chapter eighty-five
‘You don’t have to rush back to the office, do you?’ said Oliver as he tucked his ears into his swimming cap – snap, snap – and pulled his goggles down over his eyes so he looked to Erika like a goofy alien.
They had met for their lunch break at North Sydney pool, which was within walking distance of both their offices, for their first swim after their brief ‘winter hiatus’, as Oliver liked to call it. During the winter months they swapped their swim for a thirty-minute high-intensity cardio class at the gym.
‘As long as I’m back by one thirty.’ Erika pulled down her own goggles so that the world turned turquoise.
‘Good,’ said Oliver. He seemed serious.
As Erika swam her first lap, she wondered what was on his mind. Ever since his discovery of her ‘habit’ she felt like she’d been demoted to junior partner in their marriage. He’d made her promise to talk about her ‘kleptomania’ with her psychologist.
‘It’s not kleptomania!’ Erika cried. ‘It’s just …’
‘Stealing your friend’s stuff!’ finished Oliver brightly.
There was something different about Oliver lately: a kind of recklessness, except not really, because Oliver would never be reckless. Almost aggressiveness? But not quite. Feistiness. It was not unattractive, to be honest. They were having a lot of angry sex. It was great.
She hadn’t yet discussed her ‘kleptomania’ with her psychologist because she hadn’t seen her. Not Pat had cancelled a few sessions recently at the last minute. She probably had her own personal problems. Erika secretly hoped she might be forced to take a sabbatical.
As she turned her head for every second breath she looked up and saw the grey arched pylons of the Harbour Bridge soaring into the bright blue sky above them. It was an amazing place to swim. Wasn’t this enough for a life? Good work, good exercise, good sex. She tumble-turned and looked for Oliver. He was way ahead of her, powering through the water; lucky it wasn’t too busy because he was swimming too fast even for the fast lane.
It would be the baby. That’s what he would want to talk about. The baby was his project and his project management skills were excellent. Now that Clementine was no longer part of the picture he would want to ‘explore other options, other avenues’. He would want to talk through the pros and the cons. Erika’s whole body slowed in the water at the thought. Her legs felt like limp weights she was dragging along behind her.
The thought occurred to her: I’m done. I’m done with the baby project. But of course she couldn’t be done, not until Oliver was done.
This was simply the wall. Every time you ran a marathon you hit a wall. The wall was both a physical and a mental barrier but it could be overcome (carb loading, hydration, focus on your technique). She swam on. It didn’t feel like she could get past this, but that was the nature of the wall.
After their swim, they sat in the sun outside a café, looking straight out onto the harbour, eating tuna and kale salads for their lunch. Back in their suits. Sunglasses on. Hair just slightly damp at the ends.
‘I’m going to send you a link to an article,’ said Oliver. ‘I read it yesterday, and I’ve been thinking about it. Thinking about it a lot.’
‘Okay,’ said Erika. Some new reproductive technology. Great. It’s just the wall, she told herself. Breathe.
‘It’s about fostering,’ said Oliver. ‘Fostering older children.’
‘Fostering?’ Erika’s fork stopped halfway to her mouth.
‘It’s about how hard it is,’ said Oliver. ‘It’s about how people get this really romantic idea about fostering and it’s not like that at all. It’s about how most foster carers have no idea what they’re getting themselves into. It’s a brutally honest article.’
‘Oh,’ said Erika. She couldn’t see his eyes because of his sunglasses. She was aware of the feeling of a tiny spark of hope quelled. ‘So the reason you’re sending it to me is …?’
‘I think we should do it,’ said Oliver.
‘You think we should do it,’ repeated Erika.
‘I was thinking about Clementine and Sam,’ said Oliver. ‘And how Ruby’s accident affected them so badly. Do you want to know why it was such a big thing for those two?’ He didn’t wait for an answer. ‘Because nothing bad has ever happened to them before!’
‘Well,’ said Erika, considering. ‘I don’t know if that’s entirely –’
‘But you and me, we expect the worst!’ said Oliver. ‘We’ve got low expectations. We’re tough. We can handle stuff!’
‘Can we?’ said Erika. She didn’t know if she should remind him that she was in therapy.
‘Everybody wants the babies,’ said Oliver, ignoring her. ‘The cute little babies. But what they really need is foster parents for the older kids. The angry ones. The broken ones.’ He stopped and suddenly he seemed to lose confidence. He picked up his superfood smoothie. ‘I just thought … well, I thought maybe we could consider it because maybe we’d have an understanding, or at least an inkling, of what those kids are going through.’ He sucked on his straw. She could see the harbour reflected in his sunglasses.
Erika ate her salad and thought of Clementine’s parents. She saw Pam making up the stretcher bed for her to stay the night, yet again, flicking her wrists so that the crisp, white sheets floated in the air: the beautiful, clean fragrance of bleach was still Erika’s favourite smell in the world. She saw Clementine’s dad, sitting in the passenger seat of his car while Erika sat in the driver’s seat for the first time. He showed her how to put her hands at ‘a quarter to three’ on the steering wheel. ‘Everyone else says ten to two,’ he said. ‘But everyone else is wrong.’ She still drove with her hands at a quarter to three.
What was that phrase people used? Pay it forward.
‘So let’s say we do it,’ said Erika. ‘We take on one of these broken kids.’
Oliver looked up. ‘Let’s say we do.’
‘According to this article, it’s going to be terrible.’
‘That’s what it says,’ agreed Oliver. ‘Traumatic. Stressful. Awful. We might fall in love with a kid who ends up going back to a biological parent. We might have a kid with terrible behavioural issues. We might find our relationship is tested in ways we could never imagine.’
Erika wiped her mouth with her napkin and stretched her arms high above her head. The sun warmed the top of her scalp, giving her a sensation of molten warmth.
‘Or it might be great,’ she said.
‘Yeah,’ said Oliver. He smiled. ‘I think it might be great.’