The Cry

by Helen FitzGerald

  She stared out the window and began to obsess about Alistair. It wasn’t paranoia. She knew he hadn’t gone to see Phil. Kirsty had warned her that she might never trust him. Not a great foundation for a new relationship, she’d said, to know how good he is at lying. At the time Joanna felt annoyed at Kirsty for not giving the poor fellow – the love of her life! – a chance. She and Kirsty drifted apart for a while and began gently repairing the friendship when Joanna announced her pregnancy. But Kirsty still didn’t like him, it was obvious. She made sure to visit when Alistair was away at conferences (‘That way I get you all to myself!’) and couldn’t help but make the occasional dig: Do you trust him when he’s away? / Do you two laugh a lot? / He doesn’t expect you to give up work, does he? / Will he be a hands-on dad, do you think? / Did he put you on a diet? / Are you happy Jo? Really happy?

  The first spoonful of the jam was bitter and she was glad that it almost hurt to eat it. She stood at the living room window looking through a small gap in the curtains at the tree, devouring spoonful after spoonful, wincing each time until the jar was empty.

  She’d hoped to feel something other than sick, but she didn’t. She lay in bed and eventually the nausea gave way to sleep.

  *

  The doorbell rang at the same time as the phone. She gestured for Detective Phan to come in as she spoke on the phone to Justin someone from 60 Minutes. ‘Just want to say we’re thrilled you’ve agreed to do the interview,’ Justin said.

  Joanna gritted her teeth. He’d agreed to it already, the arsehole. ‘I’m very sorry, I’ll have to call you back.’

  ‘Everything all right?’ Phan asked.

  ‘Fine, just a Channel 9 thing. Not sure we’re up to it.’

  ‘You should think about it. Keeps people aware, you know. In fact, that’s why I’m here. I don’t know how to say this . . .’

  ‘Just say it.’

  ‘We’ve sent the volunteers home, closed the hall in Point Lonsdale. It’s not that we’ve stopped the search, it’s just that after the initial one, we wait for leads before going at it again. A search isn’t a linear thing, I hope you understand. We’ll still do everything we can. But that’s why it’s important for you and Alistair to keep it in the public eye. You should think about the Channel 9 gig.’

  She said she would and sent him on his way as fast as she could, furious at Alistair for saying yes behind her back, but relieved that the good people of Point Lonsdale were no longer spending their free time looking for Noah.

  When she looked out the window to check he’d gone, she noticed the security guard had gone too, and that one last journalist was packing up his van.

  *

  When Elizabeth arrived home in the evening, Joanna got up, mortified to have left the kitchen in such a state.

  ‘No, let me clean up,’ Elizabeth said. ‘I’ll get you something proper to eat.’

  Half an hour later, a plate of lamb chops and veggies appeared in front of her. Joanna apologised for not being able to eat it.

  ‘That’s okay,’ Elizabeth said. ‘I’m off to bed now. You should get some sleep too.’

  *

  It was after ten when Alistair arrived home.

  ‘How was Phil?’ Joanna asked.

  ‘Hello to you too. Did you go for a walk?’

  ‘Where did you meet him?’

  ‘Town.’

  ‘For lunch and dinner?’

  ‘Why are you being so aggressive?’

  ‘60 Minutes phoned. They’re so pleased you agreed to do the interview.’

  ‘Oh . . . Listen . . . I’m sorry. But think about it. No innocent parent would refuse. I’ll do the talking. You just hold my hand.’

  She couldn’t even be bothered discussing it. Whatever. ‘Just promise me you won’t do the book.’

  ‘Can we talk about that later?’

  ‘No. Promise me now.’

  ‘I promise.’

  What a worthless thing, an Alistair-promise. ‘You didn’t meet Phil, did you? Was it Bethany? I’ve Googled her. She’s hot. Do you think she’s hot?’

  ‘What? Jesus!’

  ‘Why don’t you just answer my question?’

  ‘Why don’t you just stop with the paranoia?’ Alistair bashed his way around the kitchen, re-heating the plate his mother left for him, then turned the television on. After finishing one mouthful, he sighed. ‘Please trust me. I saw Phil.’

  Joanna dug her arms into the side of the sofa to maximise her distance from him. There were four feet between them, she calculated. The television in front of them was four feet from her, and four from him. Joanna, Alistair, TV: an equilateral triangle.

  She realised why she had been hallucinating about triangles in the bedroom now. The counsellor. The drama triangle.

  *

  ‘Have you heard of the drama triangle?’ the counsellor had asked, and was surprised when Joanna said no. She set about drawing one on a piece of A4 paper: ‘There are three positions, each at one point of the triangle.’

  Victim

  Rescuer Persecutor

  ‘In some relationships, each person takes a position. You, for example, might have felt that you were saving Alistair when you got together: from a dull marriage, a difficult wife, a routine life, a sexless relationship. So he might have been the Victim, and you the Rescuer.’

  Joanna was tempted to grab the sheet of paper and shove it down the counsellor’s throat. Six sessions, she’d had, each less helpful than the last. After each one, she left hating herself more than when she arrived. She always came with a very specific need. The first two: to be told it was okay to have a lover who was married. The third and fourth: to be told it would not hurt anyone as long as she kept it a secret. Five: she wanted to know how to get out. She’d had enough of being a liar. It was no longer fun. She’d tried to end it, and failed, and Joanna had never failed at anything. There must be something obvious she was doing wrong that she could do right. Telling him it was over only led to tears that led to sex that led to loving him more. Changing her telephone number and blocking him on email and Facebook and avoiding their usual haunts only led to him seeking her out or creating a new email or Twitter or Facebook account from which he’d deliver beautiful speeches, which led to her believing he loved her more than anyone could ever love anyone, which led to her not leaving him, which led to the making of a sixth counselling session.

  ‘Just tell me how to leave him!’ Joanna begged, but the counsellor ignored her, and held up her diagram.

  ‘What happens is this. Some people, some couples, get caught on this triangle. You change roles, again and again, moving from one point of the triangle to another, but you are never able to get out. Soon after the affair started, you, for example, may have changed from the Rescuer to the Victim. He made you lie. He made you cheat. He turned you into someone you did not recognise or like. You might have been thinking: I was a good person before you. You have ruined me! So you moved to another point on the triangle to be the Victim. And he, the Persecutor.

  ‘Next he might have taken his stand as the Victim. My wife is unhappy, and now my lover is unhappy. I am unhappy. All I want is to be happy. Poor me. Victim.’

  Joanna had paid another thirty-five pounds for this session and she had twenty minutes to go according to the square silver clock behind the velour sofa. The counsellor was not going to help her. She would never come again. She started doing her shopping list in her head.

  ‘Couples on this triangle are dysfunctional,’ the woman said, putting the drawing down on the coffee table between them. ‘They’re stuck, only ever moving from one to two to three, corner to corner to corner.’

  The clock ticked loudly. Joanna was supposed to meet him at a bar in town in an hour. She had hoped to go armed with the ammunition to end it, once and for all. They’d been together nine months now. Fifteen minutes to go. She should get eggs at the supermarket too, and try and eat one for breakfast.

  ‘Where are you now‚ Joanna?’

&nb
sp; ‘What?’

  ‘On the triangle.’ The counsellor banged the tip of her pen on the diagram on the coffee table, annoyed that her client was distracted. ‘Where do you think you are right now?’

  ‘Um, actually, I need to be somewhere else. Sorry, I have to get going.’

  She didn’t make another appointment.

  Two hours later Joanna found herself with Alistair in the back lane behind a bar in town. After, she promised him: ‘Yes, I will save you from her. We will be together.’ She was on a triangle. The Rescuer, at that particular moment, one with cum on her chin.

  Alexandra caught them the following week and she forgot all about the triangle.

  But it came back when she was delirious.

  Sitting on the sofa watching the carefully selected television that did not involve the news and therefore them, she realised he was forcing her to be someone she hated – again.

  She wanted to tell the truth, she wanted this lie to end. Victim.

  ‘You’re a good person,’ he’d say. ‘It’ll all be over soon.’ Rescuer.

  They’d assume new positions any moment. She knew that now. She’d be watching to see when it happened.

  She felt like ringing her counsellor and thanking her for the diagram.

  She felt like wringing her counsellor’s neck for not telling her how to get off the diagram.

  She was going mad. She needed more than antidepressants. The line that connected her to him stuck to her like a shadow, stretching, holding her, then banging her off to her next position.

  Alistair was at his end of the couch watching – you guessed it – 60 Minutes. He’d manage it, you know. His ability to look normal astonished her. He’d made mistakes right enough, but had played his part to perfection, searching the streets for days, yelling at the police to try harder, tweeting and Facebooking and creating a website and even a fund for donations, latching himself to that Bethany. He was so good at it that Joanna wondered if he was human. She looked back on his behaviour during the affair – lying had come to him with similar ease. It didn’t trouble him. Since the incident, he had cried in her arms sometimes at night. He sobbed in the bath too – she heard him. But not enough. He didn’t need tranquillisers. He didn’t hear cries. He wasn’t suffering from post-traumatic stress. He didn’t want to confess or kill himself. He wasn’t tortured enough.

  Joanna went to the toilet and sat with her head in her hands. As with the affair, this had started with one lie. Someone has taken my baby. She sat on the toilet and tried to take Alistair’s advice – that she could do this, that this was only one lie. Just as she’d done when she told Kirsty that Alistair Robertson was just a friend. Only one lie.

  But it wasn’t. Now, as then, one lie turned to two.

  I just popped into the shop for a minute.

  Turned to three.

  Alistair had to get wipes.

  Turned to two-hundred-and-seventy-thousand-nine-hundred-and-forty-fucking-three.

  She pulled at her hair as she sat on the loo, hoping her scalp would bleed like it had last time she did this. She pressed her finger against her tender skull and placed the tip of her finger on her tongue, no blood. She’d have to pull harder.

  ‘Noah,’ she said out loud. Her intention was to cry. Crying had made her feel better when she had her afternoon in bed with the calendar. She said the word again: ‘Noah.’

  No tears. Just the memory of an act, an ever-present image, on replay in her mind. Rocking back and forth on the toilet, she tried to suppress this memory, but it was too powerful: Alistair is asleep. Noah is screaming. I am sitting in my seat, holding Noah in my arms. I am opening the lid to a medicine bottle. I am filling a spoon with medicine. Some spills. I am filling it again, holding it steady. I am opening Noah’s mouth with my finger. I am leaning him back. I am pouring the liquid into his mouth. I am killing him.

  The image rocked back and forth with her. She murdered the redemption she was supposed to have, the happy life she was supposed to guide and enjoy. She gave him the wrong medicine. He was allergic to it. She killed him.

  She tried to drown out the image with happy ones. Noah always seemed quite calm while she bathed him. She remembered smiling and admiring his active feet. When he settled in for a feed, his little hand touched her breast. At Dubai airport, she ached with love for him as he slept in her arms. She thought of the pictures of Chloe in the album, growing up happily with her mummy and daddy. Noah would never grow up. And she’d ripped that life from Chloe.

  She used to look at Noah and imagine him when he was older, saying ‘mummy’ and ‘I love you’. She used to imagine him riding a bike and squealing with joy and falling off and cutting his knee. In her daydreams, she’d put a plaster on it and kiss the top of his head. She used to imagine making jam on the veranda of her Aussie holiday house while he bounced on the trampoline.

  None of these images stuck now. Just the killing one.

  Her desire to go to his grave was becoming unbearable. She wanted to talk to him. She wanted to place something special there. What? He was too little to have a favourite thing. And the blanket was down there with him already. The only thing that came to mind was the Bananas in Pyjamas teddy she bought for him. But he didn’t care about that. She’d have to find something else to take to him. Oh, it would feel good to sit under the tree with him, say sorry, goodbye.

  Alistair would never let her. She’d never get away with it.

  She pulled her hair again and this time she tasted blood on her finger. It soothed her. She pulled her jeans up, opened the toilet door, and headed towards the sofa.

  Joanna sat on her side of the sofa again.

  The news came on – dangerous territory – and Alistair immediately switched it off. ‘Let’s go to bed.’

  *

  ‘I have some things to tell you,’ he said as he undressed, not pausing long enough for her to ask what. ‘I didn’t see Phil today. I went to see Lex.’

  Aha! She was right. Oh, thank God, she wasn’t totally crazy. But Lex? He’d never called her this. She knew he used it from old letters she sent him during their uni days, which Joanna found in the hall cupboard, and which he hadn’t thrown out: ‘Al, this is the longest summer ever!’ blah blah blah. ‘When do you arrive at Spencer Street? I’ll be the one wearing no knickers. Love Lex (The most interesting person in the room!) xxx’

  ‘Alexandra. I went to see Alexandra.’

  ‘Oh.’ Joanna’s face was suddenly unbearably hot. She couldn’t identify what was erupting inside: rage, perhaps. He went there without telling her. He was calling her Lex. He should have the decency not to use this name to Joanna’s face. She wanted to know every detail: where they sat, how long they were together, what she wore, if she looked good, if they were alone, whether they hugged, kissed, shook hands, had coffee, wine, talked about Noah, about her.

  ‘You’re cancelling the hearing?’

  ‘No. It’s got to be done properly.’

  ‘But you don’t want to take her back to the UK now? If we can ever go back.’

  ‘That’s the other thing I want to talk to you about. After the hearing, we have to go back.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I have to get my job back. They’ve got Hanson doing it, fucking Hanson. The little prick’s been after my position for years. I have to get back. We have to get on with our lives. That’s what we would have done, I think. No one would think it strange. It’s stranger if we don’t.’

  Joanna couldn’t believe Alistair was thinking about work . . . There’s no way she could even think about a lesson plan. How could either of them concentrate on anything, after what they’d done? No, she did not want to go home. She wanted to stay here, near the tree. ‘So what did Alexandra say?’ she asked.

  ‘Nothing really. I didn’t give details. I just wanted to warm her up.’

  None of the questions Joanna wanted answered had been answered. Instead he’d added more facts and plans into the mix that filled her with – yes, definite
ly – rage. This was just another shitstorm to Alistair, just one shitstorm in a lifetime that was filled with them. Her suspicions about him were not crazy, not paranoid. Perhaps he had gone there to plant something on her, just in case. Perhaps he had left something in her house.

  ‘We have to try and feel normal,’ he said, taking off his boxer shorts, lying on the bed, and touching himself. ‘Maybe sex would help.’

  It was the first time he’d brought up the subject since. ‘It might relieve some stress.’

  Joanna grasped at anything that might drown out the memory. She hated Alistair right now, and probably wouldn’t have agreed if she hadn’t. She needed to do something with the anger.

  She took her pants off, and noticed the triangle line was now attached to the pubic hair she hadn’t cared less about shaving since. The line ended at his foreskin. She watched it shorten and disappear as she sat on him.

  He wasn’t erect.

  And she wasn’t wet.

  But she wriggled for a while, making it hard, and then he disappeared into her. He shut his eyes and she wondered if he was imagining Lex. All he’d ever said about her sexually was that she had more curves than Joanna and that sex was never as good. ‘No details!’ he’d say. ‘It only upsets you.’ She could tell from the expression on his face that he was fantasising. Bethany perhaps.

  ‘Ah, honey,’ he said, the fantasy and the wriggling obviously working. ‘Ah baby . . . Oh this is helping!’

  ‘We made Noah doing this,’ Joanna whispered.

  ‘Shh. Ah, yes, yes, that’s it . . .’

  ‘I’m opening a bottle.’ Her voice was louder this time.

  ‘Don’t talk.’ He was almost ready, which meant it was time for him to withdraw and wank onto her stomach, or face, or wherever he fancied, as long as it wasn’t inside her, as long as he wasn’t looking at her. He started doing this almost as soon as the affair changed into a proper relationship, very few variations since.

  He wouldn’t tell her what to do any more, she’d had enough of that. ‘Get back inside me!’