The Slip, page 2
On the cliffs the wind is powerful. You breathe in and out, feeling it pummel the muscles of your face. Down below the waves are aggro and piratical, pillaging the sand. You descend the steps and then you see it: seafoam, huge swathes of it, so thick and pale and vast that the entire beach seems covered in new-fallen snow.
Exhilarated, struck with nauseous wonder, you walk back to the house thinking you will give the thing another go.
In the loungeroom he is sitting in a sulky pose and reading, so you cuddle up beside him on the couch, open the Lorrie Moore again and try to make things feel congenial. The narrator is sad because it’s been a week since her lover has called. The next time he phones he says, ‘I was having a dream about you and suddenly I woke up with a jerk and felt very uneasy.’ The narrator says, ‘Yeah, I hate waking up with jerks.’
You look over at the man. He can be such a jerk. If you were his wife, you would probably find this endearing. Perhaps it is endearing. You draw his arm around you, kissing his fingers one by one.
‘What’s funny?’ he asks.
‘Just the book.’
‘You’re still reading that?’ He sighs and shifts over, so that your bodies aren’t touching anymore.
‘What’s wrong with it? What’s your problem?’
He chooses his next words carefully. ‘Maybe it appeals to someone with your experience of life. But you learn things as you get older, you don’t find the same things funny as before. You joke a lot, and I wonder if it’s because you’re insecure.’
‘I don’t know why I joke.’ You suddenly feel very small.
‘I’m sorry. It will get easier.’ Then he kisses your head in a way that is distinctly fatherly.
You look up at him with big, childish eyes. ‘Thanks … Daddy.’ And without meaning to you suddenly let loose one long, loud snort of laughter.
He looks at you.
‘What the fuck is wrong with you,’ he says, and reaches for his phone.
You read once that humour has a history of belonging to men. The problem is that he thinks you’re insecure and you’re beginning to admit that he’s a wanker. Now he is texting his wife again. ‘They’re coming home early,’ he says. ‘Shit. Get your stuff, we really need to go.’
Leaving makes you wild with a kind of grief you’ve never felt before. He drives again while you stare out the window, the same scenery as yesterday passing by, only now there is a rainbow. Imagine prolonging the relationship, you try to reason, waiting months or even years for him to say he’s finally left his wife.
Is that what you want?
He will say, ‘I’ve left my wife for you,’ placing emphasis on the you, and once this happens you’ll be responsible for his happiness and the fallout with his family, his friends and all his networks. Both of you will have to find another job and when he doesn’t find one, you will have to be supportive. Trisha will kick him out and he will move into your share house, where you’ll find him sitting on the futon in his crumpled shirt and cowboy boots, talking to your stoner housemate Frida about art, watching Scandinavian crime dramas and eating a whole box of ice creams, the ones he likes, the ones that Trisha knows to buy him, dropping the wrappers on the floor. Come on! You’re young. You’re fun. You’re full of …
You’ve got so much life ahead of you!
Back in Brunswick, he drops you out the front of your share house, where your housemates are on the porch drinking, smoking and carrying on because it’s Saturday afternoon. You look over at them wistfully, torn between two worlds.
‘Sorry about all this,’ he says, looking genuinely remorseful. ‘Things haven’t been great between me and Trisha lately. I mean, it’s been a long time coming. Meeting you has obviously changed things and I’m starting to think …’ A misty look comes over him. He clasps your head between his hands. You can tell he is about to say it, and the thought fills you with dread.
‘Please don’t,’ you mumble, snatching all your stuff and getting out. You steal a glance at your housemates, who have paused their revelry to watch. Then you lean in through the window, and yes, you’re doing it, you’re ending the affair.
For the next few days you weep, mope and keep one of his books as a memento. Moving on is both easier and more painful than you thought.
Present day, present moment: you’re sitting at your computer. You left the publishing company and do not miss it. You are living with another man and you have your writing degree. When the book deal comes through, you feel a pressing urge to tell the man with whom you had an affair. He sends you a bottle of prosecco in the mail which is misdirected before it finds you. Inside the box is a handwritten note. His handwriting – you never saw it before. You stare at it and somehow, it moves you.
For a moment you consider what could have been, concluding that the passion which once heaved inside you like a wave has now retreated, moon-drawn, from a shore that cannot hold it. Perhaps he’d like the look of this wave, retreating from this shore, if it appeared in one of those books he loves. It’s funny, isn’t it, how these things go? Because this will always be the first thing you ever wrote, and you would like to thank him, after all that passed between you, for his small part in your becoming.
Here is that wave.
You watch it draw back gently, gently, until all that remains on the beach is a faint glimmer of seafoam.
Movements of the Soul
On Friday evening Joy goes to the housewarming party of a woman she met at the dog park. She is asked to bring a plate and goes to a lot of trouble making this elaborate salad she pulled from an Ottolenghi book. When she arrives, the table is laden with other people’s offerings, but as Joy places hers between them she feels stupid for going to such lengths; everyone else has just brought plates of kabana, tasty cheese and supermarket dip.
The host is a woman with wild hennaed hair and a psycho kelpie-cross gone mad from lack of work. She gives Joy a hug and introduces her to a pair of women talking. Pleasantries are exchanged, but after a while the women resume their conversation from before. Joy drifts away from them as if it’s accidental. Meanwhile, the kelpie-cross runs laps around them, yelping and occasionally nipping people’s heels.
The downstairs toilet is smaller than a cupboard. Joy slips in there to hide and notices a sign above the cistern which reads Please flush sparingly, we’re running on tank water . She scowls. Some animal has taken this instruction literally and left a huge shit in the bowl. Joy grabs the toilet gel, douses and begins to scrub, cursing the woman from the dog park, her filthy guests and crap food and her pass-agg smiley face. She doesn’t even really like her, this person who constantly talks about her menopause and doesn’t seem to understand her dog at all. Why did she come here? Maybe it’s a crisis, she thinks and flushes. Maybe she is finally having a midlife crisis.
Shortly after her fifty-fifth birthday, Joy was made redundant. She’d been promised a promotion, but when the architecture firm restructured, a man was given it instead. Her friend Judy took her out for lunch to commiserate; they ate Middle Eastern food and talked about their daughters. Bowls and plates of gleaming mezze filled the table, more food than they could eat, and Joy rushed through the meal with singular speed until she felt suddenly, immensely full. Judy’s plate remained untouched as she shared pictures of her eldest, who had just been selected to play in the oldest symphonic orchestra in the American Ivy League. Judy is a barrister and her daughter is at Harvard. This really shouldn’t matter, but it does.
Her only consolation is that Judy’s daughter looks like a sloth and plays the piccolo flute, which is absurd. The photos are embarrassing. Joy’s own daughter is wonderful and has just released her second studio album, even though she’s only twenty-one. The two girls played in school band together – that’s how she knows Judy.
At the end of the meal Judy became absorbed in her phone again, replying to emails, giving Joy the distinct impression she planned on ignoring the bill entirely until Joy took out her credit card and paid, even though it was supposed to be Judy’s treat. She felt extremely hostile towards her as they stood outside the restaurant saying goodbye, Judy waiting for an Uber, traffic blaring, pigeons milling at their feet. As she was getting in the Camry, Judy looked at Joy meaningfully and asked how she was going.
‘No I mean – really. Have you found another job? What have you been doing since they dumped you?’
Such a harsh way of saying it, thought Joy, like throwing something bulky from the window of a car.
‘Not yet,’ said Joy. ‘I’m considering my options.’
‘God it must be so awful. How are you surviving? Do you have anything to occupy your time?’
Fuck Judy, the stingy bitch. On the tram home, Joy decided she needed better friends.
So now she’s at this party, but there is no one here she wants to talk to. Once the toilet’s clean, she shuts the door and has a snoop around the house. There’s some bad art in the master bedroom which the hostess must have made herself, a couple of wacko sculptures involving piles of toothpicks, painted seeds and stacks of dried orange peel. She hates it, but the room smells beautifully of citrus.
Outside, the summer light is falling. Joy goes back upstairs. On the staircase, which is extremely narrow, she passes by a younger man. He wears a dark expression which disappears when he sees her, as if she has startled the trouble from his face. They do an awkward dance but can’t help pressing together, so close she feels the buckle of his belt against her stomach, silvery and cold. A quick thrill passes through her. The man is very tall and dresses like he’s famous. He looks to be in his late twenties, medium build, with lank brown hair styled limply in a mullet. His complexion suggests a lack of health, although she quickly likes his eyes, which are dark and bright like a person with fever.
Later in the night, having downed an entire bottle of rosé, Joy feels like flirting. She goes up to the younger man she squeezed past on the staircase, who is talking to a group around the fire, to ask how he knows the hostess. He says he teaches music with her at the polytechnic. ‘So you’re a musician,’ Joy says coquettishly, dragging a hand along his arm. To her gratification, the man does not retreat. ‘I am,’ he says. ‘You look familiar. Are you a muso too?’
‘Oh no,’ says Joy. ‘I’m practically tone deaf. My daughter is, but she got that from her dad. You could say I have a type.’
‘How old’s your daughter,’ he asks.
Joy falters for a moment. ‘She’s only twenty-one.’
‘Oh, just a baby. God, I remember when I was twenty-one. I did not have my shit together at all.’ He gives her a penetrating look. ‘So you have a type, hey? Does it apply to all musicians, or do they have to play a certain instrument?’
‘Mostly guitarists, I guess.’
‘Must be my lucky night,’ he says.
‘Oh really?’ Joy smiles. ‘But can you make love to a woman as well as you make love to your guitar?’
‘I guess it depends on what type of body she has. You know … rosewood, maple, mahogany.’
They laugh, their tone light, but there’s a serious game being played.
They go on like this until the fire’s low and some of the other guests are leaving. The hostess tries to crash their conversation, putting her hands all over the younger man, trying to coax him into the bedroom to admire one of her awful sculptures, and some of the other women at the party glance at them furtively, trying to ascertain what’s going on. Joy takes a secret pleasure in knowing that the man’s in high demand. He brushes the hostess off politely and, with a conspiratorial smile, comes back to stand with Joy.
‘I never asked – how do you know Maggie?’
‘Oh,’ she says vaguely. ‘I don’t, really. I just met her at the dog park.’
‘Want to get out of here?’ he asks.
Joy says yes and it is done.
His house is in a gentrified suburb by the Merri Creek where lots of social workers, lesbians and music teachers live. Joy stands behind while he unlocks the door, looking at his high round buttocks, feeling momentarily self-conscious. She should go back to Pilates. That’s it – after this weekend she’s buying a membership to the gym.
They walk down a narrow hallway and Joy realises that she doesn’t know his name. Too late. The other bedroom doors are closed and she imagines who else lives here. The thought passes. Now they are in his bedroom and he’s taking off his shirt, revealing a body that is young and firm, a little underweight, but in a sinewy way she associates with rock’n’roll. She removes hers too and things happen quickly after that; they have a natural chemistry. The only thing that bothers her is that he wants to make intense, lingering eye contact. It’s not off-putting per se, but it makes her think that he is trying too hard to connect.
Afterward he wraps his arm around her waist possessively, snuggling her into the hollow of his body. The endorphins wear off and a dull headache thuds behind her eyes, her gut revolts, she is prematurely hungover. As he falls asleep the young man’s arm gets heavy and begins to crush her ribs. Unwillingly, she thinks of the breakdown of her partnership, the sleepless nights spent in similar positions, listening to Michael snoring, feeling stuck. Feeling like she couldn’t change her life. Now she tries to live spontaneously; she never wants to trap herself again. So she makes an excuse and dresses, says she has to feed her dog.
‘But I had big plans for breakfast,’ he says. ‘Eggs, juice, maybe a back rub.’
‘Aww, that sounds great but—’
‘Promise you’ll text me?’
His desperation’s weird, but there is something sweet about him, almost boyish. It must be those quick, animated eyes. ‘Maybe I’ll see you,’ she says gently, closing his bedroom door.
In the taxi on the way home, she experiences a sudden, powerful desire to call her ex.
‘What’s the matter, are you okay?’
‘What went wrong between us, Mick? I feel as though I can’t remember. But there must have been something.’
‘Is that why you called? Joy, it’s four in the morning; I thought something had gone wrong. Where have you been?’
‘I was so unhappy. I thought nothing good would ever happen to me again.’
‘Can we talk about this another time?’
‘Do you think it’s because after Frida, we couldn’t have another baby?’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘What then?’
‘Honestly, Joy? I thought you knew. I’m not the one who wanted it to end.’
The next morning Joy wakes feeling worse than ever. She always feels a little shameful when she wakes up with a hangover, and then she remembers calling Michael at 4 a.m. Lying there, smelling like sex and stale wine, she chastises herself for acting like a teenager. She sends him an apology and then, too guilty to stay in bed, downs a couple of painkillers and a Hydralyte, showers, drags on runners and a raincoat and heads outside to walk the dog.
It is drizzling, humid. For a Saturday there’s hardly anyone around. Joy walks to the oval, feeling better with every step. After last night her body is sensitive to the air, the humidity, the fabric of her clothes. She feels strangely awake. Near a group of warehouses, the air is toasty with the smell of roasting coffee. Her dog frolics in the wet. In the daylight she is able to get her bearings; she’s not a hundred per cent sure, but she thinks the younger man’s house is nearby. If she hung a right and walked for ten minutes in the direction of the city, she’d arrive outside his door.
Her phone chimes with a text message from an unknown number. It’s him, saying he had a great time last night and can he have her email. Her email? It’s a strange request but it can’t hurt. Seconds later, her phone makes the swooshing sound to indicate an email has come through. The subject simply reads, Proposal. Involuntarily, she thinks of the time Michael asked her to marry him and she said no. Well, for a while she said yes, but then a couple of months before the wedding, Joy imagined standing at the altar and realised that she couldn’t promise, before all their family and friends, to cherish Michael until one or other of their deaths. It just wasn’t possible. Who could, in good faith, make a promise like that? Not that she didn’t love him. She just wasn’t sure she’d love him always.
The proposal in the email does not pertain to marriage but contains an employment opportunity which might interest her. The younger man recalls Joy telling him she is looking for work and coincidentally he is looking for someone to perform a cash job. He’s got all the info if she wants it. Short-term, with the possibility to extend.
Joy is intrigued. She wonders why he’s being generous; he must have really liked her. Maybe there’s a red light flashing in her brain, telling her not to mix business with pleasure, but either she ignores it or she doesn’t notice. If you’re keen to have a chat about the job, he writes, here is my address. It feels as though the universe is telling her to see him one more time. So she walks home, dries the dog off with a towel, packs his food and drops him at her sister’s.
‘Are you going away or something?’ asks her sister, holding the dog by his collar so he doesn’t follow Joy back to the car.
‘Maybe,’ says Joy smiling, leaning against the door.
‘Oh my God – you’ve met someone, haven’t you?’
‘Maybe, baby,’ she repeats mysteriously, leaping into the car and driving off.
She feels possessed of a sudden vitality. Fuck Pilates – she feels like she could climb a mountain. She could swim the Bass Strait, pump iron, go on a bender, fuck a rugby team.
Maybe not that far.
But fuck it, Joy feels good.
The man’s house is gorgeous, an Edwardian weatherboard with cast iron latticework and a sprawling, shady garden through which the rain drips oh so sweetly. She knocks on the door and he opens it immediately, as if he has been standing there waiting for her all this time. They look at each other and the attraction from last night sparks up again and quivers like a naked flame between them.
