Hindsight Page 5

  “No, sorry. That came out wrong.” Got to keep the peace here.

  “How was your night? Did you solve the crisis, save the world?” he asks.

  Other than spending the entire night worrying about you falling in love with a woman who appears to be everything that I’m not, yeah, it was great.

  “Yes, thanks. So, you had a good night then?” He doesn’t have any interest in my work, he says all of my clients are ‘phonies’, so there’s nothing to be gained by filling him in on the details. “Did Lauren have a good time? And Rob?”

  “Yeah, she seemed to, not sure about Rob though.”

  “Rob wasn’t there?”

  “He was, but left pretty early with another hook-up.”

  He what? No way! Define early. No, keep calm, swallow that fear but don’t choke on it. Be cool.

  “I bet Lauren is pretty tired after a late night and early yoga class,” I say, still fishing but not reeling much in.

  “No, she left early too.”

  At least he’s being honest with me.

  “Oh, so it was just… you and Anya then?” My attempt to sound nonchalant comes across more like the Spanish Inquisition. Damn it.

  Chris snaps, “Yes, Juliette, it was just Anya and I. Is that alright with you?”

  No, it’s not alright with me at all, but his voice is sharp and has a sense of finality about it that tells me this topic is not open for discussion. My stomach is grumbling so loudly it could join in the conversation, so I start making toast.

  “I wasn’t saying…”

  “Good, Juliette, because I would be offended if you were implying something.” The intensity of his stare rivals that of Medusa. I pinch my arm to ensure that it is still made of flesh and not stone.

  I tip-toe around where Chris is standing in the middle of the kitchen, and spread some Vegemite on my anemic toast, unsure of what to say or do next. It’s not like Chris to be so snappy. He must be really cross with me.

  “Want some?” The smallness of my voice surprises me.

  “No, thanks,” he mumbles.

  I love Vegemite, Chris hates it. He says it tastes like ‘kack”, which is a nice word for shit. We sit down at the table, look at each other and sip our coffee; it’s the eerie stillness of the night before a cyclone. I pick up the toast and take a bite. It tastes like cardboard with kack on it. My stomach feels like a trampoline and I fear that the toast will come rebounding up again any moment. My hand flies up to my mouth as the toast forces its way back up. I run to the toilet and bring up the remaining kack on cardboard, although chewing adequately seems to be a problem because not only has it resulted in an esophageal exfoliation, but the lumps floating in the toilet are big enough to attract a flock of seagulls.

  It’s over quickly and even though vomiting is not a choice pastime, I am relieved that it provided a legitimate reason to escape from the kitchen.

  The sounds of the boys playing in the backyard floats through the cedar bi-fold doors as I re-enter the kitchen. Chris doesn’t even query my vomiting, which provides the motivation to get this discussion started.

  I hold my breath and gather the kind of courage needed to pull off a waxing strip, before starting the conversation. “Are you mad with me for having to go to the meeting?” The answer is already clear but someone has to pave the way for this argument to begin.

  “No, I’m not mad at you for having to go to the meeting.”

  Really? Because the tension in this room is so thick that the walls are about to buckle, but I’ll play the game.

  “Why are you mad at me, Chris?”

  “I’m mad at you for choosing to go to the meeting, Juliette. For leaving your family again to pursue your career.” There, he’s said it. It’s out now. This has been brewing for a while; last night finally pushed him over the edge. Despite having expected this conversation for the last three years, there are no appropriate words floating around in the void between my brain and mouth.

  “Choosing? You think I choose to be away from you? You think I choose to work these crazy hours?”

  “Yes, I do think that you choose these things, Juliette. You chose to open a business, you chose to work day and night on it and you chose to develop it to gargantuan proportions. It was only ever meant to be a small boutique business, enough to make a nice living for us. But it’s turned into this…this…life-sucking, family-destroying entity.”

  “Right, I see.” Stalling for time seems the best option, because he does have a point. I have to concede that these choices were consciously made, and the business has gotten out of hand in the five years since it was born. I search the recesses of my supposedly PR-gifted mind for a comeback to his statement. Unfortunately, there’s nothing, not a thing. The next best option is to go on the offensive. “Why did you ask Anya out? What was that about, Chris?”

  “What? No! You don’t get to turn this around where I’m the bad guy. This is not about Anya.”

  “So what is it about?” As if the question needs to be asked.

  “This is about you being more involved with your work than you are with your family,” he says.

  “Chris, I’ve worked so hard for this business. You know how important this is to me. This business helps to pay our way, our mortgage, cars, Ethan’s school fees.”

  “What, and my work doesn’t? Don’t pull that crap about you earning more than me again. The money, the prestige, it doesn’t matter to me. In fact, I just find it pretentious and annoying,” he spits.

  I didn’t mean to pull that one out again. Architecture, when self-employed, is not always a constant stream of work, meaning an unreliable income. This has been used in the past to justify my workload and commitment to the business, but it comes across as more of an attack on Chris’ worthiness.

  “No, Chris, those weren’t the right words. I’m really sorry.” He’s wounded, his eyes can’t hide it. “Inside me is a real passion for my business, not so much the PR industry anymore, but running my own company, achieving things. It makes me feel better about myself. Except for the time I’m busy hating myself for being such a crap Mum and wife.”

  My self-deprecating humour does nothing to lighten the mood.

  I continue, “It’s too easy to get carried away. It’s tiring working at this pace all the time. There are days where getting out of bed is a Herculean effort. But at the same time, my goals are so close now.”

  Chris shakes his head. It’s clear my argument isn’t convincing.

  “This contract will be good for us. Things will change when the new staff settle in from the old agency. Madaya Moore doesn’t have a need for them now she’s lost Al’s contract, so once they’re up and running there will be plenty more time. I can step back and focus on our family.”

  “Will you really step back?” He stares at me, still not convinced.

  I pause for a moment to consider his question and it occurs to me that it is one that cannot be answered, despite the words of assurance that just flew out my mouth. The thought of someone else running my business, my baby, makes me feel as though I am five years old again and someone is trying to take my favourite dolly away.

  “Yes, I promise.” That’s what he needs to hear right now. Even though I am in no position to make any promises because all the ones made previously have been broken, twisted or conveniently forgotten, buying time will help me in getting things sorted out.

  “This is not the family life I want for my children. This is not the marriage I want to live in. You’ve turned into a professional version of your mother, minus the cask of wine.”

  His words cut deeply; opening old wounds that have grown a protective covering, like shutters erected over broken windows.

  “That’s not the same thing Chris, and you know it.” Biting back my anger and desire to return the hurt twofold, I am relieved when Ethan bursts into the room.

  “Dad, I need to do my science project, can we do it today, please?”

  Chris doesn’t take his eyes from me, st
ill intense and angry, his face as cold as a marble statue.

  “Dad?” Ethan repeats, our eyes still locked on each other as though we are gladiators about to launch into mortal combat.

  Chris touches Ethan on the shoulder in a show of affection. “Sure mate, let’s do it now.”

  They move out of the room, leaving me in a crumpled emotional heap as though my bones have liquefied.

  Chapter 6

  It’s Monday morning as I sit in the office, downing my double shot latte and feeling a sense of achievement at how well Chris and I managed to avoid each other yesterday. He was asleep not long after the boys’ bedtime; clearly still recovering from his night with Anya. Therefore, we are still to finish that heated conversation, and the prospect of its continuance daunts me in much the same way as my bi-annual pap smear.

  Part of me knows that Chris is right. I did choose to build the agency beyond what it was meant to be and this is the result. But should a woman lose her ambition just because she has children? Men can continue their careers uninterrupted, but we can’t? Taking a break would be professional suicide. Public relations isn’t an industry that welcomes Mums back after maternity leave because the landscape is changing constantly. Even a two-week holiday is difficult to recover from.

  I head out early for my weekly meeting with a boutique management agency, leaving the receptionist and three PR consultants to continue work on their assigned clients as well as the Saxon Jones scandal, and decide to pop in to my sister’s house to pick her brains for ways to settle marital disputes. Dash actually spends time with her husband and so is more likely to have regular arguments.

  “I’m back here, Juliette, doing the washing,” she calls out from the rear of the house, which is similar to ours because it was built around the same time. Like most capital cities, inner-city housing is similar: small, cramped and driveway-less.

  Upon entering the laundry I am thrown into a state of shock.

  “Oh my God! Have you opened a Chinese laundry? How can one family own so many clothes?” I ask.

  “No more than most others, it’s just that the plebs of society, a.k.a me, don’t have a housekeeper to do it all for us, unlike you. This…” Dash waves her hand around the clothes like a game show hostess, “is how real women live, Jules.”

  Dash tells me she is constantly drowning in a sea of mismatched socks, holey undies and fraying towels, but has resigned herself to the fact that there will never be a paid housekeeper based on Joe’s earnings from his concreting business.

  “Glamorous isn’t it? How are you?” she asks.

  “Good, just thought I’d drop by and…” I remove a pair of small pink undies from the peep toe of my stiletto as though they contain a deadly pathogen.

  “Help with the housework? Oh, Juliette, how kind of you, especially considering how important you are.”

  “Yeah, well you know, would if I could, but I just… don’t want to.”

  “You don’t look yourself today. You’re a bit scraggy. Are you OK?” Dash surveys me with a knowing eye.

  “Scraggy? Are you serious?” My compact mirror doesn’t lie and I discover, with horror, that the look of the day isn’t as polished as usual, but ‘scraggy’ is a bit over the top.

  “Do you want me to be honest or nice?” she asks.

  “Nice please.”

  “OK, that shade of pallor really works well against that pastel pink top you’re wearing, and the black hollows under your eyes match your bag perfectly. And your hair, I had no idea straw was so fashionable. Haven’t you had your weekly facial-transplant-thingie yet?”

  “You know, you’d never last a day in PR with that mouth,” I say.

  “I’d never last a day in PR because the dipshits you work for would drive me to physical violence.”

  “So surgically removing butternut pumpkins from the rectums of patients is preferable to PR?” I ask.

  “He fell over while doing the gardening and it’s not my place to question what consenting adults do behind closed doors,” she says.

  “Fell over? It was peeled, for God’s sake.”

  We both burst out laughing.

  “It took me eight months to be able to eat butternut pumpkin after that. I still can’t go near eggplants,” she says.

  Dash is a nurse and does two shifts a week in the emergency surgical theatre of the general hospital. She always has gory stories to tell of people who insert an oddment of items up either rectal or vaginal cavities. And I thought my clients were weird.

  “Besides, you said you’d give me the flattering version. You can’t over-promise and under-deliver like that; it’s crippling to my vanity.”

  “That was the flattering version, Juliette. What’s up, and don’t give me that PR shit you spin for everyone else. It’s my duty to be brutal with you, to make up for the fake world you float around in all day,” she says, folding a very pink, girly dress and placing it on top of another pile.

  Dash’s honesty is refreshing at times but not necessarily all the time. My lifestyle holds no appeal for her. Elbow-deep in cookie dough or bodies in need of life saving surgery is her idea of heaven. If Chris is my conscience, Dash is the moral compass.

  We move into the kitchen for a latte, me taking my usual place at the table while Dash whizzes around like a spinning top. The fridge is overrun with crayon drawings and photos of the kids. Post-it Notes are stuck to her calendar because she’s run out of writing space with all the activities and events the kids are involved in. The entire house is a very homely, comforting kind of chaos.

  “It’s Chris. We had part of a huge argument yesterday, about me working too much,” I say.

  “Hmmm…What happened, tell me.” Dash hands over a cup of coffee and a homemade banana muffin, cut in half and spread with butter, just the way she serves them up to her children.

  “Chris thinks that I work too much and that it’s having a negative effect on our family.”

  Dash pulls that face again, the one where she fights unsuccessfully with her eyeballs not to roll back into her head,.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” I say.

  “Juliette, I don’t want to get on your case about this, because God knows that’s already been done to death, but he does have a point, my sweet.”

  “What do you mean he has a point? He knew about my career aspirations when we married. Besides, he asked Anya out in front of me, as though he were a single man.”

  “Whoa, hang on. One thing at a time. Yes, you were open about your career aspirations, that’s true. Perhaps he thought that expelling two children from your uterus would mellow you a bit. But this is who you are and nothing on this earth is going to change that.” She must feel the heat from my death stare and adds quickly, “because you’re a special little Muppet and we all love you and accept you the way you are. Anyway, who’s Anya?”

  I explain the events of the previous Saturday night, after which Dash shakes her head and tutts in a motherly manner.

  “I’m sure there was nothing in it, Juliette. Chris would never cheat on you. Besides, women chasing married men is a bit Hollywood, isn’t it?”

  “Can you hear yourself? I think you’ve been married to Iti Joe and living in the Mummy-bubble too long. Anya wants my husband.”

  Dash takes a long, deep breath and says, “I will ignore the Iti Joe and bubble bit for the sake of sisterly love, this time. Don’t make the mistake of hanging shit on my life again though, got it?”

  “Sorry, I’m a bit worked up,” I say, twirling my hair around my finger.

  “What time did he get home?” she asks.

  “Ten-thirty the next morning.”

  “Ooh, so they were really together all night?” She cringes. It’s the same look a man gets on his face when he sees another man get hit in the groin. “Do you trust Chris?”

  “Around her, not really.”

  “Why don’t you give Chris the time he’s asking for then? If he’s not feeling so neglected, Anya will hold less att
raction.”

  “Yeah, I know. It’s not that easy though.”

  She tutts and does the eyeball rolling thing again. “Jules…”

  “If Chris would just be patient, he’d see that this is only temporary…” She’s lost the fight with those eyeballs; there they go, rolling backwards as though she’s trying to read the calendar on the wall behind her without turning around. “…and that I’m only temporarily ruining our family.” Once again, my sense of humour falls flat.

  “Well, maybe in his eyes you are ruining your family. There are always at least two sides to every story. He wants you all to be together, like a normal family. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be your first priority.”

  “Have you two talked about this?”

  “Chris mentioned it at Joe’s birthday last month.”

  “Joe’s birthday? I don’t remember that.”

  “That’s because you weren’t there, some client was having a ‘PR emergency’. Chris brought the kids. We talked, no big deal,” she shrugs.

  “So why are you taking his side? You’re my sister.”

  “First of all Juliette, calm down, OK? I can see where he’s coming from, that’s all. His demands aren’t unrealistic. He’s hardly asking you to be barefoot and pregnant constantly.”

  “What, like you?” Oh shit! Please don’t tell me I said that out loud. The atmosphere of the room changes instantly; icy winds from the Arctic Circle blow through the kitchen. Dash’s reaction to my last remark will be swift and harsh.

  She looks at me with the look of a mother telepathically scolding her child. You know the look; we have all either seen it from our own mother or delivered it to our children. It’s where you purse your lips, furrow your brows together, tilt your head to the side, clench your teeth and squint like Dirty Harry. She better not pull a Magnum out of her apron pocket. I brace for impact.

  Dash comes close and bends down to my level, where she points a savage finger at my chest, “I have a real family Juliette. I’m not off working day and night to fulfill my own dreams to the detriment of my family and marriage,” she says. She then turns her thumb towards her own chest as she continues, “I value my family. I put my heart and soul into my children because they deserve me being the best Mum possible. My Joe is not only the best father imaginable, but as a husband he exceeds my wildest dreams every day. Maybe I don’t drive an expensive car, wear posh clothes, or get my hair and face fixed every four weeks, or whatever the Hell it is you do that makes you so important, but my family loves me, they know me and I am the heart of this home, not some shitty nanny or housekeeper.”