The Near Miss (13 page)

‘No. I . . .' I want my girlfriend to come back. ‘I'm just not ready. Can they give me sick leave? Leave without pay?'

Alf refilled his cup and looked at Eddy primly. ‘I'll do you a favour and pretend I didn't hear that.'

Eddy sighed, and looked at his glass. Despite himself, he was struck by the kindness of this gesture, this filthy-smelling alcohol sent to him from two overfed, maritally dysfunctional executives via their arrogant and highly paid lawyer. His eyes filled with tears, and, rather than reveal to Alf this embarrassing turn of events, he lifted his glass to his mouth and drank.

The one entertainment Grace could draw from her new status of abandoned wife was the way it shook the security of every married person in her world. She had at first mistaken the stricken looks and introspective silences from friends and acquaintances as sympathy. However, she gradually realised that they were not reflecting on her sorry state, as they sat dumbly, but rather on their own. They were scrutinising the state of their own marital nation and mulling over harsh words, long absences between sex, episodes of blame and neglect, resolutions for regular date nights that had gathered dust.
Am I next?
You could almost read the question across their foreheads, like a text ribbon of news running across the telly screen. Could people's unions be so delicate that the shattering of one threatened to chip and crack those around them?

It seemed so.

‘But I can't believe it!' cried Verity at morning coffee, for the eleventh time.

‘Why not?' said Grace wearily, although she still couldn't believe it either.

‘I don't know. You guys seemed to me like the perfect couple.'

‘Really?' Grace folded a serviette into squares, until it became a ball. ‘Why do people say that?'

‘
Do
lots of people say it?' Anna Trapper asked. Anna Trapper, who was now living a life Grace could only dream of.

‘Well, some.' She heard it said a lot in general when people broke up, just like the way when people died they became all fabulous at their funeral. Although, come to think of it, she hadn't heard it a lot in her and Tom's case.

‘Oh, I don't exactly mean that you were
perfect
,' Verity hastened to correct herself, and Grace felt a little sour. Why, exactly, hadn't they seemed perfect? Even a little? ‘It's just that you
guys seemed good enough. Getting by okay.'

‘We were okay. But Tom was obsessed with his invention, he didn't want to earn a living in a normal way, and I . . . well . . . I guess I wanted him to change.'

‘Oh.' Anna Trapper reached over and rubbed Grace's forearm, and Grace resisted an urge to collapse weeping into her arms.

‘And I wanted a baby.' It was like confession: where was the priest? I wanted. I dreamed. And the greatest sin of all: I tried to change him.

Verity looked aghast. ‘But I feel like that, too, with Stephen! Not about a baby, cos you know, two girls are enough and what are the chances we'd get a boy next time, but, you know, other things. Like the way he hangs out my shirts so I get peg marks on my nipples! Jesus! And the way I have to write all the thank-you notes to his relatives, cos he'd never bother, and, you know, the
snoring
, which is not his fault but, shit, it's so pig-like. I married a farm animal! Sometimes I think, Jesus, get me out of here. There was this moment about a week ago, where I asked him to fill in a school excursion form for Poppy, and he was doing it and he asked me
when Poppy's birthday was
. Can you believe! I mean, I carry all that stuff in my head like four hundred unwinding reels of cotton, and he drifts in and out like a tourist. And I had this dream of leaving him — that passed in a minute, but it freaked me out. Because maybe if I think it, I could do it. Maybe that's the start of it.'

‘We think all sorts of things,' said Anna comfortingly. ‘That's what I tell the kids. Just because an idea occurs to you, it doesn't mean you follow it. Things blow across our minds like, I don't know, like leaves on a windy day. Most of them mean nothing.'

Grace thought of that blue thread, hanging from the sky. Anna would have let it go, she could see that now. She would have folded her hands and kept them neatly in her lap.

‘You never think of leaving Damien?' said Verity.

‘Oh, never seriously. Just like I say, like a leaf blowing across a field. And now he's such a big deal in the movies, I'd be mad to leave him, wouldn't I?' She laughed uproariously.

Grace studied her. ‘Damien got work?' She was ashamed to note her heart sinking at the possibility of good news for this kind friend and neighbour. What was wrong with her? Bad human.

‘A one-year contract with Fox, as a casting assistant. It doesn't earn much, but it's a foot in the door.'

Grace was amazed, and horrified. ‘That's fantastic. Go, Damien! Why didn't you tell us before? You must be ecstatic.'

Anna shrugged. ‘It's good.'

‘But aren't you rapt? I mean, all these years of him waiting for a break. Will you work less?'

Anna seemed coolly resistant to euphoria, just as she had been immune to despair. ‘Hmm? Oh, actually, yes. I'll probably quit one of my jobs. He was trying to get me to quit both, but I quite enjoy the call-centre one. The girls there are nice.'

Grace could hardly absorb this. Damien, rocking on the verandah singing songs to his children, her low-water-mark for a useless husband, was now employed. While she no longer even had a husband. ‘Well, it's a credit to you. You believed in him all these years, you encouraged him to keep trying.' Her own words stabbed her in the heart as she uttered them. Tom. The Oldbot, the solar roof, dreams once as dear to her as that of another child. Dreams which she had, Judas-like, betrayed.

Anna rubbed at a spot on the table. ‘Oh, I had my moments, believe me.' But she would say
no more on the subject, suddenly preoccupied with her phone.

Dissatisfied, Verity turned to Nina. ‘What about you? Do you ever think of . . . you know . . . with Brian?'

‘Leaving him? Sure. And since these guys broke up . . .' Nina nodded towards Grace and lowered her voice to a whisper, ‘I can't stop worrying about it. But I'm mostly terrified he's thinking about leaving
me
! I mean if Grace didn't see it coming, maybe I wouldn't either. And it would kill me! The money! The kids, the psychological damage. Leaving my house. What my parents would say! And watching him get with someone else . . . Oh Grace.' She squeezed her hand. ‘You must be devastated.'

Grace nodded, undoubtedly numb with pain, and yet feeling somehow robbed of something by this conversation. Maybe her future. Oh, Christ.
Watching him get with someone else
. . . Would that happen? And did every dire implication really need to be pointed out to her? ‘Yes. No. I don't know. I guess . . . he might come back.'

There was a tragic silence, into which Anna spoke. ‘I think there's a good chance he will.'

‘You do?' God, if she could just crawl into Anna's lap and have a good sob on her shoulder, she would feel a lot better. If only her own mother could be so kind.

‘He adores you. You can see it.'

Grace blinked hard and pulled out tissues. She never went anywhere without tissues anymore.

‘But didn't you throw him out?' Verity again, eager for more.

Grace pressed a tissue to her eyes. She did not like to think of this, but yes, she had told him to choose between his plastic bottles or her. It was a foolish thing to have said. He was a fairly literal-minded man. And why should anyone have to choose? And why hadn't she said his bottles
or his family, which would have been a harder decision for him? ‘I didn't really mean it,' she said forlornly.

‘Oh God, of course you didn't; I say stuff like that every day,' said Nina. ‘Well, I mean I did. Until this. But nobody means it. He should know that. Were you premenstrual?'

‘Um. No.'

‘Still. He should know. It's just something you say.'

‘Exactly. He's using it as an excuse. I've asked him to come back. Over and over. I've apologised. I've begged him.'

‘And where is he living?'

Grace now knew this. ‘In a squat. With some artists. Friends of Melody's.'

Eyebrows shot up around the table. ‘
Oh
. That was . . .
nice
of her. To help him.'

Grace pressed her lips closed and made a grumbling sound in the base of her throat, which was correctly interpreted by all her companions, two of whom leaned forward in eager conspiracy.

‘Oh, dear. She's a funny one, isn't she?'

‘She's such a . . . I don't know . . . such a . . .'

‘Hippy,' said Grace.

‘Exactly! So dreamy and strange-looking and uncompromising. And I mean, hippies are so over, really.'

‘She did save Lotte's life,' Grace said, resentfully.

‘That reminds me,' said Anna. ‘Damian had some telly friends over the other day, people he went to film school with who work at that current affairs show — what is it?
Round Up
— and they were asking all about Melody. Heaps of questions.'

‘Why?'

‘I think they want to get her back on the telly.'

Grace was dismayed. ‘Would they do something
else
on it? On Lotte's accident?'

‘I got the sense it was just Melody they wanted.'

‘Why can't they leave her alone?'

‘She's so attractive. So unusual-looking. The camera loved her. That's what they said, anyway.'

There was silent consideration of this. ‘She's like a wild animal. Like something that just crawled out of the jungle and has to learn how to live a normal life,' said Grace slowly.

‘It's interesting you guys have hit it off.'

Grace blinked. Had she and Melody hit it off? It had all been so out of the blue. One moment Melody had been an odd-looking character on a sidewalk, and months later she was a part of her life. Grace had even been thinking the past few days of asking her and Skipper to come live with them, at least until Tom came back. Why not? It would be cheaper for them both, and the kids would love it. The house was too big with Tom gone. And Melody seemed so out of place in that little box flat, whereas she always looked at Grace's scrappy back yard with longing. ‘She's different than you'd think,' Grace said slowly, thinking of Melody making their detergent and bread and yoghurt; of how she had pointed out where to plant herbs and veggies, of the elegant simplicity with which she lived on very little, like a musician making a beautiful song out of only a couple of notes. ‘She's actually quite practical. Certainly more than Tom.' Which did sound odd, she realised now, comparing Melody to her former husband. But the girls switched in a heartbeat back to the subject of Tom.

‘Oh, God, I still can't believe it! You guys were the perfect couple! And was there anything leading up to this, to make you expect it?'

‘Nothing.' Why had she mentioned Tom? It was exhausting, this probing of the wound, and she reflected that this was another thing that drew her to Melody; her lack of interest in the marriage breakdown. Melody rarely talked about the past, or speculated on the future. She just lived for the day, helping Skip with kindy, and making her soap and her bread and her lentils. She was a still pool.

The others shivered with fear again, and fell silent, doing mental stocktakes of their lovers. Even Anna pinched her bottom lip between her fingers and stared into middle distance.

‘But why? Why?' asked Grace's mother, a pained if sturdy-looking woman named Dawn.

‘Mum, I don't know more than I'm telling you. I wanted another baby, Tom wanted to sell our home and quit his job and make solar tiles from recycled bottles. It was — what do they say? — irreconcilable differences.'

‘Well, why on earth did you want another baby?' her mother snapped. ‘I mean what have you achieved by wanting that! You're not going to get another baby now without a husband, are you? And why would you want another baby anyway?'

‘Because I just did! I'm not that unusual. I mean Lotte is four, I think we've left it a long time as it is.'

‘Exactly, there's no point having another baby now — they wouldn't play together with this sort of age gap. I don't know why you were so fixated on . . .'

‘Mum! I don't need this sort of judgment, thanks very much.'

‘Don't come all high and mighty with me, young lady. What about all my friends who gave you wedding presents, who set you up in a home . . .?'

‘We'd already been living together for two years. They didn't—'

‘The Simondsons, who spent so much on that Sunbeam electric frypan, far too expensive, I told them—'

‘Well, I never used it; it's still in the box. You can give it back to them if you like.'

But her mother was weeping, stray phrases audible through the sobs. ‘. . . do this to me . . . after all I've been through . . . but as I told the golf women, oh well, what's one more burden for this old back to bear . . .'

Grace also had to face her mother-in-law, who was stiff and angry on the phone. ‘Tom needs to see a psychiatrist. I've told him so. I just want to, on behalf of the whole Ellison family, to
apologise
to you for what he's done.'

‘Oh, well, thank you, Maureen, but really, you've got nothing to—'

‘No. I mean it. This runs through the family. We're riddled with it! More from my husband's side than mine, although . . . Well never mind. I'm sorry we never told you. I told Tom to tell you before you got married. It was his duty, I said, but he just laughed at me.'