Truly Madly Guilty (42 page)

He ran from Jamie’s room onto the landing. It was like he had his old body back. There was no pain. He felt exhilarated by the urgency of his mission. He was running gracefully, fluidly, like a twenty-year-old with perfect, limber knees. He could do this. He was fast. He was nimble. He’d save her.

On the second step, he fell. He grabbed for the banister to save himself but it was too late, he was flying, like his wife and son.

chapter eighty-four

It was early evening at the end of another beautiful day and Sam was walking home from the ferry beneath an indigo sky. There had been almost a whole week of clear weather now. Everything had dried out and dried off and people had stopped discussing how nice it was to see the sun. The ‘Big Wet’ was drifting away from everyone’s memories on a gentle spring breeze.

Sam had just had another fairly productive day at work, so that was something. It was a little embarrassing just how much nerdy satisfaction he had achieved today from successfully completing his proposed strategic plan for preventing the further loss of market share in the now crowded sugar-free, berry-flavoured caffeinated energy drink segment. He hadn’t exactly composed a symphony, but it was a well-thought-out strategy which would make the company money, which would make up for the last few weeks when he’d sat at his desk being paid for doing nothing. He’d used his brain. He’d ticked off a task. It felt good.

Maybe it was all due to the amazing, magical effects of his first counselling session. After the humiliating incident at the first aid course on Sunday, Clementine had arranged an appointment with a counsellor after-hours on Monday. Sam didn’t ask her how she managed to get an appointment so quickly. She’d probably got her mother on the case. Pam was a big fan of counselling. She probably had one on speed-dial. Sam cringed at the thought of his mother-in-law’s softly sympathetic face as Clementine told her about his
tears,
his so-called ‘post-traumatic stress’ for Christ’s sake.

The counsellor was a cheery, chatty little fellow, like a jockey, and he had plenty of opinions, which surprised Sam. (Weren’t they meant to say enigmatic things like, ‘What do
you
think?’) He said Sam probably did have a mild case of PTSD. He said it in the same nonchalant tone as if he’d said, ‘You’ve probably got a mild sinus infection.’ He reckoned Sam would need only three or four sessions ‘max’ to ‘knock this on the head’.

Sam had left his office almost laughing; did this guy get his qualifications online? But as he’d stood in the lift going back to the lobby, he’d been surprised to find he was experiencing just a mild sense of relief, like standing in the baggage claim area after a long flight and feeling your ears pop, when you weren’t fully aware they’d been blocked. It wasn’t like he felt great. Just marginally better. Maybe it was the placebo effect, or maybe it was going to happen eventually anyway, or maybe his little counsellor had special powers.

Now he stopped at a pedestrian crossing and watched a woman with a baby in a stroller and a preschool-aged kid.

The baby was about one. He was sitting up, fat legs straight out in front of him, a large green leaf clutched in his chubby hand like a flag.

Was it a floating leaf that had attracted Ruby’s attention that day? He imagined it, as he’d done so many times before, as maybe he was going to do for the rest of his life. He saw her climbing up onto the edge of the fountain, proud of herself, walking around the perimeter, maybe even running. Did she slip? Or did she see something she wanted? A floating leaf or an interesting-looking stick. Something that sparkled. He imagined her on her knees on the side of the fountain, in her little pink coat, her hand out-stretched, and then suddenly, silently toppling in, head first, panicking, flailing, her lungs filling with water as she tried to scream, ‘Daddy!’, the heavy coat dragging her down, and then, the stillness, her hair floating around her head.

For a moment Sam’s world tipped and his breath caught. He concentrated on the DON’T WALK light in red, waiting for it to change to WALK. The cars zoomed by. The mother waiting next to him was talking on her mobile phone. ‘My shoe is falling off,’ whined the preschooler.

‘No, it’s not,’ said the mother distractedly as she continued to speak into the phone. ‘I
know
, that’s the thing, I mean it would be fine if she’d just been upfront about it from the beginning, but
Lachlan, no!
Don’t take off your shoe here!’

The little boy had suddenly plonked himself down on the footpath and was in the process of removing his shoe.

‘He’s taking off his damned shoe in the middle of the street. Lachlan, stop that. I said
stop
that.’ The woman bent down to drag the preschooler back to his feet. Her hand left the stroller handle. It was on a slope that led straight out onto the street.

The stroller began to roll.

‘Whoops.’ Sam reached out one hand and caught hold of the handle.

The woman looked up.

‘Jesus
Christ
.’ The phone slid from beneath her head and shoulder and crashed onto the ground as she stood up fast and grabbed the stroller handle, her hand overlapping Sam’s.

She looked at the traffic roaring by and then back down at the stroller.

She said, ‘It could have … he could have …’

‘I know,’ said Sam. ‘But it’s all good. It didn’t.’ He removed his hand from under hers. She had the handle in a death grip now.

‘Mummy, the phone is all cracked!’ The preschooler held up the phone he’d rescued from the ground with an expression of pure horror on his face. Sam could hear a tinny voice calling out from the phone, ‘Hello? Hello?’

The lights changed to WALK. The woman didn’t move. She was still processing it, still seeing what could have been.

‘Have a good night,’ said Sam, and he crossed the road to go home, the sky huge and hopeful before him.

chapter eighty-five

‘You don’t have to rush back to the office, do you?’ said Oliver as he tucked his ears into his swimming cap –
snap, snap
– and pulled his goggles down over his eyes so he looked to Erika like a goofy alien.

They had met for their lunch break at North Sydney pool, which was within walking distance of both their offices, for their first swim after their brief ‘winter hiatus’, as Oliver liked to call it. During the winter months they swapped their swim for a thirty-minute high-intensity cardio class at the gym.

‘As long as I’m back by one thirty.’ Erika pulled down her own goggles so that the world turned turquoise.

‘Good,’ said Oliver. He seemed serious.

As Erika swam her first lap, she wondered what was on his mind. Ever since his discovery of her ‘habit’ she felt like she’d been demoted to junior partner in their marriage. He’d made her promise to talk about her ‘kleptomania’ with her psychologist.

‘It’s not kleptomania!’ Erika cried. ‘It’s just …’

‘Stealing your friend’s stuff!’ finished Oliver brightly.

There was something different about Oliver lately: a kind of recklessness, except not really, because Oliver would never be reckless. Almost aggressiveness? But not quite. Feistiness. It was not unattractive, to be honest. They were having a lot of angry sex. It was great.

She hadn’t yet discussed her ‘kleptomania’ with her psychologist because she hadn’t seen her. Not Pat had cancelled a few sessions recently at the last minute. She probably had her own personal problems. Erika secretly hoped she might be forced to take a sabbatical.

As she turned her head for every second breath she looked up and saw the grey arched pylons of the Harbour Bridge soaring into the bright blue sky above them. It was an amazing place to swim. Wasn’t this enough for a life? Good work, good exercise, good sex. She tumble-turned and looked for Oliver. He was way ahead of her, powering through the water; lucky it wasn’t too busy because he was swimming too fast even for the fast lane.

It would be the baby. That’s what he would want to talk about. The baby was his project and his project management skills were excellent. Now that Clementine was no longer part of the picture he would want to ‘explore other options, other avenues’. He would want to talk through the pros and the cons. Erika’s whole body slowed in the water at the thought. Her legs felt like limp weights she was dragging along behind her.

The thought occurred to her:
I’m done. I’m done with the baby project.
But of course she couldn’t be done, not until Oliver was done.

This was simply the wall. Every time you ran a marathon you hit a wall. The wall was both a physical and a mental barrier but it could be overcome (carb loading, hydration, focus on your technique). She swam on. It didn’t
feel
like she could get past this, but that was the nature of the wall.

After their swim, they sat in the sun outside a café, looking straight out onto the harbour, eating tuna and kale salads for their lunch. Back in their suits. Sunglasses on. Hair just slightly damp at the ends.

‘I’m going to send you a link to an article,’ said Oliver. ‘I read it yesterday, and I’ve been thinking about it. Thinking about it a lot.’

‘Okay,’ said Erika. Some new reproductive technology. Great. It’s just the wall, she told herself. Breathe.

‘It’s about fostering,’ said Oliver. ‘Fostering older children.’

‘Fostering?’ Erika’s fork stopped halfway to her mouth.

‘It’s about how hard it is,’ said Oliver. ‘It’s about how people get this really romantic idea about fostering and it’s not like that at all. It’s about how most foster carers have no idea what they’re getting themselves into. It’s a brutally honest article.’

‘Oh,’ said Erika. She couldn’t see his eyes because of his sunglasses. She was aware of the feeling of a tiny spark of hope quelled. ‘So the reason you’re sending it to me is …?’

‘I think we should do it,’ said Oliver.

‘You think we should do it,’ repeated Erika.

‘I was thinking about Clementine and Sam,’ said Oliver. ‘And how Ruby’s accident affected them so badly. Do you want to know why it was such a big thing for those two?’ He didn’t wait for an answer. ‘Because
nothing bad
has ever happened to them before!’

‘Well,’ said Erika, considering. ‘I don’t know if that’s entirely –’

‘But you and me, we expect the worst!’ said Oliver. ‘We’ve got low expectations. We’re tough. We can handle stuff!’

‘Can we?’ said Erika. She didn’t know if she should remind him that she was in therapy.

‘Everybody wants the babies,’ said Oliver, ignoring her. ‘The cute little babies. But what they really need is foster parents for the older kids. The angry ones. The broken ones.’ He stopped and suddenly he seemed to lose confidence. He picked up his superfood smoothie. ‘I just thought … well, I thought maybe we could consider it because maybe we’d have an understanding, or at least an inkling, of what those kids are going through.’ He sucked on his straw. She could see the harbour reflected in his sunglasses.

Erika ate her salad and thought of Clementine’s parents. She saw Pam making up the stretcher bed for her to stay the night, yet again, flicking her wrists so that the crisp, white sheets floated in the air: the beautiful, clean fragrance of bleach was still Erika’s favourite smell in the world. She saw Clementine’s dad, sitting in the passenger seat of his car while Erika sat in the driver’s seat for the first time. He showed her how to put her hands at ‘a quarter to three’ on the steering wheel. ‘Everyone else says ten to two,’ he said. ‘But everyone else is wrong.’ She still drove with her hands at a quarter to three.

What was that phrase people used?
Pay it forward
.

‘So let’s say we do it,’ said Erika. ‘We take on one of these broken kids.’

Oliver looked up. ‘Let’s say we do.’

‘According to this article, it’s going to be terrible.’

‘That’s what it says,’ agreed Oliver. ‘Traumatic. Stressful. Awful. We might fall in love with a kid who ends up going back to a biological parent. We might have a kid with terrible behavioural issues. We might find our relationship is tested in ways we could never imagine.’

Erika wiped her mouth with her napkin and stretched her arms high above her head. The sun warmed the top of her scalp, giving her a sensation of molten warmth.

‘Or it might be great,’ she said.

‘Yeah,’ said Oliver. He smiled. ‘I think it might be great.’

chapter eighty-six

‘Do you want distracting talk?’ said Sam as he drove her into the city. ‘Or calming silence?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Clementine. ‘I can’t decide.’

It was a little after ten on a Saturday morning. Her audition wasn’t until two. The ten minutes past ten leaving time had been calculated to take into account anything that could possibly go wrong.

‘I can drive myself,’ Clementine had told Sam last night.

‘What are you talking about?’ said Sam. ‘I always drive you to your auditions.’

She thought with mild surprise, So we’re still us then? Maybe they were, although they still went off each night to sleep in separate rooms.

Something had changed over the last week since the first aid course; nothing dramatic, in fact the opposite. It was as though a feeling of utter mundanity had settled upon them, like the start of a new season, fresh and familiar all at once. All the anger and recriminations had gone, drained away. It reminded Clementine of that feeling when you were recovering from being ill, when the symptoms were gone but you still felt light-headed and peculiar.

The girls were with Clementine’s parents today and they were both in fine form. Holly had come home from school yesterday with a Merit Certificate for
Excellent Behaviour in Class
, which Clementine suspected was really a Merit Certificate for
No Longer Behaving Like a Crazy Person in Class
. ‘The old Holly is back,’ her teacher had told Clementine in the playground, and she’d done a little ‘Phew!’ swipe of the back of her hand across her forehead, which made Clementine think that Holly’s behaviour at school must have been much worse than she or Sam had been made aware.

Ruby had said Whisk could stay home today and have a little rest. She appeared to be losing interest in Whisk. Clementine could already see how poor Whisk was going to slip unobtrusively from their lives, like friends sometimes did.

‘Okay, so there’s no need to panic because we’ve allowed enough time for exactly this possibility,’ said Sam, as the traffic on the bridge came to a stop and a neon sign flashed in urgent red letters: INCIDENT AHEAD. EXPECT DELAYS.

Clementine breathed in deeply through her nostrils and out through her mouth.

‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘I’m not
thrilled
, but I’m fine.’

Sam held out his palms as if in meditation. ‘We are Zen masters.’

Clementine studied the crisp white curves of the Opera House’s sails against the blue sky. Thankfully the Opera House was one of the venues where she knew she’d be given her own warm-up room, and she wouldn’t have to share with other cellists, or worse, talk to the chatty ones. There were plenty of dressing-rooms available, some with harbour views. It would be a comfortable, pleasant process. Her audition would be in the rarefied atmosphere of the concert hall.

She looked back at the road. The traffic inched forward past two cars with crushed bonnets. There were police and an ambulance with the back doors open, and a man in a suit sat on the kerb with his head in his hands.

‘Erika said something the other day and it sort of stuck with me,’ said Clementine. She hadn’t been planning to say this but all of a sudden she was saying it, as if she’d been subconsciously planning it.

‘What’s that?’ said Sam warily.

‘She said, “I choose my marriage.”’

‘She chooses her marriage. What does that mean?’ said Sam. ‘That doesn’t make sense. She chooses her marriage over what?’

‘I think it does make sense,’ said Clementine. ‘It’s about making a choice to make your marriage your priority, to, kind of, put that at the top of the page, as your mission statement or something.’

‘Clementine Hart, are you actually using soulless corporate jargon right now?’ said Sam.

‘Be quiet. I just want to take this opportunity to say …’

Sam snorted. ‘Now you sound like your mother making one of her speeches.’

‘I want to take this opportunity to say that I choose my marriage too.’

‘Um … thanks?’

Clementine spoke rapidly. ‘So, if, for example, having a third child is your heart’s desire, then that’s something we need to at least talk about. I can’t just ignore it, or hope you’ll forget about it, which was what I was doing, to be honest. I know when I asked you a couple of weeks ago you said you didn’t want another child, but that was when you were still … or when we were both still, kind of …’

‘Crazy,’ finished Sam for her. ‘Do
you
want another child?’ he said.

‘I really don’t,’ said Clementine. ‘But if you really do, then we need to talk about it.’

‘What? And then we work out whether I want a baby more than you don’t want a baby?’ said Sam.

‘Exactly,’ said Clementine. ‘I think that’s exactly what we do.’

‘I
did
want a third child,’ said Sam. ‘But now, well, it’s just not something I’m thinking about right now.’

‘I know,’ said Clementine. ‘I know. But we could, we might, one day, not forget, of course, but we might forgive. We might forgive ourselves. Anyway, I don’t know why I brought that up today. It’s not like we even …’

Have sex anymore. Sleep in the same bed. Say ‘I love you’ anymore.

‘I guess I just thought I should put that on the table,’ she said.

‘Consider it tabled,’ said Sam.

‘Great.’

‘You know what my heart’s desire is right now?’ said Sam.

‘What?’

‘It’s for you to get this job.’

‘Right,’ said Clementine.

‘I don’t want you going onto that stage thinking about babies. I want you thinking about whatever it is you need to think about, intonation, pitch,
tempo
,
whatever those nancy-boy ex-boyfriends of yours would have told you to think about.’

‘Well, I’ll do my best,’ said Clementine. She said softly, ‘You’re a good man, Samuel.’

‘I know I am. Eat your banana,’ said Sam.

‘No,’ said Clementine.

‘You sound just like your daughter.’

‘Which one?’

‘Both of them, actually.’

The traffic was moving freely now.

After a moment Sam cleared his throat and said, ‘I’d like to take this opportunity to say that I choose my marriage too.’

‘Oh yes, and what does that mean?’

‘I have no idea. I just wanted to make my position clear.’

‘Maybe it means you don’t want to sleep in the study anymore,’ suggested Clementine, her eyes on the road ahead.

‘Maybe it does,’ said Sam.

Clementine studied his profile. ‘Would you like to come back?’

‘I’d like to come back,’ said Sam. He looked over his shoulder to change lanes. ‘From wherever the hell I’ve been.’

‘Well,’ said Clementine. ‘You’re very welcome to submit an application.’

‘I could audition,’ he said. ‘I have some smooth moves.’ He paused. ‘You could be blindfolded. We’ll make it a blind audition so there is no possibility of bias.’

She could feel a wild, raw sense of happiness growing within her. It was just silly, cheesy, flirty talk, but it was
their
silly, cheesy, flirty talk. She already knew how it would be tonight: the sweet familiarity and the sharp clean edges because of what they’d nearly lost. She didn’t know how close their marriage had got to hitting that iceberg – close enough to feel its icy shadow – but they’d missed it.

‘Yeah, I choose my marriage.’ Sam swung the car to the right. ‘And I also temporarily choose this illegal bus lane because I am one crazy motherfucker.’

Clementine reached into her bag, took out her banana and peeled it.

‘You’ll get a ticket,’ she said as she took a mouthful and waited for those natural beta-blockers to take effect, and it must have been a really good season for bananas because it was the best banana she’d ever tasted.