chapter thirty-six
It was raining so hard Clementine didn’t hear the front door open. She jumped when she saw Sam materialise in the doorway to Holly’s room, his blue and white pinstriped shirt so wet it was transparent.
‘You scared the life out of me!’ she said, her hand to her chest. ‘Why are you home so early?’ She knew it sounded like an accusation. She should have said, maybe, ‘This is a nice surprise!’ and then said, conversationally, gently, ‘Why so early, honey?’
She’d never called him ‘honey’ in her life.
Sam plucked at the saturated fabric of his shirt.
‘What are you doing?’ he said.
‘Looking for something,’ she said. ‘As usual.’ She was sitting on Holly’s bed with a pile of clothes in front of her, searching for Holly’s ‘strawberry top’, a white long-sleeved top with a giant strawberry on the front that Holly needed right now if she was to ever feel happiness again, and which, of course, was nowhere to be found.
She felt strangely self-conscious. Would she normally have jumped to her feet at the sight of Sam, and kissed him hello? She couldn’t remember. It was so strange that she would even consider this: the correct etiquette for greeting her husband.
She didn’t particularly want to hug him when he was once again soaked. Nobody in Sydney could be surprised by rain anymore. You were an idiot if you found yourself caught in the rain. It was all anyone could talk about. Umbrella sales had gone up by forty per cent. But ever since the rain had started, Sam left every day for the ferry without an umbrella or raincoat. She watched him each morning from the kitchen window, bolting along the footpath through the rain, his briefcase held over his head, and the sight of his bobbing body disappearing into the distance made her want to laugh and cry. Maybe it was a form of masochism. He thought he didn’t deserve an umbrella. He probably thought she didn’t deserve one either.
‘Why are you home so early?’ she said again.
‘Well, I got your message.’ Sam’s face was a mask of anxiety with a hint of aggressive defensiveness. ‘So I left work early.’
‘My message that said Holly was perfectly fine?’ said Clementine. ‘My message that said there was nothing to worry about?’
‘This is the second time she’s had this stomach thing,’ said Sam.
‘I assume you saw her in the living room,’ said Clementine. ‘Happily playing on the iPad without a care in the world.’
‘I think we need to get her checked out. It could be her appendix or something. It could come and go.’
‘Yeah, it comes when she’s at school and it goes when she’s playing on the iPad. She’s playing us,’ said Clementine. ‘As soon as I got her in the car she was fine. She talked the whole way home about her party. She wants to invite Dakota, by the way.’ She said the last part quickly, without looking at him.
‘Dakota,’ said Sam. He straightened as if sensing danger. ‘That Dakota?’
‘Yes, that Dakota.’
‘She can’t invite her,’ said Sam. ‘Obviously. Jesus.’
‘I told her that Dakota was probably too big for a sixth birthday party. And she had a meltdown. She said that we told her she could invite whoever she wanted, and we did say that. We made kind of a big deal of it.’
‘Yeah, well, we meant anyone except Dakota,’ said Sam.
‘She was inconsolable.’
‘She doesn’t even know Dakota,’ said Sam. He pulled his shirt out of the waistband of his trousers, went to wring it with his hands and then reconsidered. ‘She met her one time. Like you said, she’s too old. She wouldn’t want to come to Holly’s party!’
‘Well, anyway, I gave in,’ said Clementine. ‘She was becoming hysterical. It was kind of frightening.’
‘You just said yourself that she was putting it on about the stomach thing,’ said Sam. ‘So she’s putting it on about Dakota too. She played you, Clementine.’
He said this mockingly. Before, he’d always teased, but he’d never mocked.
‘I don’t think so,’ said Clementine. ‘Look. Holly wants to invite her, and it’s her party, and she’s obviously going through a bad stage at the moment, which is maybe not unexpected, so if she wants to have Dakota at her party, she’s having Dakota at her party. It’s not that big a deal!’
Sam clenched his jaw. ‘She’s not coming.’
Clementine threw her hands up. ‘She is coming.’
They stared at each other.
How did they get out of this? How did a couple resolve something like this, where there was no possibility of compromise, where one person had to give in? What happened if no one gave in?
‘I called Erika today,’ she said, to change the subject. ‘I told her that I’d donate my eggs.’
‘Right,’ said Sam.
He began to take his shirt off. Clementine found herself not quite but almost averting her eyes in the polite way you did when someone else’s husband took off their shirt.
‘She was funny about it,’ said Clementine. ‘I think she definitely overheard what I said that day, when we were upstairs. Those horrible things I said.’
‘I need to get changed,’ said Sam distractedly, as if she were boring him.
‘So you’re fine with me donating my eggs?’ asked Clementine, without making eye contact, as if it were an inconsequential question.
‘It’s your decision,’ said Sam. ‘She’s your friend. Nothing to do with me.’
His disinterest felt almost exquisitely painful, as if it was a pain she needed, a boil she needed lanced.
‘So you definitely don’t want another baby?’ she said. There it was again. Like at dinner the other night at the restaurant. That desire to push him, to shove him off this ledge where they were stranded.
‘Another baby?’ said Sam. He hung his wet shirt on the handle of Holly’s door. ‘Us? Have another baby? You’re not serious.’
‘Oh. Right,’ said Clementine. She piled clothes on top of each other. ‘You haven’t seen Holly’s strawberry top, have you? It’s vanished.’ She looked around her in frustration and tried not to cry. ‘Oh, I can’t stand it, why do things keep vanishing?’