Broken (18 page)

‘I did not think so.' Hilda passed her another biscuit. ‘Eat up. Everything is always worse on an empty stomach.'

Mattie chewed in silence, while she juggled with the sudden temptation to open up, just a trifle. The thought of being able to discuss
anything
was incredibly appealing, but smacked of a disloyalty that made her gut clench. And then there was the possibility, the
probability
, of being told things she didn't want to hear. This biscuit had now lost all taste, forming instead into a congealed lump that refused to go down.

‘Have another,' Hilda pushed the tin over. ‘And tell me about it.'

Mattie nodded her thanks but looked away from the tin as she forced herself to swallow the biscuit already in her mouth. It travelled slowly down her gullet, carrying with it a wave of pain. Mattie closed her eyes until it had almost dissipated and then brushed the white dusting on her fingers against her pants. ‘It's just . . . well, I'm sure it'll get better. I'm probably having one of those days. You know, when it all just seems so
hard.'

‘That is because it probably
is
,' said Hilda practically.

‘I suppose.'

‘And you said the talking was not helping?'

‘Yes. I don't know' Mattie rubbed her fingers against her sleeve. ‘I'm sure everyone else has the same problems. And sometimes they just seem a bit much.'

‘Men.' Hilda rolled her eyes sympathetically. ‘They never listen.'

Mattie frowned. ‘Yes . . . or they listen
too
much. And you have to watch what you say, because it's like a minefield. And you have to be so careful that you feel
drained
afterwards. Even when things go well.'

‘Because you have been tense.'

‘Yes,'
said Mattie, nodding eagerly. ‘That's
exactly
it.'

‘I know what you mean.'

‘Do you? Do you really?' Mattie stared at Hilda. ‘Do you find sometimes you have to
force
yourself to relax? Like physically make yourself loosen up? God, I get such bad headaches.'

‘I am not surprised.'

‘And like, you know what you want to say, but somehow it never comes out quite right, so you end up being defensive. Like you're always in the wrong.
Always.'

‘Always?'

‘Yes, just about.' Mattie stared at her fingers, and the faint smudges of white that remained. ‘Even when I know I'm not. And afterwards, I feel almost sick.'

‘That does not sound good.'

Mattie glanced at Hilda and flinched at the concern in her face. She got up and went to the sink, washing her hands thoroughly.

‘Perhaps you need to look at this marriage.'

Mattie didn't turn around. ‘We are. But maybe I just need to relax more. Learn meditation or something.'

‘Bull-crap.'

Mattie turned around and faced Hilda with surprise. ‘Pardon?'

‘Tell me if I am interfering –' Hilda gave her a long look that dared her to, and then when Mattie didn't answer, continued on – ‘but this is not normal, Mattie. Not normal at all. To feel like that
sometimes
is one thing, but I think you feel like that often. Am I right?' Hilda took Mattie's continued silence as agreement and went on. ‘And if that is so, you need to make some changes. Because it is not good for you, not good for the children. You need to make some changes.'

‘But I
have
. That's why I moved out. That's why I'm here!' Mattie sat down again, wiping her hands down her tracksuit pants. She knew she had to stop this conversation before it went any further, but she couldn't summon the energy to do so. Mainly because she didn't want to.

‘No, not really. I mean, you put some distance between you and your husband, but has anything else really changed?'

‘Well . . . I suppose not.'

‘There you go.' Hilda took a sip of coffee and then looked across at Mattie thoughtfully. ‘You need to ask yourself some hard questions, girl.'

‘What sort of questions?' whispered Mattie, not sure she wanted to hear.

‘Not
dumbkopf
questions, like –' Hilda put on an exaggerated high-pitched voice – ‘Do I love him? Can I imagine living without him?'

‘But those questions –'

‘Are stupid.' Hilda waved her hand dismissively and then leant forward. ‘What you need to ask yourself is: can I imagine life
with
him?'

‘Oh.'

‘Ja
. Close your eyes.' Hilda frowned at her when she didn't immediately obey. ‘Close them! Good. Now imagine this. It is the end of the day and the house is all tidy, you have prepared a lovely meal, and the children are bathed and quiet. You hear your husband opening the front door, home from work. How do you feel? And I am not asking whether you are
happy
to see him, I am asking if you're
content
. Comfortable, serene, at ease. See the difference? Now imagine another day – it has been a shocker. You had to be out all day, and the hot water is on the fritz. And the house is still messy, dinner has not even been started and the children are all grubby and bickering. And there is that front door. Now how do you feel?'

Mattie's eyes popped open and she stared at Hilda, her face speaking volumes. Hilda nodded sagely and then drank her coffee quietly, giving Mattie a chance to digest this. But what Mattie wasn't game to tell her was that her feelings in the first scenario, when everything had been perfect, weren't that positive either. Because although Jake made her happy, he rarely made her serene. Ever.

‘Have another biscuit.' Hilda passed her the tin but Mattie shook her head. ‘See, women are stupidly designed. Proof that the Lord is a man. We choose the men who make our hearts sing the loudest, not the ones who are going to make them sing the longest. Often we are lucky and they are one and the same, but sometimes . . . sometimes they are not.'

‘No,' said Mattie softly, staring down at the wet tracks left by her hands across her pants.

‘You have people who say you make your bed, you lie in it,' continued Hilda, still staring fixedly at Mattie. ‘But they are the ones who have either never had a badly made bed, or the fools who want everyone else to be martyrs too.'

‘Martyrs?'

‘Yes. Don't be a martyr.' Hilda stood up and stretched. ‘And now I am off home. Ernest and I are going to Heidelberg this evening, for tea.'

Mattie rose also and led the way to the front door. Hilda walked outside and then paused on the porch before turning back to face Mattie. ‘You think I am an old busybody, I know. But I had a sister with a bad marriage. And you look like she did. Like a mouse.'

‘A mouse?'

‘Yes, a mouse. And he is the cat.'

Mattie couldn't think of a response to this but Hilda didn't seem to expect one. She gave Mattie a rather humourless smile, her black eyes without their customary sheen, and then turned again and walked around the corner towards her own unit. Mattie watched her go, and wished suddenly that she'd asked what had happened to the sister. The one who looked liked a mouse.

After a few minutes, she closed the door and walked into the bathroom where she washed her hands, dried them on the towel and then stared at her reflection in the mirror. To her, she looked the same as always – same eyes, same mouth, same complexion. And she wondered what it was that Hilda had seen, and whether other people saw it too. So maybe all her efforts to present a cheerful front, a
normal
front, were really for nothing when her face said what she wouldn't – that she was deeply, deeply unhappy and didn't have any idea what to do.

On Saturday morning, Mattie took Sybil and company back to the library. From deriving a sense of enjoyment from the young heroine's romantic adventures, she'd begun to find them annoying, and vaguely depressing. Instead she chose a few non-fiction books – two on relationships and one on budgeting tips for those on low incomes. Then, just as she got to the counter with her load, she saw a new book on display entitled
Bringing Up Happy, Healthy Children
and grabbed that as well.

When she got home, Mattie made herself coffee and settled down at the kitchen table with her reading material. She started with the book about children and very quickly found the author irritatingly sanctimonious. Nevertheless, drawn by the jacket photo of glowingly happy
children, Mattie persevered for nearly an hour. But at that point she slapped the book shut and sent it sliding across the table in disgust.

She sat staring blankly at the window. The author's primary message was to listen to your children,
really
listen, because apparently it was often the questions you dismissed that held the actual answers. And Mattie clearly saw her daughter, standing before her with clenched fists and tear-filmed eyes, her face flushed with anger.
Why d'you always make Daddy angry? You ruin everything. I hate you being here
.

Where had Max been during this encounter? There was no doubt he'd have been able to hear Courtney from the lounge-room. So why hadn't he intervened?
Don't be stupid, Courtney. It's
not
Mum's fault. And we
do
want her here
. Unless, that is, he agreed with her. Unless he thought it was his mother's fault as well, and he didn't want her there either. And maybe they had a point. Because she
did
appear to be the catalyst for Jake's temper. There didn't seem to be a problem when she wasn't there. So rather than helping things by being around more when they were with their father, perhaps she was simply making things worse. Ruining everything.

Mattie sipped her coffee, ignoring the fact that it had long gone cold. She followed through with her train of thought and suddenly arrived at a rather unexpectedly congratulatory conclusion. If she
did
make things worse by being there, then moving out had actually been the best thing she could have done. For herself, for the children, even for Jake. And while this conclusion didn't solve anything, it let through a glimmer of light that illuminated the situation, and the possibilities.

But it didn't do anything to lessen her concerns about the next day. Because on Thursday evening, Jake had come up with the brilliant plan of interpreting this week's ‘family day' as exactly that: driving up to Yea to visit his parents and sisters and their extended family of aunts, uncles, cousins, boisterous brothers-in-law and numerous children, who enjoyed a family life so utterly divorced from her own quiet, placid upbringing that Mattie always felt utterly overwhelmed. And she would struggle through the visits with a smile so fixed that afterwards, back at home, her jaw muscles would ache with the strain.

Was he punishing her? As soon as this thought formulated, Mattie
dismissed it as paranoia. Besides, she had enough problems without excavating more. Apart from being unsure whether her children wanted her with them, there was the fact that she had no idea how Jake's family were going to treat her in light of the separation. In spite of their unruly household, they were a very traditional family with definitive gender roles for the males and females. With only a few exceptions, the men worked and the women kept house and, as far as she knew, there had never been a divorce in the Hampton family – no single parents, broken homes or dysfunctional children. They would find the whole idea as bewildering as her own mother did, and Mattie already knew who they would hold responsible. And it wasn't Jake. No, he was their only son, who could do no wrong.

With two older sisters and one younger, Jake spent his early childhood years on a farm halfway between Yea and Seymour. But, before he even started school, his father suffered a farming accident (still referred to within the family as
‘the
accident'), which left him with a bad leg, and necessitated the move to a hardware store in town. The rest was history, and told over and over again at the least opportunity. At the start, the store had been tiny and rundown, with the family living in three rooms overhead. But by dint of hard work, they slowly expanded the original shop into a sprawling business, including a lumberyard and farm machinery showroom, which employed about twenty people, most of them relatives. This was the business that Jake had been destined to take over, until he got a taste of city living and found it more to his liking. And Mattie had a distinct feeling that, although his choice had been made before he even met her, they laid much of the blame at her door.

So tomorrow would be an interesting day As well as long, tedious and tiring. And if there was any way she could have gotten out of it, she would have. But that would be really pushing it. Mattie sighed and pulled over the two library books on relationships. One was called
Enriched: How to Build and Maintain a Healthy Relationship
, and the other
How to Construct a Marriage Made of Brick
, the cover of which featured a colourful cartoon of two little pigs holding hands at the window of their solid house while, outside, the wolf huffed and puffed to no avail.

Mattie started with the brick one, figuring that if this was a yardstick, then her marital house was currently built of straw, on a foundation of sand – and with no floor. She smiled wryly to herself at this analogy and flicked the book open. Because if it was possible to rebuild, and strengthen, and shore up the foundations, then she was going to give it all she could, so that nobody, ever, could truthfully say that she was the one who was ruining anything.

The drive to Yea was always an attractive one, past Coldstream and up the Melba Highway through Kinglake National Park with its towering trees and steep, winding roads. On this particular day, the weather was lovely too. Early showers had given way to a cloudless sky with barely a breeze, the air still smelling faintly of the damp crispness of morning rain. Along the way, the children played ‘spotto', in which the aim was to see a variety of objects: a Mack truck, a man with a hat, a caravan, a bicycle. In between enthusiastic cries of ‘Spotto!', there were the inevitable arguments about who saw it first and whether, if only one had seen it, he or she was trustworthy.