by Cate Kennedy
Even as she walked up the driveway she could hear Harry screaming. Opening the door she saw Dean on the floor with Harry, naked from the waist down.
About time, Dean said. He didn’t look up.
She felt her resolve leak away, that familiar snap of anger.
I was only thirty minutes, she said.
Harry’s got diarrhoea. It’s all over the rug.
He looked at her then, beside him a strewn roll of kitchen paper. The smell of shit and bleach was loud. Fleur felt her skin itch with the unfairness of it all. This was the kind of thing she had to deal with every day while he was at work.
Where’s Alfie? she asked.
Dean thumbed at the courtyard. In the gloom outside Fleur could just make out Alfie carving away at a stick with a kitchen knife. He was kneeling, face turned to the side, head bent so far forward his body was a closed shape.
Fleur picked Harry up. He wrapped his legs around her waist, pushed his wet face into her neck. She’d go to Alfie later.
They lay on Harry’s bed and he stroked Fleur’s hair. Absently tracing a path behind the curl of her ear. It almost undid her. Fleur gritted her teeth and hoped he couldn’t translate her heaving chest. Even when he stopped stroking and his breathing changed she remained under the press of him. She stared at the glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling until they faded into nothingness.
Those stars sent Fleur into her first labour. She was standing on a stool pressing them onto the ceiling, puffing a little, when she felt a tug in her belly. She thought it was just from the effort of stretching, but then it happened again.
Dean drove Fleur to the hospital and dropped her on the doorstep. She took herself inside while he parked the car. He was in such a rush to get back that he smashed his foot on the kerb, arrived limping. The midwife fluttered around him, offering ice packs and Panadol while Fleur tried to concentrate on the Ujjayi breathing technique she’d learned at yoga. The fact was she couldn’t speak through the pain, but in her head she was screaming, Get over it, you selfish arsehole.
The labour went on and on. There were hot packs for her lower back, sickly sweet Gatorade and barley sugar to suck between contractions. She vomited nine times. She rolled on an exercise ball, walked the hall, squatted like an animal, and cried in the bath. She needed Dean so badly she forgot the foot business.
Then they lost the heartbeat. They rushed her to theatre, Dean holding her hand and limping along beside the gurney. They put a needle in her back, sliced her open with a knife and wrenched the baby out. Alfie. Gulping at life.
As his little frog body lay on her chest Dean leaned in close to them, all grin. And Fleur thought it the happiest moment of her life. But no one warned you what a baby did to a marriage. There was all that love, yes. Love so fierce it was frightening. But suddenly a scorecard ruled the relationship. Whose turn it was to change a pooey nappy, get up to settle the baby at 4 am, clean up the puke. Recently Fleur learned that the parents of Harry’s best mate kept an actual score card, recorded every minute they spent looking after the kids. So that it was always clear who was in credit, who was in deficit. The concept horrified Fleur; that the children were so openly considered a chore. But then in the middle of the night when Harry had wet the bed again and she was peeling off his sodden pants and shoving bedding into the washing machine while Dean lay in their bed snoring, she thought perhaps it was the ideal solution. Perhaps it diffused all that resentment. She could just mark it up on the chart and spend a guilt-free Saturday night getting drunk with her girlfriends.
By the time she came out Alfie was already in bed, face to the wall. Fleur sat down beside him, stroked his hair.
Sorry about before, she said.
He moved away from her hand.
Can you go out now, he said. I’m tired.
She kissed the top of his head. Closing the door gently behind her, she pushed down welling guilt.
Then it was back to the interminable wiping, stacking, sorting. Dean helped in an ineffective way, shuffling things into a more orderly kind of mess, but not actually putting much away.
They didn’t speak. Fleur wanted something from him but she couldn’t articulate even to herself what that was. An apology, perhaps. Or a touch, a hug. But even if he were to offer these things she wasn’t sure how she’d respond.
And then she found the bags.
So they broke up over plastic bags. It sounded ridiculous, but these things always were. Something was always the tipping point.
Dean left before the Bunny arrived. Took his books, leaving a bookcase full of flawed colour. Took the iron that she never used. Every item of his clothing, including dirty things from the laundry basket. A handful of fruit. The toolbox.
On Sunday morning she woke in darkness, crept into the laundry. With the toolbox gone there was nothing to hold back the tide of plastic bags. They spilled out across the tiles, crackled under her feet. As she reached for the back door handle, she pretended she couldn’t hear them.
In the cool moonlit air she hid bags full of cheap eggs, one by one.
Finished, she waited for the children to rise.
It Used to be His Eyes
NATASHA LESTER
She is still fresh-skinned, soft as avocado. Pliable.
This is what I think when I pick Georgia up out of her cot and hold her, squeezing her tightly so she feels the force of my love, but careful not to squeeze her as hard as my arms want to. My body wants to bring her back inside me, so she is wrapped in my blood again. As close as two humans can ever be.
‘I’m home!’
His voice makes me jump. The baby’s eyes, which had been closing as she settled into our embrace, fly open. She begins to wail.
I pat Georgia’s bottom and walk out into the hallway, pressing the smile back on my face, the smile that was an impulsive, reflexive action when I was with the baby and which is a controlled and conscious effort now.
‘That was loud,’ I say.
‘What was?’ he asks.
‘Your voice.’
‘I was saying hello.’
‘Loudly.’
He shakes his head and puts his pile of important papers on the coffee table.
The baby’s wails quieten and I kiss the top of her head.
‘I’m going to get changed,’ my husband says. He walks off to our bedroom.
I sit on the couch and open my shirt with one hand, saying, ‘Hello my darling, are you hungry?’
Georgia smiles at me, all wet, pink gums with baby drool shining her chin. Her fists jerk, her feet kick; she begins to chatter in baby sounds, a string of ah-goos, but I know what she means—hurry up!
At last my breast is free and her mouth is latched around my nipple. I rest back against the cushions, letting my arms loosen. My shoulders drop down from the position they had assumed around my ears. I watch Georgia as she feeds and she watches me, eyes locked together. It’s astonishing the way love can be spoken of and understood without words, with only a fixed gaze. It’s astonishing that our bodies possess an unlearned language, a language that we are born speaking fluently, that my three-month old baby has reminded me exists.
‘How was your day?’ He is back, wanting to chat.
‘Okay. Same-same,’ I say.
He watches for a moment as the baby’s fingers stroll across my breast, finger pads gentle, exploring. Marking her claim over my body.
It used to be his fingers. It used to be his eyes.
Before the baby goes to bed, I clean poo away from every crevice of her bottom, and from the base of her spine right up to her shoulder blades. Then I kiss her, hold her and sway with her for a moment, before I leave her in her cot to sleep. I take her clothes and put them in a bucket in the laundry to soak. Then I go into the bathroom and wash my hands.
While I am there, he comes in. He has changed into a pair of faded shorts and a crumpled t-shirt. He pees in the toilet. I wrinkle my nose at the smell and leave the bathroom.
The next morning, h
e jumps out of bed when the alarm shrills. I have already been up for an hour. Feeding the baby.
He shaves and showers. Urinates and farts. Puts on a suit with a crisp blue shirt and silvery tie. His hair is combed, he is wearing aftershave, he is dressed in expensive clothes. Then he goes to work and spends the day talking to people, people who see him in his suit, smelling of the Orient, fresh and crisp as a new-picked apple.
That night, Georgia won’t sleep. Colic or wind or getting used to her body is keeping her awake. I put her in the bassinette by the piano and I begin to play. At first a sarabande but then I stop; it’s too bruising. I choose light notes, a gigue, then a lullaby. I send the music into her dreams and I can see that her eyeballs are dancing beneath her closed lids and I understand that our wordless language does not even require the sense of sight.
I stop playing and shift each shoulder up and down. Then I feel his hands on the muscles, thumbs pressed against the back of my neck. He rubs slowly, softly at first and when I don’t shrug him away he continues.
‘I’ve missed hearing you play,’ he says.
‘Me too.’
It’s another one of those things from our old life, life-beforeher, that has slunk away, noticed only as being part of the general absence of the things beyond the functional which now take up our days.
She stays asleep.
‘I’ll put her in her room,’ he says.
‘Okay.’
I fall into our bed and feel when he climbs in through the rocking of the mattress. I can smell a trace of spice, warm and peppery, like baked earth after the rain. I turn toward it and inhale it into my dreams. When I wake later to the baby’s cry it is just dawn and my husband and I are facing each other. I smile and he does too.
Tomorrow it is Saturday. It will be hot, a midsummer sun at the peak of the sky. Georgia will like to lie outside in the morning, on a mat in the shade of the peppermint tree. I will cover her with a hat and polish her skin with sunscreen, so she stays just-fresh.
I will lie down beside her with my head in his lap. His finger-pads will trace the line of my jaw up to my ear and into my hair and he will fan out each strand across his legs. Her fist will take hold of my finger; he will tickle her foot and then he will look at me and I will look at him and we might rediscover our lost language.
FIRM AS ANCHORS, WET AS FISHES
Love and Antibiotics
SHARON KERNOT
Henry and Justine are lying in bed on their side like two mismatched but snug-fitting spoons. He’s still inside her and still quite hard. She sighs. ‘That was good,’ she says. She loves having sex with Henry. She loves him, more than anything or anyone.
He kisses her back softly: a butterfly kiss, and then runs his fingertips down her neck and over her shoulder.
She takes a deep breath. ‘I’ve got something to tell you,’ she says.
‘Mmmm?’
‘I…’ She loses her nerve, wishes she had left it for just a little longer so she can enjoy this feeling of closeness for a few more minutes.
‘Not pregnant?’ He laughs but his fingers stop moving as if he has sensed an importance in what she’s about to say.
‘No, don’t be silly. Not unless some of the boys manage to slip through that knot they tied in your balls.’
He resumes the gentle circles. ‘I guess it happens.’
‘I guess, but that’s not it. Actually…um…I think you should know that I have…chlamydia.’
‘What?’ The circling stops. She imagines him frowning.
‘Chlamydia,’ she says. ‘It’s an STD.’
‘I know what it is.’ The gentleness in his voice has gone. ‘Koalas get it.’ His dick, soft now, slides out and she rolls onto her back. He does the same. ‘We’ve just had unprotected sex for God’s sake.’ His arm sweeps the air and a cobweb above them floats and drifts madly on the breeze.
‘I know.’
‘Well…why? I mean if you knew.’ He shakes his head, stares up at the yellowing ceiling.
‘We had sex last night and a couple nights before that too,’ she says as if in explanation.
‘How?’ There’s a tinge of anger in his voice now. ‘How did you get it?’
‘Come on, Henry, you know how it works. It’s an STD.’
He flips onto his side, props himself up on an elbow and looks directly at her. ‘Are you saying you’ve had sex with someone else?’
‘No!’
‘Well, what then? Toilet seat? Sharing a cup?’
‘A cup! It’s not hepatitis. Or school sores.’
He raises his voice. ‘Well, I don’t know!’
‘Well, I do.’ She gets out of bed, stands naked in front of him for a minute, allows him to run his eyes down her long sleek body as she slips into her satin gown. There’s a sulky look on his face, a look of bewildered hurt. She ties the belt on her gown into a tight knot. ‘When the doctor told me I was in shock. Obviously. She said I should contact all my recent sexual partners.’
‘And?’ He’s furious now, his eyes have narrowed to slits.
‘And I told her I only have one. One partner. My husband. Married. Been together five years.’ She holds up a handful of fingers to emphasise the number of years. She can see the colour draining from his face. She takes a breath, calms herself. ‘When I asked her how on earth it could have happened, she said I should ask you.’
‘Me? Why?’
His pretence at innocence was beginning to give her the shits but she reminds herself to stay calm. Deep breaths, no crying, dignity. ‘Come on, Henry, let’s drop the act. I know.’
‘What act? Know what?’
This display of denial had worked for him in the past so it’s no wonder that he’s clinging to the strategy. But really, in the face of all this?
‘You’ll have to tell your little girlfriend that you’ve passed an STD onto your wife!’ She folds her arms, glares at him.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘I know about Cherie. So just stop pretending. It’s fucking insulting.’ She bites her bottom lip hard and tastes blood.
Henry sits up slowly, rubs his temple. ‘Jesus!’
She slumps down, sits on the opposite side of the bed, facing the blind. ‘Yeah. Jesus!’
‘How’d you find out?’
‘It doesn’t fucking matter how.’ She’s struggling to keep calm but she’s not going to tell him the lengths she’d gone through to piece it all together. It’d taken a while, each revelation was like a triumph, a victory over deception. A win for intuition. Every piece of evidence she discovered felt oddly thrilling and devastating; the two feelings bled together.
‘What matters,’ she says, ‘is that you are fucking someone else.’
A big sigh from him.
‘What matters is: that you have got to tell her that you’ve got chlamydia.’
He doesn’t say anything but she’s pretty sure he will be processing the information. Probably wondering if he can get out of it. Hoping perhaps that there has been a mistake.
‘And what matters is…’ She turns around to watch his reflection in the mirror. ‘What matters is who contracted it first.’
He looks at her now, in the mirror, confused. ‘What do you mean…? You said it wasn’t you.’
‘Not me. You or her? Are you sleeping with someone else as well?’
‘No! God, no!’
She watches his image for a long time and he holds her gaze. ‘There’s no one else,’ he says gently. ‘Honestly. No one.’
She ploughs on, a little more confidently now. ‘No one? Really?’
He shakes his head and his eyes soften as if to say, I’m sorry. She swivels around, studies his profile. ‘Then who started it? If that’s the case, you must have got it from her. And she must have got it from whoever else she’s been sleeping with.’
The vein in his temple pulses. Good, she thinks, that hurt.
‘You’d better tell her as soon as possible or she might give it to some other basta
rd’s poor wife.’
‘Jesus.’ He rubs his forehead and the space between his nose. ‘What a mess.’
‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘What a fucking mess.’
‘I’m sorry. Really. I love you; it was just a weak moment.’ He reaches for her hand, places his own over the top of hers. There’s sincerity there in his eyes and she allows him her hand, soaks up the moist warmth of it for a moment even though she knows he’s lying. It was not a ‘weak moment’ as he put it; he’s been at it with her for months. But she doesn’t say. She allows him this deception.
‘You have to tell her. She’ll have to get treatment. It won’t just go away, you know. It can be very nasty.’ She slips her hand from beneath his.
She wonders what this Cherie will make of it. Surely she won’t be able to forgive him. Will he tell her that his wife has it, that she was the one who discovered it? No. He couldn’t possibly drop himself in it. His profile on the dating site clearly stated that he was a man in need. One that hadn’t had sex for months and months due to his wife’s illness. Lies. He was good at those. She’d learnt a thing or two over the years. So, he’ll just have to tell this Cherie woman that he got himself tested.
‘Are you sure? I mean, I don’t have any…you know, symptoms.’
She shrugs. ‘Sometimes there aren’t any. That’s why it spreads so easily. Google it,’ she says.
‘But—’
‘Look, if I have it, you have to have it. How else could I have got it?’ She leans over to the bedside table, opens the drawer and pulls out a small white box. ‘Here. Take these. You have to take the whole course.’ She throws him the box of antibiotics. ‘I filled my repeat for you.’ She shakes another little box, slams it down on the bedside table and the lamp rocks precariously.
He stares at the little packet, turns it over and over.
