by Hugh Breakey
‘And I think maybe I knew. Somehow, I learned you hadn’t been there for me. Maybe in that first day when you were nowhere to be found, Doctor Varma told me why my wife wasn’t there for me. And that’s why I was so angry with you when you first showed up here. Last time. That’s why I wanted the divorce, and why I never mentioned you in the letter. You hadn’t been there for me, and I wanted you out of my life.’
She wasn’t glaring at me anymore. The worse my accusations had got, the more her expression became something else. Imploring. She went to speak but I cut in before she had a chance. ‘Don’t lie to me.’
Her teeth bit down on her lip. ‘Robbie, I made a terrible mistake.’
The strength went from my body, my shoulders slumping into the wall behind me.
‘But I’m not that person anymore.’ She sat up straighter. ‘I went back to the program. And no matter how hard and lonely it got, I’ve never once fallen. Because I knew you needed me, and I had to do better.’ She stumbled to her feet and padded towards me, until she stood within arm’s reach, wide eyes looking up at me. ‘I fucked up, Robbie. And you can blame me for failing to be there then, when you needed me. But don’t blame me for being here now. This is me doing the right thing. Fixing what I broke.’
Her hand reached out, but I flinched from it, my back pressing hard into the wall behind me. ‘How did it happen?’
She let her hand fall back, clasping it in front of her. ‘I was weak.’ She shook her head in anguish. ‘Let’s leave it at that. You don’t want a history lesson. And I’ve changed since then. Grown.’
‘Informed choice, remember?’
‘Right.’ She didn’t look happy about it, but she seemed resigned. ‘I need a cigarette.’
‘Okay. Let’s go outside.’
I went out to the balcony as Julie got dressed. Trapped under the starless sky, the warm breeze felt heavy, like a storm was coming.
When she came out she’d pulled on a pair of shorts under my old T-shirt. Even in the ugly orange light spilling up from the streetlights below, she was beautiful. It would be so easy to let this whole thing slide, to just give in to her.
Our eyes met for the briefest of moments. Hers looked serious and sad—but beyond that she was impossible to read. She went to the balcony rail and tapped out a cigarette.
She lit it and sighed out a stream of smoke. ‘You know most of the story already. We didn’t know about the timing. It had already happened twice so we knew it might happen again, but we didn’t know when.’
She turned to look at me. I nodded, and a hint of hope flickered in her eyes. She still didn’t understand.
‘We were doing okay. You were planning your new show. I was doing great at AA. A year dry, and I was sponsoring—I told you about Jazi. But what I didn’t say was that the more I worked with her, the more all these old memories flooded back about how I used to be.’ Her gaze flashed to me. ‘Sometimes I think you don’t realise how lucky you are, not to be haunted by history. The rest of us are slaves to it.’
I returned her gaze evenly. She was dead wrong. History still haunted me. It was standing right in front of me, dragging on a cigarette in the thick night air.
Julie turned away, looking back to the city lights. ‘Jazi didn’t have someone like you lifting her up and the program wasn’t working for her. Despite all the problems it caused, drinking still felt good. I thought I could reach her.’ Julie shrugged with a grimace. ‘She reached me instead.’
The words came out in broken puffs of smoke, her rueful smile twisting into bitterness. ‘It wasn’t her fault. I should’ve had the resources to stop me from falling back into that world.’ She stubbed out the last of the dying cigarette, twisting it into the top of the metal railing.
‘Go on.’
‘I found out later why my defences didn’t work.’ She flicked the dead cigarette away off the balcony. ‘You remember I told you about muscle memory? The thing is, the body only remembers properly when it’s in the same situation where it actually learned the lesson. When you’re in those same shoes again, with those people, that music, that smell—that’s when you remember.’
‘That’s why you took me to the dance tonight.’
She nodded. ‘It’s the same with all memory. All the lessons I’d drummed into my head only worked so long as I was sober, and in a sober place. Once I followed Jazi into her world and risked the first drink, I fell right back into my old ways. Pfft.’ She flicked her hand: a magician’s flourish.
‘And that was when it happened. When you were out with her.’
‘I went to a party with her. The plan was to show her she could be dry and still enjoy life. I made it for about two hours before that message twisted in my mind, and I convinced myself I could show her how you could drink responsibly and still enjoy life. I don’t remember much after that. There’s just a gap until the next afternoon, when I’m in hospital myself, having my stomach pumped.’ She turned to face me. ‘I was a wreck, I was sick—and I knew how badly I’d let both of us down. You hadn’t called my mobile at all and you weren’t answering my texts. I later found out you didn’t have your phone on you anymore. But in my muddled head, I somehow convinced myself you knew, and were angry.’
‘Would I have been? Angry?’
She shook her head. ‘Disappointed.’ She slid down against the railing, until she sat on the balcony floor. ‘When I finally made it home, more than a day later, there were all the messages on the home phone, and I realised what had happened. I raced to find you, but by then you’d moved hospitals. I was hysterical. The knowledge of what I’d done just kept playing on repeat through my head. Everything you’re feeling about me right now—anger, disappointment—’
Betrayal.
‘—multiply that by a thousand and that’s where I was at. By the time I had my head together, it was too late.’ She looked up at me. ‘I think you were right that Doctor Varma knew. I don’t know if doctors can search hospital records, but one way or another, she knew. She never approved of me even before that. She knew about my drinking problem, and I’d just confirmed all her worst fears. After we’d finally got in touch, she blocked me at every turn. As if you were better off without me.’ Julie’s voice cracked, and she fumbled for another cigarette. ‘I shouldn’t hate her. Everything she did was to protect you.’ She swallowed hard, as if choking down a bitter pill. ‘I don’t hate her for being wrong about me.’
‘You hate her for being right.’
She nodded. ‘She was right. Was. I was different back then. Stupid and arrogant. I should have known my limitations. I should have known all my precious strategies weren’t foolproof.’
‘Of course you should.’ Julie blinked at my words. ‘You should have known because it’s important, and if it’s important it’s worth being smart about.’
‘Right.’
‘Just like you were being smart in not telling me about this.’ I kept my tone neutral. ‘In keeping it hidden. Because that’s what you do when things are important. You get smart about them.’
‘But that’s how I beat it.’ She pulled herself to her feet. ‘By being smart. I put in the work and I beat it. For us.’
‘I believe you.’
Julie gasped with relief. She stepped forward, holding out her hand. She still didn’t understand. I turned my back and made for the door.
‘Robbie? What are you doing?’
I retreated into the cool of the kitchen, the sterile white light.
‘Where are you going?’ I could hear Julie’s footfalls following me into the cool. Her hand closed on my shoulder, wrenching me around to face her. ‘I know I let you down. But please believe me when I say I’ve paid for it.’
‘Me too.’ The words were out of my mouth before my mind had formed them.
‘But you don’t have to keep on paying.’ She stepped forward, grasping my hands before I could back further away. ‘That’s the point of everything I’ve done. To make it right again. That’s why I could never give up
. So you wouldn’t have to pay anymore for my weakness.’
‘You don’t understand. This is not about what you did a year ago. It’s what you did today.’
Julie looked at me in surprise. She drew back, and her grip on my hands loosened. ‘What—’
‘You weren’t going to tell me.’ I pulled my hands from her grasp. ‘If I hadn’t figured it out myself, I would never have known.’
‘I didn’t lie to you. Not directly. I just—’
‘You said you were away in the country. You said that’s why it took you days to get back.’
She glared at me.
And I glared back: ‘I told you no more secrets. I told you why it was important. You said you understood.’
‘I do understand.’ She was almost pleading, her eyes red-rimmed. ‘But I’m hanging on to all this by my fingertips. It took me a year just to get you talking to me again. Just to hear you say my name. A year, Robbie, of silence and loneliness. I couldn’t just throw all that away.’
‘You couldn’t risk letting me decide.’
She didn’t know what to say. I could see her mind racing behind her eyes, but she just looked up at me, dumbstruck, wringing her hands.
‘You were never going to let me make an informed choice, knowing the good and bad.’ I folded my arms across my chest. ‘Why let me choose when I might make the wrong choice?’
‘There’s more at stake here than you having some perfect choice over everything.’ Her hands balled into fists as sorrow gave way to frustration.
‘No, Julie. There isn’t. In two days, that decision will be the only thing left to me. It was the one thing I asked from you. That you let me make a choice that would be my own, and not somebody else’s.’ I tried to keep my voice calm. And mostly failed. ‘You had to tell me.’
‘How could I?’ She seemed on the verge of screaming. ‘How could anyone? Nobody tells the person they love their worst failings. How do you think it would have gone? “Oh, you know what? I betrayed you in the one moment you needed me. Just by the way, you know. FYI.”’ Her voice cracked in rage. ‘It’s impossible to ask that of anybody. Nobody does that. Nobody can do that!’
‘No one has to. I see that now. So I’m never going to ask it again. Of you. Of anybody.’
‘You can’t mean…’ Her voice trailed off.
I held my silence. She knew what I meant.
‘Don’t throw this away, Robbie. Not after we’ve come so far,’ she pleaded. ‘Look, I understand now how it is for you. You need to be able to trust whoever is there when you wake. They are your memory. They are your…’—she fumbled for the word—‘your life raft. I can do that. I will do that.’ She looked around, grabbing my journal and holding it out to me. ‘We can document it. All this history can go in your journal. Then it’s there forever. The good and the bad.’
‘You’re being smart about this.’
‘Yes.’ She nodded vigorously. ‘And you need to be smart about this too. Right here and right now. This is your future.’
I took the journal from her hands. Her eyes blazed with hope. I set it back in its place, and picked up my pen and the yellow envelope on the bench, with the divorce papers in it. I put the envelope down on the table.
‘The important things in your life aren’t what you should be smart about.’ I extended my hand, offering the pen to her. ‘They’re what you should be honest about.’
Julie shook her head in horror, backing away. ‘How can you pull this now? After everything?’
‘I told you yesterday what I needed.’ My voice sounded loud. ‘And then again this afternoon. It’s only happening now, after everything, because it’s only now that I see the truth you hid.’ My fingers shook as they held out the pen.
‘Why are you angry?’ Her voice rose to meet mine. ‘I’m the one getting dumped.’
‘I’m angry because I want this,’ I yelled. ‘This life you’ve shown me. But I didn’t ask for dancing, or dinner, or anything else. I just asked for the one thing you wouldn’t give me. The truth. And so now I have to walk away from it all, despite—’ I clamped down on whatever word was coming, slamming my jaws so hard together my teeth clacked.
‘Despite what?’
‘It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what I want, or how I feel. Because in two days I’ll forget everything, and what I’ll need then is someone I can fucking trust.’
I stepped forward, holding the pen out to her again.
‘I can’t do it.’ She flinched from it, her eyes welling. ‘Not after…’ She pointed at me in anger. ‘You put my ring on…on my…’
Wedding finger.
She couldn’t say the words. Sheer force of will had held back her tears at the dance, but nothing could hold them back now.
As angry as I was, it killed me to see her like this. It wasn’t her fault—I just needed something impossible.
Deep breath. ‘We made an agreement. You would show me how it could be, and in the end, I would decide. You promised.’
‘You promised, too!’ she raged. ‘All those years ago. You said it’d be safe for me to fall for you, because you’d always be there for me. I would never have let you in otherwise.’
‘That promise was from another world. Yours was from just a few hours ago.’ Fear tugged at my heart. What if she refused to honour it?
‘Stop talking. Just stop!’ Her hands went to her head, almost wrapping around it, as if she could block her ears.
I wiped a tear from my eye in frustration. Not the time to show weakness.
A shuddering breath shook her body, and she lowered her hands to her sides. The emotion that seemed to have twisted her body released it. The prim posture returned.
Step by slow step, she walked over to the table, and slipped down onto the chair. She slid the papers out of the yellow envelope.
I put the pen down beside the paper. The hand that picked it up shook, but no hint of emotion flickered across her face. She looked like a queen being led to the block, determined to leave with dignity.
The pen paused, poised above the document. I watched it hover in place. She still had all the power. In two days I would forget, and she would remain. She could still come at me with lawyers and crowbars.
‘Let’s be free of this.’ My voice was a whisper. ‘Both of us.’
The pen closed on the paper, she signed her name and flipped to the next marking. Page by page she worked her way through the document. Then she shuffled the pages together and placed them neatly on the envelope.
‘I’ll get my stuff.’ Her voice was small.
I stepped out of her way. As soon as she left the kitchen, I scooped up the pages and slipped them into the envelope. Then I put it up on top of the fridge where it would be safe from any sudden changes of mind. Guilt gripped me. It felt wrong to doubt her. Whatever her failings, Julie had kept her word in this at least.
I waited for her in the dominoes room. Standing there should have made me feel better. This work could now return to its purpose, free from the haphazard interventions of past lives—past wives. Just a few words more and I would shut the door. Safe and alone again.
Julie emerged from the bedroom into the kitchen wearing her party dress. Her shoes clicked across the kitchen floor. The fridge door squeaked open.
‘I’m taking my birthday present.’ She entered the dominoes room, stuffing the champagne bottle into her bag.
‘Don’t do that. Don’t be like that.’
‘Fuck you.’ She strode past me without a second look. ‘One vice at a time.’
One vice at a time. Worst vice first. That was what I’d become for her.
I tried to think of a decent goodbye. Everything she’d done to work herself into my life, all the years of marriage we’d spent together deserved something. But I stood there, mute, watching her leave.
Her hand closed around the doorknob. ‘This isn’t what they were for, you know.’ Her voice sounded flat, indifferent. ‘The dominoes. The ramps and platforms.’ She half-tu
rned, and gestured at my work with her free hand. ‘They aren’t here for you to show your achievement, or carry on your identity, or whatever your bullshit letter said.’
She kept her gaze fixed on the work, as if studying it with a scientific detachment, dark lips on her pale face curling in contempt. ‘You wanted full disclosure.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Eighty-three thousand isn’t a record. The world record is ten times that or something ridiculous. You can look it up in five seconds online.’ She turned to face me, folding her arms across her chest. ‘The dominoes didn’t come from the author of your precious letter. They came from my Robbie. And he wouldn’t have cared less about some stupid record.’ Scorn dripped from her voice.
‘What are they for, then?’ I tried to muster some strength in my voice, but there was nothing left inside. Whatever final barbs of stings and lies—or of pain and truth—she wanted to plant under my skin, I had no resistance to offer them.
‘Eighty-three thousand was the number we calculated to fit the stage at the Box Theatre. It had to be there, because we needed the raised seating. He’d hit on the idea after the second forgetting, ordering all the boxes, and the equipment and extra tools we’d need. But then it happened again. The third forgetting. When the time came for delivery, it was after I’d tracked you down. So I altered the delivery address and sent them here, hoping—’ Her scowl deepened. ‘I don’t know what I was hoping. But one day, all the boxes must have just arrived.’ She shrugged again, almost a scoff. ‘Then your precious letter-writer apparently decided to make it sound like he’d come up with a special project for you.’ She squared her shoulders, putting her hands on her hips, and her voice found a firmer edge. ‘But none of this was his. It just landed on his doorstep.’
She lashed this history across my raw, exposed mind, targeting the letter and the task. Everything I’d been holding sacred. ‘What were they for, then?’ I moved to stand in front of her. I kept my voice flat like hers. Not defensive. Not vulnerable. ‘If they weren’t to break a record, then why did he want them?’
