by Del, Lissa
“God help him,” she says.
“He seems to really like her.”
“She’s wild about him, too.” She meets my eyes and I know what she’s saying.
“I love you,” I tell her, as easily as breathing.
“I love you too.”
Kat’s face appears at the door. “Um, Nick? Your dad is here.”
“My dad?”
“Yes. He looks… well, he doesn’t look himself.”
I’m on my feet and walking inside before she’s even finished speaking. My dad stands in the front hall, shifting his weight from one foot to the other and examining the chandelier as if it’s the most fascinating thing he’s ever seen.
“Dad?”
He tears his eyes away from the lighting to look at me. “Nick. I’m sorry, I should have called. I didn’t realise you had guests.”
Evie appears beside me.
“That’s okay, come on in.” I catch Evie’s look as we turn around and I can tell she’s thinking the same thing I am. My father never drops in unannounced. In fact, he never drops in period. He’s always working and we see him on my mother’s terms.
Kat and Jack are still busy in the kitchen so we have the patio to ourselves.
“Where are the kids?” Dad asks as he settles into Kat’s empty seat.
“Upstairs in the playroom,” Evie answers. “They’ve just gone up but I can call them if you’d like to say hello?”
“Not just yet.”
The silence that follows has me reaching for my beer, but Evie fixes my dad with a look I know well. “David, is something wrong?”
To my horror, my dad’s face crumples like a piece of ancient paper. Evie reaches forward automatically as his shoulders heave, knocking over her glass of water. She ignores it, stumbling to her feet and curling herself around him. It looks awkward, but Evie doesn’t move, and I’m frozen in place as a myriad of awful thoughts run through my head. What the hell could’ve happened?
“Is it Mary-Anne?” Evie asks.
The renewed heaving answers that question.
“Is Mom okay?” I ask. My chest has tightened and I almost don’t want to know the answer.
“Your mother is fine.” The words are barely audible, but enough.
“Does anyone want any…?” Kat is back. She takes one look at my dad, swivels on her heel and disappears. A moment later she reappears with a large scotch which she deposits in my hand. She gives a head-jerk toward my father and then vanishes once more.
“Here,” I say, setting the tumbler on the table before him.
My dad finally raises his head, wiping at his wet eyes and promptly downs the glass. My eyes widen.
“Would you like another?” I ask, helplessly. He nods.
By the time I return with the drink Evie is back in her chair, her hand over his, and my dad seems to have recovered enough to speak.
“I’m sorry to burden you with this,” he stammers. His voice is hoarse.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Evie tuts, “we’re family. Now, tell us what happened.”
“Mary-Anne…” he curls his hand around the tumbler and stares into space. “Mary-Anne is leaving me.”
“What?” I exclaim. Evie gives me a stern look.
“What do you mean she’s leaving you?” she asks kindly. “Did you two have a fight?”
Dad shakes his head. “No, not at all. This is my fault. I’ve…” he trails off, his familiar eyes finding my own. Filled with shame… his eyes are filled with shame. “I’ve been having an affair, son.”
The thought of my father having an affair is so unbelievable that I can’t speak, but, to our collective shock, Evie starts to laugh.
It begins as a snort-like giggle that she tries to disguise, but soon her shoulders are shaking and water has pooled in her eyes from the strain of trying to appear sombre.
“Evie!” I’m horrified. I know she doesn’t particularly like my parents, but to laugh, it’s just too much.
“I’m sorry,” she snuffles beneath the hand glued to her mouth. “It’s just…” she looks at my dad and squeezes his hand with her own, the one that she hasn’t removed since she sat down. “It’s about time.”
I look between the two of them, watching intently as my dad’s lips curve slowly upward, at the way he’s looking at her and it dawns on me that I’m the outsider here. That there’s something far deeper at play, a secret that I suspect I’m the last to know. His words echo in my head. I’m having an affair, son. He wasn’t telling us. He was telling me.
It takes a lifetime for me to find my voice. When I do, I turn on my wife. “You knew?”
Evie gives a guilty start. “I’m sorry, Nick,” she begins to apologise, her words tumbling out over one another, “I wanted to tell you but it wasn’t my place, and your dad – he was so desperate not to disappoint you…”
“To disappoint me?” I’m reeling, my brain like a tortoise wading through mud as I try to process this information overload. “Don’t you mean Mom?”
My dad sits up straighter, his hand sliding out from beneath Evie’s as if he needs to prove to himself that he can do this alone. “Nick, your mother and I… well, we haven’t been happy for a very long time. She’s a great woman and I will always love her, but we haven’t been in love since… since…” he searches for the right words and draws an entirely new conclusion. “Well, I’m not sure we ever were truly in love.”
“You’ve been married for a shit long time for two people who were never in love,” I point out. I can feel my anger rising, radiating off me in waves. “And there’s the fact that this opinion is one-sided. You can’t possibly expect me to believe that Mom feels the same way?”
“She does,” Evie murmurs softly and my eyes slice to her. “You’ve seen it, Nick. Your mother isn’t a woman in love. She never has been. She’s just too God-damned stubborn to do anything about it because she wouldn’t want to lose face.”
“You don’t like her,” I remind Evie, trying not to sound too judgemental. I don’t want to lose this precious and fragile new closeness between us, but I also can’t allow her to speak on behalf of my mother. “And even if it’s true, Dad, that’s no excuse for having an affair.”
My father doesn’t argue. “I know that. Evie told me to end things with Mary-Anne months ago, when I met Barbara…”
“Oh, she has a name, does she?”
“Nick, stop it,” Evie snaps at my scornful tone.
“How could you condone this, Evie?”
“I didn’t condone it,” she says gently, with only the slightest tilt of her chin, “but I understood why and how it happened. Tell him,” she adds, laying a small hand on my father’s sleeve. “Tell him,” she repeats when he shakes his head, no.
“Your parents haven’t had sex in over eight years,” Evie announces.
Oh hell no!
“Nick doesn’t want to hear it, Evie,” my dad mumbles, his face glowing.
“Tough. Eight years, Nick,” she continues, unrepentant.
“Yeah, well... they’re old.”
Their dual snorts make me cringe.
“I’m old, not dead, son,” Dad says, while Evie nods sagely beside him.
“I don’t want to hear this,” I groan, dropping my head into my hands. Neither of them speaks. “Where is Mom now?” I ask, when I finally raise my head.
“She’s gone to the club,” my dad replies. “They needed help with tallying the proceeds of last night’s bingo evening.”
“She’s… gone… to… the… country… club?” I ask, each word a statement. “To count money?”
My father shrugs. “You know your mother.”
“Apparently not as well as I thought.”
Evie is smug but sympathetic. “She doesn’t love him, Nick. She never has. This is a good thing – now they both have the chance to be happy.”
“How do you even know about this?”
“That’s my fault,” my dad intervenes quickly. “Evie was… um…
she…” he seems to have second thoughts about whatever it is he was going to say so Evie fills in the blanks.
“I went over there a few months ago to spray more glyphosate on your mother’s petunias,” she admits with a flash of contrition. No wonder those petunias never grow. “I saw your dad’s car in the drive, which was odd because it was the middle of the morning, so I went in through the back door and…” she shifts a little in her seat and my dad’s face blazes crimson. “Anyway,” Evie waves her hand and, most likely, the mental image, away. “It all came out.”
“Evie didn’t judge me,” Dad tells me proudly, as if this proof of just how wonderful my wife is shouldn’t go unnoticed, “but she did tell me to make a decision one way or another. To end things with Barbara, or ask your mother for a divorce.”
Evie gives me a look that’s clearly supposed to say I told you so, but I’m already speaking. “But you didn’t do either of those things, did you?”
“No,” he admits. “I didn’t. Not then.”
I take a giant swig of my beer. “How did Mom find out?”
“Barbara told her.”
“Barbara?”
“The woman your dad’s been seeing,” Evie explains quickly.
“I know who she is,” I cannot believe I’m having this conversation, “what I want to know is why she’s the one who dropped the bomb on my mother.”
“She didn’t do it to be cruel,” my dad says. “Just the opposite, in fact. Barbara knows how difficult it’s been for me to tell your mother the truth. She’s a good woman, Nick, and she didn’t mean for any of this to happen. Neither of us did. Anyway,” he hastens to add when I fix him with a cold look, “I’ve been growing more and more desperate to have it all out, but your mother – well, you know she’s not the easiest person to talk to. When Barbara realised my nerve had failed me yet again, she took matters into her own hands and she contacted your mom.”
“How convenient for her. No, I’m sorry Dad,” I hold up my hand as he opens his mouth, no doubt to defend her, “but you expect me to believe that Barbara told Mom to help you, when it conveniently gets her exactly what she wants? Leaving you free to continue your relationship with her, unencumbered? I’m not buying it.”
“Barbara left me.”
Evie recovers first. “Oh, David, I’m so sorry!”
“She told your mother about the affair after she’d broken things off with me,” my father says. “And I’m ashamed to admit it, but I’m glad that she did.”
“How did Mary-Anne take it?” Evie asks.
My father laughs, a horrible, sad sound. “She’s worried about what the bridge ladies will think, but she wants me out of the house.”
“Do you think she’ll give you a divorce?” Not ‘do you think she’ll divorce you’, or ‘can you work it out’. Again, I get the eerie sense that Evie knows something I couldn’t possibly understand.
His face crumples again. “Oh God, Evie, I hope so.”
34
Evie
“You should’ve told me.” Nick is more disappointed than angry, which makes me feel worse. We’re finally alone. Kat and Jack left discreetly during our conversation with David, and David himself left a few minutes ago. I’d invited him to stay the night in Julia’s old room, but he’d declined. He’s staying with one of his business partners whose wife is abroad visiting their daughter.
I give Nick an apologetic look. “I know. I’m sorry, but I didn’t feel it was my secret to tell.”
“Have you met her?”
“Not officially,” I say, recalling the sight of Barbara’s pink, wobbling backside disappearing down the hall the day I caught them in flagrante. I would never tell Nick they were on Mary-Anne’s Persian carpet. He’d never let the kids play on it again. “But I hope to.”
“How can you say that?”
“Because it’s the truth. I know this is a lot to take in, but deep down you know this is the best thing for all of them. Your mother included.”
He knows I’m right. His face tells me so, but he’s not ready to admit it yet, so, instead, he changes the subject. “Did you really poison her petunias?”
I nod, sheepishly.
“She’s been on the phone to every botany specialist in the state about those fucking flowers.”
“I know.”
“Do you feel even a little bit guilty?”
“Not really.”
His eyes are sparkling now. “You’re worse than the kids.”
‘She started it.”
“Because she didn’t like your T-shirt?” he’s teasing me now.
“Please don’t be too harsh on him.” As much as I want to drop the subject I feel the urge to protect David. I need to know that he and Nick will be okay. “He never wanted to hurt her.”
“I believe that,” he sighs. “And I know my mom hasn’t made his life easy.” He ponders this for a minute. “Do you think Barbara will give him another chance?”
“I hope so.” I draw in a deep breath and add, “He loves her.”
“My mother isn’t equipped to cope on her own.”
“Your mother will be fine. We’ll help her through this, just as we’ll help David. We’re family, and that’s what family does.”
“Will you stop poisoning her plants?”
“I’ll do one better. I’ll buy her some new ones.”
It turns out I was right. The following morning we pay Mary-Anne a visit. Nick is all smiles and gentle coaxing, pussy-footing around her as though she might shatter into a million pieces.
“I take it you’ve spoken to your father,” she snaps, after about five minutes of tolerating it.
“We have,” I say. “And we wanted to know if there’s anything we can do.”
“Actually, there is,” Mary-Anne sniffs primly. “Firstly, Nick, you can stop walking on eggshells. I’m a grown woman, I can deal with whatever life throws my way. And second, you can take those revolting plants with you when you leave.” She eyes the peace offering Nick insisted I buy her with disdain. “Petunias are far too much work. The bloody things just don’t grow and, if I’m going to be spending most of my time at the club, I want a low maintenance garden.”
Nick is struck utterly dumb. “Close your mouth,” Mary-Anne snaps. He does and she continues more gently. “I know this might be hard for you to understand, sweetheart, but sometimes people grow apart. I know divorce sounds scary, but it’s not as if you’re losing either of us. Think of it as a fresh new start.” She’s addressing him as one would speak to a child and I stuff my scarf into my mouth to keep from giggling. “Your father and I will always care for one another, but this is for the best.” She pats his knee and misses the fact that his mouth is agape once more. She turns to look at me and I mould my face into a suitably attentive expression. Mary-Anne rolls her eyes – rolls her eyes – and turns back to Nick, saying, with the utmost sincerity, “After all, not every couple is fortunate enough to have what you and Evie do.”
I don’t have time to react before she’s on her feet. “Now, if you two will excuse me, I’d like to spend some time with my grandchildren. Which reminds me, Evie, dear, Grace Fawcett sent me an article the other day about the dangers of children spending too much time on these iPads and things. They’re calling it digital heroin; would you believe it! You will keep an eye on Jesse, won’t you?” And with that, she walks away, her crisp trouser suit barely shifting, without a thought for the fact that she’s the one who bought him the iPad in the first place.
I slide across the sofa and close Nick’s mouth, gently pressing up against his jaw with the tip of my finger.
“What just happened?” he asks.
“It was her way of letting us know she’s okay.”
“She can’t. I can’t…”
“Nick?”
“Hmmm?”
“It’s really none of our business.”
Together, we stand and walk outside, arm in arm, to join Mary-Anne and the kids in a friendly game of football. “
I can’t believe she paid you a compliment,” Nick whispers, just before we come within earshot of the others.
“Don’t worry,” I whisper back, “I won’t let it go to my head.”
I fall asleep in the car on the drive home. I only played one game before my strength gave out, but I still made sure we won, carrying Casey, who clutched the ball to her chest, until we had passed the goal-posts. Nick had given us the goal and I’d even high-fived Mary-Anne, although, in truth, all she did was stand around in that white trouser suit and avoid any contact with the ball. After I had pulled out, she’d made slightly more effort, but I’d still keeled over laughing when the ball, kicked by an avenging Jesse, had hit her in the gut and knocked all the wind out of her. After that we were both benched, leaving Casey to valiantly face the heavily-manned field on her own. Being Casey, and much adored by her bigger brothers, she still won by two goals.
“We’re home,” Nick coos in my ear, rousing me from my dream memory. I smile and open my eyes to find the car empty, the kids already inside.
“Do you need any help?” Nick asks as I get out. I shake my head, stretch my arms and walk toward the house. The ache in my bones is getting harder to ignore. The pain subsided substantially after my hospital visit, but it’s been almost a month and I should’ve known it wouldn’t last.
“Come here, you three,” I call the kids as I go upstairs. In my room, I beckon them onto my bed, filthy feet and all, and feel the warmth of them sinking into my bones as we huddle together. Jesse’s back is pressed up against my stomach, my arms holding him tightly against me, while Dylan and Casey peer over my back and my butt respectively. “What was your favourite part of today?” I mumble sleepily.
Dylan liked the soccer, Casey the chocolate-chip ice-cream cones May-Anne had made, which we enjoyed sitting on the grass while the sun beat down and melted it faster than we could eat. “And you, Jesse?” I ask into the thatch of his dark hair. I breathe in the scent of grass and apple shampoo and the faint tang of stinky boy simmering beneath.
“I don’t know,” he mumbles into my arm.
