Yet another telling blow.
As I cut Jonah’s apple slices into butterfly shapes, I flicked through the White Pages. Molesdale, M. Only one listed in the book. There was her number—identical to the one on our phone bill—and there was her address. Some place in Randwick.
Then Emily woke up, and put an end to my surreptitious investigations. She was in a chatty mood, spouting questions like a telephone pollster. Why wasn’t I wearing my slippers? Why weren’t my feet cold? Why didn’t Jonah like crumpets? Would Daddy be waking up soon? What were we going to do, today?
‘We’re going to Kerry and Paul’s house for lunch,’ I replied.
‘Who?’
‘You know. You know Kerry and Paul. They have two big girls, don’t you remember? Don’t you remember Gemma and Zoe?’
‘Gemma?’
‘And Zoe. They have that little white dog. And the orange cat with the bell around its neck.’
‘Oh!’ My daughter’s memory is highly selective. ‘And the swimming pool?’
‘That’s the one.’
‘And they have a big doll’s house!’
‘That’s it.’
‘Yay!’ She flung her arms around my thighs. ‘Is Daddy coming?’
‘Of course.’
‘Yay!’
She dashed into her bedroom, to pack a bag. Emily can’t go anywhere without her bag. It’s a blue plush monkey with a zippered hole in its gut, and she always stuffs it so full of hairclips, doll’s clothes, markers, novelty key rings, old Christmas cards and plastic farm animals that it looks permanently pregnant. She has this idea in her head that you can’t go anywhere unless you’re laden with junk. As a result, we never visit anyone’s house without leaving something vital behind: a stamp, perhaps, or a stuffed rabbit, or the lid of a miniature teapot. Something, at any rate, that’s absolutely vital to her general wellbeing, as we always discover when we’re pulling into our garage. Fortunately, my daughter’s displays of misery are loud but brief, like summer storms. And she can usually be silenced with something as straightforward as a muesli bar.
But I don’t really have a right to complain, considering the baggage that I always drag around. It’s obvious that Emily gets her packhorse mentality from me. When you travel with two young children, you can’t afford to overlook any eventuality. If you forget the water, they’ll want a drink. If you pack a sandwich, they’ll want an apple. Spare disposable nappies are a must, of course, as are wet wipes, nappy bags, tissues, bandaids, and a change of clothes for each child. If you don’t include a change of clothes, you’re laying yourself open to all kinds of disasters: toilet-training accidents, carsickness, milkshake spillages— even complete immersion in a stagnant duckpond.
That’s why I can’t trust Matt to handle preparations for a family outing. He never remembers to make Emily go to the toilet before she gets in the car. He always forgets Jonah’s bottle, or Emily’s hat. There’s invariably something that we come away without, if it’s left to him. I know, I know. Don’t remind me. I sound like the proverbial ball-and-chain off on a ranting feminist diatribe, but it’s true. Most men can’t seem to organise these things. Honestly. I’ve talked about it again and again at playgroup, and I always hear the same story from every mother there. Sometimes it gets quite surreal, like the husband who loaded up his car with everything except the baby. Or the husband who took his kids on a weekend trip to the north coast without packing underpants or sunscreen.
Mind you, I’ve never met a man who’s the primary carer, so it might not be a gender thing after all. Matt’s very firm on that point. He also thinks I’m a bit—well, hyper is probably the word. And I suppose that I do go overboard on occasion, dragging raincoats around everywhere. Providing a choice of beverages (milk, water or juice). Always adding yet one more emergency nappy, just in case.
But what can you do? It’s conditioning. After that first year, with all the bottle disinfecting equipment, and nursing pads, and spare dummies, and teething gel, and extra bibs, of course I’m going to feel uneasy if a bag seems too light. Automatically, you register an absence. Something forgotten.
That’s why some trips are hardly worth the hassle. That’s why my social life always leaves me so exhausted. Preparing for a picnic is like preparing for a three-day hike.
I was thinking about this as I hovered over the toaster. If picnics had become like three-day hikes, and the laundry like a full-time job, and evenings like tactical training exercises, then what time had I been able to spare for Matthew, lately? None, of course. Perhaps he had been feeling neglected. Perhaps he had sensed a yawning chasm opening up between us. Our points of connection had been reduced to domestic practicalities. (And don’t even talk to me about sex.) When had we last gone out to dinner—by ourselves? Walked along the beach—unburdened by plastic buckets? Visited a secondhand book shop—for more than ten minutes? I’ll tell you when. When my parents were still living on the North Shore. Three years ago, they retired to the southern highlands, and that was that.
I’ve never had much help from Matt’s side of the family, you see. It’s partly because they all live so far away, and partly because Jonah happens to be my mother-in-law’s eleventh grandchild. We went to Newcastle for the festive season, one year, and it was like a mosh pit around the Christmas tree: eleven children under the age of ten, ripping into presents as they elbowed each other out of the way. Poor Marcella has her hands well and truly full, up there; I wouldn’t expect her to be popping down here every second weekend. And she always remembers birthdays. Plus she’s always gorgeous when we do get to see her. She’s one of those lovely Italian grandmothers, very physical, always kissing and squeezing and tickling and sucking little pink toes. Even Jonah responds to his granny. Most of the time he’s very cautious with people, nervous of loud voices, suspicious of proffered arms, but he loves Marcella. He loves Matt’s Nonna, too, though poor Nonna doesn’t move around much any more, what with her arthritis. Still, she loves spoiling the kids. She’s one of the few people who’ve ever seen Jonah’s dimples, besides Matt and me.
Anyway, that’s my problem. No accessible grandparents. I don’t need a marriage counsellor to tell me that my husband and I would benefit from some quality time together. That we have to rediscover the shared joys, as well as the shared responsibilities, of the matrimonial state. But who’s going to put Jonah to bed in the meantime? A qualified babysitter, at $12.50 an hour? Even if we could find one around here, a two-hour meal would come to $25 before we had even ordered drinks.
It occurred to me (as I buttered toast) that despite all the deprivations associated with life as a working mother, I hadn’t been feeling so neglected that I’d gone off and found myself a nice building contractor to sleep with. I wouldn’t have felt justified in doing so, though it wasn’t as if Matthew had been very attentive to my needs lately. Not that I’ve had many needs that I’ve been conscious of, except the need for a decent night’s sleep, and the need for someone to fix that damn cupboard door in the kitchen, but you know what I mean: the sort of needs that people talk about in therapy sessions and modern literature. The need to feel appreciated. Unique. Spiritually nourished. All that sort of stuff. Okay, so I might not have been providing enough in the way of affirmation, but you could say the same thing about him. And did I blame him for it? No, I did not! All I did was blame him for sensible things, like leaving his shaving soap out where Jonah could get at it.
I was thinking all this when Matthew stumbled into the kitchen. Again, it’s not his fault that I’m wide awake the second I open my eyes, while he’s semi-comatose for a good half-hour after rising. You can’t blame him for that. It’s genetic. You might as well blame him for his hairy chest or his big ears.
Even so, I do wish sometimes that I got to put my feet up in the morning.
‘We’ll have to take something,’ I said to him, and he stared at me with bleary eyes.
‘Ughn?’ he said.
‘We’ll have to take something to the Irwin
s. A cake, or something. Wine? Have we got any wine?’
‘Dunno.’ Matt wiped a hand over his bristly face. Then he went to have a shower.
It’s impossible to converse with him until he has his morning shower.
By the time Matt emerged, Jonah was getting really antsy. The poor kid had been up since 5.45, and it was already half past eight. So there was a lot of noise and discussion among the dirty dishes (those drains, by the way, are beginning to stink again— should I go straight out and buy Drano or try some vinegar first?), and finally it was agreed that Matt should take Jonah and Emily to the park until the local bottle shop opened, while I cleaned the house, packed the travelling supplies, and made myself presentable. I stressed that we would have to leave for Tamarama by eleven o’clock at the latest. Then I waved them off and shut the front door, savouring the silence that they left behind.
I love having the house to myself. God, it’s fantastic. Just me and The Silence, which I picture as a kind of large cat, blinking and fluffy, very still and exuding calm. The kids always scare it right out of the house. But when I’m here alone, even when I’m vacuuming, it’s not far away. As soon as I switch off the vacuum cleaner, it’s in the room again, as dense as smoke.
I never appreciated it before, not the way I do now. The Silence. The Stillness. I went around picking up toys, Rice Bubbles, dirty socks and old newspapers, enjoying each creak of the floorboards—because you don’t notice them creaking normally during the day (too much noise), and at night each creak is like a pistol-shot, making you flinch as you try to creep past the kids’ room on your way to the toilet. Unfortunately, however, the vacuuming had to be done, so I was unable to wallow for more than a few minutes. There’s always some big, dirty job scheduled for when the kids are out of the house; you never get to sit back and bask in the peace. If it’s not the vacuuming (which scares Jonah—he thinks that the vacuum cleaner’s going to eat him) it’s something involving water or paint. You can’t afford to let Emily and Jonah get anywhere near water or paint. Not inside the house, you can’t.
While I vacuumed, I had the leisure to think about sex. So far I’d been able to avoid picturing Matt with his dick inside another woman, but there’s something about vacuum cleaners, and the way you push that long shaft about . . . well, you get my drift. I couldn’t help myself. I thought about this alleged purple-haired girl, in bed, under Matthew, and I was cast adrift. I didn’t know how I felt. Afraid? Angry? Disgusted? All three of the above? Miriam had said that the purple-haired girl looked like a junkie. Was she, in fact, just that? Was Matthew bonking a junkie? Surely, surely, he couldn’t be so stupid? And even if she wasn’t a junkie, even if he wore condoms, how could that possibly be clean or safe?
But in a funny sort of way, it wasn’t the physical thing that I minded so much. I didn’t really believe that sex with her could be anywhere near as good as the variety he got at home—not unless he was willing to sacrifice quality for quantity. Granted, we didn’t do it much. Granted, we were both a bit deprived in that area. Nevertheless, as the kids got older, our pace was bound to pick up; couldn’t he see that? Wasn’t it glaringly obvious that our kind of compatibility couldn’t be found on every street corner? We’d always been a natural fit, and years of shared experience had refined and improved our techniques. I mean, I knew the guy—at least in this regard. I knew what he liked. So why the hell was he going elsewhere?
I told myself that there was every chance he hadn’t gone elsewhere. I reminded myself that I hadn’t established his infidelity beyond all doubt. But if he had gone elsewhere, then the sex—the physical side of it—surely wasn’t the reason. I couldn’t believe that it was. Matt wasn’t one of those men who would screw a sheep or a prostitute or a mate’s girlfriend in pure desperation, just because he had to get his rocks off at least once a day. His testosterone levels weren’t off the chart. He was a normal guy, I was sure of it. Unless he had been nursing a deeply buried desire to have someone pee on him, or something?
No. Not a chance.
No, if Matt was having an affair, it was because he wanted something besides sex. Adoration, perhaps. Unknown Territory. The freedom to yell during orgasm, without worrying that Jonah might wake up.
A navel stud, maybe?
It made me so furious, the notion that Matt might be wanting fancy underwear or foot massages as well as kids, dinner, a clean house, an extra income, a laundry service and my fabulous muffin recipe. But before I could build up a really savage head of steam, I found myself beginning to worry about all the things that I wasn’t providing. The list was far too long. His last birthday had completely slipped my mind. (Though I had apologised profusely, the damage was done.) I would often greet him, not with a kiss and an inquiry about his day, but with a complaint about the builders, or about the fact that he hadn’t filled the car up with petrol. I had stopped buying the shower gel he liked, because it was too expensive. And of course there were all those other things: movies, restaurants, brunch, sex, unstinting admiration . . .
Then I caught sight of myself in a mirror, as I wiped down the shower stall, and something clicked. The hair. The droop. The unplucked eyebrows.
By the time Matt returned with Emily and Jonah, I had put on lipstick, mascara, eyeshadow, earrings, perfume, pantyhose, my Italian slingbacks and my Lisa Ho cream chiffon dress.
Matt stared at me in a startled fashion.
‘You look nice,’ he said, sounding surprised. I didn’t know whether to be flattered or resentful. I didn’t really have time to be either, because Jonah launched himself at me, his face besmeared with ice-cream, and I had to duck behind a chair.
That’s the trouble with dressing up to go out. These days, I’m always torn between wanting to look nice and not wanting to get any of my remaining good clothes (that still fit me) irretrievably soiled by small, grubby fingers. The Lisa Ho dress, up till now, has fallen into the category of ‘wedding receptions without kids’ or even ‘if I ever appear on TV/meet Ralph Fiennes/get invited to a Royal garden party’. But you have to be realistic, don’t you? You have to bite the bullet and take a few risks, if you want to keep your husband.
That’s what I told myself, anyway.
‘Ice-cream?’ I said. ‘At this hour?’ And Matt instantly went on the defensive.
‘There was a Mr Whippy,’ he explained. ‘Jonah hurt himself.’
‘What did you do to your face, Mummy?’ Emily asked. But I ignored her.
‘Will you wipe him down, Matt? Please? I’m wearing my good dress.’
‘Yeah. Sure,’ said Matt. ‘Maybe I should change. Do you reckon?’
‘Better make it quick. We’re already late.’
So Matt took off his T-shirt and put on a shirt. He’s come a long way since I first met him; he’ll wear colours now, and tops that button down the front. The result is that he’s looking better than ever (despite a certain coarsening of the skin and a very slight—almost undetectable—thinning of the hair) while I’m rapidly coming apart. The hands. The stretch marks. The cellulite.
What if I haven’t held together enough for Matt? What if that’s the trouble? Could it really be that banal?
Looking at him as he slapped on his sunglasses, I asked myself: suppose he went bald? Would I still love him then?
Actually, I almost wish he would go bald. At least if he was bald, my cellulite wouldn’t matter so much.
The trip to Tamarama was accomplished without excessive drama. As usual, there was tension over who got to play what music, with Matt and Emily competing stubbornly for control of the CD player. Having been forced to shelve all songs featuring certain four-letter words and references to guns, butts, sex, whores, drugs and pussies (I’d hate to tell you what Emily started singing in the car one day, on the subject of pussies), Matt’s decided that he should be given at least some opportunity to play those songs which haven’t been consigned to the ‘headphones only’ basket. It’s a matter of principle, with him. Emily, on the other hand, has her own t
aste in music. She likes the Wiggles, Sesame Street, Christmas carols and certain Disney favourites, over and over again.
Personally, I’d willingly endure ‘Santa Claus is Coming to Town’ twenty-seven times in a row if it meant that I didn’t have to play one round of ‘What animal am I thinking of?’, but Matt feels differently. It’s a battle of wills, every time he starts the engine. I don’t know why he bothers. How can anyone enjoy Counting Crows while Emily is whining and groaning and asking questions in the background? What’s the point? And Matt’s choice of music seems so inappropriate, somehow. Fatboy Slim. Pearl Jam. Sloane. This isn’t music for people with booster seats and wet wipes in the car. This is music for raging young dudes in combi vans, or slick eastern-suburbs types in linen and Ray-Bans and red convertibles. All I feel, when I listen to Matt’s music, is deprived.
Maybe that’s how he’s been feeling, too. Maybe therein lies the problem.
Fortunately, it was a beautiful day. A real beach day. The sky was blue, the air was fresh, and the sea was sparkling. Even Jonah seemed quite satisfied with life, singing along to the Wiggles with cheerful concentration. As for me, I was so beguiled by the cosy family atmosphere that I began to unwind a bit. The knot in my stomach started to unravel. I shoved on a pair of sunglasses, wound down the window and enjoyed that indefinable atmosphere that Sydney always lays on, when the weekend weather’s fine—a kind of laid-back carnival atmosphere, it is— until Emily suddenly threw up. Emily always throws up. She pukes at the drop of a hat: when she’s overtired, when she’s overexcited, when she eats too much, when she eats too little, when she eats grapes or doughnuts or avocado, when she’s been swimming, when she gets her shots, when she’s got a cough or a cold, when it’s been too long since breakfast . . . all the time. She has a very strong ‘gag reflex’. That’s what the doctors told me, after she’d been through a battery of tests because I’d started to worry, and was beginning to wonder if maybe she had something really wrong with her. I mean, when she hadn’t outgrown this rampant spewing by the age of two, I started to get concerned. Though it turned out just to be Emily. Emily’s stomach. She’d get carsick on her tricycle, given the chance.