When She Rings

When she rings, he always goes into the other room to talk to her.

‘Work, Honey,’ he mouths at me with a wave of his hand and an apologetic grimace.

How stupid does he think I am? When it’s really work he doesn’t bother to leave, just shouts down the phone from wherever he’s sitting as if he hasn’t yet learnt the principles of telecommunication and thinks he’s a kid using a couple of tin cans joined by string.

I have to pretend not to notice, the way I pretend not to notice the secret zoom sessions when we’re away on holiday, and the expensive perfumes and lingerie he buys at the airport. He tries to be discreet, but his bubbling sense of self-satisfaction always gets in the way. I recognise that proprietorial smile, the way his whole body seems to inflate slightly. It’s the look he gets when he gazes at his car, when he sees another man staring at me in the street, or when he’s running his hand down the rumps of his horses. I’m sure he has a fantasy about sliding his hands down both our flanks simultaneously, too.

Least resistance is the path I’ve chosen, a choice made a long time ago. But it’s been five years now, and I’m beginning to get curious.

To tell the truth, I’ve always been curious. I want to know all about her, what her hold on him is. Why he wants her. Why I’m not enough for him.

Anastasia says I should just leave it. Best not to know anything, she says.

Anastasia’s man left her for another woman. ‘When I saw her, she looked just like me.’ Anastasia’s voice drops. ‘Just like me, only ten years younger.’

I wonder what she looks like – what my ‘other’ woman looks like.

It would have been easy to find out any time these five years. He’s always been complacent. And it’s not like I didn’t know about her from the very first. But it was part of the pact I made with myself. Don’t look, don’t ask. Like a child covering her eyes and trying not to peep at the evil thing under the bed – or in this case, in the bed.

But I’ve grown tired of the pact. I never thought it would last so long. When it began, I believed he’d soon weary of her and stay with me. But five years on and there’s no sign he wants anything to change.

So it’s up to me. I’m sick of looking in the mirror asking ‘who’s the fairest?’ and seeing only Snow White.

I found her photo tucked at the back of his wallet behind his credit cards. She’s all dark and cream and cheekbones in an Isabella Rossellini / Modigliani kind of way. She looks friendly. She doesn’t look like me.

It’s just a head shot, so I can’t tell how tall she is, but I bet she’s one of those long-legged, skinny-thighed women who look fantastic in jeans. Me, I’m small and curvy with good child-bearing hips – except I don’t have any kids. When I wear jeans I look like a blue bean bag squeezed in the middle.

The photo doesn’t tell me what I want to know, so I use his logon to go online and check out her Facebook page. I’m pleased she’s got fewer friends than me – but she still has the one friend I don’t want to share. She updates her status a lot, like she had plenty of time, like she’s a lady of leisure, a kept woman.

I find out from Facebook where she meets her BFFs for coffee every Tuesday. I phone in sick to work and half an hour before they’re due to arrive I’m chain drinking espressos in the corner and pretending to read a magazine. The coffee is strong and black and bitter, and lies like acid in my stomach.

I recognise her friends from their photos and strain to hear what they’re saying, hoping that they’re talking about her; but instead they’re bitching about someone called Claudia.

She’s half an hour late. He doesn’t like people who are late so I always make sure I’m on time for him. I start to get hopeful. Maybe she’s one of those people who are always late. Or perhaps he’s so entranced by her he doesn’t care what she does.

She comes in toting a toddler like it’s a designer handbag and orders a latte and a babyccinno. ‘Sorry,’ she says, indicating the kid. ‘Nanny’s off sick – again.’

‘Tell me about it,’ says one of the friends, rolling her eyes.

It’s a shock to see the child. For a while I’m so focussed on it I forget to listen and just stare, trying to decide if it’s a boy or a girl and whether it looks like him. I wonder if he was at the birth, and try to work out what we were doing eighteen months ago. I don’t remember any sudden absences.

I wonder who pays for the Nanny.

When they leave I follow her out into the street. She takes the child to the shopping centre crèche and then goes cruising the designer shops. I hover in a corner pretending to look at expensive scarves while she buys herself a chunky silver bracelet studded with lapis lazuli – her birthstone.

My birthstone’s opal. She wears silver. Gold suits me. We seem designed to be opposites. I’m fair, she’s dark. She’s tall, I’m short. Skinny/curvy. It’s like we’re balanced on a fulcrum – two equal and opposite reactions see-sawing around him. I wonder which one of us is going to jump off first and let the other fall to the ground with a bang.

I wonder too, if she, like me, feels joined by invisible string. Does she think about me? Does she sense the ghost of me in her life, the way I sense her?

She goes for lunch with a tall blond man. I sit at another table and order mineral water, hoping to sluice the morning’s coffee away. I can’t tell if it’s the caffeine causing my hand to tremble or something else.

She touches his arms and smiles. Who is this man? Is she sleeping with him too? Is she being safe?

I’m suddenly fearful, remembering what I learnt at high school about arithmetical progression of disease: If Alicia Vincent’s boyfriend goes out partying on the Gold Coast, then how long will it take before the cricket captain, the soccer coach and half the netball team end up with genital warts?’ Answer? Not very long.

How, after five years, would I introduce the topic of safe sex? What reason could I give for suddenly wanting to use condoms?

When she finishes lunch I follow her home and park for hours across the street like some private eye in a bad movie. I look for her silhouette in the windows as she moves about, lit from behind. I’m there when he arrives and watch him swing his big car into the drive, then get out and set the alarm in that familiar way – pointing the zapper backwards over his shoulder. He walks into the house without looking back and the lights on the car flicker twice, like some kind of warning.

None of this is getting me any closer to what I want to know, so I finally heed my stomach and my bladder and head home.

It’s our five year anniversary on Friday. Wood’s the traditional gift, symbolising solidity. Husbands used to give their wives furniture and little families of wooden dolls. But wood’s been replaced by flashy silverware in the modern convention.

If I prompt him, he’ll take me out for dinner. It’ll probably be the Italian place he likes so much. We’re long settled into our routine of favourite restaurants and take-aways – we’ve lost that quiver of shared discovery for new places, new pieces of each other.

I’ll wait till the end of the meal, till he’s replete, wiping his mouth on the white linen napkin. I’ll wait until he’s taken the latest piece of jewellery from his top pocket and watched me unwrap it and smile and thank him and hold it against the hollow of my neck.

When he’s smiling back at me, I’ll lean in close, and then I’ll say, ‘Honey, it’s been five years. When are you going to leave your wife and marry me?’