"It was the most stupid of all reasons," said Rosie. "You'll be horrified."
"I'm sure I won't be." Although she might very well be.
"When I left here after our last session, I was so ready to call off the wedding. I knew it would be a huge deal. The invitations had gone out. You know the prime minister was on the guest list. She had to be in Japan or something, but, you know ... And my mum had lost twenty kilos and bought the most expensive dress she'd ever owned, and my dad had spent days working on this terrible speech, and my friends were all so jealous, which isn't the reason to marry somebody, but, you know, everyone thought I was marrying out of my league, which I was, which I did, but anyway, that's not why I did it--it was something that happened after I left here."
"What happened?" asked Ellen.
"I thought I'd go for a walk on the beach," said Rosie. She was tapping at her lips with two fingertips in a V-shape: the way of a smoker longing for a cigarette. "To clear my head, to think about how I could possibly explain it to Ian, and I saw this couple sitting on the beach and they were kissing, really kissing, you know the way people kiss when they're at the beginning of a relationship?"
"I know," said Ellen. She remembered that kiss with Patrick outside the museum.
"And I thought, oh, that's sweet, but then as I got closer, I thought, that's Joe! My ex-boyfriend. We broke up a year ago. I thought I was over him. I thought I didn't care less, but the way he was kissing this girl, like he'd never experienced such bliss, it just killed me."
"Ah," said Ellen.
"And just like that, I thought, I can't do it, I can't call off the wedding," said Rosie. "We were going on our honeymoon to this expensive resort in Malaysia, where my ex-boyfriend and I had always wanted to go, but we couldn't ever afford it, and I wanted him to hear about it. I wanted him to imagine me there with another man. I wanted to wipe that blissful expression off his face. He'd always had a thing about money and wealthy people being somehow better than him, and I knew that we had mutual friends who would tell him all about the wedding--and I don't know, it was like I lost my mind. And I just went ahead with the wedding, and decided that I did love Ian, of course I did, how could I not? I convinced myself that I'd just got confused in my session. I sort of blamed you, to be honest. So I got married, and that was all fine, but you know what?"
"What?" said Ellen.
"Two things. The resort in Malaysia wasn't that great, it was actually pretty awful, and we had to cut the honeymoon short because of some merger or coup or something or other. And then, do you know what I heard this morning? My ex only went out with that girl for a few weeks. He's single again. But I actually couldn't care less, either way! I never really wanted to get back together with him, I just couldn't bear to think of him being so happy with someone else and then hearing that I was single again. Isn't that the most pathetic thing you ever heard in your life?"
"Of course not," said Ellen. "We all have the most peculiar motivations for what we do."
There was a pause. Rosie fidgeted and then said suddenly, "You're engaged!" She pointed at Ellen's ring and Ellen realized she'd been drawing attention to it by twisting it around her finger. It had very quickly become a habit. "Congratulations! I bet you love him. I bet you love him properly."
"Well." Ellen smiled foolishly. She didn't want to sound smug.
"Anyway," said Rosie. "Ian wants to try for a baby straightaway."
"So you're ready to give up smoking once and for all," guessed Ellen.
"No," said Rosie. "I want you to hypnotize me into falling in love with him. I mean, love is just a state of mind, right? I don't want to have a baby with someone I don't love. You can do that, right? Make me believe that I love him? So I haven't made the worst mistake of my life?"
Chapter 13
A woman's relationship with her father will have a profound impact on all her future relationships with men. The fatherless daughter lacks a template. Fatherless daughters are more likely to be promiscuous--so GREAT, thanks Mum, I'm going to be a slut!!!!!!!!!!
--Entry in Ellen O'Farrell's diary, written a
week before her fifteenth birthday
Ellen's mother was nervous.
It was suddenly perfectly clear. Ever since they had arrived at the restaurant for lunch, Ellen had been observing Anne, trying to work out what was different about her. Anyone else would have said that Anne was calm and at ease as she chatted with Ellen about the pregnancy, argued amiably with Ellen's godmothers about the choice of wine and asked the waiter probing questions about the specials. Yet, there was something odd about the way she was sitting: her back was unnaturally straight, even for someone who was a passionate advocate of good posture, her chin too high, her shoulders too braced. Her beautiful violet eyes kept sweeping past Ellen. Normally Ellen was aware of her mother's eyes giving her a rigorous health check: monitoring her skin tone, her weight, the whites of her eyes. She had always thought that Anne would have preferred to strap a blood pressure monitor around her arm and shove a thermometer in her mouth each time they met rather than hug her.
She turned her attention to her godmothers. Phillipa had an air of suppressed excitement, as if she was about to see a slightly risque show. At first, she couldn't see anything out of the ordinary about Melanie, but then she saw the way her eyes kept returning to Anne, waiting for something. Ellen remembered Mel's phone call, only two weeks ago now, when she'd said that "Anne was behaving oddly." With the pregnancy and the engagement she'd forgotten all about it.
As soon as the waiter left after taking their orders, Ellen spoke up. "OK, what's going on?"
Anne's hand went straight to her neck, and Ellen saw that she was wearing a beautiful, expensive-looking necklace that Ellen had never seen before, and also that the skin of her neck seemed older and more vulnerable than the rest of her, like a crumpled piece of silk; Ellen wanted to reach out and smooth it.
"Where did you get that necklace?" asked Ellen.
"You really can't put anything past this one," said Phillipa proudly. "She's always been like that. Remember that time we tried to convince her that--"
"Pip," said Melanie. "This is between Anne and Ellen."
"Exactly! I agree! I don't even know why we're here! Would you like us to go off somewhere and give you two some privacy?"
Anne sighed. "The three of us brought up Ellen together. That's why I wanted you two here as well. You've both been like mothers to Ellen. The four of us are a family. We're a family and this is ... a family matter."
Ellen was horrified. Her mother did not talk like this.
"It's cancer, isn't it?" she said.
"It's good news." Anne smiled. Suddenly she looked radiant. "I came around to tell you the other night actually, but then we got distracted, didn't we."
"OK," said Ellen.
"Well, it's just that I've met up with your father, that's all."
"Well, not quite all," said Phillipa.
"I'm sort of ... in a relationship with him," said Anne.
"It's so romantic," sighed Phillipa.
"I don't understand," said Ellen. "I thought he was married and living in the UK."
"Divorced," said Anne blissfully, as if divorce was one of life's sweetest pleasures.
"And he's moved back to Sydney," added Melanie. "Your mother has been seeing him for weeks. She never told us. I knew something was going on."
"It's all due to me," said Phillipa. "He found me on Facebook! He asked if I'd kept in touch with Anne O'Farrell, and when I told your mother, I could tell by the expression on her face that she still had a thing for him, even after all these years!"
"A thing for him?" said Ellen. She could feel the most profound sense of irritation rising in her chest. The three of them were acting like teenagers. "But you picked him from a list!"
"Yes, yes, all that happened," said Anne. "Don't worry. Your life isn't based on a lie. The part I didn't ever tell you was that I did actually have a little crush on him."
"Mor
e than a little," said Melanie. "Pip and I saw right through her, of course."
Now all three of them were chewing at their expensively lipsticked mouths, like schoolgirls trying not to giggle in class. Anne refilled their wineglasses, and Ellen, who was drinking mineral water, felt like their middle-aged mother. They were all being so silly.
"And it turns out that he's always had a thing for me too," said Anne with pride. "He thought about me throughout his marriage. I was always popping up in his dreams apparently."
"That poor woman," said Ellen.
"What poor woman?" Her mother frowned.
"His wife! The one he was engaged to when you slept with him to conceive me!"
"Oh, don't be so--" Anne stopped and flicked her hand as if to wave away a harmless insect. Ellen suspected she'd been about to say "boring."
Mel spoke up. "Ellen, your mother had nothing to do with their marriage breakdown. There is nothing untoward going on here."
Ellen thought about some poor woman in London, sleeping next to her husband each night, while he dreamed of a violet-eyed girl back in sunny Sydney. Nothing untoward indeed.
"So." Ellen tried not to sound snappish. "You've told him about me?"
Anne's moony expression vanished and she looked nervous again.
"He was very shocked, of course, and so cross with me for not telling him. He said he would have called off the wedding if he'd known and married me. Imagine! I could have been quite the little housewife."
"Oh, Mum," said Ellen.
There was something cozy and self-satisfied about her mother's tone. It made Ellen's whole existence seem tacky and trite instead of bohemian and brave.
"You'll meet him, of course, won't you, Ellen?" said Phillipa. "It will be just like that television show where they reunite lost families. I'm crying already, just thinking about it."
"I will meet him, of course I'll meet him, but there's nothing romantic or heart-wrenching about this," said Ellen. "We just share the same DNA."
"But now you know your parents were in love!"
"We thought you'd be thrilled." Mel gave Ellen a curious, analytical frown, as though she were an accounting discrepancy she needed to solve. "You were always so desperate to meet your father. You were obsessed with him for a while."
"When I was fifteen," said Ellen. Now it just seemed like an awkward sort of social obligation.
"Don't you want to see what he's like?" asked Phillipa.
"I'm curious, I guess," continued Ellen, except she wasn't particularly. She was too focused on her own life at the moment: her baby, her soon-to-be "stepson" and "husband." Her husband-to-be's ex-girlfriend. She didn't have time to devote to building a new relationship.
"Well, there's no rush," said Anne. "Whenever you're ready." Her hand kept returning to her neck, to caress the stone of her new necklace.
"So the necklace is a gift from him?" asked Ellen. "From, ah ... David." Surely she wasn't meant to call him Dad?
Anne removed her hand. "Yes. It's for our one-month anniversary." She flushed. "I know we're too old for that sort of thing."
"Awwww," said Phillipa.
Ellen's mother was clearly in love, and she was in love with Ellen's father, which in most cases was considered appropriate and convenient and the way the world was meant to work. Ellen couldn't understand why she felt so unhappy about it. Was it just resistance to change? Did she not want her mother to love anyone else except her? She would have to think about this when she got home.
"I'm happy for you, Mum." She did her utmost to sound sincere.
"I'm not counting my chickens, it's early days, of course," said Anne briskly, but then she smiled her bizarre new smile and reached out to touch Ellen's hand. "Your dad is the loveliest man I've ever known."
I live in a three-bedroom duplex.
I've never been fond of duplexes, and yet, here I am.
When Patrick and I broke up, I needed somewhere new to live fast, and I asked a real estate agent I knew to find me the first available rental property in my price range. So he found me this bland, sterile little place, in a street crammed with identical duplexes and three twenty-story apartment blocks. The people who live here are hardworking midlevel professionals. They are the worker bees of society, on their way to something better. This is an area where "convenience" is what counts. The railway station is an easy walk and it's only a ten-minute trip into the city. There are dozens of perfectly adequate but not that great restaurants and twenty-four-hour dry cleaners and ATMs and cab ranks. People stride along checking their BlackBerrys and gulping down takeaway coffees. It's not a place for lovers. There are no buskers or bookshops or galleries or cinemas. It's good. It's like an extension of the office.
Ever since I moved in, a man named Jeff has lived in the other half of my duplex. He is short and bald with a neat ginger-colored beard, and the most personal fact I know about him is that he doesn't feel the cold. He wears short-sleeved shirts all year round. When he is inside, I rarely hear a sound from him through our shared walls: no music, no television. Once I did hear him crying out, as if in anguish, "But that's not the way you do it!" Do what? But I was only mildly intrigued. I didn't care enough to actually have a proper conversation or make eye contact with him.
If we see each other at the letterbox or walking in and out of our front doors, we both immediately speed up and walk away fast like we have suddenly remembered we are running very late, or we develop an intense interest in one of the letters we have just received, tearing it open as if it's of the utmost importance. We call out things in a distracted busy tone like, "Hot, isn't it?" and "Cold, isn't it?" or if the weather is difficult to label, "How are you?" and we never wait for the other person to answer because we don't care about the answer. Sometimes in my head I answer: Still obsessively stalking my ex-boyfriend, grieving for my dead mother and suffering unexplained leg pain, thanks, how about you?
So, yes, Jeff is the perfect neighbor for a duplex. We have managed to live next door all these years, and collect each other's mail when one of us is away, and negotiate shared issues about garbage collection and lawn mowing, while maintaining the most delightfully superficial of relationships.
And then today, when I'd just got home from collecting the car from the mechanic, Jeff suddenly marched up to me and stood far too close. I tried to take a discreet step backward. "Hi, Saskia," he said. I think this was the first time he'd ever used my name.
"Hi, Jeff," I said. Likewise.
"I wanted to let you know that I'm moving," he said. "I'm having a sea change."
"Sea change," I repeated.
"Yes, I'm moving to a little town down the south coast. I'm going to run a cafe. I'm calling it Jeff's Jetty Cafe."
I was stunned. I'm not sure why. I think I just never expected him to be important enough to make any significant changes in his life, but of course, he doesn't know that he's only a minor character in my life. He's the star of his own life and I'm the minor character. And fair enough too.
"It's not on a jetty, but I'm going to give it a jetty sort of look. Ropes and anchors and ... buckets, that sort of stuff." A flash of uncertainty crossed his face. He has no idea what he's doing.
"Sounds wonderful," I said. It will be a spectacular failure.
"Yeah, decided it was time to get out of the police force," he said.
"You're a policeman?" I couldn't believe it. I'd never seen him in uniform. I thought he was an auditor or an IT consultant or even a librarian. Shouldn't policemen be forced to disclose their careers to their neighbors? What if I'd casually revealed a crime to him at the letterbox? Offered him an illegal substance?
And there is the matter of Patrick. He's always threatening to call the police. So melodramatic. Why would the police be interested in what is essentially a private matter between two adults? But still. Technically, I do enter his house without his permission.
"I had no idea you were a policeman," I said. I couldn't keep the resentment out of my voice.
&n
bsp; "Undercover," said Jeff. "Pretty stressful. Messes with your head. Impossible to form a relationship with anyone. I'm not getting any younger. I'm desperate to meet that 'special lady.' Want to be a dad one day!"
I did not want to hear that Jeff was desperate to meet that special lady. It was like he'd shared an intimate, slightly revolting sexual secret.
"A nice young family is moving in to my place," he continued. "Two little kids. Boy and girl. You'll find them a bit livelier than me."
And that suddenly seemed to remind him of the sort of neighbors we'd been, and he took an abrupt step backward.
"So," he said. "I've kept you long enough. Just thought I should let you know so you didn't get a surprise when the movers arrive tomorrow. The young family will be moving in the day after."
"Best of luck with everything," I said.
"Thanks," he said and smiled, and he had an unexpectedly nice, shy smile, and I was filled with a strange, sad regret. I could have been his friend. I could have invited him over for a drink or a coffee. Maybe then he wouldn't have needed his silly sea change.
Before Patrick, I would have been the sort of person who would have done that. This is all Patrick's fault.
And now there will be a "nice young family" living next door. My bland little duplex will no longer be my safe haven from other people's happiness. The thought of having to hear and see this smug family loving each other every day of my life is unbearable and unacceptable. I hate families with one boy and one girl, like a family in a car commercial. It's so tidy. They're always so pleased with themselves.
I can feel this explosive pressure building in my head. Something has to happen. I have to make something happen. Soon. I'm just not sure what.
When Ellen got home from lunch with her mother and godmothers, she sat on the front step with her bag on her lap. She didn't want to take the keys out of her bag and open the door to an empty house. She wanted to ring the bell and wait for the sound of slow, shuffling footsteps. Her grandfather always opened the door with a wary, almost belligerent expression on his face that would vanish when he saw it was her. "She's here!" he'd call out jubilantly to her grandmother, and he'd open the door wide and Ellen would smell baking.