Our Tiny Useless Hearts Read online

  ‘You’re angry, of course you are.’

  ‘Honestly Janice, do you live on Mars?’ she says, as she lops the head off the blue tie. ‘Here on this planet, every action has a reaction.’

  I take the scissors. ‘All the same, let’s keep the collateral damage to a minimum. Please, Caroline?’

  ‘Well excuse me. Some of us like being married.’ She shoots me a look. ‘Are you on Henry’s side, is that it?’

  I open my mouth, but I’m saved by the doorbell.

  ‘I’ll get it!’ she yells.

  ‘It’s my house too!’ yells Henry, from the lounge room. ‘That means it’s equally my front door and I will be the one who gets it.’

  ‘Neither of you will get it,’ I yell back at them. ‘You will each stay in your designated corners and I will get it.’

  I stalk back down the hall, past where Henry is still squatting and saying god knows what to the girls, who nod back at him. I almost intervene but the bell rings again so I keep going: he’s their father, he only wants what’s best for them. Besides, they’ll need something to tell their analysts when they grow up.

  When I open the door, it’s Craig and Lesley from next door. What luck.

  ‘Janice,’ Craig says. ‘It’s been ages. You look well.’

  ‘Janice,’ Lesley says. ‘Aren’t you the ministering angel? You must have arrived very early. Or did you stay over?’

  In this suburb, everyone knows each other. They pop in for drinks, they pick up each other’s kids from drama class, they traipse through neighbours’ yards as shortcuts on the way somewhere. Progressive dinners. Weekends at the snow. It’s frightening. In the inner city where I live, people have the decency to ignore each other in general, and marital spats in particular. I regularly pass taggers, junkies, halfhearted trannies and any beggar who isn’t a bonafide local as though they’re invisible. It took six months of nodding in the street before I got to the stage of saying ‘morning’ to the guy from the flats who dresses like a pirate. Allowing other people room for their private proclivities is the basis of a civilised society.

  I step outside and pull the door almost closed behind me. ‘Caroline and Henry are just in the middle of something,’ I say. ‘I’ll let them know you dropped by.’

  Lesley and Craig exchange meaningful looks. The two of them are always shiny with health, like they’ve perpetually come from the gym and even their hair—Craig’s blond ponytail and close-trimmed beard, Lesley’s glossy black bob—is shampoo-commercial-ready. They’re both in Lycra shorts and a t-shirt (her) or singlet (him). He has the kind of chest that will happily spend all day in a singlet. She’s petite, a good foot shorter than him. Sharper, older.

  ‘It’s us, lovely. We heard them last night,’ says Lesley.

  Craig rubs a hand over his designer stubble in a gesture chosen to simulate thoughtfulness. ‘The whole street heard them. Probably the whole valley. Sound really carries out here. It’s the shape of the hills. Amazing pitch resonance.’

  Craig is a sound engineer by profession and inclination, who works from a besser-block recording studio in their backyard and routinely inserts phrases like ‘pitch resonance’ into conversation. I’ve seen him in a t-shirt that says Sound engineers do it with frequency. Since Lesley sold out of the IT firm she founded, she makes ceramics: vases and bowls stocked in gift shops and galleries all over the mountains. She has a kiln and wheel in her own studio in the backyard, the mirror image of Craig’s. She has a t-shirt that says Potters do it with a glazed expression.

  ‘I can’t believe he was on with Martha. I literally can’t believe it,’ says Craig.

  ‘She seemed so sweet on parent-teacher night,’ says Lesley.

  Craig shakes his head. ‘They’re the ones you gotta watch.’

  ‘Caroline, the poor love. I can only imagine how she’s feeling,’ says Lesley. ‘Is there anything we can do?’

  ‘He’s a sly dog,’ says Craig. ‘She can’t be a day over twenty-five.’

  Everyone’s fine, I tell them. Every marriage goes through ups and downs. They just need a little space. They’re resting now.

  ‘Is that Craig?’ Henry is behind me and before I know it, he opens the door. ‘Craig, mate. She’s gone completely psycho.’

  ‘Henry, mate.’ Craig grips Henry’s shoulder and flexes his arm and shoulder muscles with little pulses. ‘I hear you. I feel for you mate.’

  ‘You’d think after fifteen years I’d have earned a little wriggle-room, wouldn’t you, mate? The odd free pass? Wouldn’t you think that?’

  ‘I think Caroline has been thoroughly provoked,’ says Lesley, detaching Craig’s arm from Henry. ‘We aren’t taking sides.’

  ‘Of course not, of course not,’ Craig says. ‘Henry, you dog you.’

  ‘Is that Lesley?’ yells Caroline, and before I know it she’s standing on the other side of me, and she’s within two feet of Henry, which is the thing I’ve been trying to avoid since six o’clock last night. She opens the door even wider.

  ‘All those weekends I was stuck here and he was away on business? Ha bloody ha. His demanding job that kept him so busy and exhausted? Mugsy me, picking the girls up after school and hello Martha, thanks for giving Mercedes so much extra attention Martha, and driving them to ballet and swimming and making their dinner and bathing them and putting them to bed and then watching Law and Order and eating Lean Cuisine and all the while he’s at the motor inn on the highway, shagging.’

  ‘Don’t,’ says Henry. He sighs it out, a soft don’t, and in that word I imagine the kind of boy he was: smaller than his size, used to saying don’t in defence.

  ‘Don’t you say don’t to me. I’m not the one who’s been doing anything,’ says Caroline. ‘I’m the one who’s been staying home, minding my own business.’

  ‘Don’t say shagging,’ he says. ‘It’s not like that. We have a connection.’

  ‘Your genitals have been having a connection, that’s for sure,’ says Caroline.

  ‘Now—’ begins Lesley.

  ‘Girls,’ I yell behind us. ‘Back to your rooms please.’

  There is a silence, a freezing I can feel from here, and all at once I remember what it’s like to be that age in almost exactly these circumstances. Mercedes and Paris will be curled up on the floor in the lounge, splitting themselves in two, trying to decide whether it’s best to know or to not-know. You can’t win: if you hear, you’ll wish you hadn’t and if you don’t, you’ll wish you had. You feel wrong and stupid whichever you choose. Right now, they’re trying to make themselves invisible, which can become a habit. It’s very hard to stop, even when you grow up.

  ‘Mercedes. Paris. I know you’re there. Hop to it.’

  A pause. ‘We’re hungry,’ Mercedes yells back.

  ‘You’re stalling. I’ll make you something really yummy soon but right now, your rooms.’

  ‘All right,’ yells Mercedes, after a moment, ‘but whatever you make us, we don’t like it.’

  We all wait until the sound of small feet recede and we hear a door being closed.

  ‘—That’s quite enough of that,’ continues Lesley.

  ‘Let’s everybody chill,’ says Craig.

  ‘It’s a gross violation of trust, sure,’ says Lesley. ‘But it’s not the end of the world.’

  ‘I know!’ Craig clicks his fingers. ‘Trust exercises. One spouse leads the other blindfolded through a strange room. Or one spouse folds their hands on their chest and drops backwards and the other saves the first one’s head from being smashed in.’

  ‘The girls can change schools. There are male teachers around if you look hard enough, or maybe you can ban Henry from drop-offs and pick-ups,’ says Lesley.

  ‘The point is to not let the blind spouse get concussion,’ Craig says. ‘Concussion doesn’t build trust.’

  ‘Two unsettled children dragged away from their friends and two emotional adults at risk of a brain injury,’ I say. ‘Just the ticket.’

  ‘Some people work at their marriage problems, rather than cutting and running,’ Lesley says, and maybe I’m paranoid but she’s looking right at me.

  ‘Trust is a muscle,’ says Craig.

  ‘I’m pretty sure it’s not,’ I say.

  Lesley threads her fingers through Craig’s hand and touches her nose to his shoulder. ‘It needs exercise, he means.’

  Craig hunches to kiss her forehead. ‘It’s because we work at it, Pookie.’

  ‘I have a wonderful therapist,’ says Lesley. ‘She really helped with my OCD. She does couples too. Not that I have direct experience, I don’t. It’s spray-painted on her door. I’ll drop in her card.’

  ‘That’s thoughtful,’ I say. ‘Isn’t that thoughtful, Caroline?’

  ‘I guess,’ she says.

  ‘Henry? That’s a good idea of Lesley’s, isn’t it? Talking to a professional?’ I say.

  He doesn’t answer. He clasps his hands behind his back and twists from side to side, an Olympic weightlifter before the clean and jerk.

  ‘Henry? Counselling. It’s worth a go, isn’t it?’

  ‘Really, Janice?’ says Caroline. ‘You’re suggesting counselling? You? I’ll tell you one thing: Henry and I will not be taking relationship advice from you, Janice. Will we Henry?’

  ‘Look,’ Henry says. ‘The truth is. I have a flat.’

  ‘Your car’s at the mechanic’s, isn’t it?’ says Caroline ‘They’ll fix it while it’s there, take them two minutes.’

  ‘Not that kind of flat,’ says Henry. ‘The other kind.’

  ‘What other kind?’ says Caroline.

  ‘It’s not an affair,’ says Henry.

  ‘What is it then?’ says Caroline.

  ‘It’s love. I haven’t known how to say it until now, but I love
her. Martha. I want to be with her.’ And then he says, ‘I’m leaving.’

  Perhaps a relationship flashes before your eyes in the moment of its death. Flash. I see them, Caroline and Henry, the afternoon they first met outside an Engineering Department mixer, drinking beer and fighting about politics. Flash. Here they are again, years later in a crowded pub, each vaguely recognising the other and Caroline drinking too much and Henry driving her home and kissing her on the top step of Mum’s house. Here is the first time they made love in the reclined front seat of the Beemer. Here they are, sharing a pizza on a perch of unopened boxes the night they moved in to their first flat, wide-eyed, listening to the strange sounds of the suburbs, planning paint colours and herb gardens. Henry, crying at the altar. The births of the girls. Standing at the sink: him washing, her drying. Sleeping together on hot nights, the tips of their fingers touching. Flash, flash, flash.

  At the front door, we are all still. None of us dares to breathe. Then Caroline’s mouth falls open and her skin yellows and shrinks. She is hollow now. The rage has gone out of her and her shell is upright only from the habit of her bones. She is watching their life together unspool before her eyes and she is thinking of her future, of the years to come without him. She is wondering how she will sleep alone every night in their big bed. Now, after two children, after almost two decades with this man at the centre of her of her life, she is no longer required.

  We all stand on the threshold. No one knows what to say next.

  2

  In the long, black nights when I was not much older than Paris, when we were still adjusting to our house without my father in it, I took to imagining where he was sleeping, the particular bed and the pillow and the sheets. Was he warm enough? He liked the kind of orange juice with the leprechaun on the label. The others were too pulpy, he said, and sweet like musk sticks. Who was going to the supermarket and buying it for him? Who was ironing his shirts, now that Mum wasn’t?

  When he lived with us he would tuck me in and, just before he turned out the lights, bring his face close to mine and shut his eyes. It’s not easy being a grown-up, he would say. Take away my day, magic girl. My hands were pale and soft then, before the bunsen burns and broken beaker scars, and I would raise them to his forehead. I imagined my fingertips as erasers. I started near his hairline, smoothing every furrow, and I then I slid the heel of my hand downwards towards the tufts of his eyebrows then across to his temples. I paid extra attention to the deep wrinkle that curved downwards like a gouge, near the chicken-pox divot above the bridge of his nose. I kneaded and pressed until his frown lines weren’t as sharp, it seemed to me, until they blended with the texture of his skin. When I finished, I kissed each of his eyebrows, left and right.

  There, I’d say. All fixed.

  Now I’m good as new, he’d say. Now I can sleep.

  Late some nights after my father left, I would ease my way out of bed as though I was molten, so nothing would creak. Mum and Caroline were sleeping. If I was careful, the house belonged to me in those dark hours. I roamed with bare feet on bare boards, I sat at windows and stared at the moon. It was easy to imagine that this strange house made up of women was temporary and soon everyone would be back where they belonged. My father was only away on a business trip. He would be home in a day or two.

  Sometimes on those wandering nights I found myself in Caroline’s room where I could look at her big-sister things without her saying Rack off, Janus. Or Vajanus. Or Jan-arse Man-arse. Or some variation of Can you shut it? Can you possibly give me five minutes of peace? Asleep, Caroline looked like herself again, despite her black sheets, dyed by Mum after a long negotiation involving compulsory minutes of sunlight exposure. I touched the white foundation on her dresser, the lipsticks with names like Nosferatu and Daughter of Darkness, and ran my hands across CDs of bands that sounded like a Harley-Davidson being tortured. She was a heavy sleeper, a snorer and a snuffler. Even without the makeup, her naked face was pale against the black pillow. She often seemed on the verge of waking, but she never did.

  Mostly, though, I would sit on the floor beside my mother’s bed to watch the rise and fall of her chest beneath her covers and the rhythmic wave of her sheets. Occasionally she stirred and reached one arm towards my father’s empty space. On her bedside table beside the scattered blister packs was a picture of the four of us, smiling, taken at Torquay months before any of us knew of the storms ahead. Mum is wearing a swimsuit with spaghetti straps and a white ruffle that curves around her waist. Me and Caroline have our mouths inched open, as though a photo is the last thing we’re expecting. Dad’s face is tilted down but he’s looking up and to the side. Maybe there is someone standing behind the photographer who’s caught his eye. He has a lock of dark hair curled across his forehead like James Dean.

  I didn’t realise how young they both were, when we were a family. They were younger than I am now.

  It took years for Mum to replace the photo with another one of just us three, taken at a school fete where she was running the plant stall. It took even longer for her to sleep in the middle of the bed.

  Now, after Craig and Lesley make their excuses as though fleeing an outbreak of ebola, the girls and I are watching Caroline sleep on top of Paris’s princess doona, surrounded by stuffed toys. Caroline’s chest moves up and down in a ragged rhythm and her mouth is tight and her hands are tucked between her knees. I know that sleep, I’ve seen it before. The brain has withdrawn in the hope that when she wakes, everything will be better. Henry is packing. When Caroline wakes, things will only be worse. She is right to sleep now, while she can. The insomnia will come later.

  ‘Mummy’s like Sleeping Beauty.’ Mercedes is squatting on her haunches on the floor beside me.

  ‘She’s just very tired,’ I say. ‘Mums get tired sometimes.’

  ‘We know. If her door is closed, it means we have to stay downstairs in the playroom and not make one peep until she comes to get us. Then, do you know what? Ice-cream.’ All at once Mercedes jumps to her feet. ‘I know!’ she says. ‘Maybe if Daddy kisses her she’ll wake up.’

  I reach for her and hold her tight limbs in my arms. She comes to me reluctantly, a folded origami child all elbows and knees and sharp edges. She smells of soap and fresh milk and I have a precious moment to feel her weight heavy on me before she wriggles clear.

  ‘Well? I’ll go get Daddy, yes?’ She bounces on the spot with her legs straight.

  ‘I think Mum’ll wake up when she’s ready, and then you and Paris can be the ones to kiss her. What do you think, Paris?’

  Instead of answering, Paris opens her eyes wider still and reaches for a sad-faced octopus at the foot of the bed. It has pearly fur, shiny black eyes and stretched stitches along the joins where legs meet torso from too many years of demonstrative love. I’m surprised Caroline hasn’t had it renovated. Paris creeps forward and prises one of Caroline’s hands from where it’s tucked, and then she slips the octopus in the crook of her elbow.

  Paris hasn’t spoken to anyone except Mercedes since last night. I wonder if I’m the only one who’s noticed.

  ‘Grown-ups are hard to understand,’ Mercedes says.

  ‘Sing it, sister,’ I say.

  ‘You’d be a good mummy, Auntie Janice,’ she says. ‘How come you don’t have any kids?’

  Just then, Henry sticks his head around the corner. ‘I’m almost done,’ he says. ‘I’ve got as much as I can here, clothes and stuff. One trip, clean as possible. Surgical. No point dragging it out. The CDs and booze can wait.’

  ‘How very efficient of you,’ I say. ‘You’re a regular hero.’

  He opens his mouth, then closes it again. We follow him back to the bedroom: all the de-crotched pants and the bisected tie are in a pile in the corner and the bed is hidden beneath suitcases and sports bags and shopping bags filled with clothes. The wardrobe doors are open and his side is mostly empty except for a blotchy raincoat, a plaid jacket with a blue ink stain over the top pocket and a couple of Essendon scarves hanging over the rail. Metal coat hangers litter the floor. The dresser drawers are ajar and there’s a trail of potpourri from a broken sachet leading to one of the suitcases. Novels and boxes of tissues and odd socks are spilling from the bedside table. He’s stormed through the room and taken the things he wants. The person leaving always takes what they want and the one staying behind has to deal with everything else.