPTER 6
It’s Complicated
Logan’s boss called him into an unexpected meeting and offered him a promotion to head up the marketing arm of the Australasian part of the business. He could choose to move to either Sydney, Australia, or Auckland in New Zealand. After some discussion with Fred and Maddy and of course one another, it was clear their choice was New Zealand, especially while their two daughters were young. Suzie, the youngest, was only six months old, so it made sense for them all to choose a comfortable lifestyle over fast-tracking career opportunities in Australia.
Logan’s new employment contract was for two years, renewable for a further two, and included the return cost of transporting their entire household. During the packing and house move, Mila reminisced over old photos before stuffing albums back into old boxes for storage. She made a more concerted effort to track down old school friends who she vaguely recalled settling in New Zealand. Searching online like a voyeur; she spied on virtual strangers clicking through social media comments and photographs. Trawling through personal information and jokes, Mila nosed around some of their family events and gatherings. Nearly everyone was having a blast. Remarkably, everyone’s lives were blissfully exciting and enjoyable. They seemed to have achieved Nirvana on earth and were forever smiling out at her from the glowing laptop screen.
She reconnected with two old school friends now living in New Zealand. One of them lived in Auckland, so it was a relief to talk to her on Skype and get the lay of the land. Too many years had gone by, and their interactions were superficial. It reminded her of why some friendships had not endured during intervening years. But one of her forays into the past had uncovered the contact details for Rory, Maddy’s friend Jess’s younger brother, who had shared some of her classes in her first year at UCLA. It was clear Rory had left LA to travel the world and ended up in rural New Zealand, married to a dairy farmer’s daughter.
Logan and Mila chatted to Rory online three weeks before leaving for New Zealand.
‘Any handy tips and gems of wisdom you want to impart to the newbies?’ asked Logan.
Rory laughed easily and freely, his eyes dancing in unison with the positive energy he took to every interaction. ‘Kiwis can be hard work, off-hand and abrupt, but that’s the culture. They tell it like it is. Don’t get offended if one of them asks, what the hell are you dressed like that for?’ he chuckled. ‘Kiwis are like their national emblem, they look like they have a dangerous beak, but they never actually bite.’
‘How long did it take to settle in?’ Mila asked.
‘Easy. Took me about six months. People are mostly friendly in a laid back kinda way. The land is beautiful, spacious, fresh, open and there’s plenty of it. The outdoor life is incredible. It’s much easier living here. Not as sunny as LA but you ain’t seen surf beaches, mountains, and forests until you get this side.’
‘Wow,’ breathed Mila, grinning at her husband.
‘Yeah, you’ll both adjust easily. And your kids will too. The best way to meet locals is at the school pickups. How old are your kids?’
‘Not quite at school yet,’ smiled Mila. ‘But good to know.’
She was having pangs of homesickness, and they hadn’t even left California’s shores. Mila imagined saying good-bye to her life-long friend which contributed to her distress about moving countries. This will be further than the two women had ever lived from one another. They tried to cajole Logan to commit to a time frame, but he was unrelenting.
‘Two years?’ tried Mila.
‘Maybe.’ He retorted unconvincingly.
‘Five years?’ braved Maddy trying to flush him out.
‘It could be. Who knows?’ Logan frowned. ‘It’s just impossible to know.’ Both women looked crestfallen. He looked from one to the other. He sighed. ‘I can’t make any promises. Hell, these days you’ve got almost limitless ways to talk to one another. Cyberspace has it all.’
Mila shrugged. ‘Like King Solomon once said: And this will also pass.’
Both women shared a powerful bond as the closest of closest friends and saying goodbye would be the hardest farewell of all.
But Logan had secured a high-powered marketing job in a massive global food processing business. His employer had offered him free accommodation on a one-acre lifestyle block in a semi-rural town on the outskirts of Auckland, New Zealand’s largest city. Mila hoped to get a part-time role as an administrator in a local business once they had settled. The prospect of living in a foreign land excited both Logan and Mila, but they knew isolation could be a struggle to overcome. They promised to Skype and WhatsApp, Fred and Maddy at every opportunity, sharing news of their new divergent lives.
‘It’ll be like we’re there, in the same room,’ said Maddy. ‘We’ll fix a time, make coffee or even share dinner and pretend we’re at a restaurant together.’
‘Sure,’ smiled Mila. ‘If only we were sitting around the same table.’
Down-under in New Zealand was a world away from life in Santa Monica and settling into their new home was harder than expected. Logan worked long hours to ensure his position and credibility were intact. He promised to be home early, but something urgent took priority, erupting last minute and placing Mila on the back burner. Because she ‘lacked local experience,’ Mila’s job applications were rejected. These frustrations and the mundane domestic isolation contributed to a full-blown outburst when Logan returned home from work at 9.36pm on Friday night, after a few drinks with his boss.
‘I specifically asked you to come home to share dinner together, and you promised you would be home on time,’ Mila complained as Logan stepped through the front door.
Logan shrugged and ran his hand through his hair. ‘Mila, darling, you know what it’s like. I need to do everything I can to impress my boss and the team. I’m the new boy and being watched like a hawk.’ He removed a beer from the fridge, pulled the bottle opener from the cutlery drawer and flipped the cap off into the kitchen sink.
Mila watched him, seething in silence. He glanced up after the second gulp of cold beer.
‘What?’
‘Are you that stupid?’ she asked.
Logan looked like she had slapped him hard across the face. Evidently, he enjoyed a few drinks at work and needed a few moments to process why his wife seemed so off.
‘You’re not playing fair. It’s unreasonable,’ she stated. ‘I am stuck in the house all day with the kids and you’re strutting around at work, meeting people, achieving results, everyone running around after you while I sit here.’
‘It’s just a time thing,’ he tried, knowing he was on uncertain ground. ‘Early days, things will settle in. We’ve all been through a big change.’
‘But why can’t you do something as simple as turn up for dinner once a week? Am I so undervalued? Am I number 326 on your To-Do list?’
He hadn’t seen her like this before, she seemed like a stranger, another person occupied his wife’s body. He couldn’t understand why she was so upset. Her bottom lip trembled, almost on the brink of tears. This over reaction made little sense and he wanted to avoid the situation as quickly as possible.
‘How can I help? What do you want me to do?’ he tried.
She shouted. ‘I just want you to turn up when you say you’re going to. To meet your promise or don’t damn well promise anything! Be your word or is it too hard for you? Being the boss at work is all you need, and I am superfluous.
‘Wow, Mila, you are really blowing this up out of all proportion.’ Logan softened his voice, hoping to take the heat out of the situation. He didn’t want to fight and in some ways, she was right. His commitment to the job was critical for their security and life in New Zealand. Why couldn’t she see that?
‘How can you say that? I sit here day in and day out, alone, waiting for you. The dinner’s ruined. Why do I bother? Why would I? You obviously don’t give a damn about me or how I’m feeling.’
‘I wanted…’ he started, but she cut him off
at the risk of listening to reason.
They devolved into yelling at one another until Mila burst into tears and locked herself in the bathroom. Days of cold silence followed as each retreated to their corners while maintaining a bright, cheerful face in front of their daughters. But the damage was done, slow crawl out of the trough of their misunderstanding and bitterness would take many weeks to heal. But the scab was there for either to pick off and trigger another round.
While the foursome married their best friends, it was the opposing spouses, Maddy and Logan, who shared a passion for English language, music, and art along with a renewed desire for each other. After the first two years of geographical separation, Logan reached out to Maddy in a quest to rekindle their inter-personal obsession by gradually exchanging a few secret emails. Exchanging private emails outside their regular contact created a little excitement. Both couples swapped news, their children’s milestones, and life in those distant Antipodean shores through their regular family email exchanges.
The two secret lovers raised no suspicion. Unlike any new relationship or the connection with strangers, Maddy’s private email contact with her husband’s best friend started out as a bit of harmless fun. Gradually their communication transitioned to longer missives and written exchanges about their past and shared intimacy in an unemotional, compact online connection. Initially, neither dared to go beyond the perimeters of warm association, a prelude to testing the waters of commitment versus infidelity. They didn’t exchange telephone numbers or physical addresses. More recently, their emails had expanded, and the content deepened. But neither one picked up the phone to speak to the other. It was as if this innocuous relationship didn’t exist in the actual world. They were both fearful of upsetting their spouses and each other’s best friend, so they maintained the fantasy aspect of their relationship online.
After some months, Maddy wondered if she would still recognize Logan’s voice. By October they agreed for the two families to share the Christmas holidays in New Zealand. Logan had already hired a bach, a rented beach house for summer. Logan and Maddy kept everything politely contained behind the encrypted firewall of Internet anonymity. He was very economical about his personal life and besides, Maddy got all the intimate details from Mila. Maybe he already knew. Not that Maddy would ever cross that line and disclose details conveyed by his wife and transfer private information to Mila’s husband. That was a communication conduit leading to serious misadventure.
Logan developed a nickname for Maddy after a lover’s tiff during their shared teenage romance in the last century. Mitch, a combination of her name and bitch. He had expressed his anger at her calling a halt to a physical relationship with him in their teenage years. It was more in jest than a damning indictment of their relationship, and in his recent emails, he dropped back into his old ways of communicating with her.
Dearest Mitch,
You really are getting eyebrow deep in that gardening gig. I tried it once and grew half a dozen lettuces, only to find they cost me $432.00 each!! Once the girls reached their teens, they lost interest in the land, pets, and their two horses. Around the same time, my wife of 12 years and your closest friend lost interest in me. I hate it when that happens!
So, I find myself virtually alone again. That sounds like a song! A swansong for me as I struggle to make sense of love and marriage. What sage advice do you offer, Mrs. Davis? We both seem to live as if we’re sainted monks, chained in the tedious silence of tolerance and chastity.
Life is not always as it seems, dear heart. But I hope you are enjoying yours.
Love Logan
She sensed Logan was unhappy and putting on a brave face. Semi-joking, but of course, his wife had told Maddy how fed up she was too. She guessed that somewhere between the spouses’ conflicting perspectives, there would be a common cause and effect with, hopefully, an acceptable resolution. Maddy wrote a heartfelt email back, advising on love, care, and understanding delivered with practical steps to win Mila’s heart. Weeks of silence yawned into the coming months. Elusive time, which they picked up as if their condensed lives were only a week’s absence. She and Fred were busy renovating their house, but now and again she wondered about Logan, and what his life must be like, and how he may have changed over years they had been apart.
On some subconscious level, Maddy believed her house renovation project was a means to obliterate her sense of isolation while Mila and Logan lived so far away. A new kitchen and bathroom, along with the pre-requisite matching double garage, which included a bedroom-come-study in the attic. The extra space made perfect sense for storing extraneous gear, including the future prospect of an adult-child or two when they would inevitably return home after their first failed forays into lease-sharing with friends.
Now that their youngest son, Blake, was in elementary school, Maddy felt it was time to re-enter the workforce. But what job would incorporate her son’s after-school activities and homework demands? Commuting from suburbia to the city was something she wanted to avoid. She discussed the possibility of moving further out into the country, but Fred insisted this meant fewer work opportunities for them both and even longer hours of commuting. This dilemma was the bell jar of all bastards. Like Alice in Wonderland, she could sense the lifestyle opportunity through the looking-glass, but had no way of making it a reality. Non-existent local jobs in small semi-rural towns surrounding LA were a silent economic killer. The lack of political will to drive businesses into rural areas and small towns was the real culprit, but sadly, well beyond her ability to influence a positive change.
Within a few weeks, she returned to the corporate coalface and took up the myriad reins of project management again.
My Dearest Mitch,
Wonderful to hear from you.
I confess I’ve been keeping tabs on your social media page. The ravages of time and life have hardly touched you, whereas I’m the charred remains of my former self.
That’s quite something moving your octogenarian mother closer to where you live. It will be a real challenge. Her birthday’s next month, isn’t it? At least that’s what my husk of a forgettery tells me! Hope she is not too demanding of your time?
I’ve been frantic, traveling through China—quite a struggle to understand the business etiquette and explain marketing campaigns with a western cultural sense of humor. It would’ve given you a few laughs at my expense!
Take good care of yourself
Loganxxx
Maddy’s heart skipped a beat every time she saw Logan’s email address in her inbox. Sometimes she wouldn’t open it for a few hours, wanting the house to herself to savor his words and take the time to read between the lines, interpreting his reality. Other times, she would check the email on her cell phone and read it immediately, composing a range of responses before she got home from work. She thought of him often and felt he was becoming a regular part of her remote, semi-detached life.
Maddy knew she needed to stop. It was grossly unfair to her husband and equally inappropriate to Logan’s wife, her closest friend, Mila. She would have days where her inner bitch berated her for hours. What was she thinking? She played out a selection of ridiculous scenarios that only caused more pain and suffering for all involved. In her darkest moments, she fantasized about Fred and Mila having an affair. Why not? They love each other, too. The alternative solution, a middle-aged wife-swap! Or maybe one of them would meet an untimely death. Round and around her thoughts swirled from the benign to the ridiculous.
CHAPTER 7
Tickling the Trout
Maddy and Logan reignited their lifelong affair. Although their love relationship finished years ago, it was not entirely over, especially now with their family friendship intensifying and binding them together beyond their teenage years.
At first, Maddy didn’t take Logan seriously, especially as they were both married to one another’s best friends. She had put their affair out of their thoughts for some years. But somehow, they just couldn’t help th
emselves. Both suffered from bouts of desire, which they ignored, suppressing any wrongful emotional need. It wasn’t a need, she reasoned, but a plain, simple want. She still wanted Logan.
Logan and Mila returned to LA for holidays and the occasional flying visit when the damp, cold Aotearoa winters brought nothing but long white clouds for weeks on end. They had to escape to the warm shores of sunny California and catch up with their closest friends, share laughter and many lively conversations late into the night, bringing the two couples closer. It also contributed to guilt, burying Maddy deeper in silent misery at her subterfuge with Mila’s husband.
It was a very convenient affair. Both men were close friends since elementary school. But it was in College where they grew closer and spent weekends away camping and fishing. Fred had taught Logan to fly fish for trout on several annual trips over the years to the beautiful, languid lakes of Gull and Topaz in Mono County waters. Stocked with Rainbow and Brown Trout, the men always caught their fish allocation, including the big one that often got away. Logan quickly learned the dance of the trace, stretching back and pitching the rod, unleashing the reel, so the line flew across the river’s surface.
‘It’s easy. Make a smooth swinging oval shape with your arms as you grip the rod, shifting your weight to hook the bastards,’ Fred explained as he watched Logan shift his body from one foot to the other. Logan arched backwards, clutching rod high and smoothly curling the line into the air as it freely ran off the reel.
‘What if we catch nothing?’ Logan asked, gazing across the deep clear green waters of Lake Gull, surrounded by vibrant forests reflected on its deep blue-green mirrored surface. He could smell the foliage, the freshness of the earth, and hear the song of birds nearby calling to their mates.
Fred snorted. ‘It’s nigh impossible.’ he stretched his arm out, showing the expansive water and rocky outcrops with exotic forest to the horizon. ‘They’re everywhere and regularly stocked. You just can’t miss.’
