Where Have You Been? (9 page)

She could be anyone now. She could be anyone.

Routines give him pleasure. There is such satisfaction – no, it's more than satisfaction, it's almost a feeling of joy (but a peaceful, uncomplicated, steady joy rather than the eddying, unsettling variety) – in doing the same things, in the same way, at the same time. Take waking, for instance. Ed no longer needs an alarm clock; he's been waking at six during the week for so long now that he wakes always on the dot, just in time to witness the changeover from 5:59 to 6:00 on his bedside clock-radio. He stretches twice, flexing his way up his body: legs, torso, arms, neck. Then kisses Susan on the back of her neck (occasionally, very occasionally elsewhere, if she's so disposed) before bouncing, yes bouncing, up out of bed and into the day. He eats the same breakfast in the same order. Coffee fruit juice muesli toast. After breakfast, a shit then a shave – generally in that order. Kisses the kids twice on the forehead and a still-sleepy Susan hard on the lips. Squeezes her bum or tweaks a nipple, and then off he goes to the factory. Every morning he greets Moira with a coffee from the deli across the road and some cheeky, cheery banter.

He knows that most people find such routines unbearably depressing – proof of their own inconsequence, their mundanity, their mortality. But not Ed. Ed likes the idea that when he grows old, these days will be almost indistinguishable from one another – that such insignificant rituals will provide a history, a continuity, in much the same way that the seasons and their endless cycles provide humanity with a framework for the passing of time.

He has often thought himself lucky that he and Susan – an organised woman – have been able to so comfortably coordinate their separate schedules. They generally have
dinner around seven o'clock, and get the children into bed by eight. Most nights they share a bottle of wine, talk, watch television, read. Some nights they play cards, or a board game, maybe even attempt the
Herald'
s cryptic together. Once or twice a week they hire a video. Most nights, at around ten-thirty, Ed will yawn, stand up and stretch. ‘Big day tomorrow,' he'll say. ‘See you soon?' Usually Susan, absorbed in a movie, book or whatever, will just nod absently. ‘Uh huh,' she'll murmur, ‘G'night.' And he'll clean his teeth, and cross off another day on his bedside calendar before sliding into bed and just as easily into sleep.

But sometimes (he's averaged it out to be 1.6 times a week over the past twelve months – down a little from the previous year's average) his wife will look up and give him a certain look (how to describe it: tender? Lascivious? Suggestive? Inviting?) and on these nights he'll wait until that particular, most enjoyable ritual has been executed, before crossing out, marking off another ordinary extraordinary day.

But tonight is different. Tonight Ed has lain awake, waiting for his wife. Ed has read somewhere that admitting uncertainty, particularly before the uncertainty develops into something more serious, is a sure way not only to clear your own conscience, but to open a relationship to new meanings, potentially better ways of being. He has, he thinks, discovered the source of his anxiety, and has decided to gird his loins, make a clean breast of it. Who knows what positive outcome might result.

‘I have an admission to make,' he whispers when, at 12.55 am, Susan finally climbs in beside him.

Susan turns towards him, sighing.

‘What is it, Ed? This admission.'

‘I hope it's
not
her, Susy. I really hope it's not.'

She sits up. Fumbles in the dark for the bedside lamp. Switches it on. Ed screws up his eyes, momentarily blinded.

‘What do you mean you hope it's not her?'

‘Well, it's going to be messy, isn't it? Emotionally, I mean. If it's really her. For you.'

‘It's going to be messier still, Ed, if it's not her, don't you think?' Susan pulls the blankets up around her shoulders. From Ed's angle she looks lumpy, neckless.

‘Why don't you just admit it Ed – it's the money you're worrying about, isn't it?' Her face is puffy and sour.

‘No, Susy, really. It's you. It's not just the money.' He touches her on the shoulder. She turns away, switches off the light.

He lowers his voice, makes it sorrowful, pleading. ‘Hey,

Susy. Sweetheart.'

She lies down heavily. Sighs.

He tries again. ‘I just don't want to see you get hurt. That's all.' He stretches his arms out, goes to pull her to him, but she has moved too far away. He murmurs her name one last time, rolls over, closes his eyes, counts sheep.

On the afternoon that Susan is to meet her sister, Ed takes Mitchell and Stella to Taronga Zoo. They are Zoo Friends, so it is no big deal, they visit the zoo regularly, have done since the children were babies, but still, zoo excursions with their combination of pleasure and learning are, to Ed's way of thinking, a first-class outing. They did the African Animals last month, so this visit (and it's about time) they're doing Australia. Ed gives Mitchell the map.

‘It can be your responsibility, Mitch, to lead us to the platypus.'

‘But I don't want to see the platypus, Dad. And you never get to see them, anyway. They're always hiding. It's a dumb exhibit.'

‘I want to see the seal show, Daddy, not the Australian animals. They're
boring.
'

‘I want to see the monkeys, Dad, and the elephants.'

‘We'll go see the platypus first, guys. And then we'll see.' Ed tries always to be firm but fair. He is determined that his children will never have any cause for complaint (or lawsuits), that when they look back over their childhood they will remember (and appreciate) this as being both a happy and enriching time. Firm but fair. ‘Now lead the way, Mitch.'

Not that Ed has any real reason to complain when he looks back on his own childhood. Oh, there were the usual difficulties and disturbances, all the expected childhood traumas, but nothing major, nothing of any lasting significance. And since Mitchell and Stella were born, Ed has found that he understands, more and more, those things he'd found inexplicable as a child. He remembers, for instance, his resentment at what he regarded as his mother's irrational dislike of one of his particular friends, Sam Maiolo, when he was in third grade. Whenever Sam came home with him after school – to play at the park, or go bike riding – she would make him wait out on the verandah while Ed changed out of his uniform. She warned Ed never to share his drink bottle or to eat food from Sam's lunch box. He was forbidden, on pain of being dispatched, forthwith, to boarding school, to visit the Maiolo's home. He understands now, of course, that his mother was protecting him, Ed, in the only way she knew how. Sam and his parents were recently arrived Italian migrants. Ed's mother had heard rumours of a smallpox outbreak amongst the Italian community (unfounded of course, but still). Ed can't imagine that he'd ever manage such a situation in quite the same way, but is glad that his suburb is affluent enough now to make this a non-issue – the only immigrants who settle here are doctors from Hong Kong and Singapore, or the odd American IT wunderkind.

When they finally find the platypus exhibit (by way of the South American monkeys – Mitchell maintaining that he's been looking at the map upside down), they discover it's closed for cleaning. Ed is disappointed – he likes to watch the strange submarine pups snuffling about in their gloomy aquarium – but the children are delighted, race off down the path that leads to the elephants.

‘We don't need a map anyway, Dad,' Mitchell crushes the photocopied page into a ball, ‘there are signs everywhere.' He tosses it at the nearest bin in passing. It misses, but he doesn't look back. Ed sighs, picks up the paper, follows the signs.

No, Ed's childhood was remarkable only for its lack of serious trauma (and perhaps, he thinks, it was this very absence of problems, of hang-ups, that initially made him attractive to Susan, and continues to cement his relationship with his wife). His parents were not wealthy, but they were certainly comfortable – his father started his working life as a high school science teacher, but, a keen and capable weekend carpenter, he eventually (after a small seeding loan from his own father) called it quits and established his initially tiny kitchen business. His mother, a primary school teacher, stayed at home after her children were born, going back to part-time work only when they'd reached high school. He has his brother, Derek, who is three years older – to whom he is very much attached, despite their profound differences – and a sister, Pam – six years his senior, unmarried, unhappy – who he tolerates. His family had moved house only once during his childhood – and that was to a bigger house in the same beachside suburb. The Middletons had holidayed two weeks every year at the same caravan park on the Central Coast; spent another two weeks on his (adoring) grandparents' Bathurst property. Ed had been doctored for years by the same physician who'd delivered him; he attended the local primary and then high school and still has friends he's known
since kindergarten. Ed knows how lucky he was, how lucky he is; knows that his upbringing was exemplary in its solidity and stability – a picture-postcard suburban childhood.

‘Oh God. What is
that?
'

‘Oh, that's gross. I think I'm gunna spew.'

‘Don't say “God”, Mitchell, and spew is not a nice word, Stella. Vomit. Say vomit.' Ed follows the children's disgusted gaze. One of the elephants has a monstrous vine-like tangle of vessels dangling from its rear. They are so heavy, so low, that they almost drag on the ground.

‘It looks like intestines,' Mitchell says. ‘God, Dad, do you think its intestines have come out?'

He searches for an explanation. ‘I think they're blood vessels, kids. They're called, um, haemorrhoids. And I think the elephant might be pregnant. Watch its stomach.' The animal's huge belly ripples, contracts. ‘See.'

‘Oh,
g-ross.
' Mitchell simulates severe retching.

‘Imagine having a baby elephant in your tummy,' Stella giggles. Then: ‘Ugh. I think I'm gunna spew, again.'

The stability and consistency of his early years has, or so Ed believes, made him the strong (but not hard), confident (but not insensitive), motivated (but not hyper-dynamic) individual that he is, and so he tries hard to reproduce (though it is such a different, such a difficult world) the same environment for his own two children. He and Susan have moved house only once since their marriage – and not at all since the children were born. Ed sees this consistency as a kind of insurance policy.

Though he has never seen any real evidence of neurosis or instability in Susan's behaviour (she does occasionally cry for no apparent reason, and she did once throw a chair at him), he knows that significant emotional disturbances (and God
knows that Susy has had her fair share of these in her own childhood) can be repressed and then transferred, invisibly and insidiously, in a type of psychic slow-release, to those most receptive of creatures – children.

So Ed keeps a watchful eye on his precious offspring. He loves Susan, no mistake and certainly no regrets, but his children, his children are the wellspring of his being. They are his future; his posterity. He is a hands-on father. He conscientiously attempts to monitor his children's levels of self-esteem and bolsters them when necessary. He helps them with their homework when he's home, and takes them to their various sporting venues on the weekends, where he shouts (not too loudly and always encouragingly) from the sidelines. He has taught them both to bodysurf, to respect the sea; they're both enthusiastic members of the local surf club's ‘little nippers'. He makes the space to take them out during their school holidays – to the movies, ice-skating, to museums and galleries. Thus Susan is given the necessary down-time from the children, substantial Self Space, and Time Alone; while Mitchell and Stella receive plenty of Quality Time with their father – such time being the one thing, he has to admit, that he feels was lacking in his own otherwise idyllic childhood.

Today Ed is a little distracted, not as focused as he likes to be, as he
should
be, on the children and their experience. He is worried about Susan's meeting with her sister – thinks that this might be the event, might be the trigger, so to speak, that will release Susan's pent-up grief and anger, and he is concerned not only for Stella and Mitchell, but for himself. He follows the children along the path that leads to the cafeteria. They are hungry and have refused the ham sandwiches and bottles of cordial he's prepared. (
Boring. Just like school. We want chips. Hotdogs. Milkshakes. Coke.)
Ed tries hard to stop worrying, wonders how he can transform all this negative energy into something positive, into something
more productive. He decides that after lunch they will go back to the platypus exhibit. Perhaps it will have reopened. He's firm. Firm, but fair.

The cafe – it's a restaurant really – is right on the wharf. It's a big, airy place, all stainless steel and polished timber, an impersonal place, good for business lunches, or meals with distant relatives. Susan has requested an outside table. That way if the whole thing becomes too awkward, too painful, they can at least watch the water, the ferries, the endless stream of people. That way they'll have an excuse, or maybe even an opportunity, for silence.

When the waitress comes Susan is alone. She orders coffee, then changes her mind.

‘A bottle of champagne? You're sure about that then?' The young waitress is tall, brunette, cool.

‘Yes.' Susan smiles apologetically.

‘Anything to eat, yet? Or do you want to wait for your friend?'

‘No. Yes. She should be here soon.'

‘Okay.' The waitress tucks her pencil and pad away, starts back inside.

‘Oh, sorry. Miss? Miss? Excuse me a minute?'