If Sam had had a blue-collar job, he would have lost it weeks ago. He thought of his dad. Stan the Man couldn't go out to a plumbing job and just sit there staring into space, could he? He couldn't mindlessly bang a spanner against a pipe for twenty minutes. If Sam had been a plumber then he would have been forced to focus and his mind wouldn't be slowly unravelling, or whatever the hell was happening to him. Wasn't there a great-aunt somebody or other on his dad's side who'd had a (hushed voice) 'nervous breakdown'? Maybe he was having one of those. His nerves were disintegrating, crumbling to dust like porous sandstone.
The ferry lurched off, back across the harbour to deliver everyone to their jobs, and as Sam looked at his fellow passengers it occurred to him that he'd never really belonged. He wasn't one of these corporate people. He'd always liked his work well enough, it was a relatively stimulating way to pay the bills, but there had been those times, as he stood at the front of the room with his PowerPoint presentation, for example, when he'd feel, just for a moment, like it was all an act, an elaborate act, like he was just pretending he was the 'businessman' his mother had always dreamed he would be. Not a doctor or a lawyer, a businessman. Joy had no idea what a businessman actually did all day, except that he wore a tie, not overalls, and his fingernails were clean, and that if Sam got good marks at school, which he had, then the glamorous life of business would be his reward. He could have insisted he do a trade like his father and brothers - his mother wasn't domineering, just enthusiastic - but instead his teenage self had dopily, sleepily gone along with it, without ever really considering what he actually wanted, what would give him satisfaction, and now here he was, stuck in the wrong life, a middlingly good middle manager, pretending to be passionate about marketing energy drinks.
So what? Suck it up. What percentage of people on this ferry felt passionate about their jobs? It wasn't a God-given right that you would love your job. People said to Clementine all the time: 'You're so lucky to do what you love.' She wasn't grateful enough for that privilege. Sometimes she'd answer, 'Yes, but I've always got the fear of wondering if I'm good enough.' Her neuroticism about her music had always baffled and bugged him, just play the damned thing, but now for the first time he understood what she meant when she said, 'I just feel like I can't play today.' He saw again his computer screen filled with the letter p and felt the panic rise. He couldn't afford to lose his job, not with their mortgage. You have a family. A family to protect. Be a man. Pull yourself together. You had it all and you risked it all for what? For nothing. He looked out the window as the ferry dipped into a swell of green-grey water laced with white froth and he heard himself make a sound: a mortifying high-pitched squeak of distress, like a little girl. He coughed, so people would think he'd just been clearing his throat.
He found himself remembering the morning of the barbeque. It was like remembering someone else, a friend, or someone he'd seen playing the role of a father in a movie. Surely it had been somebody else, not him, strolling about, strutting about his sunlit house, so sure of himself and his place in the world. What happened that morning? Croissants for breakfast. He'd tried to set up the mock audition for Clementine. It hadn't really worked. What happened next? He had meant to take the girls out so Clementine could practise. They couldn't find Ruby's shoe with the flashing sole. Did they ever find that damned shoe?
If someone had asked him that morning how he felt about his life he would have said he was happy. Pleased about the new job. Actually kind of psyched about the new job. He was all smug about how he'd negotiated flexible hours so he could continue being a hands-on dad, the dad his own father never got to be, and didn't he just lap up all the praise he got for being such an involved father, and laugh sympathetically, but enjoyably, over the fact that Clementine never got any praise for being an involved mother?
He might have had doubts about his role in the corporate world but he'd never had doubts about his role as a father. Clementine always said that she could tell when Sam was talking to his dad on the phone because his voice went down a notch. He knew he was more likely to tell his dad about some manly DIY project he'd completed around the house than a promotion he'd got at work, but he didn't care about the bemused expression his dad got when Clementine said what a great job Sam did doing Holly's hair for ballet (better than her) or when he took Ruby off to change or bathe her. Sam was one hundred per cent secure in his role as a husband and a father. He thought his own father didn't know what he'd missed.
If someone had asked him about his dreams on the morning of the barbeque he would have said that he didn't want for much, but he wouldn't mind a lower mortgage, a tidier house, another baby, ideally a son but he'd take another girl no problem at all, a big motherfucking boat if it were up for grabs, and more sex. He would have laughed about the sex. Or smiled at least. A rueful smile.
Maybe the smile would have been exactly halfway between rueful and bitter.
He found he was smiling bitterly now, and a woman sitting across the aisle from him caught his eye and looked away fast. Sam stopped smiling and watched his hands resting on his knees clench into fists. He made himself unclench them. Look normal.
He picked up a newspaper someone had left behind on the seat next to him. It was yesterday's issue. ENOUGH ALREADY was the headline above an arty-looking picture taken through a spattered window of Sydney's rainy skyline. Sam tried to read the article. Warragamba Dam was expected to spill at any moment. Flash floods across the state. The sentences started jumping around, the way they did now. Maybe he needed his eyes checked. He could no longer read for a sustained period of time before he felt twitchy and anxious. He would look up in sudden terror as if he'd missed something important, as if he'd fallen asleep.
He looked up and caught the eye of the woman again.
For fuck's sake, I'm not trying to look at you. I'm not trying to pick you up. I love my wife.
Did he still love his wife?
He saw Tiffany's face in that gold-lit backyard. Come on, Muscles. That smile like a caress. He turned his head towards his ferry window, as if he were facing away from Tiffany's physical presence, not just the thought of her, and looked instead at the bays and inlets of Sydney Harbour under a low grey forbidding sky. Everything had an apocalyptic feel to it.
There were things he could say to Clementine. Accusations he wanted to hurl, except he knew as soon as they left his mouth he'd want to snatch them right back, because he deserved far worse. Yet still the accusations hovered, not on the tip of his tongue but at the back of his throat, lodged there, like an undigested lump of food, so he sometimes felt he couldn't swallow properly.
Today she was doing another one of those senseless community talks she now did. At some library way out in the distant suburbs. Surely nobody would turn up in this weather. Why did she do it? She was turning down gigs to do this unpaid work. It was incomprehensible to Sam. How could she choose to relive that day when Sam spent his days trying so hard to stop the flashes of shameful memory flickering over and over in his head?
'Excuse me?'
Sam jumped. His right arm flew out violently as if to catch something falling. He shouted, 'Where?'
A woman in a beige raincoat stood in the aisle staring at him with wide Bambi eyes, both her hands crossed protectively over her chest. 'I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to scare you.'
Sam felt pure, unadulterated rage. He imagined leaping at her, putting his hands around her throat, shaking her like a rag doll.
'I just wondered if that was yours? If you were finished with it?' She nodded her head at the newspaper.
'Sorry,' said Sam hoarsely. 'I was deep in thought.' He handed her the paper. It shook in his hand. 'It's not mine. There you go.'
'Thank you. So sorry about that,' said the woman again.
'No, no.'
She backed away. She thought he was mad. He was mad. As the days went by he was getting madder and madder.
Sam waited for his heart to slow.
He turned his head to face th
e window again. He saw the Overseas Passenger Terminal and remembered that he and Clementine were meant to be going to a restaurant there tonight. A fancy, overpriced restaurant. He didn't want to go. He had nothing to say to her.
The thought crossed his mind that they should break up. Not break up, separate. This is a marriage, buddy, you don't just break up like boyfriend and girlfriend, you separate. What a load of shit. He and Clementine weren't going to separate. They were fine. And yet there was something strangely appealing about that word: separate. It felt like a solution. If he could just separate himself, detach himself, remove himself, then he could get relief. Like an amputation.
He stood suddenly. He held on to the backs of seats to balance himself as the ferry rocked, and went to stand outside on the deserted deck. The cold, rainy air slapped his face like an angry woman, and the kid in the raincoat looked at him with disinterest, then his gaze slid slowly away, as if Sam were just another feature of the dull, grey landscape.
Sam clung on to the slippery railing that ran along the edge of the ferry. He didn't want to be here, he didn't want to be at home. He didn't want to be anywhere except back in time, in that ludicrous backyard, at that moment in the hazy twilight, the fairy lights twinkling in his peripheral vision when that Tiffany, a woman who meant nothing to him, nothing at all, was laughing with him, and he wasn't looking at the outrageous Jessica Rabbit curves of her body, he was not looking, but he was aware of them, he was very aware of them. 'Come on, Muscles,' she'd said.
Right there. That's where he needed to press 'pause'.
All he needed was the next five minutes after that. Just one more chance. If he could just have one more chance he'd act like the man he'd always believed himself to be.
chapter seven
The day of the barbeque
'Let's just forget it,' said Clementine.
It was nearly one o'clock, they were expected at Erika's house for afternoon tea at three, and Sam and the girls still hadn't managed to actually leave the house to give her the promised practice time. It wasn't going to happen.
'No,' said Sam. 'I will not be defeated by one small shoe.'
One of Ruby's brand new, remarkably expensive, flashing-soled runners had gone missing and due to a recent growth spurt those were the only shoes that fit her at the moment.
'What's that poem?' said Clementine. 'For the want of a nail the shoe was lost, for the want of a shoe the horse was lost ... and then something, until the kingdom is lost.'
'What?' grunted Sam. He lay flat on his stomach on the floor, looking under the couch for the shoe.
'For the want of a shoe my audition was lost,' murmured Clementine as she pulled the cushions off the same couch to reveal crumbs, coins, pencils, hairclips, a sports bra, and no shoe.
'What?' said Sam again. He stretched out his arm. 'I think I see it!' He pulled out a dust-covered sock.
'That's a sock,' said Holly.
Sam sneezed. 'Yes, I know it's a sock.' He sat back on his haunches, massaging his shoulder. 'We spend half our lives trying to locate possessions. We need better systems. Procedures. There must be an app for this. A "where's our stuff?" app.'
'Shoe! Where are you? Shoe!' called out Ruby. She walked about lopsidedly wearing one shoe, stamping it occasionally to make the coloured lights flash.
'Shoes do not have ears, Ruby,' said Holly contemptuously.
'Erika says we need a shoe rack by the door.' Clementine replaced the cushions on top of all the detritus. 'She says we should train the children to put their shoes there as soon as they come in.'
'She's right,' said Sam. 'That woman is always right.'
For someone who didn't want children, Erika had a wealth of parenting expertise she felt obliged to share. You couldn't say, 'How would you know?' because she always cited her sources. 'I read an article in Psychology Today,' she would begin.
'She sounds like one of those toxic friends,' Clementine's friend Ainsley had once said. 'You should cull her.'
'She's not toxic,' Clementine had said. 'Don't you have friends who annoy you?' She thought everyone had friends who felt like obligations. There was a particular expression her mother got when she picked up the phone, a stoic 'here we go' look, which meant her friend Lois was calling.
'Not the way that chick bugs you,' said Ainsley.
Clementine could never, would never, cull Erika. She was Holly's godmother. The moment, if there had ever been such a moment, where she could have ended their friendship was long gone. You couldn't do that to a person. Were there even words for it? Erika would be devastated.
Anyway, over recent years, since Erika had met and married the lovely serious Oliver, their friendship had become much more manageable. Although Clementine had cringed at Ainsley's use of the word, 'toxic' was actually an accurate description of the feelings Clementine had so often felt in Erika's presence: the intense aggravation she had to work so hard to resist and conceal, the disappointment with herself, because Erika wasn't evil or cruel or stupid, she was simply annoying, and Clementine's response to her annoyingness was so completely disproportionate, it embarrassed and confounded her. Erika loved Clementine. She'd do anything for her. So why did she inflame Clementine so? It was like she was allergic to her. She'd learned over the years to limit the time they spent together. Like today, for example: when Erika had suggested lunch, Clementine had automatically said, 'Let's make it afternoon tea.' Shorter. Less time to lose your mind.
'Please can I have a cracker, Daddy?' said Holly.
'No,' said Sam. 'Help look for your sister's shoe.'
'You girls make sure you say please and thank you to Erika and Oliver at afternoon tea today, won't you?' said Clementine to the girls as she tried behind the curtains for the missing shoe. 'In a nice, big loud voice?'
Holly was outraged. 'I do say please and thank you! I just said please to Daddy.'
'I know,' said Clementine. 'That's what made me think of it. I thought, "What good manners!" '
If Holly or Ruby were ever going to forget to say please or thank you, it would be with Erika, who had a habit of pointedly reminding the girls of their manners in a way that Clementine found to be kind of unmannerly. 'Did I hear a thank you?' Erika would say the moment she handed over a glass of water, cupping her hand around her ear, and Holly would answer, 'No, you didn't,' which came across as precocious, even though she was just being her literal self.
Holly took off her shoes, climbed on the couch, balanced on her socks on the side with her arms held out wide like a skydiver, and then let herself fall, face first onto the cushions.
'Don't do that, Holly,' said Sam. 'I've told you before. You could hurt yourself.'
'Mummy lets me do it,' pouted Holly.
'Well, she shouldn't,' said Sam. He shot Clementine a look. 'You could break your neck. You could hurt yourself very, very badly.'
'Put your shoes back on, Holly,' said Clementine. 'Before they get lost too.' Sometimes she wondered how Sam thought she managed to keep the children alive when he wasn't there to point out all the perilous hazards. She let Holly do that face-first dive off the side of the couch all the time when he was at work. Mostly the girls were good at remembering the different rules that applied when Daddy was at home, not that those different sets of rules were ever actually acknowledged out loud. It was just an unspoken way of keeping the peace. She suspected different rules about vegetables and teeth-cleaning applied when Mummy wasn't home.
Holly got down off the couch and slumped back. 'I'm bored. Why can't I have a cracker? I'm starving.'
'Please don't whine,' said Clementine.
'But I'm so hungry,' said Holly, while Ruby wandered off into the hallway hollering, 'SHOE! WHERE ARE YOU, MY DARLING SHOE?'
'I actually really do need a cracker. Just one cracker,' said Holly.
'Quiet!' shouted Clementine and Sam simultaneously.
'You are both so mean!' Holly turned on her heel to leave the room and kicked her toe on the leg of the couch, which Sam h
ad dragged sideways looking for the shoe. She screamed in frustration.
'Oh dear.' Clementine automatically bent down to hug her, forgetting that Holly always needed a minute to process her rage at the universe before she accepted comfort. Holly threw back her head and gave Clementine a painful blow on the chin.
'Ow!' Clementine grabbed her chin. 'Holly!'
'Bloody hell,' said Sam. He stomped out of the room.
Now Holly wanted a cuddle. She launched herself into Clementine's arms, and Clementine hugged her, even though she wanted to shake her, because her chin really hurt. She murmured sympathetic words of comfort and rocked Holly back and forth while she stared longingly at her cello, sitting quiet and dignified up against her pretend audition chair. No one warned you that having children reduced you right down to some smaller, rudimentary, primitive version of yourself, where your talents and your education and your achievements meant nothing.
Clementine remembered when Erika, at the age of sixteen, had casually mentioned that she never wanted children, and Clementine had felt strangely put out by this; it had taken her a while to work out the reasons for her aggravation (all her life, there had always been so many varied, complex reasons why Erika aggravated her) and she'd eventually realised it was because she wished she'd thought of saying it first. Clementine was meant to be the crazy, creative, bohemian one. Erika was the conservative one. The rule follower. The designated driver. Erika dreamed of getting enough marks to do a Bachelor of Business degree with a double major in accounting and finance. Erika dreamed of home ownership and a share portfolio and a job at one of the big six accounting firms with a fast track to partnership. Clementine's dream was to study at the Conservatorium of Music, to play extraordinary music and experience extraordinary passion and then, sure, to settle down one day and have babies with a nice man, because didn't everyone want that? Babies were cute. It had seemed to indicate a failure of the imagination that it had never occurred to Clementine that you could choose not to have children.