A WEEK OR SO AFTER THE family weep and wailathon, so help him, Liam coasted down the drive on his bike, straight into the garage. Iris would be clock-watching, but now was as good a time as any to oil the chain, pump the tyres, tighten the brakes, fix the brackets on the rear-light holder … He swore at his pinched thumb, which throbbed with accusation when he let the wrench slip. This wasn’t procrastination, all right? If he didn’t get it done now, when bloody would he? He heard Iris moving around in the kitchen above the garage. He sighed, looking at his shelf of Allen keys, screwdrivers, wrenches, tyre irons, spare inner-tubes. Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more, he muttered. Something, something, imitate the action of a tiger.
He stalked upstairs, trying to remember where he’d left the laptop this morning, after Iris had pointed out the day’s date.
‘Hi, sweetheart?’ she said. Already questioning him, for God’s sake.
‘Hi.’ He went to the sink.
‘How’d it go today?’
He ran himself a glass of water. ‘I postponed.’
‘You what?’
‘Had too much on at work this afternoon, so I cried off.’
‘Ironic phrase, don’t you think, Liam?’ she asked, poison-tipped.
‘I’m not the spill-all-to-strangers sort. Talking to cushions, or whatever amateur experiment they’ll try. Dance with the bloody scarves.’ He saw the squared-off, blunt expression on her face. Something in him teetered.
‘Look, Liam. The “play” angle was clearly for Billy. They’re trying to put him at ease. They’re not going to get you to colour in, are they?’ She shut the pantry door, dumped a container of flour on the bench, then stared at it as if she’d forgotten why she’d taken it out. ‘But you know what? Quite frankly, you haven’t been the talking to anyone sort for a long time.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘That’s partly what this —’ she gestured: meaning the field of tension between them ‘— is all about isn’t it? I’ve talked this over with Jenna. She thinks that at least some of the … insecurity, this constant anxiety, isn’t just to do with Pete, Jase, the move. When you’re this closed up, I feel unsafe.’
‘All this feeling wank!’ he muttered.
She booted a cupboard shut, then turned to him with her hands on both hips. ‘If we don’t fix this, Liam, we’re looking at a deal-breaker.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘I can’t live like this. I can’t live with someone who’s not talking to me. Really talking.’
He started to dismiss it, and she said, ‘I mean it.’
Her voice, a shift in posture: it was like a strobe seared the kitchen. The way all the curves and lines of her fitted together; her thick, electric auburn hair bunched, with one tendril sprung from her hairclip; her creamy, untanned calves reminding him of the taste condensed milk left at the back of his tongue. It pierced him with unexpected desire, fear, shame and long-brewing grief.
‘I can’t stay with someone who’s not being honest.’
He flinched. How did she — ‘Honest?’
She dropped to a kitchen stool. Trouble shadow-played over her face now. ‘I don’t know what else to call it.’
‘Look —’ His mouth was dry; his pulse sped up. ‘I’m not sure what you mean.’
She stared at him, the fatigue on her face peeling back as if some realisation edged near. ‘Liam?’
He turned away.
‘What’s going on?’
A black orb blotted across his vision. ‘Nothing.’ He turned back. ‘It’s nothing.’
‘Looks like a pretty heavy nothing, Liam.’
He’d persist with a fudge. Not exactly lying. Then, involuntarily, his mouth said, ‘I saw Faye. At a service station in Ashburton. On the way back from my trip to Christchurch a few weeks ago. Faye Prescott.’
What had he done?
It wasn’t a name they’d spoken together in years. But he saw he’d hardly needed to say her surname. He couldn’t seem to stop. ‘We had a drink together.’ As if this were the worst part of the confession and he could get away with a half-truth. He should have known that wouldn’t fool Iris. In the early years of their marriage, she was always better at poker than he was, even though he had to remind her of the rules before nearly every game. Faye Prescott: she was — the woman from his past who wasn’t, really. For reasons he’d never fully understood, she’d been just a friend, and Iris had sometimes expressed suspicion about that. ‘Always?’ She read him too well. ‘Nothing’s ever happened,’ he’d reassure her, when they had all lived in Auckland and Faye sometimes dropped by, or she and Liam had coffee, or once or twice an after-work drink.
Nothing had ever happened, true: but there was an unspoken tension that made her more dangerous than a genuine ex. With Faye, there was still a coiled bolt of energy stored, or working against itself, somehow.
‘And?’
‘And —’ He felt an internal stutter: an engine that wouldn’t turn over. All the ands were too barbed for him to say: and it had been a relief to see someone who wasn’t constantly asking him for something, judging him, finding him falling short. And it was good to see someone who had once known him and Pete at their best together.
‘Liam.’
That was what he’d dreaded. To hear Iris’s belief in him corroding, when it wasn’t like that; he did still love her, he would always be there for her, she and Billy were top priority. Morality said so, common human decency cried so: this protesting hinge of love still said so. So why was he sweating?
He had just — wanted respite. Had tried to steal it; needed a break from the strain of work, Iris’s worry, the eroding sorrow about Pete and Jase that he couldn’t give air to if he wanted to keep home-life sane. He wanted someone to listen to him without blame, confusion and fear behind everything. He wanted rescue sex: straightforward lust and its welcome ache answered. Don’t anyone dare say typical male arsehole, because after years of suppressed attraction, Faye said she wanted it, too, as much as he did, though she was just as scared.
Could he tell Iris he’d begun to think it was actually possible to desire and care for more than one woman at once? Something had made him call Faye as soon as he reasonably could after Pete’s suicide. They’d met for a coffee then, and she’d listened, quietly. That was all he’d needed then. She had moved down south, just before the big quakes, but had flown up to Auckland not long after Jason’s funeral. She’d called and tried to see him, but although they couldn’t meet, he knew she understood.
He couldn’t tell Iris. Couldn’t explain it, couldn’t hurt her any more than she had been already. Why did it have to be so complicated? She must know how she exhausted him sometimes, with her ability to stack anxiety ever higher. He’d wanted an oasis of time, outside ordinary life. Light-hearted, painless fun. A private retreat. Everyone needed privacy, didn’t they, even in a marriage? Was the only place you could have it, once you were married, in your head? He’d wanted to see if he could forget, for a moment. Go back to an old self. Soak in uncomplicated affection.
That was naïve, to believe it could be uncomplicated. And yet — at first Faye seemed to understand. Slightly older than Liam, serene; she was married; had her children very young, so two were already grown and gone from home. A third child, a girl, she had lost when the baby was under one, many years ago now. She’d once confided how this sat in the corner of every other thought. It was there, always. Even under the warm, sliding glow of a second beer in that Ashburton garden bar, he realised his attraction was split with contradiction. He wanted playfulness, but also wanted to sit alongside her subliminal sorrow.
After the drink, they hadn’t slept together. But perhaps that was just chance. The coincidence of meeting in this small southern town, of all places, made them both a little wild, loose, before they’d even finished the first glass. Faye’s husband was in Auckland at meetings; the move to Ashburton from Christchurch after the quakes had been rough on them both. People say you can run a business from anywhere with the internet, but Faye missed her old friends; the buzz of a bigger place. The quakes had really made her think, maybe too much sometimes. About things she hadn’t achieved. She’d spread her hands on the table, reaching out to grip the edge near him. He decided he wasn’t sober enough to drive; she offered to take him to his motel. He moved some of his gear from his car to hers, planned to collect his vehicle in the morning. When they parked up at the motel, the office was closed, the hotelier nowhere to be seen. ‘Would you like to come in?’ he’d asked, trying to find out what was happening between them, genuinely not knowing what she would answer. She said, ‘I’d have to leave before six tomorrow.’ The need for sex redoubled, a current tripping him. His hand at the back of her neck, one thumb gliding her nipple; her hands up under his shirt, then at his belt. Then someone who sounded half-cut knocked at the unit door. Liam and Faye pulled back, instantly sober, all the risks fully exposed; she was shaking and apologetic, all that enviable, restful poise and equilibrium gone. He tried to be understanding, though after she left his nerves were so charged up, he couldn’t sleep. He watched a blue movie on the motel rental system; hands trying to conjure her up again; coming to afterwards, so to speak, with self-loathing, bemused by how insistent lust had been.
He and Faye had texted and talked on the phone every few days since. He’d grown so confused that he looked for ‘affair’ in an online dictionary, to see if they qualified, even without sex. The guilt he felt right now seemed evidence enough.
He sat next to Iris on the other breakfast bar stool and steepled his palms up over nose and mouth: mask or prayer. ‘I’m sorry. This has all just been such a screw-up.’
With preternatural calm, Iris said, ‘What happened?’
He had the sensation of seeing the room through a porthole, and simultaneously, objects seemed to detach themselves from surfaces. Just stress, he told himself. He tried to suck in air to stay grounded. ‘Nothing actually happened.’
Stonily, ‘A Bill Clinton nothing, or a genuine nothing?’
He gave her the precise details. ‘We kissed. Fondled. Nothing more. Talked.’
He wanted to take that word back the minute he said it: her eyes seemed to burn him.
His head rang with the effort behind the quiet.
Then Iris started talking in a monotone, as if narrating subtitles to their last year together. ‘So all that withdrawal, all that preoccupation, all that guardedness and distance … it hasn’t just been in my head, has it?’
He felt nauseous.
‘Did you talk to her because you couldn’t talk to me? Or is it the other way round?’
‘What?’
‘Have you not been talking to me because you were talking to her?’ She said it as if it were a simple, clear-cut equation, but in his mind it looped and snaked. He rubbed his forehead.
‘She wasn’t us. That’s why I talked to her. It was just — a breath of fresh air.’
‘How can you not think we need help? Is this something you want to fix, Liam?’ Then as he tried to drag the leaden weight in him up with words, ‘I’m sure this is all connected. I mean, so maybe Faye is an outsider you can talk to, but —’ She inhaled an odd laugh. ‘I’m not sure whether to be furious with you, or relieved that you can actually still talk to someone. I’m not sure whether to be grateful nothing happened, or whether, or whether — fuck, Liam.’ The last words were barely audible, but he felt punched.
He swallowed. This swerve, her focused anger, was bizarrely energising, cleansing. Why? Because here it was, in the open. The monster, Infidelity, had come out of its lair: this was what they had to slay. He put a hand on her arm, ready to agree to any terms, but now Iris was standing, hand over mouth. She left the kitchen, and he heard her in the bathroom, dry retching. He pressed his fingers hard into his eye sockets, trying to stop the spinning. There was the sound of running water, a handle turning, her tread upstairs, the old floorboards creaking almost as if she were rocking one small, sleepless thought back and forth, back and forth. He wanted to follow her up, have it out, get all the answers now — but he couldn’t move.