Australian Love Stories

by Cate Kennedy

  ‘Do we have any barbeque sauce?’ you asked.

  ‘What? For pasta?’

  You nodded.

  ‘I guess so. Somewhere in the cupboard.’

  You returned and I asked again. ‘But for pesto?’

  ‘I just want to try it, okay?’

  ‘That’s fine, of course,’ I said, saying nothing of the subtle flavours of pesto. ‘Are you feeling all right? How was your meeting?’

  ‘It was good, nothing much new. Jess is going in soon.’

  ‘In where?’

  ‘Into hospital,’ you said, looking at me as if wondering whether I knew how any of this worked. You were probably right. I took a spoonful of pesto. It tasted strong now, which meant that I’d either messed up the measurements or eaten too much. You were dipping each spoonful into the sauce and there was a part of me that wanted to do the same but it must taste bad. Surely. I watched you eat. You weren’t self-conscious at all, eating the way other people fill up their cars when petrol is slightly less expensive. I’d stopped, my mouth filled with the harsh grittiness of basil. I wiped my finger along the bottle of barbeque sauce where some had dripped down. It tasted exactly like I expected. You went into the kitchen for a second bowl.

  ‘Are there any couples doing, like, water births or something?’ I asked.

  ‘Are you being sarcastic?’ you came back into the room and looked at me.

  ‘No, I’m serious,’ and I was. ‘People still do that, right?’

  ‘I can’t tell if you’re trying to undermine me or not.’

  ‘No, I’m always trying to be supportive, can’t you see that?

  But you’re not—’

  ‘I’m not what?’

  ‘Nothing, doesn’t matter.’

  ‘I’m not what?’ Neither the pesto nor the barbeque sauce was spicy. But still your eyes were red.

  You told everyone you were in your second trimester. I wondered if you would forever be in your second trimester. Outlasting all the other mothers like the lone survivor at a cancer support group. Your mother called more often but never seemed to want to speak to me. I left the room whenever I heard you using your talking-to-your-mother tone of voice. It was under the pretext of giving you privacy, but partly because I felt guilty and assumed you did too. There was no need to make it harder by having me hover nearby. Occasionally we would silently touch, or I would see your breasts through the shirts you wore now, braless and large, and I would think of you as a person, rather than a vessel for a person. Sometimes I would wait in the garden. Mostly I’d lay in our room until I heard you walking through the house again, the localised tremors of your existence coming to me through the walls. One evening after she’d called I came into the lounge and you already had the television on.

  ‘How is she?’

  ‘Who?’ Your hair was blue-rinsed in the light. You’d taken to wearing track pants even though I’d never seen you in them before, even when you’d occasionally gone walking in a token nod to exercise. But now you never seemed to leave them. I wondered when you’d go back to teaching but knew you’d just tell me to check the calendar. You’d mentioned briefly that you were thinking about going on maternity leave, which was an argument I hadn’t had the energy for.

  ‘Your mother,’ I said, while the television asked if my garage door was too small.

  ‘Oh she’s fine, just likes to check up on me.’

  I noticed you were eating bread. Just bread. There was no dip nearby, or cheese or anything. You had the bag of bread and were pulling out the soft flesh so the loaf looked like it had been eaten out from the inside. The ads finished. Your show came back on, something about medical miracles. Onscreen a health professional was talking about the unlikely chances of some nervous middle-aged woman conceiving.

  ‘Oh god,’ I said before I could stop myself.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing, nothing. Are you going to want dinner?’

  ‘Yes?’ You noticed me looking at the bread. ‘I was just snacking.’

  ‘On the loaf of bread.’

  ‘Yes? It was what I felt like eating?’

  ‘But you’re just eating the plain bread.’

  ‘Why is it such a concerning thing for you?’

  ‘You don’t even need to eat.’

  I wanted to sit down on the couch with you, just let the beige wash over me until my mind was wallpaper. How did I not know after all this time that you didn’t like crusts? I thought about how you must have thrown away your crusts every day in school, your mother not being the type that would cut the crusts off for anyone. Maybe you’d eaten them resentfully and were only now acting out. Or was this just part of your cravings? It couldn’t be good for you. I just wanted to take it away but the plastic swaddling crinkled up as you held it in your arms.

  ‘What? Who are you to say whether or not I need to eat?’ ‘Well you don’t. Come on, you know it.’

  ‘Know what?’

  ‘That you’re, well, you’re an imposter.’

  ‘Don’t you ever!’ you said, your voice fracturing like a shard of glass which you then pointed at me. ‘Don’t you dare say that again.’

  You had morning sickness and I had coffee. Neither of us enjoyed it.

  I can still remember the fight we had when I found out about your fraud. It started with an email from you, saying you were going to tell me everything. It felt like you were divorcing me, and we weren’t even married. The fact of you having sent it to my work email meant that you could be sure I wouldn’t get it till I was out of the house. I wondered if this was to give you some time, just a few more moments with your ‘baby’. Because as you explained to me in the email, you weren’t pregnant. I remember reading it and then sitting in my chair, closing my eyes and concentrating on my breathing, the feeling in my gut. There were no words for this. You weren’t pregnant and had never been pregnant. The test had been unclear (how could it be unclear?) and so you’d gone to the doctor’s, already feeling different. You’d done some tests, but they would take a few days and by now you were already so sure. When you walked, you said, it felt like everywhere was the first time you’d been there. You were looking at things with new eyes, feeling the world with a different weight. When I’d asked how the test had gone you told me how you felt. Positive. The doctor called and told you that it was otherwise, and to come in if you experienced any changes, but you decided he was wrong. It had been so hard for you, you said, but you’d already begun to imagine yourself, and your future differently. I’d already started treating you more carefully. You’d told your mother. In the email you said I couldn’t tell anyone that you needed support, the same type of support, even though I now knew the truth. I’d sat in my office feeling bloated with emotions I hadn’t been able to name and wondered how a person could lie to themselves so well that even their own body would be fooled.

  3.

  At night, under the covers, your stomach seemed to swell. I watched for a sign but it was like looking at the beach at night, trying to point out the largest wave. It was too hard to tell until it was right before me, water rushing out from underneath your toes.

  I held my hand to your stomach and then put my ear to your navel. For a moment I heard two heartbeats and felt something move deep inside me. And then I realised that one of those heartbeats was mine.

  The Little Things

  IRMA GOLD

  It was plastic bags that finally did it. Fleur lifted the wheelie bin’s lid, unsettling a parade of ants along its rim, and tossed a bag of rubbish in. It made a soft hissing sound, not the usual thunk, and peering in she discovered that he’d thrown away the old shopping bags she used as bin liners. She reached in to haul out bags within bags, three of them stuffed full. Rage whoomped into her; he had no right.

  In the kitchen she shook them in front of Dean’s face. Dirt fell between them like confetti.

  I can’t stand the mess, he said. It’s encroaching on my tool box.

  Encroaching?

  Every
time I get something out of my tool box—

  Every time? Like, what, once a year?

  —I can’t find anything for bloody bags.

  Anyway, he added. They were disintegrating.

  Plastic bags don’t disintegrate, she said. That’s why they’re an environmental problem.

  She watched him swallow. The quick bob of his Adam’s apple.

  I didn’t chuck any of those thick plastic Woolies bags, he said. He looked at the floor. Said nothing about the dirt confetti.

  In the toilet she yanked down her underwear. Stared at the ceiling and listened to the sound of her own piss. Tried to breathe right.

  Reaching for the toilet roll she met cardboard. A new roll lay on the floor; stray hairs clung to it.

  That’d be right, she thought. Why spend a whole ten seconds changing rolls when your wife’d do it for you.

  She grabbed a handful of paper and wiped herself viciously. Flung the roll back onto the floor so hard that it unfurled like a Chinese scroll.

  Fleur poured wine, half missing the glass. She couldn’t be bothered cleaning it up. Anyway, she told herself, it blended with the rest of the mess.

  Gulping at the wine, she dissected the bags’ contents. Inspected every bag, smoothed them out. A piebald plastic hill formed.

  She wrote up an inventory.

  This is what you threw out

  34 (yes 34!) plastic bags suitable for the bin

  5 Woolies plastic bags (2 brand new!)

  6 assorted cloth bags

  1 handcrafted cloth bag purchased at the markets for $30

  She pushed them all back in behind the toolbox. Admittedly they did hang over its lid.

  Dean was watching television. Some awful crime series. A scalpel was slicing into a dead man’s toe, nails yellow and as thick as bark. She thrust the list at Dean and took her wine to bed.

  In the beginning she’d thought it funny how anal he was about certain things. He would leave facial hair shavings in the sink and wet towels on the bed, but heaven forbid if a book wasn’t correctly filed by the colour of its spine. In the beginning she’d laughed at this. How adorable these quirks seemed. But Fleur always had difficulty with transitory shades. Red wasn’t just red. It was crimson, rose, brick, merlot, burgundy, scarlet, vermillion, carmine and a thousand in between shades. It was never clear to her how one shade was supposed to progress to the next, though Dean had issued many a lecture on the matter.

  The morning of the plastic bag incident they fought. Harry asked Dean to play chess with him before school. Instead of saying no, he said, Sure, but later. After I’ve had a shower.

  Later he said, Not yet, mate. Got to iron this shirt.

  And then he left. Harry cried.

  When the kids were brushing their teeth she shut herself in their bedroom and hissed into the phone, You just don’t care, do you? You couldn’t care less.

  When they fought Fleur’s head buzzed all day. It made it hard to hear anything else. The children spoke to her as if through a screen of static.

  She drove them to school still in her pyjamas, an old sweatshirt thrown over the top. Alfie kissed her goodbye through the window but Harry wouldn’t budge.

  You always come up, he said.

  Not today, Harry. Just this once.

  Harry folded his arms across his chest, pushed his chin into his neck.

  I will tomorrow, she said. Promise.

  No. Today and tomorrow.

  Fleur punched open her door, breathed out fucking hell so only she could hear. She marched up to the kinder area, pulling Harry along behind her. Quick, she said, hurry up. Feeling guilt and embarrassment. The mothers looking at her Hello Kitty flannelette bottoms.

  At home she made herself coffee, slumped onto the couch with a book. But then one paragraph in she remembered.

  She pulled on a t-shirt, not bothering with a bra, and called for Cornflake. He ran to the door, tail a weapon of happiness. Perhaps the walk would clear her head.

  Fifteen minutes later she was inside the false cool of the shopping centre. But she was too late. She had been meaning to go for weeks but the task kept slipping down her list. There was plenty of time, she had told herself. But now all the good stuff was gone. She trawled from shop to shop. Only the packets of cheap Easter eggs were left, the kind that didn’t even taste like chocolate. And there were no more of the big M&Ms eggs anywhere. Alfie had made a point of saying that he hoped the Easter Bunny would bring one. Four times. So he was obviously onto the whole scam. Which meant their crap haul wouldn’t be the Bunny’s fault.

  She grabbed enough packets to keep them buzzing for weeks, hoping that quantity would make up for quality.

  Cornflake greeted her with more joy than she could handle, panting and drubbing his front paws.

  On Kirkton Street the strap on her sandal broke. She lumbered along, curling her toes to grip the useless thing. Halfway over a pedestrian crossing she kicked them off, ran to beat the red man, chocolate eggs bashing her calves, Cornflake delighted.

  They walked ten blocks, the soles of her feet blazing. Barefoot and braless. A goddamn hippy. Her shins started to ache, an old injury flaring.

  Fleur shoved her poor stash to the back of their bedroom wardrobe and started on the house. It was never quite clean, never quite tidy no matter how hard she worked. Sometimes she felt like one of her children’s computer games. You finished one level, only to start all over again.

  She wiped the dining table, pretending not to notice the crumbs that fell to the floor. There was a pile of papers sprawled at the far end. A recipe torn out of the weekend newspaper. Unpaid bills. A voucher for cheap pizza. School excursion notes. Items that had no home. She shuffled them into a neater pile, wiped around them. In the centre of the table was a vase of dying lilies. She pulled out their slimy stalks and threw them in the bin. Their rotting vegetable smell lingered. As she worked she found herself sifting through the bones of her argument with Dean, embellishing her responses with cruel precision.

  When they were still in that glowy stage of first love Dean bought her flowers every other week. On pay day he’d come home with trumpets of cheap cellophane, always different arrangements. Freesias were her favourite. An odd knobbly flower lacking beauty but with a perfume that left her quite drunk. Now she mostly bought the flowers herself, simple bunches pulled dripping from buckets at the markets.

  She picked up dirty socks, shoes, an empty cracker packet, a multitude of toys. Next to the DVD player was a spoon furry with mould and a scrunch of passionfruit skin. Life with children was a weary kind of deja vu.

  At midday she scoured the cupboard for something sweet. A reward. The best she could come up with was half a block of cooking chocolate. It didn’t taste much better than cardboard, but she finished the lot. She flicked on the telly and found herself watching a poor version of Rage. It took her longer than it should have to realise that these teenagers flicking their hair were singing about Jesus. A pastor cut across the last chord. He was wearing jeans and a casual t-shirt. Had a mo and a bald head. Is this how they’re making them cool these days, she wondered. He said, When Jesus died on the cross he paid the ultimate price for our sin. He died that you may be forgiven.

  Cornflake harrumphed onto Fleur’s feet but she pushed him off. Lunged for the remote and closed the pastor down. She would not be saddled with the God Squad today.

  How was school?

  Fleur asked the obligatory question but as Harry launched into a blow-by-blow account of their lunchtime footy match her attention slipped.

  Want a milkshake? she said when she realised he had stopped talking.

  Sure.

  How was art? she asked, trying.

  We had to make chickens, he rolled his eyes. From his pocket he pulled a yellow pom-pom with barely attached bits of cut-up straws and googly eyes.

  How cute.

  It’s terrible, he said. We had RE after.

  Oh yes? she said.

  She has regretted ticki
ng the little box agreeing to religious instruction. She thought it might help her kids think about the big questions of life—kindness and honesty and forgiveness—but it was just brainwashing. The kids who opted out did colouring sheets in the library. Terrible pseudo-Aboriginal designs of lizards and fish. But she’d be fine with that. Anything would be better than the guilt-laden rhetoric they came home with.

  You’re not a sinner, she said to Alfie once. Eight year olds can’t sin.

  Yes we can, he said. If we reject Jesus in our hearts. Or steal someone’s pencil.

  Murderers sin, Fleur said. God’s got bigger things to worry about than a pencil. You don’t have to believe it just because they tell you to.

  But for once Harry’s story made her smile. They had been told the resurrection story. Harry repeated the salient points, then said with a grin, So Jesus was like the undead. He was really a zombie.

  When Dean returned from work he said hello to the kids, but not her. He poured himself a glass of beer. Fleur leaned against the kitchen counter and watched him. He smelled of aftershave and sweat and the stink of the city. She thought of forgiveness. She could almost kiss him.

  D’you mind if I go out for a walk? she said. The kids are all ready for bed.

  He turned away from her. Sure, he said.

  She escaped into the twilight with Cornflake. She walked hard, feeling the muscles in her thighs, her calves. Cornflake trotted ahead, his tongue flapping. Stupidly happy just to be out again, sniffing the air, aging turds, telegraph poles. The sky was a swathe of gaudy lobster red. Fleur felt as if she could walk all night.

  She thought, When I go back I will apologise. I will be a good wife, a kind person. And the thought of this lifted her. Why do I let them get to me? she thought. All these stupid little things.