I Should Have Been a Pair of Ragged Claws
Athena, 39
Perth, 2013
Athena gripped the trolley and pushed it through Coles. From the double seat at the front, the twins fixed their four blue eyes on her. At any moment they could separately or jointly initiate a meltdown, start wailing uncontrollably, beg her for treats. It was her fault for being in Coles in the first place, for not ordering a delivery before the cut-off time. She moved purposefully, grabbing only the essentials, taking great care to prevent her children’s eyes connecting with the confectionary aisle.
They were in dairy.
‘Cold, Mummy. I’m cold,’ Clara said, rubbing her arms.
‘Nearly done here,’ said Athena, grabbing milk and sliding it into the trolley.
‘Oh, Mummy – look! Mummy, please Mummy!’
And there, in the yoghurt section, were plastic squeezy pouches with Princess Elsa and Olaf the Snowman plastered all over them. The bane of her mother’s life.
‘Guys, we can’t buy these yoghurts. Yiayia will go crazy at us if we buy them. You know how Yiayia Koula and Pappou Evan have the yoghurt business.’
‘Elsa!’
‘Olaf!’
The twins’ faces reddened and filled with tears. They began to howl. Athena felt the eyes of everyone in the supermarket focus on her. She blushed and tried to shush them.
‘Okay, okay. You can have one each if you be quiet right this instant.’
‘No, I want two!’ yelled Clara.
Athena grabbed a handful of the squeezy pouches and threw them into the trolley.
‘Just wait until I’ve paid for them,’ she said, vowing to put reminders in her calendar so she didn’t miss the cut-off time for online delivery again. No more quick trips to Coles. No more trolleys. No more people staring at her, thinking she was a bad parent.
_____
Later that day, Athena found a rare moment of silence in the kitchen. The twins were in the playroom, not fighting for once. She made herself a coffee from the two-cup French press.
Suddenly, her mother walked in unannounced, jingling keys in front of her.
‘Athena! You left your keys in the front door.’
‘Oh, did I?’
‘Do you know how dangerous that is? Someone could just come into the house and you’re home alone with the children.’
‘Yes, okay,’ Athena said. ‘I just completely forgot when I came inside.’
‘Yiayia Koula!’ the children called out. ‘Yiayia Koula’s here!’ Sam and Clara materialised in front of their Yiayia, checking to see if she had brought them cake or presents.
‘Is your mother looking after you properly?’ she asked the twins.
Athena took a deep, sharp breath. Why did her mother take such delight in putting her down?
Now she was rubbing her hands through the twins’ hair. ‘You’re so beautiful, my grandchildren. Ftoú ftoú ftoú.’
‘Mum, they don’t understand what that means. They think you’re being strange.’
‘Here are some little presents for you both,’ said her mother, ignoring Athena and handing Clara and Sam a wrapped gift each from a giant carry bag she’d brought.
‘Mum, you can’t buy them so much stuff all the time.’
‘You can’t tell me what to do, Athena.’
Clara and Sam skipped off to the playroom to open the presents. Athena took another deep breath.
‘I brought some yoghurt for you,’ her mother said, reaching into her bag. And before Athena could stop her, she was opening the door of the fridge.
‘Athena!’ her mother said. ‘How could you?’ She took out the squeezy yoghurt pouches and held them up.
‘Sorry, Mum, I just, I was in Coles and the twins were going nuts and I just—’
‘Our yoghurt isn’t good enough for you?’
‘You know I love the yoghurt, and so do Clara and Sam,’ Athena said. ‘It’s just – they were screaming for the Frozen ones.’
Her mother shook her head and ceremoniously deposited the yoghurt pouches in the bin, replacing them with a 1-kilogram tub of Kairos Greek Vanilla Yoghurt.
‘Our family hasn’t worked so hard for so many years for you to buy the competition. The American competition. And these little plastic pouches are not good for the environment. You of all people should care about too much plastic, Athena. You’re always going on about carbon emissions.’
Athena gripped the edge of the kitchen counter and tried to slow her breathing.
‘Do you want a cup of tea?’
‘No, I just came to check on you,’ her mother replied, looking her up and down. ‘Don’t you think you need some new clothes?’
Athena grazed her hands over her faded cotton t-shirt and jeans that were fraying at the knees. This was her uniform now. What was the point in wearing anything nicer than this? She wanted to burst into tears. When did this happen? When had she become this person? But she didn’t. She smiled and nodded and pretended, just like her mother wanted her to.
‘You’re right,’ Athena said, playing the part. ‘I should get some new clothes.’
‘Athena,’ her mother said. ‘You are really lacking something.’
‘What?’
‘I don’t know,’ her mother said, shrugging. ‘Only you know that.’
Her mother had always been like this with her, but it had definitely gotten worse since the children had arrived. All the things that Athena had known all her life she was deficient in – cooking, cleaning, laundry, being organised, getting by on so little sleep – were somehow the qualities most required in her role as a mother.
From the day they were born it seemed like everyone else’s babies slept more, had fewer tantrums, just generally weren’t so high maintenance. Or were all the other mothers just way more competent? How was Athena meant to know how to look after children? Why was it assumed that she would know what to do, how to act? Nothing had prepared her for this.
And then there was the cooking required for four people. In London neither she nor Richard had cooked. They had gone out for dinner or eaten at their respective offices or had takeaway from the Indian place that was almost an extension of their lounge room. Most of their social life revolved around spending weekends at the pub with their friends or taking little trips on cheap airlines to places they chose randomly. Her life in London seemed like a dream now. Sure, they’d had their problems there too, but it was infinitely easier than Richard being at work all day and Athena in this domesticated Sisyphean existence.
Athena knew she had to get back to work somehow. Every day she looked at job ads on Seek, but she couldn’t comprehend how she would get someone else to look after the twins, put on nice clothes, blow-dry her hair and leave. How would that happen? She had once dared to suggest to her mother that she would go back to work (but not at the yoghurt factory), and her mother had said it was a bad idea and wouldn’t be good for the children. Children need their mothers, Athena. So Athena stayed home, in this perpetual loop of waiting until they were old enough to go to school, convincing herself she would go back to work then.
But she knew that she could never go back to being the person she was in London. That woman, that old version of Athena, who didn’t know how good she had it.
‘You can come to my house for lunch on Sunday if you like,’ her mother said, snapping Athena out of her thoughts. ‘Unless you have other plans.’
Athena forced a smile. ‘We don’t have any plans.’
Because they never had any plans. All her friends, bar one, were in London. She didn’t enjoy the petty competitiveness of her mothers’ group. Richard socialised with people at work. Her brothers’ wives had older children and had passed this phase years ago. So Athena spent days upon days with the twins, visiting her mother and her grandmother, going to storytime at the library, or having picnics on the grassy area at Cottesloe Beach. She just couldn’t think of anything else to do.
But Athena loved her mother’s cooking. The píta, the syrupy baklavá, the melomakárona. All of it. Even if it tasted like guilt, Athena was so used to its flavour it somehow satiated her.
‘Sunday. We’ll eat at midday. Don’t be late,’ said her mother.
‘Do you want me to bring anything?’
‘Ha! No.’
Her mother left abruptly and Athena looked at the clock. There were still three hours and twelve minutes to go before Richard walked in the door. She attempted some slow breathing and opened up Airbnb on her iPad. She typed in the first thing that came into her head. A little town in the southwest.
The house at the top of the search results had several five-star reviews – well-maintained, very clean, good for kids. It was a timber cottage on the edge of pristine forest. It had a lot of glossy wood, a black pot-belly stove and a touch of the ’90s judging from the brass fittings and polished cork floors.
That’s what she needed. A short holiday break. Somewhere safe the kids could play and nobody telling her how she was doing it all wrong. Richard would be there to help out with the kids and not so easily distracted by work and other things.
There was a crash of blocks in the playroom, shouting, crying. She tipped over her stone-cold coffee and it puddled onto the iPad. Athena soaked it up with a paper towel and then immediately clicked to book the house before tending to the twins’ dispute over the blocks.
_____
On the morning they were scheduled to depart, Athena took Clara to visit Yiayia Sia on the way to buy some last-minute provisions. Richard stayed home with Sam to pack the car.
Athena saw Yiayia Sia through the flyscreen security door, sitting at her kitchen table, listening to the mumble of Greek radio, rolling dough into something that would eventually be sweet. She had a kandíli, a short wick floating in oil, lit for her parents, her husband and her sisters, near the stove. Yiayia Sia was wearing black. Athena had never known her not to wear black.
‘Yiayia Sia,’ Athena called out, knocking on the flyscreen. ‘Kaliméra, Yiayia,’ Athena said.
‘Korítsia mou,’ Yiayia Sia said, standing up, limping towards them, crouching on her bastoúni. Her black dress trailed behind her. Athena knew she should offer to fix up the hem, but she didn’t know how to sew. She could take it to the tailors. That she could do. But she knew that Yiayia Sia would decline her offer. Her Yiayia followed Athena’s gaze and said ‘Oh yes, yes. I will fix it.’
‘We just came to say goodbye. We are going away for a few days,’ said Athena.
‘Welcome, welcome. Come in,’ Yiayia Sia said, unlocking the door and hugging Athena and Clara. Yiayia Sia always smelled of roses and honey. The roses in her garden grew thick and fragrant. They never seemed to be those tightly budded ones. They were unopened buds and then, it seemed, the next day, full blushes of petals in block colour as if Clara had painted them.
‘Say hello, Clara,’ Athena said to Clara.
‘Mummy!’ said Clara, clutching Athena’s leg. Athena conceded that to a child perhaps Yiayia Sia was a little on the scary side, whereas Yiayia Koula was all toys and treats.
‘She is a special one,’ said Yiayia Sia, patting Clara on the head. ‘You know, I remembered last night I buried some treasure long ago. I think you would like it, Clara-mou. It is far away, back in Greece, on my island, Aeaea. It’s for you. One day.’
Athena smiled as she tried to detach Clara from her leg.
‘Your mother is taking me to the doctor this morning,’ Yiayia Sia said. ‘I can’t remember why.’
Athena nodded and walked towards the kitchen, following her grandmother.
To the left of the corridor was the ‘good room’. A polished wooden cabinet adorned with white doilies displayed a variety of crystal objects and wedding photos of Athena, her brothers, parents and grandparents. The room, even when rushing past, always gave off a whiff of sugared almonds. Kouféta. They were the most impractical of things that people gave out at weddings and christenings in white or baby blue or pastel pink, wrapped in taffeta. Nobody ever knew what to do with them after the event but, no, you can’t throw them away. Athena had never seen anybody eat a whole one, or even take a bite. She had licked them as a child at the Greek weddings she’d attended. She recalled their taste as sweet but kind of paint-like.
‘You’re wearing your máti,’ said Yiayia Sia. ‘And you have the one I gave you for your little girl?’
‘Yes, you gave it to me when she was born, remember?’
‘Oh, yes, very good. Sometimes I can forget things.’ Yiayia Sia nodded and then changed her tone. ‘Oh, here she comes.’
‘Clara, my darling!’ called out Koula from the front door.
‘Yiayia Koula!’ Clara yelled, running to her. ‘We’re going on a holiday today.’
‘Be careful with my grandchildren,’ Koula said, turning to Athena. ‘Are you or your husband driving?’
‘Richard will drive.’
‘Asto, Koula,’ Yiayia Sia said. ‘Leave her alone.’
‘Glad to see you’re wearing your máti these days,’ Koula said to Athena. ‘Make sure Clara wears hers too, once she stops putting things in her mouth.’
‘Okay,’ said Athena. ‘We won’t stay. Just came to say goodbye. See you both in a week.’
‘Kaló taxídi,’ said Yiayia Sia. ‘Have a good journey.’
‘Don’t let Richard drive too fast,’ her mother said. ‘And watch out for snakes.’
Athena picked up Clara and carried her out, past the thick blush of roses. Clara was unusually quiet for once, and gazed at Athena while she fussed with the seatbelt.
‘Mummy, are you happy?’ she asked.
Athena smiled, ‘Of course I’m happy.’
‘Mummy, I love you,’ said Clara. ‘We’re going on a holiday!’
_____
Richard set the cruise control and drove at 110. Still charred from a bushfire, the trees on both sides were like witches’ fingers, black and knobbly. The land was beige, the sky low. Big and blue and nothing and empty. Australia seemed to mean more to other people than to her. Why didn’t she love the vast empty space? Why didn’t she love the beach? Why did she miss London so deeply?
There were new signs on the freeway. Huge advertisements every so often. Visit Dardanup! Accompanied by a photo of a rare pink steak on a plate with a nondescript salad garnish. Speed Kills. A photo of a crying family.
She checked the odometer and glanced back at the twins, strapped into their oversized car seats, holding their teddy bears. Clara held her favourite book and turned the pages, pretending to read. Sam was looking out the window, sucking his thumb.
Athena turned to the road ahead and opened the glove box. Inside was the car manual and a knob of garlic. Her mother and grandmother put garlic in all the vehicles they drove, just in case. What harm could it do? The evil eye was everywhere, and wasn’t it better to send it away, protect the children? Ftoú ftoú ftoú.
Athena snapped shut the glove box.
She sipped from her stainless-steel water bottle. She thought that perhaps she should offer some to Richard, but she didn’t. He didn’t ask. Richard was wearing the grey v-neck jumper that Athena liked. He’d always been quite stylish, made good sartorial decisions. Women noticed that about him.
Athena remembered the first moment she noticed Richard. She was in second-year uni, at some kind of party on the main lawn. There was a band playing. She was standing next to her friend Sally. Athena was sipping cheap cask wine from a plastic cup, looking to the stage, and there he was singing into the microphone and playing guitar. He looked right at her as he sang, and after their set came into the crowd and found her. She had been getting over a crush on someone completely unattainable, so she had appreciated this attention from the lead singer of the band. The band didn’t last, but Athena and Richard did. The spark was there in that moment of white wine and ’90s music. From there, their relationship progressed to living together, getting married (with the full Greek Orthodox wedding orchestrated by her mother and all that that entailed), spending a decade living and working in London, returning to Perth and having the twins.
And now, here they were. There had been so many years and months and weeks and minutes. And in all that time, it had become something else – something that was nothing like it was when it started. Was this as good as it was ever going to get? Perhaps it was. Athena couldn’t shake the feeling that Richard had taken something from her that she could never get back. She’d tried to explain this to Sally over coffee the previous week.
‘I’m sure most people feel like this,’ Sally said. ‘According to pretty much everyone I know, all wives and mothers get to a point when they realise they’re the stereotypical disgruntled housewife and their life is just about making other people’s lives more fulfilling. I think women even feel like that if they keep working after having kids, because they still do everything at home as well.’
‘My grandmother should have stayed in the village.’
‘Your Yiayia Sia probably wonders why things haven’t changed more for you in this modern era of gender equality.’
‘Well, there’s not a lot of gender equality going on at my place,’ said Athena. ‘Richard goes to work. I look after the twins. I make their food and do their laundry and pick up everything off the floor, again and again and again. I just wonder when I won’t feel so tired and so angry that this is the way things are and I just have to deal with it. Every day I wish I was back in London. I miss everything about London. I miss my job. I miss the Tate. I feel guilty I miss my old life so much. When will I stop feeling guilty?’
‘I’m not sure that’s ever going to happen to you, Athena. You are the queen of guilt,’ said Sally.
‘I wish I wasn’t. I feel so guilty about so many things, though. Like, for example, how you couldn’t be the maid of honour at my wedding,’ said Athena.
‘It’s okay, Athena. I’m over it.’
‘So, how are things with you?’
‘Still not pregnant.’
‘Sorry.’
‘It’s not your fault, Athena. It’s okay, I’m okay.’
Athena smiled and squeezed her hand. Sally’s nails had been painted in a burgundy gloss. Her hair was freshly blow-dried. She didn’t have Weetbix plastered to her jeans or unicorn stickers on her shoes. Sally looked like a normal 39 year old woman with a real job and reasonable mental health. Athena couldn’t remember the last time she’d had her own hair cut or coloured. At least she hadn’t put on too much weight post-children. This was only because she never sat down, and often forgot to eat.
She often made entire meals, set the table, fed the twins and cleaned up before realising she had forgotten to eat altogether. She never made food for herself. Sometimes her breakfast was remnants of the twins’ toast crusts before she was plunged into the next drama of the morning.
‘You should pay for some more help with the twins, you know,’ Sally said, her tone changing slightly. ‘You have to take the plunge, Athena.’
‘Who am I going to leave them with?’
‘Look on a website and find a nanny,’ said Sally. ‘She doesn’t have to be perfect, just someone who can do all the house stuff and entertain Clara and Sam while you’re at work.’
‘My mother will have a fit if I leave them with a stranger.’
‘Your mother hates non-Greek strangers, that’s for sure. What’s the word she used when she met me?’
‘Xéni,’ said Athena. ‘I can’t believe you remember that.’
‘One day, Athena, you are going to stop caring what your mother thinks,’ said Sally, shaking her head, ‘and live a little.’
‘If you remember correctly, Sally, I did that and I married Richard.’
‘Well, yes, but you still went through with the whole wedding thing, didn’t you? And I wasn’t even allowed to be your maid of honour because I was – what’s that word again?’
‘Xéni. So you’re not over it.’
‘Well—’
‘You’re saying that if Richard and I hadn’t got married before we’d gone to London, things would be different now?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Sally, shrugging. ‘Maybe? Who knows?’
Athena didn’t reply and instead fumbled with her thin gold bracelet and the blue circle charm with a black dot in the middle.
‘You’re still wearing that little thing, all these years later. What’s it called again?’ Sally asked.
‘Máti. It means eye.’
‘The evil eye.’
‘No, it protects against the evil eye if someone is giving you the evil eye.’
‘You crazy Greeks,’ she said, and Athena smiled.
Oh Sally, if only you knew.
_____
‘We’re hungry!’ Clara and Sam called out from the back seat, interrupting Athena’s thoughts.
‘Do you want some pieces of peeled apple or a Vegemite sandwich?’ Athena asked.
‘I want a cheese sandwich.’
‘I don’t have any cheese sandwiches.’
‘Fine, Vegemite then.’
‘Please, Mummy,’ Athena said.
‘Please, Mummy,’ they chanted back in unison.
Athena unwrapped the Vegemite sandwiches and handed one each to the arms extended from the back seat.
‘I want mine in a triangle shape,’ said Clara.
‘I don’t have a knife in the car, Clara. I already cut them as rectangles.’
‘Mummy! Triangles are my favourite!’
‘I’ll make you a triangle one when we get there, okay?’
‘Are we there now?’
‘Not yet.’ Then she turned to Richard. ‘Do you want one?’
‘No, thanks,’ he said.
Was there something in his tone? I can’t believe you only made Vegemite sandwiches! Didn’t you pack anything edible? Or, I can’t believe you pander to them! Or, I can’t believe you’re so boring. Or something else?
Athena thought about how Richard must see her now. The mother/wife creature who spends all day chopping fruit, folding washing and wiping down the kitchen bench-top that doesn’t stay clean for more than a few minutes. What happened? She used to work for the BBC. In London! That meant something, once. She’d read novels and had opinions. She’d scribbled lists of words she loved in the back of leatherbound notebooks. She tried to think of a few. Adamantine. Clandestine. Gnomic.
People used to listen to what Athena said, nodding and responding appropriately. Nobody had ever asked her to make food, clean up, wipe anything. Her days had been dedicated to words, other worlds and political dysfunction. They were nothing like this.
Her husband’s days were very different to hers now. Richard still went to work in an office, spoke to adults, wore well-fitting, tailored clothes. He still looked and acted the same as he had before the children. Nobody would have known unless they asked him. But for Athena, being a mother was stamped all over her, like how farmers brand cattle, burnt through flesh, irreversible.
Athena had forgotten how to interact with adults or have conversations that weren’t related to sleep, breastfeeding, appropriate foods or which school she was going to send the twins to.
Some days felt like years. Waiting, watching the clock for Richard to come home, hoping that he would.
Athena constantly reminded herself that she was lucky to have children. She had always thought she wanted twins – before she knew what that actually meant. Two babies, one pregnancy. Instant family. A boy and a girl. You’re done.
_____
The Airbnb host had left a single key in a lockbox. Athena retrieved it and unlocked the front door to the scent of eucalyptus oil. The interior looked like the website photos. There was the pot-belly stove, not that they would use it. In the small kitchen was a wooden bowl of fresh fruit as a welcome gift. An apple, a pear, an orange, two bananas. They wouldn’t last the hour.
Richard unpacked the car while Sam and Clara ran laps around the verandah, circling the house. Behind them was a thick wall of karri trees, the start of the forest.
In the kitchen, Athena chopped up the welcome fruit and made cheese sandwiches, cut into triangles. Bread, butter, thinly sliced cheese. Her hands moved quickly, folding bread like origami.
Athena removed a family-size tub of Kairos Greek Vanilla Yoghurt from the esky and shoved it in the fridge, sighing as she shut the door. Oh, the yoghurt.
Athena chopped up three more apples and congratulated herself that the Airbnb she had just gone ahead and booked was fine. Even just being in a different kitchen was a welcome relief from monotony of her own. How many kilos of fruit had she chopped in her own kitchen over the past three years? The answer would defy mathematics. How would she have known that this much fruit chopping would be required?
Athena thought again about Sally, dear Sally. You crazy Greeks.
‘What are you smiling about?’ asked Richard, walking in behind her.
‘Just what Sally said the other day.’
‘What was that?’
‘She said “You crazy Greeks”, but it was just funny the way she said it. She was hassling me for still wearing my máti all these years later.’
‘Your mum would go nuts at you if you didn’t wear it.’
‘I know. I mean, it doesn’t hurt to wear it, does it?’
Richard shrugged.
And she thought how nice it must be to live as Richard, because if anything ever happened to the children, it would never, ever be his fault.
‘So, we’re on holiday.’ He put his arms around her and drew her in closer. She bristled at his touch.
‘I’ve chopped up this fruit,’ she said, not returning the embrace.
‘Fine.’ He let her go. She shoved the plate of fruit into his hands and turned back towards the late-afternoon orange light through the kitchen window.
_____
Later that night, Athena pretended she was asleep while Richard sat up in bed. She felt him watching her. It was so easy to imitate the slow, relaxed, rhythmic breathing of sleep. He stood up, grabbed his phone and went outside. Athena heard his voice making promises under the trees to someone who wasn’t her. Eventually he returned to bed and Athena resumed her fake-asleep breathing. Soon she heard his real-asleep breathing and she opened her eyes. She felt the familiar sadness, the silent leak of warm tears, adding to that deep, dark well that was her marriage.
She listened to the crickets, the occasional car driving past, time passing, the car returning. She heard rustling in the ceiling and hoped it was a possum or a mouse rather than a ghost.
The next morning Athena woke first, even though she had definitely been the last to fall asleep. The sounds and smells were of an unfamiliar place – the birds’ morning calls, the loud hum of the refrigerator, a different brand of laundry powder which the sheets had been washed in. Richard was still asleep (probably).
She checked on the twins. They were snuggled in their beds in matching seahorse-print cotton pyjamas. She listened for their breathing and then returned to bed.
‘They’re fine, Athena,’ he said, without opening his eyes.
Richard reached over to her and stroked her hair. She opened her eyes and looked at him. He pulled her closer.
But the kids would be up soon. And he would rather be with someone else anyway. She didn’t resist but didn’t respond.
‘What?’ he said, retracting his hand.
‘No, it’s fine. I just—’
‘If you don’t want to, then just don’t,’ he said, pushing back the covers and striding into the bathroom.
‘I just—’
‘You’re not a very good liar, Athena.’
‘I don’t have anything to lie about.’
‘I haven’t lied about anything. I’ve always told you and that’s what we agreed.’
What was there to say? They had been here before. Many, many, many times. And apparently, they had returned.
There was an oil painting of a beach on the wall. The bulbous white bedside lamps matched. This room wasn’t as heavily focused on wood as the rest of the cottage.
Richard got out of bed with a sigh and then she heard him messing about in the kitchen, then the kettle boiling. He must have found a coffee plunger and hopefully some cups. It wouldn’t be long before the kids woke up and the day would begin properly. In the meantime, what would she do? There was nothing left to say.
‘I’m sorry, Athena,’ he said, appearing with coffee in chipped red cups and saucers.
‘It’s fine,’ she said and accepted the peace offering.
He sat on the edge of the bed and looked at the painting.
‘I think it’s Rottnest,’ he said.
‘I guess it could be,’ she said. She noted the artist’s name scribbled in the bottom right-hand corner. Athena set her eyes to the blues and the turquoise. The ombre colours of the Indian Ocean.
The twins woke up and started a pillow fight in their bedroom with squeals and laughter. She knew by now that if she left them for a few minutes of interactive sibling play, one of them would self-destruct. She sipped her coffee and waited for the tears. Clara this time.
‘Sam hit me in the face!’ she cried. ‘Mummy, where are you?’
‘I’m here!’ called out Athena. She sorted out the apologies and then began taking orders for breakfast.
‘Weetbix with milk, not too much. That’s too much, Mummy,’ said Clara.
‘Toast with honey – but not butter and honey – just honey,’ said Sam.
Richard was on his phone, texting. She complied with the breakfast orders. But they would have a nice day. They would.
Athena began the challenge of finding hats and shoes, applying sunscreen – sunscream, as the kids called it. They would walk up the hill.
Outside, the trees towered above them. Athena inhaled the earthy smell of the forest, the promise of a different kind of day.
‘I guess we’re going to find out what’s up there,’ she said to Richard.
As they approached the crest of the hill, she saw a white cross peeking out. And then rows and rows of grey marble gravestones. Some laden with silk flowers, others with fresh ones. Were the flowers for the person who was buried there, or for the world to see how much they were still missed?
The twins started up with questions.
‘What are these?’
‘Graves,’ said Athena.
‘Is it a playground?’
‘No. You can’t step on those.’
‘Why not?’
She looked to Richard for some help, but he shrugged.
‘It’s a lovely place,’ Athena said out loud. ‘In a strange land a stranger finds a grave, far from his home beyond the rolling wave.’
‘Is that a poem?’ asked Richard.
‘It just came into my head. I’ve seen it before on a grave, I’m sure of it,’ Athena said. She couldn’t work out where the words had come from. It was as if they’d passed through her, on their way to somewhere else.
‘Mummy, I’m hungry,’ said Sam. ‘I want some rockmelon.’
‘Okay, well now we know what’s up here,’ she said. ‘Let’s walk back.’
_____
Athena chopped and shaped the rockmelon into identically shaped curves. It was a more labour-intensive fruit. More time standing in front of the kitchen window.
The twins devoured the melon, and a few minutes later Athena returned to her station to chop a second round of fruit and assemble sandwiches. Richard hadn’t been able to locate wholegrain bread when he popped into the town bakery, so she would have to make do with white. ‘It’s a holiday,’ he’d said.
She piled the fruit onto a large plate – arranging it in any kind of order was a waste of thirty seconds, as it would be squished and crushed and distributed all over the picnic rug, their beautiful faces. Wiped all over her jeans.
Athena’s thoughts returned to the cemetery. She hadn’t given death much thought before she became a mother. Nobody she had ever cared about had died. Her parents were fine. Her grandmother was still going well.
She thought this boded well for her children. Good strong genes. Longevity, health. These were important. It meant everyone could depart in the right order – when they were very old and had lived full, rich, meaningful lives.
She had worried about other things before she became a mother, but nothing of significance in comparison to Clara and Sam.
And now she couldn’t relate to people who didn’t have children. What did they have to worry about? How simple and uncomplicated her life had been before they arrived.
Sally, for instance, wanted children but couldn’t have them. Athena didn’t understand why Sally wanted them so much. Surely she had seen what it had done to Athena and Richard. Yet Sally kept going to appointments and scans and paying ridiculous amounts of money. Athena wanted it to work out for her. She wanted Sally to have a baby. Even if only so Sally would say, ‘Wow, Athena, this is hard. This is so hard. I knew it was hard, but I didn’t know it was this hard.’
But maybe Sally wouldn’t find it hard at all.
At one point Athena had fleetingly thought about offering up her womb. In retrospect, pregnancy had been a walk in the park compared to looking after two toddlers all day.
She wondered what Richard would say. I think I should be a surrogate for Sally and Josh. He would roll his eyes. If that’s what you want, Athena. That was his passive-aggressive way of making something, anything, seem like only her idea. Having children: You wanted children. Leaving London and living in Perth for the rest of their lives: You’re from Perth. Every life decision.
And it was true. She had chosen this life, without meaning to. But she didn’t remember ever deciding to end up this way.
The thing that upset her the most, the thing she couldn’t change, was Richard himself and what she had agreed to all those years ago.
‘I thought we agreed that you know what I’m like,’ he had said when she brought it up with him every time it happened. And she did. That’s why it was so hard: because she had known what he was like all along. When they first got together, when they lived in London, and now post-children. That’s just what he was like.
Athena had condoned his behaviour. She was responsible. She’d never wanted to be bossy and inflexible. She didn’t want to be that kind of wife. Their relationship was more than that.
But she wasn’t interested in sleeping with anyone else. It was never about her, she just didn’t want to be one of those women who always said no. But, why then, did it feel so terrible? She could intellectualise it to death, but it still made her feel cold and unloved. Unwanted. Undesired.
‘Not all relationships are like this,’ said Sally. ‘You have children now and you don’t have your own life, your own work. Athena, you don’t have to stay with him. You can’t cope with it as well as you once could. And there’s nothing in it for you anymore. You should just tell him that the rules of the game have changed and that the other stuff has to stop.’
‘So, what am I meant to do, Sally? Strap him to the mast of the ship? Confiscate his phone? Tell him he’s not allowed to go to work?’
Sally shook her head. ‘Your relationship is too one-sided. You think you somehow deserve to be unhappy? Or the kids are so precious you have to put up with this forever because you think splitting up would be terrible for them?’
Athena was silent.
‘You do think that.’
‘Well, in the long term it will hurt them if we break up.’
‘You can’t live like this forever, Athena. What about you?’ Sally asked.
What about her.
Athena was heavy with the fiction of the effort she had put into her existence – her marriage and the twins. She had tried, she was trying. Surely, surely, it would be okay. Everything was going to be okay. Everything was going to get better.
Athena’s throat burned as she cried, and her knife sliced the top of her finger, blood and tears dripping on to the fruit. She glanced down at the máti hanging off her wrist, now dotted with a tiny ruby bead. She knew the máti didn’t work. It never had.
She was captive in this world with no way to protect herself. From herself. From her promise to her husband.
It was all already broken.