Love and Punishment

by Unknown

  Francie was sitting at the kitchen table with the weekend papers arrayed before her when Robbie made an appearance, radiating megawatts of white-blonde vitality.

  ‘So,’ he inquired between mouthfuls of fresh orange juice and bircher muesli, ‘how’s your Sunday looking?’

  Francie replied that she was staring down the barrel of a day spent washing clothes and unpacking boxes.

  ‘Hmm, and how did you used to spend your Sundays when you were a couple?’

  Francie’s first instinct was to be hurt by the question, but then she thought Robbie’s bluntness was actually a refreshing change.

  ‘You know, just the usual stuff. Maybe go to the plant nursery, a street market, wander around the antique stores . . .’

  Robbie snorted. ‘You mean shopping.’

  ‘Well, a lot of the time we didn’t actually buy—’

  Robbie had no time for it. ‘You know that’s one thing I find incredibly sad about our society—we substitute genuine cultural interaction with consumerism.’

  And that’s how Francis Sheila McKenzie found herself spending Sunday afternoon in a church, in an outer western suburb of Melbourne she had never heard of, swaying to a Sudanese Catholic choir and singing Hallelujah!

  Seven

  The next Monday night Francie was to be found at Amanda and Lachlan’s flat in East St Kilda. Johnno and Olga were there too, which meant there was just one person missing . . . Nick.

  Amanda was bustling around the little kitchen preparing a casual supper of pasta and salad, demolishing a few vodka and cranberries in the process.

  Olga was sitting on the bench trying to keep the voluminous skirt of her red 1950s sundress out of the way of the chopping board. She was fiddling and twiddling an armful of brightly coloured plastic bangles and her aqua cat’s-eye glasses. Chattering away like a parrot on a perch.

  ‘You two are going to adore this new range. I’m using all those old paste brooches I’ve been collecting and sewing them onto backings of antique lace. The ones I’ve already done look divine—especially on black satin. I see them pinned on the bodice of an evening gown of a movie star, because the biggest news is . . . guess what?’

  Amanda was nodding, listening as she peeled avocados. She was stylish as ever in a plain black jersey dress which rippled around her bare feet. Her dark brown hair was brushed back sleekly and caught with a beaded clip. She heard the excitement in Olga’s voice and turned from her preparations, her dark eyes twinkling with anticipation.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Vogue has already picked up a few of my pieces for this five-page fashion spread they’re doing with—Naomi Watts!’ Olga squealed.

  ‘Really? Naomi Watts? That is brilliant, Olga! Imagine if they publish the pictures in American Vogue! You might even end up with your stuff in—’

  ‘Neiman Marcus or Barney’s! I know, I know! If they do, I am definitely going to somehow find the money to travel over there. Imagine walking around and seeing my jewellery in a display case in New York! Eeek!’

  Francie applauded from the doorway, where she had been banished for treading on Amanda’s toes with her high-heeled sandals. From her vantage point she could also see Johnno and Lachlan sitting on the balcony nursing beers and talking football . . . or cricket.

  She thought of the times Nick had been part of this cosy domestic scene. He would have been leaning against the railing with his long legs stretched in front of him, arms folded over his chest. There would be an expression of intense concentration on his face while the boys discussed the monumental implications of a full-forward’s dodgy hamstring or some earth-shattering umpiring decision. She shook her head to dislodge the painful memory.

  This had been Francie’s real family for the past five years. Not a biological family where you just made do with the genetic lottery handed to you at birth, but a family you had handpicked and loved all the more for that. People you trusted and shared your life with more intimately than any mismatched brother, sister or parent.

  Francie had known Olga since childhood and had met Amanda when they worked together as cadets at the Daily Press. The women were firm friends who had long ago claimed each other as part of the same tribe. They were, despite their inner city makeover, just ordinary suburban girls. A trio who had managed to find an independent, creative life their mothers could only have dreamed of—Francie as a journalist, Amanda now as a television producer and Olga as a jewellery-maker. It was only when they reached their thirties that they started to wonder when the rest of their birthright—the house furnished with husband and kids—was going to be delivered.

  Over the years the friends had brought a number of men to restaurants and cocktails for approval, all of them possibilities, but all who weren’t quite what one had hoped for. They were loved and lusted after all the same. But there had been a time—a golden era of contentment when you looked back on it now—when the three amigos believed they had found the men they were looking for.

  Amanda had unexpectedly turned up Lachlan at work. She had started as a production assistant at Pretty Pictures, a local film and television production house, and one fine day Lachlan walked in the door in his disguise as a copyright lawyer. He was tall, loud, athletic. She was short, artistic, considered. He played golf, followed the footy. She practised yoga, loved the theatre.

  It was like one of those bad chick flicks where she hated him, hated him, hated him and then, ohmigod, she loved him. It happened so fast it was almost between ad breaks. So here they were, three years later, living in a flat together, saving for a house, and every time Francie visited she expected a marriage date would be announced.

  Then there was Olga and Johnno. There was nothing special about the way they had met. A dinner party. Francie knew Olga, Nick knew Johnno. Theirs had been one of those relationships where everyone hoped and hoped, but in their heart of hearts couldn’t imagine it lasting. After all, if they had stayed together it would all have been so neat. It should have worked. He fashioned words into lyrical sentences and she took gemstones and beads and strung them into lovely necklaces. It had looked like they had a lot in common, but Francie could see that they were both so creative and intense, there was no-one to lighten the mood when things got dark—which they often did.

  They’d broken up a couple of years ago. The group had survived that rocky passage and everyone had stayed friends. They ate out together at least twice a week, spent weekends away in the country and cosy nights in with a video. Then Nick left and kicked their comfy sitcom to the shithouse.

  Whenever they sat at the dining table Francie noticed the space at the end where Nick would have been. She was reminded of the Chinese superstition in which the thirteenth place at the feasting table was always set, but left empty, for the ghost. The ghost of Nick was sitting there laughing, sharing stories, looking lovingly at Francie.

  Nick’s absence was even more glaringly obvious because Francie had not mentioned him once this evening. He had moved into Johnno’s house in North Fitzroy and Francie dared not ask after him. Johnno’s friendship had been a part of the furniture of Nick and Francie’s relationship.

  Francie adored him. She was a journalist, but Johnno was a writer! And with his declaration came poverty, rejection, humiliation, self-doubt and more poverty. On Johnno’s desk were manuscripts for two novels, dozens of short stories, piles of poems—all unpublished. There were screenplays and television dramas, all on the road to nowhere. In the meantime he was keeping body and soul together by writing scripts for children’s television.

  Francie admired the way Johnno had cast himself as a struggling artist from another era. Something straight out of La Bohème. From the unkempt flop of dull black hair over his forehead and the threadbare T-shirt hanging off his chest, down to his battered black lace-ups, Johnno was a romantic who liked to believe in things. The innate goodness of people. The faithfulness of dogs. That right would always triumph if one just surrendered to the sweeping tide of the universe. It was a qualit
y which was, by turns, endearing and irritating. His moral compass was always set, unerringly, to the same magnetic point of natural justice. Francie wished she could be so sure of herself.

  For Johnno, Francie and Nick’s break-up was deeply unfortunate. Francie could see he was truly torn between them, and she appreciated him trying to remain neutral, but she couldn’t help making him suffer all the same. She had a list of questions for Johnno as long as your arm. She wanted to ask—starting with the innocent and moving to the insanely personal:

  ‘So, Johnno, is Nick eating well?

  ‘How’s his mum?

  ‘Has he found another job?

  ‘Does he go out much?

  ‘How many nights does he stay at her place?

  ‘Has she been to your place?

  ‘What’s she like?

  ‘Is she funny, smart, beautiful, clever, kind?

  ‘What are they like together?

  ‘Does he love her?

  ‘Does she love him?

  ‘Has he told you what she’s like in bed?

  ‘Do they fuck a lot?

  ‘Does she give him blow jobs?

  ‘Are they better than mine?

  ‘WHEN IS THAT FUCKING BITCH GOING TO GIVE HIM UP AND LET HIM COME BACK TO ME?!’

  But Francie didn’t say any of this. She was trying, really trying, to push all this out of her mind and to be a cheery, sane human being. To step out of her dark place and engage with the real world. So all her questions were dangling over the dining table tonight like a chandelier of cut glass.

  There was something else in the air tonight too. All through dinner Amanda and Lachlan exchanged long, loving looks with each other like a couple of doe-eyed . . . er . . . deer. It was making Francie, Johnno and Olga feel distinctly uncomfortable. Amanda and Lachlan’s billing and cooing were almost intolerable. Francie could now see what Johnno and Olga had been complaining about since she and Nick had broken up. She’d never noticed it before, but they were right. It was an almost nauseating spectacle. Of course, Amanda and Lachlan’s good fortune was a beacon of hope for the lovelorn in an otherwise blackened landscape. But did they have to flaunt it like this?

  It couldn’t have been more tasteless if they had been a bunch of homeless people paraded past the mansion of a millionaire. See the double car garage, admire the huge entertaining area, gasp at the pool cabana! Bet you wish you had one of these!’

  The three singles were sitting at the table rolling their eyes at the flirtatious giggling coming from the kitchen when Amanda and Lachlan appeared at the doorway with a huge strawberry-topped cake and two bottles of French champagne. Amanda set the cake on the table and stood back with her hands clasped under her . . . uh-oh! Her stomach.

  ‘We have an announcement to make,’ said Lachlan, commanding a silent space in which to land his important proclamation. ‘We’re having a baby!’

  There was a bomb blast of excitement. This was a testament to the devotion of the five friends because underneath the fireworks display of kisses, hugs and exclamations of joy was a deep, dark well of disappointment.

  Francie immediately thought of the baby she longed for with Nick. Johnno thought of his fledgling scriptwriting career and wondered if he would ever be in a place where a family was possible. Olga remembered her two abortions and wondered if she would always feel haunted by their lost souls which hovered around her face now like butterfly wraiths. But these fears stayed under the surface as the effervescence of the moment was enjoyed.

  A baby! Francie didn’t have any other friends who had children. Which was bizarre when she considered how, just a few decades earlier, she and all her friends would have had two, three, four kids each by the time they were thirty. And a few decades before that they would probably each have produced a cricket team by now. Thirty was the new twenty. Forty was the new thirty. Fifty was the new forty! And when was the right time to have kids? No-one had figured that out yet. While women’s magazines carried endless pages on which moisturiser and what hem length was appropriate for each decade, they were piteously short on details about what else should be happening in your life. They knew that after forty you shouldn’t be showing off your cleavage or wearing frosty pink lipstick, but that’s where their wisdom about the female condition started and ended.

  Of course they carried the odd feature about supermodels and actresses who carted around babies like designer handbags. But have one themselves? Without a nanny, cook and cleaner? Francie knew enough female magazine journos to know that the prospect of nine months off the fags, cocktails and tuna sashimi were enough to make them schedule a four-page spread on the latest scientific advances in birth control. They saw the prospect of even one baby as a life sentence of drudgery. A blunt instrument which would bludgeon you into submission.

  But Francie didn’t see it like that. She had really, truly wanted a baby with Nick. She had spent hours imagining what their combined genes would have created. A dream baby which would have had his hair, her mouth, his eyes, her legs, his neck, her ears. His passion and intuition and her practical, calm logic. Looking back she could see this baby was more a vanity project than anything real. She even had names for this perfect phantom. If it was a boy it would have been James. Jimmy McKenzie Jamieson. That had a ring and rhythm to it. If it was a girl it would have been Jinx. Jinx as in ‘charming spell’. ‘One who can enchant with her beauty and grace.’ She’d looked up the meaning in a book of 1000 Classic Baby Names.

  But now her baby fantasy, along with the walk up the aisle under a canopy of stars, had been vaporised. Francie reflected on all those years playing perfect plastic families with her Barbie dolls. It was ironic that Barbie was now in her mid forties, single and childless.

  So one of her friends was having a baby! A baby that Francie could reasonably expect to be godmother to, or to babysit. One that she actually had the right to pick up. No, it was more than a right. It was an expectation that she would pick up the baby, and do . . . whatever you did with babies after you picked them up.

  Putting aside her own preoccupations, Francie realised she was excited at the prospect. And, of course, she was delighted for Amanda and Lachlan. How any couple these days got to the point where they both agreed to have a baby and then actually made one! It was a triumph of . . . well . . . timing mostly. Francie sometimes thought it would be good to go back to the days when women could get pregnant accidentally.

  Francie had always thought of Lachlan as being too stolid and predictable for her tastes. She rolled her eyes whenever she saw him heading out the door to play golf in his poly-knit shirt and tartan trousers. Now she saw him waving a handful of photographs of Amanda’s ultrasound and grinning proudly, and couldn’t imagine Nick ever doing the same. She felt envious. In a good way, she reminded herself.

  ‘Have a look at this one! Look at the hands! Perfect golf grip!’ Lachlan boasted.

  Amanda swatted at him. ‘We’re having a baby, not a caddy!’

  ‘And he’s taking after me already . . . look . . . he’s bald!’

  ‘She’s not bald!’ Amanda squealed. ‘She’s blonde.’

  They all bent over the grainy images which looked like aerial photographs of a swamp. Apparently the teensy blob of algae in the right-hand corner was human.

  ‘Hey, I can see a foot,’ said Johnno. He was lying.

  ‘We’ll have to have a baby . . . party,’ said Olga. The word ‘shower’ had escaped her but, to give her credit, she was trying to grapple with a cultural ritual which was utterly foreign to her. Not so much because she was Jewish, but because she didn’t know anyone with a baby either.

  ‘Let’s break open the champagne!’ Francie clapped her hands.

  ‘Well, you guys get into it. I suppose I’d better not.’ Amanda rubbed her tummy.

  And with this statement Francie realised that one of her dearest friends had already moved into a shadowy parallel universe. It was as if Amanda had stepped through the back of a wardrobe into the snowy land of Narnia an
d was now off on a fantastical adventure with a witch and a talking lion. Francie was still back in the bedroom looking at a rack full of clothes.

  It wasn’t until the singles were on the way home in the darkened interior of the car, where they couldn’t see each other, that any of them felt they could reveal their true feelings.

  ‘Well, there goes the neighbourhood. Gone to hell in a baby capsule,’ said Johnno. It was a half-hearted attempt at a joke. He didn’t expect to get a laugh.

  Olga was quiet in the front seat beside him. She was thirty-five. For her, this was just another whack over the nose with a rolled-up newspaper: ‘Stupid, stupid Olga! Why aren’t you married? What are you thinking? Where are our grandchildren?’

  Francie, predictably, was in tears. ‘Oh shit! I know I’m supposed to be happy. Well I am, but I’m not. I’m not jealous. I just . . .’ She leaned her head against the car window and watched the darkened streets slide by. A low-lying black cloud settled in over the group. Johnno pulled the car up outside Elysium, Francie’s new house, and they all sat there in the dark. It was quiet as Johnno and Olga waited for the inevitable question from the back seat.

  ‘So . . . how’s Nick?’ Francie whispered. She knew she shouldn’t ask. She wasn’t even sure she wanted to know, but she couldn’t see how she could feel any more wretched than she already did. As it turned out, she was seriously underestimating herself.

  ‘Oh, you know, good, good,’ muttered Johnno. He coughed and clutched the steering wheel with both hands. His position was truly unenviable. Now that he and Nick were housemates, he knew everything about Nick’s life. Whether he whistled in the shower, what he ate for breakfast, how often he was home. Francie understood Johnno was sparing her the most gruesome details, but that he also didn’t want to give her false hope.

  ‘We . . . um . . . we had a party at our place last night for Poppy’s birthday,’ he mumbled.