Spinning Around (19 page)

‘Good.'

I stared down at my pasta, slumped over it, one hand supporting my head. Matt got up. He fetched his own plate, a fork, the parmesan cheese. He sat down again.

‘I was gunna suggest we have takeaway,' he remarked. ‘Pizza, or something. You didn't have to do this.'

I thought: I did though, didn't I? The way I do just about everything around here.

But I didn't say it.

‘The builders came,' he offered.

‘Oh good.'

‘They said they'd be coming again tomorrow.'

‘I'll believe it when I see it.'

‘Yeah.'

Another long silence. Matthew has a weird (but endearing) way of using his fork; he holds it like a screwdriver, and kind of mashes everything up with it. I was watching him do this when he suddenly said: ‘What's the matter, Helen?'

I looked up. His expression was taut and wary.

I felt a tightening in my chest.

‘What's the
matter
?' I repeated.

‘Is something wrong?' The tone was almost accusing— I didn't like it at all. The blood rushed to my cheeks. I had to force the words out.

‘Well, you tell me, Matt.
Is
something wrong?'

‘Eh?'

‘You're the one throwing things around and storming out of the house, not me!'

‘Yeah, but—'

‘What's up with
you
? That's what I want to know!'

Without even trying, I was suddenly teetering on the edge of a precipice. I was staring into a vacuum, holding my breath. Had I . . .? Would he . . .?

The question hadn't
quite
been asked. Not quite.

I still didn't have the guts.

‘Nothing,' he replied tonelessly. ‘Nothing's up with me.' He was poking at his pasta, his eyes downcast. ‘I'm tired, that's all. Tough day. You know what it's like.'

None better.

So that was that. All that emoting, all that carry-on, and I still don't know.

Is he a coward or is he an innocent man?

CHAPTER SIX

Wednesday

My cold was ten times worse this morning. I practically forgot about it yesterday, because my sore throat disappeared some time during my interview with Christine, and nothing took its place until last night—when I came down with another ferocious headache. But that was after my argument with Matt. That was when the air was practically throbbing with tension, and the pressure of unshed tears was making my nose run. Naturally, I assumed that my headache was a consequence of the unfortunate atmosphere. So I took a Panadol Forte and passed out for the night, hoping that an eight-hour sleep might solve the problem.

Needless to say, I was disappointed. I woke up with clogged sinuses and a wet cough—the type described as ‘productive' in medical literature provided by the local baby clinic. I couldn't chew my toast without gasping for breath. I couldn't measure out Jonah's milk without stopping every thirty seconds to blow my nose or expel crap from my lungs. Matt took one look at me on his way to the toilet and said glumly: ‘That cold's worse, isn't it?'

I refrained from making a sarcastic comment about the bleeding obvious. Instead I just nodded.

‘Bloody hell,' he groaned, and retreated into the bathroom. Nothing like a bit of sympathetic support from your hubby, I always say.

Fortunately, it was Wednesday morning. Matt goes to work at twelve on Wednesday mornings. So I asked him to please take the kids to the pool while I struggled with a bit of housework; it would be better, I said, if they were kept out of my way as much as possible. Then I waited, nursing a faint hope that he might actually offer to stay home and look after the kids, so that I could retire to bed with a hot-water bottle.

But he didn't, of course. He never does. When you work for the ABC, you can't risk giving anyone the excuse to sack you.

‘Just an hour in the pool,' I growled, resigned to the inevitable. ‘You'll be back in plenty of time.'

‘Where are the swimming costumes?'

‘In the top right-hand drawer of their dresser.' Will you tell me why he can't remember that? When I must have told him about a million times before? ‘Use the old towels on the
bottom
shelf, please, and don't forget Emily's goggles.'

He muttered something.

‘Pardon?'

‘Nothing,' he said. ‘Hey, kids! Who wants to go for a swim?'

‘Me! Me!'

‘Oh, I don't think you want to go, do you?' he joked. ‘Not Emily Muzzatti. She doesn't even
like
swimming.'

‘I do! I do!'

‘No, she'd rather stay here and help Mummy clean the toilet.'

‘No, no!' Emily cried, and followed him around the house as he collected articles of swimwear, begging him to bring the blow-up dinosaur flotation ring.

‘Only if I'm allowed to use it,' he replied, stuffing a drawstring beach bag with towels.

‘Don't be silly, Daddy!' Emily protested. ‘You wouldn't fit!'

‘Yes I would.'

‘No you wouldn't! You're too big.'

‘I am not. Jonah's bigger than me.'

‘No he isn't!'

‘Yes he is, look.' And Matthew swung Jonah up onto his shoulders. Jonah began to giggle and crow, and kick his pudgy feet. Matt ordered him to duck his head on the way out.

‘Say goodbye to Mummy, you two.'

‘Bye, Mummy!'

‘Bye, Mummy!'

‘Bye, guys! Have a good swim!'

They all looked so sweet, filing out the front door: Emily wearing her floaties, Jonah clutching Matt's head like a baby koala, and Matt himself burdened with the purple plastic dinosaur, the Mickey Mouse beach bag, the dangling octopus goggles, the cluster of undersized, fluorescent shower shoes. Normally, I'd be glorying in the fact that they were mine, mine,
mine
. But not today. Today I watched them go with cold fear in my heart.

Then I flopped down on a kitchen chair and castigated myself. Here was I, worried about my husband's fidelity, and all I seemed to be able to do was mope and moan and nag. Did I really believe that this was going to improve matters? If he was actually having an affair, it would only make things worse! Yet somehow I couldn't help myself. My resentment—my anger— kept bubbling to the surface. Even though he was being Mister Perfect, taking the kids to the pool, remembering the shower shoes . . . my eyes filled with tears, when I considered those shower shoes. What
right
did I have to complain about Matt, when he had remembered the shower shoes?

It was my cold, I decided. My cold was making me miserable. Not to mention the filthy kitchen, which I would have to clean before everyone else came home. Yesterday's green cordial spillage had not been properly expunged, and now the floor was sticky. There were streaks and splatters all over the cupboard doors. Dirty dishes and cutlery were piled high on the draining board; the stove was greasy; the table was covered with crumbs. Through the window over the sink I could see a grey sky, and a flutter of black tarpaulin. The drains still smelled.

I got up slowly, deeply depressed by the thought of having to clean a kitchen that I hated with all my heart and soul while still burdened by a lurking sense of dread. It's a horrible kitchen, by the way. Dates from about 1973, to judge from its orange tiles and wood-grain laminex. Even the handles on the cupboard doors are putrid. Everything's full of cracks and holes, so I can't keep the ants out no matter what I do. (Which isn't very much, with Jonah around. Baits are out of the question.) You can scrub the vinyl floor until you're blue in the face, and it will still look just as dirty. There's a huge scorch-mark on one of the benchtops. As for the oven, I don't even want to go there. Literally. It hadn't been cleaned for twenty-odd years when we moved in, and I'm still chipping black stuff off its sides, like a coal miner.

One day I'm going to have a nice white kitchen with a stainless-steel dishwasher. I'm going to have a built-in microwave cupboard and a rangehood with an extractor pipe up through the ceiling. One day those builders are going to
finish the job
, and I won't be looking out the kitchen window onto a junkyard piled high with lumber and lengths of rusty pipe and chipped blocks of old concrete. After all, they've got to finish that bedroom one of these days, haven't they? They can't keep pouring the foundations forever. And once the bedroom's done, they'll be able to tackle the kitchen, and I'll be happy.

That is, if I still have a husband by then.

I groaned at the prospect of having to sell up and get divorced before the builders had finished their renovations. What kind of a price would we get, in that eventuality? About enough for a down payment on a caravan in a trailer park, that's how much.

No, no, I thought, madly sloshing water about. No, that won't happen. It
won't
. This is crazy. I should just—just . . .

What? Turn a blind eye?

Out of the question. I had made arrangements with Jim McRae, and those arrangements were set in stone. There was no way on earth that I could change my mind, not again. Feeling the pressure of yet more tears, I whipped off my rubber gloves and grabbed a couple of chocolate biscuits, which I consumed in about three seconds flat. I would have eaten more, if there had been more to eat. That's the trouble with kids. Wherever there are kids, there are also chocolate biscuits and cartons half-full of rice custard and bits of leftover mashed potato and all kinds of other nursery food that you always crave when you're feeling down. No wonder I've put on so much weight in the last four years. Unfortunately, I'm not one of those people who go off their food when they're under stress. On the contrary, I eat like a pig, because I'm pathetically weak when it comes to sugar-laden food groups. My only strategy for weight loss is to keep out of the way of temptation— and how am I supposed to do that when I'm surrounded by Honey Jumbles and paddle-pops? Especially when they're distributed around a kitchen like this one. It's the sort of kitchen that would send anyone groping for comfort food. I mean, you can clean the whole room, from the kickboards to the cabinet-tops, and it won't look much better. What's more, as soon as the family surges in, you'll end up back where you started. Within half an hour there'll be more crumbs on the floor, more greasy marks all over the refrigerator, more dirty dishes piled high in the sink. Talk about a woman's work is never done.

It's heartbreaking.

It's also unavoidable, however—the murky underbelly of every family's life—so I took a swig of cold coffee and set to work once more, buoyed somewhat by a rousing, kick-ass song from Alanis Morissette which I'd put on the stereo. (Nothing like Alanis Morissette to get you feeling both empowered and victimised simultaneously.) After I finished the kitchen I even had a stab at the living room, where the kids had dumped most of their toys. Putting away toys is a very time-consuming occupation. It's not just a matter of tossing them in a toybox—not when a kid reaches Emily's age. By the time a kid turns four, he or she generally has a squillion toys, all of microscopic proportions, which someone has to keep track of. So every doll's shoe, every Lego block, every miniature plastic giraffe has its own box or bag or drawer, in order that it can be easily found when a child wants it (urgently). And that means endless sorting through tangled piles of discarded toys, making certain that the giraffe goes into the small animals drawer, the Lego goes into the Lego box, the shoe goes into the tin full of dolls' clothes . . .

And don't even talk to me about the doll's house. That's a whole second kitchen I have to clean.

‘Mummy!' Emily burst through the door just as I'd finished untangling a knot composed of plastic pearl necklaces, toy parachute strings and frayed hair ribbons. She was followed by Matthew, who was carrying Jonah under one arm and a bundle of wet towels under the other. ‘Mummy, look what I've got!'

I looked. It was a lollipop.

‘Wow,' I said.

‘Look. I bited it.'

‘You bit it. Don't do that, Emily, you'll break your teeth. You're supposed to suck it.'

‘No, I didn't! I didn't break my teeth! Look!'

‘All right, all right.' I wasn't going to argue. Instead I turned to Matt. ‘You smell of bath gel. Did you have a shower there? That was smart.'

He shrugged. ‘I didn't want to go to work smelling of chlorine.'

‘What about the kids?'

‘They came in with me.'

‘Oh good.'

I was pleasantly surprised. A shower at the pool meant no baths in the evening. But before I could express my appreciation, Matt disappeared into the bedroom to change. He emerged looking very sleek and deadly in black jeans, a white shirt and a pair of sunglasses.

Dressing up for Her?

‘I'm running late,' he said, all grim around the mouth. He headed for the front door, jangling his keys. ‘See you tonight.'

‘You're not late. You're fine. You'll—'

Bang!
The door shut. No kiss, no nothing.

My eyes began to smart.

‘Mummy,' said Emily. It's hard to ponder your problems when there are kids around. (Which is one of their many attractions, I suppose.) ‘Mummy, Jonah dropped his lollipop, and he put it in his mouth again.'

‘Never mind.'

‘But it's dirty now. He'll get sick.'

‘No he won't. I just washed the floor in the kitchen.'

‘But he dropped it in the lounge room. He got hairs on it.'

‘What hairs? From where?'

‘From there.'

The Persian rug, needless to say. Our only Persian rug— the only decent thing in the living room, apart from the TV and stereo system. Why couldn't he have dropped it on the scuffed leather sofa? Or the grubby chintz armchair covered in baby puke? Or the second-hand sixties coffee table?