I needed an emergency dance session with Hattie and a dump truck to offload all the emotional baggage I was carrying. After our No Lights No Lycra dance hour, we went to the same bar as the time before and ordered a glass of Pinot each. I was about to launch into all my unforgiving angst when she announced, ‘I have a happiness hangover.’
‘What?’
‘I’m so happy, it’s still lingering. I had the most fabulous weekend. I’ve met this girl, Tess, an interior designer, short cropped brown hair, such a lovely smile, I could get lost in her eyes. She was wearing a mustard-yellow Fedora when we met.’
‘A what?’
‘A Fedora hat.’
‘Oh, right. So, tell me more.’
‘She’s so sweet, we spent the whole weekend in her bedroom. No joke, we didn’t get dressed all day. And then it went on until the next evening. And all those times with Briar came in handy. Tess doesn’t think I’m sloppy at all. I don’t know, I just felt comfortable with her, it just felt right, you know? It’s like finding the right person to bounce off. Some people make you uncomfortable in a conversation, make you shut down and not be yourself, whereas other people bring out the best in you. It’s like that — she brings out the best in me.’
‘I’m so pleased for you. Truly, I am.’ I was. They sounded like the perfect couple: Hattie the hat maker and Tess, the beautiful interior designer with a mustard-yellow Fedora. It sounded like a match made in heaven. And that staying in bed all day thing had me seriously drooling. I didn’t feel like launching into all my issues now, but she drew them out of me anyway.
‘So, what’s happening with Jarvis?’ she asked.
‘Nothing . . . Just the same. Well, I went to the opening at McClelland on Saturday . . . I was so proud of him. Things are starting to happen for him.’
‘That’s great.’
I took a sip of wine. For some reason I suddenly felt uncomfortable talking to her about Jarvis. I’d spent the whole day looking forward to offloading about him, but then when I got the chance to, I felt self-conscious about it, fearing judgment and damnation. So I underplayed all my feelings and made everything sound lukewarm. No wonder she wasn’t my personal cheerleader, telling me to go for it.
‘I wanted to tell you about Sandra,’ Hattie said. ‘She came down from Sydney and stayed with me for a few days last week. Anyway, she’s met this guy from Melbourne. They spent a day together in Sydney and time together in Melbourne, and then he was up in Sydney again, but all they had done was kiss and they never spent the night together. Anyway, when she was here last week it was like D-day, she was starting to wonder why he wasn’t busting to get her into bed, and he finally reveals that he’s impotent. And it all made sense.’
I wasn’t sure why she was telling me this right now, but I suspected it had something to do with Jarvis. ‘So what did she do?’
‘Well, she’s going to stick with him, see if they can work it out together. He’s forty, an architect, she’s extremely attracted to him. She’s going to see if they can work through it together.’
I finally got the point. ‘Jarvis isn’t impotent,’ I said. Although I couldn’t know for sure, his messages definitely suggested otherwise.
‘I only meant that often if someone is left on the shelf that long, maybe there’s something a bit . . . I don’t know, wrong with them perhaps? Like what’s Jarvis’s story? What’s his past like?’
‘I don’t know,’ I admitted. I had tried to ask a few questions here and there, but he didn’t seem to have any girls of note in his past. To be honest it had been a bit flattering to think that I may have been his first true love.
Hattie screwed up her eyes at me, like she was suspicious of the fact that I didn’t know about Jarvis’s past romances. ‘Has he ever lived with anyone?’
‘I don’t know . . . I mean, I don’t think so. He likes solitude. It’s good for his work. He lives this bohemian lifestyle.’
‘But how do you know that you’ll be a good match? Mad, passionate, intellectual love is one thing, but how do you know that you could make life work together?’
‘I don’t know exactly.’
‘Then why don’t you just stick with Luke, because you two work really well together? I’m just being devil’s advocate here, because . . .’ I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, all this from the girl who had recently renounced half the population, and I had supported her and encouraged her through everything, even when she broke off her engagement. It was all different for me because I had a child. Childless couples can break up and it’s a shame, but it’s not a tragedy.
Damn Luke. Everybody loved him with his kind and funny nature; I feared even my own family would snub me if they discovered what I was doing. I couldn’t even persuade my oldest friend Hattie to be compassionate about the way I was feeling.
I changed the topic because I didn’t feel like getting into a debate, and I decided that I wasn’t going to talk about it anymore with her. My therapist was the only one I could talk to, because she was paid to listen and to be even-handed and non-critical in her judgments.