Suzi must have called Luke straight away, because he came home within the hour. It was just after midday. He must have wanted to have the confrontation before Max came home from school. His eyes were red and puffy and his hair looked dishevelled. He burst through the door to the study and knelt at my feet.
‘I’m so sorry,’ he said, placing his head in my lap and sobbing, his shoulders convulsing. ‘I’m so sorry.’
I sat there, mostly numb. This was the scene I’d known was coming all along, but now I was in it, and it didn’t feel real.
‘Say something. I’m so sorry.’
I sat on my ergonomic swivel chair, my arms limply at my side. Suzi’s manuscript was neatly packed in an envelope on my desk, ready for a courier to arrive. Luke’s head in my lap felt heavy and awkward, overly dramatic. I didn’t feel like supporting that head of his on my knees. I didn’t feel like saying anything either, nor did I feel like pushing him away. So I put up with it. He stayed like that for five, maybe ten minutes — until, perhaps, his neck ached — then he pulled himself up and looked at me, eyes red raw, face drained of colour.
‘What are you going to do?’ he asked.
‘What do you want to do?’ I replied.
‘I don’t know. Are we stuffed?’
‘Probably,’ I said.
‘What about Max?’ The mere mention of his name made me feel cold all over, because he was the only thing I truly cared about. Finally, I cried deep, soulful tears from my eyes. It was only Max who mattered. His father and I had made a mess of everything and sacrificed his calm, happy upbringing. I cried so much that I couldn’t talk. Luke had to carry me to bed. He lay me down, rubbed my back and stroked my head.
He stayed with me like that until the doorbell rang. It was the courier who had come to collect Suzi’s manuscript. I heard Luke ask him to wait. I heard his steps down the hallway. He collected his mistress’s manuscript and returned to the front door and gave it to the courier. ‘Have you got all the delivery details?’ I heard him double-check.
Luke returned to our bedroom doorway. ‘I’m going to pick Max up now,’ he said.
I pulled myself up onto my elbows. He was holding a pair of sunglasses, to hide our family secrets at the school gate. ‘Take him for a milkshake and a kick at the park. Give me a couple of hours. I don’t want to rush this. Let me think,’ I told him. Luke came and sat beside me, hope in his eyes.
‘I’m so sorry,’ he said again. ‘I can’t tell you how sorry I am. I never wanted to ruin what we have here . . . I just . . .’
I felt his pain so deeply, like we shared the same wound. I squeezed his hand and lay back on my pillow, suffocated by misery.
I took my time after he left. Eventually I got out of bed and had a shower. I held a warm face-washer to my eyes under the showerhead and sobbed into the downpour of water. I threw on black jeans and a black top and realised afterwards that I had dressed in mourning, like a widow. I dried my hair with the hairdryer, took a couple of Nurofen, drank a glass of wine and started to prepare dinner.
When Luke and Max both came through the door a couple of hours later, it appeared as though it was any normal night in our household. I’d made chicken schnitzel with creamy potatoes, and Max was hungry, devouring everything on his plate. He even ate his vegetables without us having to bribe him with promises of ice-cream afterwards. The exercise after school had done him good. Luke was wary, like he didn’t know the lines that were going to be spoken in this play of ours that night, but he went along with it and followed my lead.
After Max’s shower, we both lay down in his bed, one on either side of him, to listen to him reading his book. We both wanted to be there, for that last night being a normal family together. He read us Diary of a Wimpy Kid so beautifully, his voice full of expression. Our three heads were on his pillow, all of us squished together in his single bed. Occasionally Luke and I would steal a glance at each other over the mound of his body. I could see it in Luke’s eyes — he felt the same as me. Although everything else had become a disaster, we had created the most precious thing together: Max. Whatever else was to come, we would protect him, because he was more important than anything.
As the words rolled out of Max’s mouth, Luke reached over his belly, grabbed my hand and held it. I held onto that hand of his for the last time: that hand that had put a ring on my finger in front of all our family and friends, promising to love me forever; that hand that had held my sweat-drenched one when I pushed Max out into the world; that hand that had built the deck on this home we loved, where we had sat and created so many beautiful memories; that hand that had once stroked my face and made my body sing. It was the same hand that did all those things, but on that night it was a hand begging for forgiveness.
Max finished his chapter and Luke asked him to read another one. Both of us were stalling. Neither of us wanted to face the conversation that was waiting for us beyond his door, the one that would decide his future forever. Max started to read another chapter but he was getting tired by then. He read more slowly, stumbling over his words: ‘that’ became ‘then’ and ‘beak’ became ‘break’. But we let him go on, soothed by the sound of his voice. He didn’t make it to the end of that second chapter. He told us he was tired, and reluctantly we pulled ourselves up out of his bed, gave him kisses and made sure he had a final sip of water from the cup on his bedside table. We lingered in his doorway, our arms pressed up against each other, and we watched quietly, solemnly, as he rolled over in bed and pulled the doona up to his chin and closed his eyes.
Luke skipped his 7.40pm coffee and his chocolate and came and sat with me in the living room. The television was off. One lamp cast an unnerving shadow over the rug.
‘So, have you thought about what you want to do?’ he asked me uncertainly.
‘Maybe we just need some time apart. Perhaps you can go and stay somewhere for a bit, see how we feel? I’m not saying it’s over, I’m just saying that we both need some time to think.’
‘I’m so ashamed,’ he said, starting to cry again, putting his head in his hands. ‘What are you going to tell Max?’
‘What do you want me to tell him?’
‘I don’t know . . .’
‘We should tell him . . . we’ve always shared everything together, you and I. Whatever we say, we should do it together. We don’t have to tell him everything — just the things that he really needs to know.’
‘I don’t know how this happened. I got carried away. This is killing me.’
I looked at the broken man beside me and I felt no anger towards him, only hurt and confusion. This was all my creation, my game, my diversion tactic. This is what I had done to him. I felt pity for him, and I knew then that I would try to make this as easy as possible on him.
‘Maybe you can stay with your brother for a bit? We’ll just tell Max that we’re going to trial some time apart.’
‘Like a separation?’
‘I guess.’
‘Aren’t you going to ask me some questions?’ I could tell he was desperate to confess, to get everything off his chest.
‘I don’t want to know,’ I said. Truly, I didn’t want to know, I had enough to badger me in my imagination. I didn’t need any visuals he could supply as well.
‘Are you in shock? Are you okay? You seem so calm,’ he said. How could I tell him that I had known this day was coming? That it had been my design all along?
‘We’ve been distant for so long. This is simply the final nail in the coffin for us. I just have to accept it,’ I said. Perhaps he wanted a great big fight, vases thrown across the room, tears, anger. But before the last few weeks we’d been in a sober relationship. Why construct some passion now? ‘I’m going to bed, I’m wrecked,’ I said. My head was throbbing, I felt ill inside, I was dreading the conversation with Max the next day, and the conversations I would have to have with friends and family. My day of reckoning was about to happen; it was time to admit to everyone that my relationship was a failure. The image of a perfect family that people had seen would be revealed as smoke and mirrors. It was time to be dragged through the streets, tarred and feathered.