The Soulmate, page 5
Of course I remembered. The man had stopped the rain for me! I’d been thinking about him for three weeks.
Wondering if he’d been horribly drunk and forgotten about our meeting.
If he’d met someone else on the way to the wedding reception and fallen in love.
The entire thing – coming to talk to a crying dog walker during a wedding ceremony and asking her on a date – had been a dare that he never intended to follow through on. (Stopping the rain, I had to concede, was a lucky coincidence.)
Eventually, I’d had to put the whole encounter in the same category as my relationship with Mark: things that I had unwittingly screwed up for reasons that weren’t clear to me.
‘I’m so sorry I haven’t called earlier. But I can explain!’
His excuse, of course, was magnificent. He’d been helping an elderly wedding guest across the road to the reception venue when a car had come around the corner at high speed. Gabe had managed to get the elderly guest to safety but he’d been clipped by the car, breaking his leg in two places. His injuries had required a week’s stay in the hospital (something that was verified later by the groom as well as by the gruesome scar on Gabe’s leg), and the subsequent two weeks had been spent on opiates, falling in and out of sleep and wondering if our initial meeting was something he’d dreamed up – much like I had.
I wanted to say no to the date. I told myself I had some dignity. But it turned out I didn’t have much at all.
On this occasion, having the advantage of prep time, I looked nice. I wore a short white sundress with sandals, my hair was washed and in a bouncy ponytail. I wondered if he’d comment on my appearance, but he didn’t. Knowing Gabe as I do now, it doesn’t surprise me. As good-looking as he is, looks are entirely irrelevant to him. He’s attracted to something deeper, harder to pin down.
We met at the Botanic Gardens – his idea, and a sweet one. This time, though it was cloudy, there was no rain. Gabe arrived on crutches, carrying a thermal picnic bag over one shoulder and a blanket around his neck. When I got close enough to him, I laughed and rolled my eyes, taking the blanket from him. Perhaps it was the crutches that made me feel strangely comfortable. As if they brought him down to a more human level, less the unattainable dream-like man I’d imagined the past few weeks. As I spread the blanket out for us, he said, ‘It feels like we’ve done this before, doesn’t it? In another life?’
Yes, I thought. Yes, it does.
‘So, you’re a lawyer?’ he said; I’d told him as much in our phone conversation. ‘What kind of law?’
It was a question I answered often. I was aware wills and estates was not the sexiest area of legal practice. It had never bothered me. But now, faced with a gorgeous man, I found myself wishing I’d chosen litigation, or mergers and acquisitions, or even family law.
‘Wills and estates,’ I confessed, then added in mitigation, ‘It’s most recession-proof.’
What happened next was the second miracle of our relationship (the rain-stopping being the first). Gabe rested his cheek in his hand, looked into my eyes and said, ‘Tell me about it.’
No one had ever said that before. No one has ever said it since. The craziest part was that it looked very much like he meant it.
So I told him. I was halfway through explaining escrow, when he took my chin between his thumb and forefinger, looked directly into my eyes and kissed me. Softly. Just once. Then he smiled and said, ‘Sorry. Carry on. Escrow.’
We talked about everything that day. Important things – like the fact that his father had died before he was born and that he still bore a grudge towards his father’s family, who never helped his mother out or made any attempt to meet him. We also talked about unimportant things – like what we watched on TV, why IKEA hot dogs were so good and whether we were going to get that Indian summer everyone was talking about.
We stayed in the gardens until the sky turned dark and the bats began to fly overhead. The air was warm and sweet, and our conversation was punctuated by short silences and shy smiles and comments of wonder (from Gabe) like, ‘It feels as if we’ve always known each other.’
It was an evening of that feeling you wanted to bottle, the feeling that no drug or orgasm could replicate – the skyrocketing high of limerence. I was delighted by everything: the way he paused to think before answering any question, as if whether or not he liked pickles was worthy of deep contemplation; the way he laughed loudly at my offhand jokes; the way his chest looked in his button-down shirt. And he delighted equally in me. It was delightful to be delighted in.
By the time we made it back to his apartment, which was just a short walk away, it was not a question of whether the night was ending but, rather, where we were going next. The idea of parting was simply unthinkable.
When I gathered my things to return home forty-eight hours later, he seemed adorably confused.
‘Where are you going?’ he asked.
‘Home.’ I laughed. ‘I’ve been here two nights. How long did you think I would stay?’
He looked at me as if it was the strangest thing I’d ever said.
‘Pippa,’ he said, ‘I thought you’d stay forever.’
We went from nought to one hundred in a second, which, I learned later, was the only way Gabe did things. He met my family after a week, we started looking for a house together after two. Three weeks after that first date, in a bubble bath, he asked me to marry him. There was no ring, no champagne. The idea just occurred to him, he said. I told him he was mad, and you couldn’t possibly get married after knowing someone for three weeks. He agreed, it was ridiculous. Then I said, ‘Of course I’ll marry you,’ and we had sex on the bathroom floor.
*
Falling in love with Gabe lasted an eternity. It felt like I’d never stop falling. There were a million little reasons to love him. He was the person who always rushed to help when someone dropped their bags in the street. He was the guy at the party who offered to hold the random baby. He was the first to put his hand up for anything – even before he understood what it was or what it would involve. He listened to people, really listened, and then thought about what they’d said later. He went out of his way to include people who were left out of conversations.
I realised, even then, that there was another side of Gabe. He got distracted easily. He could do big talk, but not small talk. He didn’t sleep . . . or only slept. He was all or nothing.
I often wonder if choosing Gabe was a direct result of my upbringing. Some people choose the safe guy, the stable guy, if they’ve had an upbringing filled with uncertainty. My family was so stable, maybe it made me yearn for instability? And Gabriel Gerard was a perfect fit.
My parents were surprised – possibly even concerned – when, six weeks after our first meeting, I told them Gabe and I were engaged. But my mother believed in letting people make their own choices, and my father believed in doing what Mum told him. Besides, I knew that once Mum and Dad got to know Gabe, they would fall in love with him too. How could they not?
We got married in the Botanic Gardens, in the same spot we’d first seen each other. It was a brilliant, blue-skied, happy day. It was a day of joy and contentment. With Gabe by my side, the future was bright.
11
PIPPA
NOW
‘Do the silly voices, Daddy,’ the girls cry. ‘And put on the head!’
I stand in the doorway of their bedroom, watching. Gabe is lying in the middle of Asha’s single bed, with a little girl on either side of him. In his hands is a copy of The Tiger Who Came to Tea.
He looks weary. It’s well after the girls’ bedtime and they are showing no signs of calming down. Even Freya, our good sleeper, is wide-eyed and wriggly. (Asha, our night owl, is practically psychotic with hysteria.) It is, of course, a problem of Gabe’s own making. Just a month ago, while reading The Tiger Who Came to Tea, Gabe had donned the fluffy tiger’s head and peeped around the corner saying he was ‘very hungry’.
When I’m doing story time, the only thing I don is a no-nonsense expression.
Asha thrusts the head into his hands. ‘Put it on! Put it on!’
Gabe looks like he’s going to protest, but that’s all part of the act. Gabe is a father first, everything else second. It’s been an interesting transition this year, handing the primary carer baton to Gabe. It took time, but these days it’s him they go to with the important questions like: ‘Where are the crackers?’ ‘How does that song go – the one about the bird that we sang in the car that day?’ and ‘Where is my purple squishy thing that I won in the lucky dip at Seraphine’s party?’ Now, he is the expert on hair, playing dolls, baking cakes, doing craft. He revels in it. Being a dad is the blood in his veins. If there was a Dad Olympics, Gabe would win gold.
‘Put on the head?’ he says. ‘I don’t put on heads.’ He disappears under the blankets and comes out wearing the head, roaring wildly. ‘This is just what I look like!’
The girls roll about in giggles. Asha wipes away tears.
They look adorable, all clean and fresh in their matching rainbow pyjamas.
‘Are they twins?’ people always ask when we’re out in public, usually after hearing both girls call me Mummy. It is, they must think, the obvious explanation, even if it doesn’t quite fit. Usually by that point I’ve felt the person watching us for a while, trying to make sense of the situation.
‘Irish twins,’ I always say. ‘Born less than a year apart.’
This is typically followed by the unasked-for information that the other person had barely had sex with their partner twelve months after having their first child, let alone birthed another one, and I do my best to deflect their awe with remarks about how ‘it’s had its difficult moments’. (An understatement, I’ll admit.)
I close the bedroom door, leaving Gabe to story time. There’s a half-bottle of red wine on the kitchen counter. I open the bottle and pour myself a glass. It’s the same wine we were drinking when we saw the woman out on the cliff, I realise. Gabe had been so alive that night, dancing around the kitchen, singing to French music. How quickly things can change.
My laptop is on the kitchen counter. I open it and do another search. ‘Woman dies at The Drop.’
It’s the third time I’ve done this today, trying different word combinations, and there’s still nothing. No name. No information about her at all. I’ve no idea if there will ever be information. I have a vague feeling that suicides aren’t reported on. Something to do with not wanting to encourage it. It’s a horrifying thought – that someone might read an article in the paper and think, Ah. Good idea. I’ll go jump off a cliff. It’s also horrifying because it means I may never know anything about this woman.
It shouldn’t matter who she is, of course. Any death is a tragedy. Still, I’ve always found details to be orientating in these sorts of situations. For example, if the woman had a history of depression, that would be information worth knowing. I’d also be curious to know if she’d made earlier attempts at suicide. That’s what I’m looking for, I realise: something to suggest that her death was inevitable. Why am I looking for that? What is wrong with me?
I suppose the woman’s family have been informed by now. They’re probably trying to process the fact that their mother/wife/daughter/sister is gone forever. Will it be a total surprise? Or have they been subconsciously preparing for the news all their life? It’s hard not to imagine what they must be feeling right now, hard not to feel their pain. It makes me think of a conversation I had with Gabe once, when he was at his lowest. It was a weekday and I’d had a call from child care to pick up Freya because she wasn’t feeling well. I’d left the office, collected her, and arrived home to find Gabe lying on the couch, still in his pyjamas.
‘Gabe?’ I said. ‘Why aren’t you at work?’
He gave me the strangest look. He sat up, took my hands in his and gazed at me with a desperation I will never forget.
‘You know how you feel for someone you know who is hurt or sick or sad? Imagine feeling that for everyone. Not just everyone you know, but everyone. Every person in the world. All the time.’
I wonder if this is what that woman felt.
I close my laptop.
‘I’m not sure if we’ve heard the last from them,’ Gabe says a few minutes later, when he appears in the kitchen. ‘But I told them if there was any trouble, I’d send the big guns in to deal with them.’
I raise an eyebrow. ‘The big guns?’
He shrugs. ‘You can be scary.’
I get out another wineglass and fill it, hand it to him. Then I look out the window. The Drop is still cordoned off, the police tape flapping in the wind. ‘Did we make the right decision moving here?’
I expect him to say yes. I expect him to say, Of course we did, and then launch into all the reasons why. He is, after all, the one who was so eager to buy this house. But he doesn’t. I look at him. It might be the wine, or the fact that we’re alone together, but all at once the thoughts that I’ve been working so hard to push from my mind start to crowd in.
The fact that he told the police the woman was much closer to the edge than she was. The fact that the placement of his hands doesn’t quite make sense. The fact that I felt the need to lie about what I saw through the window.
All of it settles on my chest, like a cast-iron weight.
‘Gabe,’ I start, but he puts a finger to my lips. Then he takes the glass from my hand, puts it on the counter and hovers inches away from me.
I stare into his intense, handsome face. He’s wearing jeans and a white long-sleeved T-shirt that sets off his tan. He smells of the ocean. Usually, he tastes of it too.
‘Can we . . . not talk?’ he says.
With a few lines and grey hairs, he’s even more attractive now than when we met. My attraction to him is the one thing that has persistently refused to die, no matter how bad things got. I understand this isn’t always the case. Most women I know are always joking about it, or complaining, trying to avoid their husbands’ propositions. But for me, when things were bad between us, sex was what I missed the most. With Gabe, sex is always surprising, and always good. We’ve been married seven years now, and it’s only getting better.
He grips the counter on either side of me and slides a knee between my legs.
The thing about marriage a lot of people don’t understand is that you don’t get everything. Some people get passion, others get security. Some get companionship. Children. Money. Wisdom. Status. Then there is trust and fidelity. They’re the two you hear most about. In general, couples will cite trust or fidelity as their non-negotiable. In a lot of cases, a partner will offer one in exchange for the other. But Gabe and I have always agreed on our non-negotiable. Loyalty. Gabe has certainly made me work for that one.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Let’s not talk.’
I let him touch me until I lose myself in it. You’re not involved in this, I think as he lifts me onto the kitchen counter. You’re not. I say it over and over inside my mind, hoping that if I say it enough, it will become true.
12
PIPPA
THEN
In the first year of our marriage, Gabe had five jobs.
The first one, as a landscape gardener, he enjoyed immensely. There was something about being outside in the fresh air, watching a garden design come to life, that really excited him. In typical Gabe style, he threw himself into it with everything he had, believing everything he touched would turn to gold. I believed him too. He spent evenings researching irrigation systems and sustainable gardening. He had a good eye for the design side too, balancing the beautiful with the practical and low maintenance. Before long he was redesigning our garden, even though it was a rental, and spending each weekend at the local nursery, or outside planting and watering.
The first change came when he heard about an entry-level job that was going at a local newspaper. I was surprised, given his enthusiasm for landscape gardening, but writing seemed like a good fit for him; he thrived under pressure, and his ability to produce fast concise prose was exceptional. At first, he excelled at it, as he did with most things. He had a couple of stories published and the senior editor praised his budding talent. But only a couple of weeks in, he got into an argument with the same editor and quit on the spot.
‘It’s all political,’ Gabe told me afterwards. ‘Everything’s political.’
The timing of this coincided with a friend opening a franchise handyman business. Gabe gave this a try, but two months later he left, with grand plans to write a novel.
Within three weeks, he’d written three very good chapters.
In week four, he decided he’d been wrong to quit landscape gardening, and he returned to that. It was then, while working in the opulent gardens of a wealthy business tycoon, that he was offered an internship in a media organisation, NewZ. It sounded strange to people, a landscape gardener with no qualifications being offered a job after chatting to the executive, but it wasn’t strange to me. For Gabe, this was the way the world worked. It was exhilarating. He shone and the world welcomed him.
Media, as it turned out, was the job that stuck. It was all Gabe could talk about; all he could think about.
I’d never seen Gabe so dedicated. He took seminars, he read books, he met people for coffee to ‘pick their brains’. He finished his internship at NewZ and then was offered a permanent role in the investor relations team. As far as I could tell, his department’s job was to convince investors to give them money to acquire other companies. It required lots of schmoozing and gladhanding. Since he was the most convincing person I’d ever met, I had no doubt Gabe would be great at it.
I was right. Within a year, he’d traded his check shirts and messenger bags for dark suits and shiny shoes and expensive haircuts that we couldn’t quite afford.
‘Dress for the job you want,’ he used to say, along with other business-type affirmations. There was something sexy about his commitment. It made me revise the image of him in my mind. He’d always been so dishevelled, so devil-may-care. This new, sharp, dedicated side of him was appealing.
