David visited us at least once or twice a term. He would drive up on Friday afternoon, go out on the town or to parties Friday night, sleep most of Saturday, share dinner with us Saturday night, and then return to the city on Sunday. He often timed these visits to coincide with some convenient town event – the bachelor and spinster’s ball, the end of the football season finals, big cricket tournaments. David was frequently invited to be a ring-in on the teams, and even when he wasn’t, he would stand with the players and give them coaching advice. Back in Sydney, he was playing for the university football team in the winter, and for the cricket team in the summer. He told us, more than once, that he had been approached by professional scouts in both sports.
‘I turned them down. I’m focusing on my studies,’ he told us, and he was doing very well at university – just as I always knew he would. And David might have been busy with sport and study, but he still seemed to find time for an endless array of friends and girlfriends. He seemed so happy, and I felt like he’d found the perfect balance between studying and making the absolute most of the rich life university offered him. Then, at the end of his second year of study, David surprised us when he announced that he was bringing a girl home for Christmas.
‘Well that’s a first,’ Wyatt remarked when I hung up the phone.
‘He wouldn’t tell me her name,’ I said, and I was inexplicably nervous. This was the first girl David had brought home since that disaster with Jennie all of those years earlier. All I knew about this girl was that she wasn’t staying with us, but that she’d be joining us for Christmas lunch. It didn’t make any sense.
‘Where else would she stay?’ I asked Wyatt, and he said, ‘Do you think she’s a local?’
We stared at each other, and then we started to laugh. It seemed exceedingly unlikely that David would move four hours away, only to hook up in some kind of serious relationship with another girl from Milton Falls. But then the day arrived, and I opened a door and David was standing there with Olivia Brennan.
I’d been aware of Olivia. She had been in David’s year at school, a clever girl – a focused girl. He’d never shown the slightest interest in her in high school. As far as I knew, she had no interest at all in sport – and I couldn’t ever remember seeing her at any of his games. I knew her parents: Rita was a registered nurse at the hospital, Tom was an accountant. They were a nice family, they lived in a nice, average-looking house on the other side of town, and as far as I knew, they kept to themselves. I’d certainly never been aware of any scandals involving the Brennan family. They were good people. Simple people.
But even so, Olivia was not the kind of girlfriend I had pictured or wanted for David. Not only did I fail to see what they might have in common, Olivia was actually quite a plain girl. After Jennie, David had always gravitated to the prettiest, to the most outgoing, to the most vivacious. Olivia was quiet and gentle, and she had mousy-brown hair, and some freckles scattered over her cheeks. She didn’t wear a lot of make-up; she didn’t really dress up. She was the kind of kid to blend in, rather than the kind to stand out – certainly not the type to command attention. This was not the kind of woman I pictured David settling down with. I had imagined that one day, he’d finish uni and go on to a highly successful career, and he’d be with the kind of woman who turned heads when she entered a room. Everyone would be jealous of them – they’d be the perfect power couple.
Olivia Brennan was the polar opposite of the woman I’d pictured for my son. But there she was, standing hand-in-hand with him, passing anxious glances in my direction between intense gazes at her shoes.
‘Well, hello,’ I said.
‘Mum, I think you know Olivia?’
I had assumed that if he was bringing a girl home, things between them had to be fairly serious – but then it struck me that if it was only Olivia, maybe they weren’t actually home ‘together’ but rather just home ‘at the same time’.
I glanced at their hands – tightly entwined, and my heart sank. No, they were definitely together, and I had no idea what to make of it at first. So I stared at them, and a sense of unease slowly dawned in me.
Olivia wasn’t the kind of girl a boy like David should be dating. She wasn’t good enough for him – she was too plain. Too ordinary. But she also wasn’t the kind of girl a boy like David would just have some fun with. She was no notch in his belt, no fling. And even if she had been, he wouldn’t have brought her home to meet us formally like this.
I swallowed heavily. David was serious about her. I couldn’t even begin to fathom what he was thinking. He was looking at me expectantly, and I realised I was yet to welcome her.
‘Of course, hello Olivia,’ I said, and I forced a bright smile as they walked into my house. I watched the way that David brushed a kiss against her hair as he led her gently into the hallway. He was tenderly, gently encouraging her. I remembered how protective he was of Jennie Sobotta all of those years ago. There were hints of that same determined chivalry in those first moments with Olivia.
‘How was the drive?’ I asked them, and David wrapped his arm around Olivia’s waist and steered her into the living room. She sat on the couch, and then he sat right beside her but kept his arm around her. Olivia lent into him, and she flashed him a doe-eyed smile.
‘It was great, thanks Mum. How have you guys been? How’s the dogs?’
I think my jaw probably hung open for a good ten seconds or so before I could collect myself enough to say, ‘The dogs are good. We’re having pups again soon. Dad’s well, he’s busy at the store. I’m good too.’
‘Olivia’s doing vet science,’ David told me, and I looked to Olivia in surprise.
‘Is that right?’
‘Can I see your dogs?’ she asked me, brightening. ‘What breed are they?’
‘Of course you can!’ I said, and I was warmed a little to the situation myself.
That Christmas, David left no doubt in our minds that he was very serious indeed about Olivia Brennan. Rather than going out on the town or even going to sporting events, he wanted to spend every spare moment with her. He doted on her. When she was in our house, he was always fetching her a drink or asking if she wanted anything else at dinner, or cuddling her, or just holding her hand. They weren’t the kind of kids to spend a lot of time alone in their room making out. Instead, David seemed respectful, devoted, and completely and utterly in love.
I must admit, I felt threatened. I’d never imagined that David would be like this when he found a serious girlfriend – Wyatt certainly hadn’t been. Perhaps I was just a little jealous too – David and Olivia seemed to share the kind of relationship that I had always imagined I might have for myself. They were well matched intellectually, and although their interests were diverse, they found easy middle ground. Olivia went to a few cricket games with David over that summer, and when she volunteered to walk the dogs for me, David willingly went. I even caught him patting one of the dogs, just because Olivia was sitting on the couch beside him patting the other one.
And then there was the fact that David had come home to see me, but in that entire visit, he didn’t spend a single moment with me alone. We spent plenty of time together, but Olivia was always there… and she was always his focus.
I thought seriously about suggesting to David that perhaps they were moving a little too fast. I went as far as to plan what I’d say, and how I’d bring the subject up. I’d ask him as nonchalantly as I could if he didn’t think things were Olivia were getting just a little bit intense. I could point out that they didn’t really have all that much in common. I could even try an offhand comment about how her sister Louisa was actually the more classically beautiful of the two, and had he met her? All I needed was a little doubt in his mind… a little wedge between them. Then I could expand it later.
During that entire summer, almost every day I thought about trying to find a way to break David’s focus on Olivia, but I never once went through with it – and the only thing that stopped me was that I knew I’d fail. I knew instinctively that an attempt to introduce some distance between them would only damage my own relationship with David. The intensity in his gaze when he looked at her was a force I’d not reckoned with before, and I came to the conclusion that all I could do was wait and hope that this honeymoon period between them faded by itself in time. I kept telling myself that this thing with Olivia would pass, and David would move on to someone more suitable. Someone who didn’t monopolise his time or energy. Someone who wasn’t so needy for it. Someone worthy of him.
On Christmas morning, Olivia came round as soon as she’d finished opening gifts with her family. David presented her with a parcel, a small box, not small enough to contain an engagement ring – and I was so relieved about that I felt a little giddy with it.
When Olivia opened her gift, there was simply a little piece of paper folded up inside.
‘What is it?’ I asked, peering over to see.
Olivia had tears of happiness in her eyes. She threw her arms around David’s neck and hugged him, and then she finally showed me the piece of paper.
‘We’re going to go do some behind–the-scenes animal feeds at the zoo,’ she said, and her brown eyes were sparkling with joy and delight.
She seemed overtly excited about this gift, in the way that a person can only be excited when a gesture truly speaks to something that they desperately wanted to do. I looked at David, and he was so pleased with himself – I could see that her happiness made him happy. There was no doubt at all in my mind then that David loved Olivia. And when I saw the way that Olivia looked at David, I really started to wonder. If this relationship didn’t fade, would she do everything within her power to make my son happy? She was at university too, and clearly very focused on her vet studies: would that career come before David in the future? Or if they did stay together long enough to build a shared life, would she do as a good wife should, and lay her own needs down in order to support my son?
I wondered if Olivia knew the unspoken promise she made David when she looked at him with love shining in her eyes like that. I wondered if this clever, quiet girl realised the sacrifices that becoming a good wife and mother would require of her. I wondered if she understood that to commit fully to a man meant a life that sometimes felt hollow, because her purpose one day would be to build and sustain her family. I knew girls of Olivia and David’s generation liked to kid themselves about careers and independence and feminism – but equally, I’d seen enough women try ‘to have it all’ to be quite certain that motherhood inevitably commanded a determined selflessness. That was just the way of the world.
And it was all ahead of her; ahead of them, if they decided to walk the path of life together.
I was still hopeful it was just one of those romances young adults tumble in and out of when they’re trying to figure the world out. But over time, Olivia became an awkward addition to the fabric of our family.