Despite Hattie’s lack of enthusiasm for my mission to find a wife for my husband, after I dropped Max off at school I put aside my work for an hour and created a detailed list of possibilities for his father.
Single mothers were the obvious first choice. I listed all the single mums I knew, then crossed out the bitter and twisted ones, the ones who looked sickly from losing too much weight after developing some kind of post-break-up eating disorder, the ones who seemed plain crazy or drearily miserable, the fat ones, the ones who had become too tough for their own good and the ones who had shits for kids. There were only two or three women left on my list.
Then I listed all the single women I knew. There was Carla from high school. She was always taking holidays for three months of the year, eating her way around Europe or Asia, snapping photos of her meals and posting them on social media, as though anyone cared. For some reason, I couldn’t quite stomach the idea of her and Luke getting together. Then there were Bridget and Maria. But it worried me that they’d never had kids — they would probably want to have a child with Luke. There would be a huge age gap between Max and the baby, and they’d probably neglect Max while the baby was crying, and he’d never get his homework done. In short, a late-marrying stepmother and a baby would surely ruin Max’s life. So, I decided that no single, childless woman could be on the list. The new woman absolutely had to be a mother already and not likely to have any more children.
I needed to meet some new single mums.
So I came up with a great idea — a tutor. Max was struggling with his maths, so a hot single-mum tutor could serve two brilliant purposes: help Max out with his maths and introduce a new woman into Luke’s life. And I could keep a good eye on things from the kitchen bench.
I met with nine potential tutors. Many of them were ex-teachers and had that off-putting know-it-all attitude. I didn’t want anyone talking down to Max in that teacherly way, like he was some dipshit. I wanted someone nurturing, who would make him feel good about himself, possibly a blonde, because I thought Luke should have someone a bit different to myself. And I didn’t want her to be skinnier than me, or more attractive, because at the bottom of my heart I wanted Luke to always remember me more fondly. But she couldn’t be butt-ugly either, because then the whole plan would never take off.
All I was left with was Annie. Taller than I would have liked; big around the ass, but not too bad elsewhere; long, dirty-blonde hair, dark brown eyes and thin lips. In our interview, I checked out her credentials. She was a divorcée with two girls, ten and twelve. She had worked in some kind of lab as a scientist in her previous life, but was now doing odd jobs during school hours to pay the bills.
I told her she would have to come after 7.30pm, because I knew that was when Luke was at his most relaxed. She said that was impossible: she had two kids and had to supervise their homework at that time and get them ready for bed. I said I would pay her double. She said she would make some arrangements.
On the first night, Annie was right on time, which was a good sign. But I didn’t feel as though she had gone to enough effort with her appearance. Her makeup had worn thin by the end of the day, her rosy cheeks looked patchy, and she’d rubbed some mascara into a smudge under her right eye. It was disappointing.
‘We always have a shower and get changed and dressed for dinner,’ I said to her as I led her down the hallway.
‘Excuse me?’ she asked, dimly.
‘We like to look nice in the evenings around here. Freshen up, you know.’
She didn’t say anything.
I took her through to the kitchen. Our house was on the small side — there wasn’t space to swing a cat — but I did my best to keep it clean and tidy. We couldn’t afford anything bigger in Fitzroy; we would have had to move out further. And we only had Max, so we made do.
‘I’ve set you up at the table,’ I said, pointing to the kitchen table that I had converted into a workspace. ‘Max!’ I called out three or four times, until he came. I’d made him wear his pyjamas, because it was late for him, too. I usually liked him to be in bed reading by 8pm, so it was a rather inconvenient time for everyone all round, except for Luke, who, I knew, liked to make himself a 7.40pm coffee — like clockwork. Where most people couldn’t drink coffee past 3pm, Luke needed his 7.40pm coffee to help him sleep at night.
It worked perfectly. Max was getting into his multiplication exercises when Luke walked in, fresh from his shower. He was wearing the jeans and red-and-white check shirt that I had laid out on his bed for him. His feet were bare, his dark brown hair had dried nicely. He actually looked quite attractive.
‘Howdy,’ he said to Annie.
‘Hello,’ Annie said, poising her pencil to her lip.
‘I’m Luke,’ he said, and walked right over to her.
I held my breath, keenly watching how this scene would unfold.
‘Annie,’ she replied, looking up and shaking his hand in a truly feminine way, lacking any gusto.
‘Thanks for helping Max out,’ Luke said. ‘He’s a smart kid, intuitive, creative . . . just needs a bit of a hand with the numbers side of things. And, if we’re to be honest, his mum and I aren’t that great at explaining maths.’
‘Luke has his own business,’ I said, leaning against the sink. ‘Have you heard of Green Patch? It’s a rooftop garden for inner-city people to grow their own produce. Lots of Melbourne’s top restaurants have patches there — Vue de Monde, Nobu, Ezard — so people all over Melbourne are eating herbs and veggies from Luke’s garden.’
‘Really?’ she asked.
‘Truly, and it’s doing so well. All Luke’s idea. It hadn’t been done before. There’s a waiting list a mile long. You haven’t read about it in the papers?’
‘I hadn’t heard of it.’
‘You should drop by. They’ve recently opened a café up there in a converted shipping container. Coxy from Coxy’s Big Break is doing a segment on it soon.’
‘All right, all right, let them get on with it,’ Luke said.
Perhaps I’d been a bit over the top with my pitch to Annie. They turned back to the multiplication worksheet. I looked around our tiny kitchen, not quite sure what to do with myself. The pots and pans were washed and put away, the dishwasher was on, the bench-top was clean. There wasn’t anything for me to do in there, but I didn’t want to miss any of the action, so I pulled out my phone and scrolled through Twitter, hovering at the kitchen bench.
Luke started up his coffee machine. It was a noisy beast when he frothed the milk. He was watching Annie casually. She seemed patient and professional, and Max seemed to like her. All in all, I thought she could be a goer.
I allowed myself to think about the artistic life I would have with Jarvis: reading thick hardcover art books by the open fire, my head on his chest, his arm around me, or the two of us walking hand-in-hand through our overgrown English garden full of Jarvis’s sculptures. We’d walk down some moss-covered stone steps and pause beside a purple echium and a twisted Corten-steel sculpture and he’d kiss me delicately on the neck. Annie may just be the answer to everything.
I felt Luke’s hand on my back. ‘Luisa, let’s leave them to it,’ he whispered, steering me out of the kitchen.
The lounge room wasn’t far away, but when we reached it I turned to him, furious. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ I asked him.
‘Leaving them to it.’
‘I was trying to keep an eye on things,’ I said.
‘She looks more than capable.’
‘Don’t you want to get to know your son’s tutor?’
‘What the hell for? And don’t you think it’s a bit excessive getting him a tutor? He’s only eight. Wouldn’t that money be better spent when he’s in high school?’
‘We don’t want him falling behind,’ I said.
‘Jesus, you should take a chill pill sometimes.’ He switched on the TV, sat himself down on the couch with his coffee, and propped his bare feet on the coffee table. ‘And you should have asked me about it first, instead of going off and organising it.’
I sat on the single chair and watched him, wondering how we had drifted so far from each other. He was like a business partner living in my house. He liked us to make all of the decisions about Max together; it was parenting by committee. I couldn’t buy a new winter quilt for Max without getting Luke’s sign-off on the warmth rating and choice of material first. He liked input into the choice of washing detergent, the ply of the toilet paper, the home-cooked meals for the week. We talked about all of these things, but we no longer talked about ourselves: about our hopes, our dreams, our passions, our fears. We had nothing left between us as people. We were just decision-makers.
I wanted Jarvis to be my knight in shining armour, to arrive on a white horse and whisk me away and show me deep passionate love, like he promised to do in his messages to me. I was thirty-five, at my sexual peak. I felt as though I only had five, maybe ten, good years left in me. Luke was missing the ball game. Jarvis wanted some of the action. If no one else wanted to play, then why shouldn’t I be allowed to play with him?
Where was the future with Luke and me? Nothing excited me anymore. He would talk about updating the kitchen or buying a country house one day, but inside I would feel nothing but dread and emptiness. I needed out, and I thought it would actually be better for everyone once I’d made my escape. But it couldn’t seem as though it was my own doing.
Jarvis was so creative and inspiring, but he didn’t have a cent to his name. He lived in an apartment his uncle owned in an art deco building in South Yarra, making sculptures in a shed out the back. He worked at an abattoir three days a week to pay the discounted rent and to buy materials for his artworks. He had big dreams, but small successes. And that was why if we were ever going to be a couple I had to make my escape carefully to make sure I wasn’t left with nothing. I had a son, and I didn’t want him to live in poverty half the time.
So I sat there, staring at Luke, feeling sorry for myself and this situation I was in. I thought about Ben, who’d had an affair on Trish two years ago, and how much I’d despised him, how I’d thought Ben was such a low-life bastard. But now I felt like maybe I understood Ben’s perspective. I realised that people don’t make decisions to have an affair lightly; it happens with a lot of angst and soul-searching. Perhaps I should have applauded Ben’s bravery, his sense of adventure and inability to settle for an unsatisfying long-term relationship. So many people settle for misery; you hear of those couples that break up after thirty years of an unhappy marriage, after the kids move out of home. Those are the people who deserve our damnation, not the ones who are brave enough to make a great escape before their breasts go as flat as roadkill.
Everyone is so damn righteous about someone who has an affair. Nobody says, ‘Oh, Ben fell in love: how lovely!’ No. It’s always: ‘Oh my goodness, Ben had an affair! Poor Trish!’ But maybe the affair is real love. Maybe it’s the most romantic, true love, ever — the type that occurs in movies, in books, the type of love that crackles like fireworks in your stomach. And maybe it frees the other spouse to move on to something better, too. Does anyone ever think about that?
I couldn’t stand the idea of people hovering around the school gate, whispering with contempt: ‘Luisa had an affair.’ That would not do at all. There was no way I was ever going to let those four words travel towards Max’s ears. I never wanted him having to say, ‘My mum had an affair.’ He would never be able to properly understand how love had lifted me up on my toes, swayed me to music and tickled me behind the ear. If he first learnt of it as ‘an affair’ he would never want to listen to my side of things and learn the truth of how it really was. So I had to come up with a plan.
‘Annie’s pretty, don’t you think?’ I asked Luke.
‘Huh?’
‘She’s pretty and smart. Two kids, divorcée.’
‘So what?’
I crossed my arms across my chest. ‘Have you ever had a beard? I’m loving those Ned Kelly bushranger beards at the moment. You see all the guys with them.’
Luke snorted dismissively. ‘They’re too itchy!’
‘You’d look good with one.’
‘Shhh.’
He actually shushed me, as if there was some crucial moment in the show he was watching that he didn’t want to miss. Jarvis would never ‘shhh’ me, I thought to myself. He would listen to every word I said, as if stars were shooting from my lips. In one of his messages, he’d said how he longed for me to sit on his lap while we talked about our days — he would stroke my back and play with my hair in his fingers. He’d even emailed a small sketch of me sitting on his lap.
Jarvis wasn’t around, so I got up and went to sit on Luke’s lap to see what he would do. He pushed me in the back and said, ‘Get off, you’re too heavy.’
I went into the kitchen and poured myself a glass of water. Max’s eyes were watering and he was yawning uncontrollably, like some strange animal gasping for air. Annie was talking quietly to him, demonstrating different examples in his workbook with a blue ballpoint pen. He was resting his chin in his hand, trying his best to look interested. Instead, he should have been in bed reading a book, relaxing after a long day at school. For a moment I wondered whether I was turning into a lousy mother, but then I reminded myself that this was all in his best interests. One late night once in a while wasn’t going to damage him too much — but having a really wicked stepmother would.
‘How’s he going?’ I asked, after taking a sip of water.
‘He’s good. He’s a clever kid. But I think he’s getting a bit tired now,’ Annie said.
I looked at the wooden clock on the wall. Luke had made it himself in one of his more creative periods. It was five to eight.
‘Thanks for tonight,’ I said.
Max looked relieved that I was wrapping it up. The maths had been lulling him to sleep. Annie started packing away the worksheet books. Her hair was sitting prettily over one shoulder, and she had a gentle and innocent look about her.
‘I’m going to put Max down to sleep,’ I said. ‘Would you like a glass of wine? Luke can get you one. Luke!’ I yelled out, trying to rouse my husband from his catatonic state in front of the TV.
‘No, no, I really should be getting home,’ Annie said.
Luke appeared in the kitchen, eyes narrowed, bothered by being disturbed.
‘Are you sure? I was asking Annie if she wanted a glass of red. You could get her one,’ I said.
‘I really should be getting home. The neighbour is looking after my girls. I said I wouldn’t be late,’ she said.
‘Let her go home. She needs to get home,’ Luke said.
Well, it didn’t seem as though the party was going to get started that night. So I had to let her leave, but I excused myself and took Max to brush his teeth, making sure it was Luke who walked Annie to the door, so that the two of them could enjoy an intimate farewell moment together.