by Nicky Webber
Maddy looked up at Jess sitting opposite. ‘You’re right. No fool, like an old fool,’ she grinned sadly. She picked up the phone and read the text from her husband.
‘I Love You,’ was all it said.
Jess couldn’t read the expression on Maddy’s face. ‘What? What is it?’
‘It’s Fred.’ She paused, contemplating how far she should go in explaining to Jess. ‘He tells me about twice a year that he loves me. He has, weirdly enough, chosen this exact moment to text me those exact words.’
It was now Jess’s turn to look solemn and sad for her friend.
On the drive home, Maddy thought about what attracted her to Fred. She and Logan had broken up, and Fred was the next best thing. As she got to know him, in those early years, she thought she had married the better husband of the two. One thing she liked was his clear and direct communication, albeit limited. He was intelligent, and without guile or deception. Or so she thought. She had occasionally wondered if he was having an affair, too. His emotional disconnection and remoteness made Maddy feel insecure and invisible most of the time. After work, he would pour a drink and forget to offer her one. He would make a cooked breakfast and never ask if she would like some bacon and eggs, too.
Maddy couldn’t figure out if it were just poor form, ignorance, a poor upbringing or little interest in her, a lack of consideration for his own wife. He would suddenly decide to cross the road in a busy city street with her beside him. Fred would then disappear amongst the Saturday morning shoppers, while she stood on the curb flummoxed at his ability to forget she was there with him. Ostensibly with him. But anyone in the crowd wouldn’t think so.
She once asked him, years ago, why his approach to her seemed so switched off. She had explained several times that if you love someone; you don’t talk to them abruptly or rudely.
‘You can’t treat people you love so off hand, Fred. You certainly can’t name-call or emotionally abuse them, not even in private.’ Maddy had looked at him, hoping to get a meaningful response or maybe an apology.
Her explanation took him aback, and he still couldn’t quite connect its relevance to his way of being with her. She was his wife. She knew him, so why would she take things to heart in this way?
‘I don’t quite get what you mean,’ he said, looking astounded. ‘I’ve never thought about it like that,’ he confessed. ‘I don’t mean it to be the way you describe.’ He said he was busy, stressed, anxious and distracted by work and fitness training. ‘I know that you’re so even-keeled so thought nothing needed explaining.’
Maddy noticed how he structured his response using the ‘I’ word with greater frequency as the world revolved around him in almost every way.
Maddy considered Mila’s assessment of Fred being Asperger’s, describing his unemotional, disconnected personality along with his genius intellect. ‘You should get him tested,’ Mila suggested years ago.
With a derisive snort, Maddy had ended the conversation. She now looked into Fred’s blue eyes, but it was impossible to read what lay there, so she tackled him on basics.
‘How do I know you still love me?’
‘I’m here, aren’t I?’ He stated. And indeed he was.
While it wasn’t the romantic answer she was hoping for, she felt momentarily appeased. But in a double-blind test, when engaging in grilling men, she tried a more complex pincer movement, taking Fred unaware.
‘So?’ she paused. ‘I won’t be angry. We won’t ever talk about it again. But please be honest with me.’
Fred looked perplexed, eyes slightly widened, bracing for her next volley. He wondered if it was a trick question, but did not know. Fred waited, not able to anticipate what she was going to say next.
‘Promise you’ll be honest,’ she said again. Fred stared at her intensely, with an expressionless face. ‘During our entire relationship, have you ever slept with anyone else?’
‘No,’ he shot back, the tension ricocheting around the walls. The look on his face was hard to read. Maddy narrowed her eyes, looking directly at him. She thought he was expectant, waiting to see if she would take the bait or drop the topic.
But Maddy would not let it go. She thought his remoteness caused her neediness. It was his fault. He withheld his love for her in almost every way and reminded her of his distance nearly every day.
‘Would you tell me if you had?’ Her voice was calm. She smiled disarmingly. She could have been asking him to pass the butter at the lunch table.
Fred felt confident she would not be unhappy, but he wanted to be honest. Trust was a big thing, and he understood that implicitly. His intellectual reason and logic came to the fore.
‘No. I wouldn’t,’ he specified. Maddy stared at him. So, he wanted to play cat and mouse, she thought, and be the winner in this marital game of chance and self-destruction.
She rolled the dice again and pressed on. ‘Why not?’ she probed.
His facial expression softened slightly. ‘Because I don’t want to hurt you.’
Maddy was silent. This was not a satisfactory answer, and she understood what Fred was saying. How cruel he could be, refusing to say what she needed to hear. Why couldn’t he lie to her? Fred covered his tracks and played her to the end. It was a signal for her to give up the witch hunt and let it go. She did. But the conversation played out in her mind many, more times. She realized it was heartbreaking. He could not just come out and say, ‘I will always love you and only you.’ The same words Logan found easy to say to her whenever they were alone. Rarely anymore. She missed him, but they had set one another free. She wore the full impact of that separation and had to live with her commitment to the shadow husk their marriage had become.
All these years on and little had changed. Last year she was crossing the road with Fred in the city, and she slid her hand into his. He gripped her fingers as they crossed the busy intersection. When safely on the sidewalk, he looked around as if he was wary of anyone seeing him holding her hand, and promptly let it go.
‘That’s enough of that!’ he announced gruffly.
How could it ever be enough, she wanted to say, when life was so short? She felt disappointed but joked about him being a chicken crossing the road and a wuss for letting her hand go. He smiled as they walked on in their separate head spaces, Fred sometimes getting a meter or two ahead of her. His awareness of her beside him was non-existent, and Maddy realized this was just the way things were between them and it would never change. Acceptance.
CHAPTER 25
Awakening
Five weeks later Hawke moved back home for a week after every bout of chemotherapy. Maddy nursed him, making sure he received the best care with love and support. She regularly held a stainless steel basin when he vomited, scrubbing his back and feet in the shower, his fragile body, thin and pale, unstable on the tiled floor. His vibrant youth almost dissipated as the weeks passed. She massaged his feet and shoulders in the evenings, gently reminding him that this would soon pass and he would be back to his old self. His girlfriend, Tracey, often visited after work and sometimes slept over. It created a semblance of a calm routine, allowing a sense of normality to permeate their lives.
Fred returned home after work, looking distressed and exhausted.
‘Are you okay?’ Maddy asked as soon as he walked through the front door.
‘They have restructured me out of my job,’ was all he said.
‘Sorry?’ she responded, not sure if she had heard him correctly above the humming of the kitchen extractor fan above the dinner cooking on the stovetop. He repeated the same sentence in a stronger, more matter-of-fact tone.
‘Why?’ she asked, looking worried.
‘Not sure, but changes…’ He swung open the fridge door and removed a cold can of beer. He rearranged his face into a calm, unruffled expression. But she knew him too well. She could see the tension tugging at his anxious eyes as he looked past her at the muted television.
‘Did they not warn you or give you a heads up
or anything?’ she queried, wanting to understand the full picture.
‘No,’ he said looking downcast, his voice wavering. ‘About twenty-seven of us are being pulled out from different parts of the business. Something about rising costs and shareholder payouts.’
She moved around the kitchen island to hug him, and his shoulders slumped, leaning into her for a full embrace. ‘It’ll be okay,’ she soothed, but she knew this could be the mother of all distress in their lives, with bills and mortgage payments due. ‘Those bastards will rue the day they cut you lose. Look at all the extra work and long hours you’ve put in over the years.’ She squeezed him close and stroked his back with her open hand. Then leaning back, putting a good spin on what could be a disastrous situation, she said, ‘Hey, it’s an opportunity to get something better. You’ve always wanted to do something different, away from the hard-edged business problems, the negativity, day in day out, frigging code cutting with minimal thanks.’
Her carefully modulated voice soaked in reassurance. ‘We’ll be fine. They’ve done us a huge favor.’ She smiled calmly at him. He held her eyes, knowing at his age and in a competitive market, it would take him months to get a similar role. But he played the confident game too and shrugged, smiling back at her.
‘This calls for a drink!’ she joked, retrieving the half bottle of imported Sauvignon. ‘I guess it will be back to reality for a while and we’ll have to swallow the local stuff!’
‘Nothing’s wrong with that,’ he plastered on a grin. ‘As long as we can still afford a drink.’
Maddy knew it would be a struggle for them both. It was the beginning of the year, and it could be months before corporate leaders signed annual resourcing plans and approved budgets. New projects would need approval before relevant IT job ads would clutter up online recruitment websites.
After considering all the issues around Fred’s genetic testing, his well-versed wife had good reasons for discouraging it. Blake had already undergone the test, and it had come back clear of any Hodgkinson’s markers in his gene profile. This was an immense relief to them all.
‘Isn’t this wonderful news Fred, Maddy prompted him over dinner that night? I don’t think I could handle my other child being so seriously ill,’ she said, massaging Fred into a cooperative frame of mind.
‘Yup, for sure,’ responded Fred, munching through his salad and not glancing up at his wife’s anxious face.
‘Are you still going to get it done?’ she asked him, trying to modulate her voice in a distracted, disinterested way.
‘I guess so,’ he said. ‘I haven’t given it much thought.’
‘Don’t you think it would be a waste of time given that you are so fit and healthy and we just don’t have any extra cash to cover it with Hawke’s medical costs and other bills?’
‘Ummm,’ he continued eating his plate of food and still not looking up.
‘The chances of you having it must be almost negligible. So why waste money on testing you now?’ This sounded uncharacteristically logical, thought Fred. He immediately agreed to forgo the test. For days after that brief discussion, Maddy felt relieved and grateful the forces of life benefited her and she could step back from the precipice of her demise. There was no further discussion on the topic.
Hawke’s paternity would remain a secret.
Little did the Davis family know that it would be five long and frustrating months before Fred landed an IT contract. The job was for twelve months with an extension, depending on his performance. Fred took a salary cut too. After months of job interviews, many rejections or ominous silences from potential employers. Although Maddy’s salary had covered basic living costs, Fred accepted the role to cover their ever-expanding mortgage before their bank owned more of their home than they did. By November they were back on track, and much to their relief Fred secured a permanent position.
A week later Hawke received the all clear, and both families gathered for a celebratory lunch. Fred explained to Logan his own decision to not take a genetic test was a wise one.
While Maddy and Fred were out early the following Sunday morning walking along the Santa Monica beachfront, they discussed plans for the New Year.
‘We’re still trying to complete New Year’s resolutions from last year!’ she laughed. ‘What do you think we should aim for this year, and we can tack them onto last year’s ones?’
‘I’m just glad to see the back of last year,’ Fred said, making them both consider how lucky they had been.
During the Year of Austerity, Maddy called it; they had agreed not to exchange any Christmas or birthday gifts. She made him a card, with a simple hand painted heart on the front of the white folded paper. Inside she had carefully written in cursive black ink, wishing him love, happiness, and a prosperous year ahead. After opening the envelope, he silently hugged her. He hadn’t considered a card as a substitute for any gift, and he didn’t have the words to express what he felt, but for him, it was love, most definitely love.
They had the beach almost to themselves. In the distance, an elderly man, walking a dog, threw a stick into the rolling waves with the dog chasing after it, back and forth. The salt sea spray and calm lapping sound of the waves at high tide in the early morning light uplifted both their spirits as they walked barefoot on the fine sand. The shafts of sunlight gently stroked the clear blue sky as it rose over the horizon. Maddy felt like a sponge, blissfully soaking up the quiet. They both felt heartened as they walked side by side, not holding hands. She was used to his physical lack of proximity and thought nothing of it, absorbed in the beauty of the early beachside morning.
She wanted to engage him in conversation, to distract him from striding off into the sunrise, absorbed by his thoughts and almost forgetting she was beside him. She would look at his back and feel bereft. They were so emotionally detached. It was little wonder she couldn’t let Logan go. As much as she had tried to kill the affair, she always came back to this starting point. It annoyed her Logan was creeping into her head now and quickly refocused on her husband, striding ahead of her already.
‘Okay, Fred. What about this New Year’s resolution?’
Without hesitation, Fred rattled off three items he wanted to buy. ‘A new bike, a bigger laptop and do a motorbike tour across Italy, from Lake Como down to Sicily. Is that allowed on the list?’
Maddy frowned at him, pursing her lips, unimpressed.
‘What’s your problem?’ he asked. ‘You wanted to know.’
‘Sure, but what about good health and world peace? You only want to buy stuff.’
‘Well, they’re all things I need. I have to work, you know.’
They continued walking along the damp sand near the tidal edge of the beach. Maddy had encouraged him to remove his shoes and connect with the sand and water, feel the elements and enjoy their time together. From a distance, the elderly man had glanced up and thought they looked like two friends. They each silently considered what the New Year would bring. There was no sign that they were lovers, married or even close. They seemed entirely separate, the distance between them expanding as they walked towards him.
Fred, already a couple of yards ahead, stopped and turned to Maddy and asked, ‘Well, what do you want?’
‘Simple really.’ She moved closer to him, shrinking the distance between them. ‘I wish for more love and understanding in my life. To love truly and deeply.’
Fred’s eyebrows shot up, almost merging with his receding hairline, taken aback and not sure how to interpret his wife.
Maddy knew she needed to flesh her words out in more detail to ensure he fully understood.
‘I think we should have more romance in our lives.’ she sighed. ‘You cycle for hours on the weekends, and we both work long hours, and here we are, two individuals, that barely share a meal or activity.’
‘We can go to a movie,’ he tried.
She remained unimpressed. ‘In that way, we could avoid talking during the entire duration of the film.’ She paus
ed. ‘I don’t want more things. I want to get rid of our stuff. Simplify our lives.’ She said the word stuff as if it were toxic. The word itself symbolized all things wrong in their marriage.
‘Can you see how disconnected we are from one another? Not just on different pages but working from completely different handbooks!’ He remained silent, trying to process the emotionally indecipherable content of her response.
‘You want to buy more things?’ she questioned. ‘In our tenuous financial situation where I want to clear all debt and not spend anything for at least another year, you think shopping is the solution?’
‘Well, you asked,’ he said.
‘I’m sorry I did.’ She paused, and the silence between them hung like a stone from both their necks, pulling them closer into the abyss of an argument. ‘Clearly, there’s a level of insanity operating between us.’
They walked on wordlessly. Fred soon was well ahead of her. His longer strides gave him the advantage, and he just wanted to be alone to think.
It was all too frustrating trying to keep up with him. There was no point. Maddy imagined the worst-case scenario. What if she left him? She would rather be alone, free from his cold aloofness. At that moment she felt utterly isolated, married and walking alone, with her husband’s silhouette fading towards the distant horizon.
For several years Maddy fantasized about living in a small studio apartment near the city. Lockup and go, an appealing option. She used to hate being alone, always filling every waking moment with children, friends and weekends away. But Fred taught her how to be comfortable with isolation. She could easily bask in silence, enjoying a calm, uninterrupted lifestyle. I may as well live by myself, she reasoned. She virtually did now, and living alone meant less washing, cooking, and zero intermittent bickering with Mr. Right. Happily avoiding emotional upheaval and enjoying the peace she craves. She could be the architect of how her last years would unfold, rather than being buffeted around by verbal and emotional disregard.
