Too Close to Home (7 page)

ONCE MATT HAS LEFT for work and Ella has gone to school, Freya is alone. She's sent an email to her agent, wanting to know if there's any response to her new play. There's always an anxiety in waiting for this first feedback, and the thesis is no distraction. She sits in her workroom at the other end of the garden and reads articles online or essays in books she has borrowed, knowing she's not really taking in any of the words. She is simply putting off writing.

She decides to cut the grass, only to find the mower she bought a month ago was, as she'd feared, not built to last. The plastic wheels fall off each time she pushes it, and she swears loudly, knowing she is likely to chop her finger off if she keeps trying to fix it without unplugging it from the power socket.

And so she returns to her studio, where she hunts for a review of her first play, vaguely remembering that there was a statement she could use, a line that she's sure is perfect. Cross-legged on the floor, her thighs itchy from the sisal matting, she looks through old scrap-books, delaying for far too long over photographs of her and Matt, early notes he sent her, memorabilia
she kept from the days when she was so very much in love.

It's different now. But not because he's changed, she thinks. He has remained remarkably consistent in his feelings for her. Even all those years ago, when he left her to travel north, he still professed to care for her, sending her postcards from each town, and occasional longer letters, telling her that he missed her.

She'd had to learn to need him less, and it had taken her some time.

While he was hitchhiking, adrift in the world, she was finishing the Honours year of her Arts degree. She had a room in a huge share house that shook and rattled each time a truck rumbled past on the busy road below. Her window looked out over the cracked cement yard at the back of the terrace, down onto a Hills hoist and the sagging lounge chairs that someone had dragged in from the street.

‘Come down,' her housemates would call out to her, as they drank beer on those long, hot afternoons, trying to find shelter under the avocado tree.

She would wave from her bedroom window, mouthing the word ‘later' as she did so.

She missed him with an aching emptiness that left her weightless, a pretender in all social interactions and hopelessly aware of how out of step she was with the world around her. She pinned his postcards up around her desk. She took them down often, re-reading his words in the hope they would bring him back.

There was a party at the end of that year. The house was crowded, people crushed in the hall, on the stairs, in every room. Out in the yard, an old bathtub was filled with ice and bottles of beer. Everyone was drunk.

Hamish, a friend of Matt's, knocked on her door. She was dressed for the evening, her lipstick dark against the paleness of her skin. She'd been about to come down, she told him, and she took the cigarette that he offered.

Standing by her desk, he looked at the cards on the wall, his eyes running over the series of blue skies, surf beaches, art pictures and the odd joke card with bikini babes lying on impossibly white sand. The most recent one, from Brisbane, telling her he was thinking of coming home for Christmas, had not been put up yet. It lay face down on top of a pile of books. She knew he was reading it, and she asked him to stop.

He apologised, talking without thinking. ‘I guess you've heard he's changed his mind? He's met some people in Brisbane. Looks like he's going to stay a while.'

Freya didn't mean to cry. The tears had come and she'd been appalled, embarrassed, as she tried to wipe them away without smearing her make-up. She hadn't known, and she felt like a fool as she admitted to this, while Hamish apologised.

‘You know Matt,' he offered by way of consolation, ‘he says one thing one day and another the next. He'll just turn up when we least expect it.'

He tried to hug her and it was awkward. She could smell the beer on him, cigarette smoke, the sweetness of marijuana, and the warmth of his body through the worn softness of his T-shirt.

She stepped back slightly and her intake of breath was audible, sharp above the thump of the music from downstairs, the laughter, and the voices as people called out to each other, talking, talking, talking; she wondered what they could possibly have to say.

She looked at Hamish and tried to smile. Do you think he loved me, she was about to ask, but thankfully stopped herself, because there had to be a limit to how much of a fool you could be. He brushed her hair away from her eyes and began to kiss her, tentatively at first, and as she responded, a little more insistently.

They moved towards her bed far more quickly than either of them could have anticipated and she wondered whether this was happening simply because they both did not know what to say. He unzipped her dress and she didn't stop him. Neither of them spoke, and in the dim light of her room, with the noise from the party coming up through the floor, they had sex; silent, sad sex. Don't stop, she wanted to tell him, because she knew that when he did stop, they would be left face to face with each other and the enormous divide between the inherent intimacy of the act and the distance between them.

‘God,' and he looked at her and grinned. ‘I don't know how that happened.'

She smiled, relieved that one of them had spoken, that it was not as bad as she had expected. Sitting up, she searched for her dress on the floor. It was crumpled at the foot of the bed. He was putting on his jeans, shimmying them up over the slimness of his hips with one hand, smoothing down his ruffled hair with the other. Their eyes now adjusted to the slow descent of complete darkness into her room, they could see each other clearly enough, and neither of them averted their gaze.

‘I'm okay,' she told him, not that he had asked.

‘I know,' he said, and his smile was gentle.

They went down to the party, peeling off to separate
ends of the house as they reached the bottom of the stairs. She saw him throughout the night, there in the middle of a group of people near the Hills hoist; later, leaning against the stove in the kitchen; after midnight, coming out of the bathroom; and then, towards the end of the night, arguing with his girlfriend at the front door.

Neither of them spoke. Each time she glanced in his direction, he wasn't looking at her.

The next morning, head aching, she woke to the stifling heat of the midmorning sun and the smell of alcohol, wafting sickly in the stillness. Downstairs, there were people asleep in the lounge room, there was even someone slumped across the kitchen table. She made herself a coffee and tiptoed to the phone in the hall.

She'd woken with the memory of Hamish, despite the fact that the strangeness of the moment made it almost impossible to recollect. She thought about calling him to see if he had Matt's number in Brisbane, but as she picked up the phone, she changed her mind. Leaning against the cool of the terrace wall, she knew she'd reached the end of what she could bear. There would be no more. It was time for her to move on, because no matter how painful that felt, it could be no worse than the stasis she'd been inhabiting for months.

Two days later, Freya booked herself a ticket overseas. One week after that, she left. She didn't write to Matt. She didn't let him know she'd gone. She supposed there was an element of punishing him, but she preferred to think of her actions in a higher light; she simply wanted to break free. It was a turning point, the first step in the several that led to them being together as they are now.

She closes her scrapbook; the review she had been searching for isn't there. Staying just as she is, legs now outstretched on the floor in front of her, she feels as though she has been bathing in the richness of how she once loved, the dark romance of it, a state that had to give way and one that she wouldn't want to return to, but there is sadness in remembering, because there's a stillness between them now. The newness of their life in this house has faded, and they have settled into a routine weighed down by a dissatisfaction that hovers, a cloud she wants to burst. Perhaps she just needs to take his head between her hands and tell him how much she loves him? She looks out to the garden. Even if she felt that would help, she knows her best intentions are always waylaid by the demands of domestic life.

Later, as she lies on the bed with Ella reading her a story, she stops as she often does, to kiss the softness of her skin.

She can hear Matt out in the hall, searching for his keys, and then he opens the door quietly, showing them just his face as he tells them that he is heading up the road.

‘To have a drink with Shane. Won't be long.'

‘Don't get drunk,' she says, unable to hide her disappointment. She'd wanted an evening together.

Ella squirms out of Freya's hold, attempting to climb out of bed hands first, feet second. ‘I'm coming,' she says, her entire body collapsing onto the floor.

Freya grasps her daughter's ankles and pulls her back under the covers.

‘Why can't I go?' she asks. ‘I could sleep up there.'

It's late, Freya explains, and time for bed. They lie together, sheet pulled over their heads as Freya answers
the questions Ella always has before sleep. Lately they've all focused on a particular potential accident, the possibility of falling into the gap between a train and a station platform. It worries Ella and she wants reassurance that this will not happen to her.

‘Never,' Freya says.

‘But has it ever happened to a kid?'

Freya says she doesn't know for certain.

‘Can you ask Google?'

‘I suppose so,' Freya tells her. ‘But in any event it's not going to happen to you.'

‘Why not?'

‘Because we'll make sure it doesn't.'

The questions can go on forever; the trick is in knowing when to draw the line, finding that moment when it is no longer a matter of Ella genuinely wanting answers but actually a ploy to stay up that little bit later.

Freya kisses Ella on the nose and tells her it's time for sleep.

She pours herself a glass of wine and calls Clara to complain that she is bored and lonely. ‘Is this what happens to married women in the suburbs?' she asks.

‘Seems so.' Clara is also alone. Julia is out playing tennis. ‘I'd come over,' Clara says, ‘but you live so far away now.'

Freya sighs. ‘I probably need to make some new friends. Ones that live in the neighbourhood. Not that I would forget you.'

At ten o'clock Matt still isn't home. He will be sitting with Shane, drinking beer, passing joints back and forth, remembering, their voices slow and slurred. She wonders whether the kids will still be up.

‘They drag a mattress into the lounge room and all sleep together,' Matt once told her. ‘When it's really hot they take it out to the garden.' He'd looked around their place. ‘Strange,' he said, ‘how middle class, how straight, you get.'

‘That's what we are.' Although her tone was light, the unease between them had slipped into her veins, once again.

She sits on the computer and trawls through eBay, searching for nothing in particular. A rug for the bedroom, a Danish dining room table that looks remarkably similar to the one she grew up with, a Bamix because she thinks she should start baking now that she is spending so much time at home. She even places a bid on a pair of shoes, safe in the knowledge that she's unlikely to win.

Eventually she is too tired to stay awake, and turning on the outside light, she goes to bed, knowing she probably won't sleep. She will lie there, wanting to doze, but waiting for Matt to come home.

SITTING IN SHANE'S BACK garden, Matt had felt at peace with the world. The neighbourhood was quiet, the streets deserted under the evening sky, the darkness broken by the soft glow of the lights from the kitchen and the sparks from the small fire Shane had built, more for comfort than any need for warmth. He and Shane had talked, at first about a new project, a house with five bedrooms and four bathrooms that he'd been detailing.

‘There'll only be two people living there.' Matt shook his head. ‘When I asked them why they wanted such a large place, Simone took me aside and told me to zip it.' He smiled. ‘I'm not suited to what I do, but I don't know how else to earn a living.'

Their conversation had turned to the kids, and Archie's brush with the principal. On his second day, he'd taken one of the fire-extinguishers, opening it up on the playground. Shane's laugh was throaty. ‘Gave him a talking-to but couldn't keep a straight face. He's just a kid. It's what you do.'

Matt had meant to leave earlier, to get home before Freya went to bed, but as the conversation had drifted back to Brisbane and people they knew, he'd stretched
out his legs, warm in front of the fire, and rolled another joint. Remembering that house, he'd smiled, his thoughts returning to Lisa again, and her small room out the back, the harshness of the sunlight filtered by the giant frangipani that grew outside her window, the creamy sweetness of the flowers pressed against the glass.

He'd asked Shane what she was up to now, not even really wanting to know, his mind just idly turning in that direction, not expecting to alight anywhere in particular but to move on, leaving Lisa as he remembered her.

It took some time before he began to filter through the information, the dates still hazy but settling with a colder certainty as he eventually stood to leave, aware now that he had stayed far longer than he'd intended.

In fact, it's well after midnight as he turns the key in the lock. His head is light from drinking, and his heart is racing, sending a speedy poison through his bloodstream as he goes back over his conversation with Shane. He tries to be quiet, but as Freya is a light sleeper, there's probably no point. As he opens the bedroom door, she turns on the bedside lamp and he looks at her, eyes red and glazed.

‘Sorry I was so long.' His apology is mumbled and he undresses, gathering his clothes under one arm and standing naked in front of her. ‘Where will I put these?' he asks, indicating his jeans and T-shirt, at the same time knowing how foolish his question is. He could leave them on the floor, take them to the laundry or hang them in the cupboard. It's neither a hard decision, nor one he hasn't made before. But everything is wrong, and he wishes he'd drunk a little less, and said no to another joint.

Under the harshness of the bathroom light, he looks at himself and breathes deeply. He rinses his face with cool water. He needs to find calm.

As he makes his way back through the darkness of the kitchen and into the hall, he stops to listen at Ella's door. There's not a sound. He gets into bed with Freya, her long limbs cool against the heat of his own skin, and he is restless, kicking the sheets off, unable to lie still.

‘Can I tell you something?' he eventually says.

‘I guess so,' she responds.

There is silence for a moment. And then a mosquito whines near his ear.

‘I don't know how to say this.'

She moves away, turning on her side so that he can see the dark shape of her, an outline of her smooth cheek and the softness of her eyes. He turns on his back, staring at the ceiling. He cannot look at her as he speaks.

‘I think I have a child.'

For a moment, he wonders whether he is just completely out of it and engaging in some absurdist joke. Of course you have a child, she will respond. Her name is Ella and she is lying asleep in the next room. Really? he will answer. And who am I? You are Matt and I am Freya, and this is your beautiful house, this is your beautiful wife.

‘There was someone,' he continues and he shifts slightly, reaching for her, wanting to draw her close. ‘In Brisbane, in the house with Shane.'

She does not speak.

‘Her name is Lisa. I might have mentioned her before.'

Freya remains silent.

‘It wasn't a big deal. We just slept together a couple of times.'

They had told each other about the others; the women he had sex with when he went north, the men she was with while she was overseas. There had been no promise of fidelity in all those months.

‘I left. We didn't stay in touch.'

His body is too hot, and Freya moves away.

‘Don't,' he says, trying to pull her back to him.

‘You're too warm,' she complains, and he hears the catch in her voice, like the snag of a zipper on nylon.

‘Shane told me tonight. She has a kid. A boy. He's about seventeen.'

He wonders whether she, too, is trying to count back the years. He had initially been unable. They are all a jumble, a mess of time, impossible to lay out neatly. ‘I asked him who the father was.'

‘What did he say?'

‘I don't know. It's kind of hard sometimes to get a straight answer. He was evasive, I suppose.'

Matt sits up now and lifts the edge of the curtain; he is staring out into the darkness of the street.

‘It fits,' he finally says. ‘The time. But I don't know. Maybe there was someone else.' He lies back down, drawing the sheet over his body.

‘What should I do?' he asks her.

She doesn't respond.

‘Should I get in touch with her?'

She is sitting up, knees drawn to her chest, arms clasped around her legs. ‘You're asking me?' she eventually says and her voice is angry. ‘It's late, you're out of it, you've just hit me with this, and you're asking me?'

He sits up too and puts his arm around her. She doesn't relax.

‘What do you expect?' she says. She shakes her head. ‘You can come home whenever, dump this on me, and – I don't know – I'll be excited?'

‘Well, it doesn't have to be something you're angry about.'

She shifts slightly, letting herself breathe again. ‘You're completely ripped. You couldn't even sort out the days of last week, let alone the last seventeen years.'

He rests his head on her shoulder. ‘I'm sorry,' he tells her. ‘You're right. We should try to sleep. We can talk about this in the morning.'

There is a small space between them and they lie, side by side, aware of this, both wanting to cross it, neither of them able, until Matt reaches out for her.

‘I love you,' he says, and he means it.

‘I know,' she tells him, and she, too, seems to be speaking the truth.

But, in the oppressiveness of the heat, neither of them sleep. They turn and they toss, slipping in and out of dreams that float too near the surface of consciousness for comfort.