Like Being a Wife

by Catherine Harris

  ‘Somewhere inside of you there’s a movie star – just like Zsa Zsa Gabor, or Marilyn Monroe – talented and beautiful, but a troubled soul. People claim to love you for that paradox, for what’s on the inside screaming to get out, if only you could express yourself, if only you knew how.

  ‘Alas,’ she said, ‘for all your hopes and aspirations, your wild and crazy dreams, your elaborate fantasies, and your need to believe in the possibility of your unrealised potential, your life will continue on much as it has before.

  ‘That frustration which drove you to pick up the telephone, it won’t dissipate with age. Your boredom will nurse it and it will grow, a blossoming tree, eventually encompassing all areas of your existence, until even your friends will disappoint you.

  ‘I do not know how you will die or when. I cannot predict major illness. Nor do I know how many children you will spawn or with whom. My guess? More than one, less than four. Does this pertain to spouses or to children? That I cannot say.

  ‘Your first husband will be a good man (a simple matter of definition, yes, but most people will agree). You will meet soon. At a work function, or some vapid family affair. You will go out a few times, he will propose, you will say “yes”, the relatives will haul out their fancy clothes for the wedding, and that will be that. Quickly you will realise that he bores you. It will hit you early one evening as you are frying his Wednesday-night steak. But by then it will be too late, because you’re nearly four months pregnant and constantly fighting back nausea.

  ‘Despite what you have been taught to believe, your children will not fulfil you. They won’t complete you or soften you or make you feel content. You may feel protective of them, possessive of them, on occasion even proud. Sometimes they will make you laugh. But this is not enough. That promised flood of maternal piety will never overcome you. You may feel more contemplative, older, your body loaded and marked by its experience, but this doesn’t please you. It is certainly not “a life”.

  ‘You will not return to work. You swear that you will, but it will never happen. Instead, the nappies will pile up and then the clothes, and your afternoons will be spent ironing in front of the television. You will prefer The Bold and the Beautiful to Days of Our Lives, yet both programs hold some sentimental appeal.

  ‘One afternoon you’ll notice an advertisement: Free Psychic Consultation, Call Us and See. And you will, because Jenny won $5000 after talking with her psychic and Monica met the man of her dreams.

  ‘You are not calling because you are unhappy. It is just a little fun, you tell yourself. Because you’re bored today, or distracted, or you’re in a playful mood.

  ‘Nonetheless, your palm is clammy as you dial the number. The person who answers says, “You’ve called us before.” But you won’t admit it. Possibly you won’t even recall. And just like now, you’ll experience no great revelation. There will be no epiphany.

  ‘Just a voice on the line saying, “You’re frustrated, you’re hoping for a major life change...” Holding the receiver tightly to your ear, eyes closed, head nodding, as you try to take it all in. And five minutes pass, and ten minutes pass, and fifteen and then twenty, while somewhere across town a girl talks on the telephone. She is filing her fingernails as she speaks. Petula Clark plays in the background. The clock is ticking, and the girl is talking, saying combinations of the same words over and over again: “It is not too late for you. The future is now. Tomorrow is the first day of the rest of your life. It is the future. The first day is tomorrow. For you, now is too late. The rest of your life is. Too. Now. You. Everything’s waiting for.”’

  Our Breakfast Hostess, or How I Gained 15 Kilos – A Memoir

  Six months after the installation of the new breakfast hostess, I arrive at the radio station, assistant producer, where I am assigned to work with her, the already notorious, universally despised, Shirley de Young.

  At the cafe, Maureen tells me that she thinks Shirley’s awful. ‘I can’t stand her,’ she says. ‘It’s really too much. The worst radio personality in the business bar none. The worst breakfast hostess I’ve ever heard.’

  ‘I know. I know.’ But she goes on.

  ‘I don’t listen anymore. Can’t. I used to, all the time. At home, in the garden, in the car. Some people were upset when she started cos she’s from Brissie. I don’t care about that. I don’t care where she’s from. But the girl’s got to sound intelligent. This one can’t string a sentence together.’

  I am sipping hot chocolate topped with cocoa-dusted whipped cream, between us a little snack of thick buttered toasted ham and cheese. Ominous, but at this early juncture my pants still fit. My pants still fit.

  Four am, en route to the office, driving past all those quiet houses. The streets hum with their promise, families recharging their engines.

  Here I am in the dark, heading north on Northbourne Avenue. It is so optimistic. I picture myself on a map, arrow pointed firmly up, me in the car, headed straight to the top.

  Shirley de Young would be showering now. Shirley de Young, our breakfast hostess. Lathering up her pale body, soaping her freckles. Stepping out. Putting on her happy face.

  I pull into the Braddon shops where I am to collect the day’s newspapers. The newsagency is dark out front. I swing around the back where Harry and George stand smoking in the cold – hot instant thermos coffee, caps and scarves. ‘Morning, luv,’ says Harry.

  I take possession of a string-tied bundle he shunts towards me with his foot.

  ‘ Sydney Morning Herald still isn’t in. I’ll send it on later with one of the other girls.’

  That’s fine with me. ‘That’s fine,’ I say.

  George hands me a coffee scroll, sticky with thick white icing. ‘Same time tomorrow then.’ His head is huge, face ruddy in the dawn despite liberal smudges of newsprint.

  What is worse, that our breakfast hostess is so terrible, or that she is so oblivious to how terrible she is? ‘You are quite horrendous at this,’ I would like to say to her. ‘You should get another job.’ Imagining the instinctive arch of her head – back, back – the thin laughter stretching emptily from her Colgate-clean mouth.

  Oh lament, as a person, I am bad, bad, bad. A great heffalump of wickedness in a Cue business suit. The sweetness of the icing hurts my teeth.

  A minister’s staffer calls. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘I’m the assistant producer,’ I tell him. ‘I’m new.’

  ‘Well, put on someone who isn’t.’

  Thoughts of Violet Crumbles and other midmorning fare. I hand the phone to Melanie, senior producer, my institutional superior.

  ‘Melanie here.’

  I observe as her eyebrows crowd in. ‘Yeah, okay. It’s possible. I’ll see what I can do.’

  ‘What did he want?’ I ask once she’s free again.

  ‘Our source on that unemployment story, I think. I’m not really sure.’

  Melanie is a journalist because she has a journalism degree. This makes her adept at managing her seasonal allergies and beginning sentences with the expression, ‘As a journalist, I believe...’

  Shirley de Young is a journalist too, same degree, different institution. Once, while travelling through India (at the tender age of nineteen), she survived a bout of dysentery so devastating she had to be hospitalised for a week. Her essay about it became her first published piece. She has British-born parents and skin tougher than hide.

  The two of them make quite the team, Melanie and Shirley, Melanie and Shirley de Young. One plus one equals two, it does not equal three. My presence can only ruffle their already snug feathers.

  Melanie sniffles throughout most of the broadcast, her nasal membranes inflamed by the dust, the acacia pollen scratching her throat, distressed nostrils chapped and sore.

  I answer the phone. ‘Do you have a question for our guest today?’

  ‘Yes, well, no, but I’ve got
one for you: how do you do it, day in day out, listen to so much bullshit?’ Three forty-five am again. I wake up, feel like a fridge is balanced on my forehead.

  Interviewer: And so, young lady, tell us why you wanted to become a radio producer?

  Assistant producer: Well, Dick, I’ve always loved listening to the radio. The cricket in summer. Recipes on a Friday afternoon. The hourly news. I’d listen while I showered, shaved my legs to book reviews. I’d have my alarm set to it in the morning, so much better than the buzzer at that hour of the day. I’d listen while I made my tea, grilled my winter crumpets.

  Interviewer: And yet all this has changed for you now?

  Assistant producer: Yes, Dick, I’m afraid it has. The job has killed it for me. The pleasure is gone. Now the radio is stilled in my house, a squat speechless troll of a mechanism lurking in the dankest corner of our bathroom, quietly collecting lint and pubic hair.

  By daylight Canberra is a cesspit. Junkies vie for windscreens at the junction of Northbourne Avenue and Barry Drive, carving out territory like hookers. ‘No,’ I say. ‘Piss off, I told you, no.’ Scrubby continues anyway, leaning across our blue Hyundai hatchback set to go with his tired bucket of milky-grey suds. I get out of the car, screaming and pointing. ‘Get the fuck away from the fucking car.’ He steps back, shocked. This feeling is the opposite of hunger. I am as powerful as Zeus.

  Shirley de Young making small talk with the Belconnen footy coach.

  Shirley de Young making small talk with the ACT Chief Minister.

  Shirley de Young making small talk with an ANU linguist.

  Shirley de Young making small talk.

  The telephone is alive with complaints.

  In the programming meeting, Jamie, our managing producer, asks my plan for tomorrow’s show. Oh, I haven’t the first idea. What did we do today? My face ripens to a beetroot red. ‘I thought we’d shoot for the same shape as last week,’ I say, trying to sound confident, casual, like I’m clear about what’s going on. My clothes don’t fit me well, too cheap, too uncertain, too much upping and downing on the scales. My skirt twists. An A-line. Sarah, the afternoon producer, pipes up. ‘I have a few ideas,’ she says. And naturally Jamie wants to hear them all.

  Excuse me, but is it not lunchtime? Do you not hear the urgent squeak of tightly Glad-Wrapped sandwiches pressed up against each other behind the streaked cafeteria glass? I sit politely through the rest of her spiel trying to decide if I want straz and pickles with butter on white, or diced egg, lettuce and mayonnaise on a sesame seed roll.

  I have put on weight. I have. It has become noticeable even to me. Some of my clothes are no longer feasible. At the end of the day I have a red mark round my hips. I slip off my trousers and into my trackies. ‘Do I look fat?’ I ask Pete as I flip over the lamb chops. Greasy fatty parts scrumptious slightly burnt.

  The menu also includes fried onions, oven-baked chips and frozen peas. Eating dinner on our laps in front of the telly, the tomato sauce bottle conveniently in reach.

  Bea Haggard, formidable newsreader, gets on my nerves, screwing around in the background, distracting me while I’m engineering the show. ‘Can’t you get out of here?’ I ask her. ‘It’s irritating. I’d be grateful if you’d leave.’

  ‘What, am I annoying you?’ she asks. ‘How about this?’ She leans in to press the intercom button.

  ‘Bugger off,’ I say, swiping her hand.

  She gives me the finger.

  The image of her big moon face in my control booth gets my stomach growling. As soon as the show is finished I head over the road to the Department of Transportation caf. It is always busy but well worth the wait. Cream cakes taste delicious and don’t answer back.

  There is a line of obese men waiting to be served. The lady behind the counter knows all their names. When it’s my turn she recognises me too. ‘You were in here yesterday.’

  Shirley de Young sleeps in again. This time I don’t bother to rouse her with a courtesy wakeup call. She arrives at the station well into the news. Doesn’t mention the time, doesn’t ask what happened at the top of the hour, no ranting about absent reminders and me letting her down. She just walks into the studio and calmly puts on her headphones. ‘Good morning, Canberra. It’s ten past five.’

  Hey lady, did it ever occur to you that there might have been a reason why I didn’t ring you: I could have had car trouble, stomach trouble, maybe I slept in too. But it’s all on the inside, my indignation. Glaring at her from behind the control panel – fading her up, fading her down, muting the studio button – but I can still see her talking.

  Guilt drives me to ice-cream. Magnums all round. One for Shirley de Young, one for Melanie. And obviously, one for me. Melanie smiles blankly, craps on about the nuts. ‘Chopped nuts, I love chopped nuts. And look, it’s vanilla. Vanilla’s my favourite flavour.’ I hear the words but know what she really means is, I see how desperate you are, how eager to please. Purchasing cheap mass-produced frozen confection in a bid to buy friends. How sad it all is. What a useless ploy.

  ‘Wow, your favourite flavour? I must have known.’

  She holds my eye as she bites right in, cracked chocolate tumbling down her neatly pressed white cotton shirt.

  I do not like gathering vox pop. Perched at some city intersection, microphone in hand. ‘Excuse me, Miss, do you have a minute?’ The station manager keeps trying to send me out: ask people how they’re feeling about the cold weather, ask people how they’re feeling about the hot weather, do you like visiting the War Memorial, are you a resident here? But I resist, I resist, I resist. Finally she corners me in the kitchen, microwaving leftover lasagne. ‘Pardon the interruption, but could I have a word?’ There are twenty seconds left on the timer. I pause the machine. In her office we stare each other down.

  How many laughs in a bottle of gin? Julian, the afternoon presenter, has been listening to Paul Kelly again, has dragged the morose melodies behind him into the office. I could scream. Do you not see the grey colour of the carpeting, the sad putty-yellow of the walls, the windows opening onto courtyards, onto other windows? This, this suburban troubadour, he is not what we need.

  We go for coffee at a local bistro: espresso, two sugars, a slice of lemon tart supreme. There is absolutely nothing to talk about. The cake makes it easier for both of us.

  Here’s my bugbear: why is Shirley de Young so self-assured? It is confusing to me, all that confidence, because she has so very much of it and yet so little to actually say.

  Well, at least I am not alone. All across this great Territory, from Yarralumla to Kaleen, from Watson to Campbell, from Fyshwick to Ainslie to Bruce, committed listeners are complaining, calling the station in despair, twiddling their tuning buttons, turning off in droves.

  Ah, the weekend. First we eat fried eggs, grilled tomatoes, bacon and toast. Then, at Pete’s cousin’s engagement party, I start with a slice of orange cream sponge cake, followed by a mini asparagus quiche. My boobs swell stubbornly out of my bra. Handy as life-supports in deep water perhaps, but otherwise not so much.

  When are you two getting married, asks my de facto aunt-in-law. Her foundation make-up sweats, gathers in the wrinkles around her eyes. Her oldest son, Keith, is a nurse, living with Sharon (a nursing assistant). Sharon has two children from a previous relationship. She is barely twenty-one.

  Pete makes a beeline for the buffet.

  ‘Try the potato salad,’ he says when he comes back.

  ‘I hate potato salad. You know I hate potato salad.’

  ‘Yeah, but this one’s good. Here.’ He extends a forkful towards my mouth. The mayonnaise glistens in the late afternoon light.

  And then it is Monday again.

  ‘How was your weekend?’ asks Shirley de Young. Shirley de Young, the breakfast hostess. After the show, the three of us si
t crammed in the office, a tiny space barely large enough for two.

  ‘Good,’ says Melanie. ‘Same old same.’

  ‘Mmm, same old same,’ I say. Me too.

  ‘Well, I have some news,’ says Shirley. ‘Jack gave me a ring.’ She thrusts out her hand for our inspection.

  Shirley met Jack at last year’s Desperate & Dateless Ball and they’ve been shacked up together ever since. Jack still can’t believe his luck, living in Kingston with a natural blonde who survived a bout of dysentery while travelling through India at the tender age of nineteen. Lathering up her pale body in the shower, soaping her freckles. Later, by the pool, watching her fine yellow leg hairs drying in the sun.

  ‘Are you two getting married?’ I say.

  ‘No. It’s a friendship ring,’ she says sarcastically, screwing up her face in case I missed the tone. ‘Of course we’re getting married. It’s 18 carat gold.’

  ‘Jesus, he must really love you,’ says Melanie, fingering the diamonds.

  Her drooling draws the other staff like flies. What’s going on in there? Buzzing around at our door, Jamie, Sarah, Julian and Bea, wanting in on the supposed action.

  Midday. Driving south on Northbourne Avenue. Pants too tight, zip undone, composure shot – a water drop barely clinging to the lip of the glass.

  I once knew a woman named Shirley de Young

  (When I was young and free)

  But Shirley made me come undone

  (Now I am not skinny)

  She wore me out, she drove me mad

  (I ate and ate and sat)

  Until I quit – thank God, I’m glad

  (But I am also very fat)

  My last day. For morning tea I present the team with my friend Melissa’s Mars Bar Cake:

  Mars Bar Cake