The Marriage Gap Year, page 26
Today was about making the living room look…livable. It was an ass-backward way to build a house, but he didn’t care. He needed to see at least one room in that house fulfill the vision in his head.
He could’ve had the stuff shipped to the site, but he was already in Melbourne and he felt like driving. He headed to the timber and hardware in Clifton Hill. Chris and the boys looked after him there. Plus, he wanted to give Angelo a ribbing about his football team losing the semi-final.
Rob walked through the sliding doors and browsed the aisles. None of the staff looked familiar. The grumpy girl behind the timber counter said Chris didn’t work there anymore, didn’t know why he left. Angelo was on vacation. She wordlessly scanned his stuff while he peered into the warehouse behind her, searching for a familiar face.
Out in the carpark, Rob caught a whiff of cigarette smoke and tracked the odor to a shaggy guy in paint-splattered coveralls loading tubs of primer into a beat-up hatchback.
“Mind if I bum a smoke, mate?” said Rob, a little loudly.
The paint-splattered guy turned, squinting past the cigarette stub in his mouth. He looked Rob up and down, his gray whiskers stained yellow with nicotine. “Sure.” He reached into the breast pocket of his flannel shirt and handed over the pack, crinkled and almost empty, with only a few smokes and a plastic lighter jammed inside.
Rob felt at once exhilarated and nervous about crossing this threshold. What if he couldn’t turn back? He needed this, though, some action bold enough to match the storm brewing inside him. He pulled out a ciggie, automatically turned to shield it from the breeze and flicked the lighter. If these instinctive movements made Rob feel young again, the burn of smoke in his lungs did not. He suppressed the urge to cough and closed his watering eyes.
“Thanks, mate.” Rob handed the packet back.
“No worries,” said the painter, returning the mangled pack to his shirt pocket. He’d sucked his own cigarette down to the filter. “We’re a dying breed,” he smirked, and then continued loading paint cans into the back of his car.
Rob dumped the new drill bits and tubes of Liquid Nails adhesive onto the passenger seat of his own truck. He sat there in the quiet of his truck, the blue smoke curling in the airless vacuum of the cabin. His hand on the steering wheel, a cigarette nestled between his fingers – this all felt good. Familiar. Safe. The pang of nicotine remembered places his body forgot.
He knew this was temporary, that he was role-playing his younger self. Truthfully, he didn’t much like the taste of cigarette smoke anymore, or the burn of it in his chest. He appreciated the ritual, though, and found himself relaxing into a remembered state of calm. Even his back seemed to hurt less.
He took a few more puffs, opened the window and tossed out the butt, drawing a sour look from a middle-aged woman in lycra pants and a puffy jacket. He smiled to himself. Even if someone built a time machine, you couldn’t really go back to the past because you’d be different.
He started the car, turned on the radio, settled for Bryan Adams mid-chorus and drove to pick up that suspended wood-burning fireplace. It would look great in the living room of the stone house. Sareena’s taste was rubbing off on him.
The Schots Home Emporium was in his neighborhood. His house, their house was just up the road. Probably not a bad idea to drive past, make sure the tenants hadn’t damaged anything.
Rob drove around the back streets, noticing the little differences in the neighborhood since he’d last been there months ago. There was a new cafe on the corner where the 7-11 had been, the bowls club had fresh, white shade sails, and that McMansion with the too-tall pillars and the unusable Juliette balcony was complete.
There’d been so much fury in the neighborhood about that building. Rob agreed it was ugly, the scale was absurd, the proportions were all wrong, the symmetry poor, materials mismatched. It was a dog’s breakfast, half White House, half conference center. A total mess. Still, the neighbors were snobs for lobbying council against its construction. Inappropriate development, they said. People deserved the right to build whatever house they wanted.
Rob still believed that, but, as he drove past that house, he conceded it was inconsiderate of those people to ignore the wider feelings of the neighborhood in which they’d chosen to live. While the owner should be allowed to build this house, it was an unneighbourly thing to do. Hard to make a law against that.
His chest fluttered with nerves as he glimpsed his own house through the branches of the trees. He parked across the street. How many times had he trudged up and down those front steps without really noticing his home? The front porch looked saggy and the cobwebbed weatherboards needed repair. He had a mind to ring the real-estate agent and blast him for not looking after the place, but the wood must have been like that for years. How had he let it go like that, and why hadn’t he noticed it before?
A light in their living room flickered with a passing shadow. It felt strange to know that someone else was in there, that he couldn’t just open the front door and walk inside. While this might still be his house, it was not his home. Rob shifted in his seat, trying to ease the ache returning to his lower back. What if one of the neighbors saw him there, idling his car and staring at his own house? They’d have questions he didn’t feel like answering. He didn’t relish the hour’s drive back to the display home either, only to sit there, staring at the plush carpet and cold walls. He wanted to go out, be someplace different. He’d call his mate Vance, but he had a young kid again and never went anywhere anymore. Rob didn’t get on much with any of Syed’s other regular guys. Besides, they were all younger and he was their boss. He couldn’t let his guard down with them.
He drove on, leaving his street behind.
On his way out of town he picked up a chicken schnitzel roll and pulled into a drive-through liquor store.
“What can I get you?” The attendant leaned into the open car window, a scrappy-looking guy with earrings in his lip, nose and eyebrows.
“You got any Montgomery’s Pale Ale back there?” Rob tried to look past the kid’s nose ring, at the beer fridges inside.
“Nah. Just the usual. Got your Carlton, your VB…Great Northern.”
A jacked-up truck pulled up behind Rob, close enough to feel the doof-doof music rumble through his own vehicle. Rob lowered his rear-view mirror to dim the aggressive headlights of the growling truck behind him. “I’ll take a Carlton.”
“Case?”
Rob scratched his eyebrow with his thumb. “Yeah, give us a case, mate.”
“Anything else?”
Rob hesitated. “Better give me a bottle of Johnny Walker too.”
“What color?”
“Black’s fine.” Rob passed three fifty-dollar bills through the open car window.
The pierced shop clerk snatched the money and turned to retrieve the booze.
Rob squinted into the rear-view mirror. The diesel behind him revved its engine. That truck was almost bumper to bumper. A few years ago, Rob would’ve got out, told that guy to back up or turn his headlights off, but you didn’t know who you might be dealing with these days. Some guys even carried weapons.
“Have a good night.”
Rob jumped in his seat, startled by the shop attendant handing the booze through the open car window.
“You too,” he said, relieved to be heading back to the safety of the open road.
He liked driving at night, the featureless sky, the ordered rows of headlights and taillights. The world seemed more manageable in the dark, less cluttered.
As he drove, Rob became aware of the side roads that fanned out beyond his windshield. Not just the streets he usually took to get where he was going, but all the streets and how they branched out across the city and out of it, feeding highways, roads and dirt tracks that crisscrossed the country, places he’d never see. What would happen if he just veered off and kept driving until he felt like stopping? How long would that take? Where would he end up? And who’d even notice he was gone?
Rob veered onto the South Gippsland Highway toward San Remo. He was glad to be rid of traffic lights for a while and relaxed into his seat, lulled by the smooth highway surface gliding under his tires. He ate his fried chicken sandwich, occasionally brushing away the shredded carrot and breadcrumbs that tumbled onto his knees from the sweating paper bag.
The dry sandwich clogged in his throat. Rob panicked, struggling to breathe past an unswallowed lump of bread. He reached over the passenger seat, cracked open a can of Carlton and chugged it, dislodging the sticky glob of food that dropped to his guts like a stone. Eyes watering, he tossed the empty can of beer onto the floor of the passenger seat where it rattled and rolled. He wanted another, but the risk of getting pulled over by the cops was too high. That bottle of Johnny Black was calling him too. It’d burn off the greasiness of the chicken sandwich, maybe even blast away the furriness of the cigarette smoke that lingered on his tongue.
The turn-off to the stone house felt sinister at night. He’d only left the gravel road when it was this gloomy, not entered it. The track felt familiar but empty, the windswept trees bowing over the narrow path like outstretched arms shooing him away. He would not heed their warning. No cops out here. Safe to crack a can now.
He almost expected to crest the hill and see the house finished, nestled at the bottom of the valley, aglow with lights, a warm mosaic of lit windows. But the top of the hill descended into ominous darkness. Only a shaft of cold moonlight rippled on the black waters of Bass Strait.
The truck lurched over the potholed dirt, spilling Rob’s beer. “Fuck.” He wiped his pant leg with his hand and kept driving until his high beams found the corrugated steel sides of the shipping container. He could almost see ghost images of the women still working there, of Sareena walking around with her phone, talking, poking her head around the frames of unfinished walls, of Will loading stuff into the container, his mind elsewhere.
Rob parked next to the container and sat for a moment in the still darkness, pierced by the shimmer of moonlight through gathering clouds and the crash of waves against the rocks at the base of the cliff.
He picked up his beer and stepped into the night. He marched toward the front door, turning briefly to consider the bottle of whiskey still lying on the floor of the truck, but he kept walking.
At the front door, Rob stared down the stop-work order the Bass Coast Shire had posted there.
NOTICE:
Immediate Cessation of Construction Works by Order of…
Rob stuck his middle finger up at the sign and used his shoulder to open the sticky door.
Inside, he cracked a fresh beer, flicked on a few site lamps and walked around, running his hand over the various materials. The herringbone of his studwork felt solid and the equidistant gaps between the timbers pleased him. The coarseness of the granite felt unyielding, real as only something borne of the earth can be. The house cracked and whistled as the wind picked up. Even unfinished, he could feel this structure communing with its surroundings, seeking a truce with the brewing storm.
He cracked another can and laid out insulation sheets he’d use as a mattress, covering them with a bunch of drop sheets. Even if this now seemed like a dumb idea, it was too late. He’d had too much beer to drive. Better to freeze his ass off and fuck up his back than lose his license. Couldn’t afford that. Besides, he couldn’t go back to that empty display home. At least this place had a soul, a history that felt nearer just for being here.
As he snapped open beers, he expected his craving for cigarettes to return. But it didn’t. Maybe the one he had earlier put the cancer sticks behind him for good. Maybe it wasn’t the cigarettes he missed after all. It was liking them.
He lay on the stack of insulation pads, trying to get comfortable. He turned onto his back and stared up at the ceiling, listening to the roof tarp flapping outside while he lay under the drop sheets. Beer had been a mistake. He lay there, bloated and burping, the greasy chicken sandwich threatening to return in the acid reflux that welled at the back of his throat. Is this what it would be like on his last day, uncomfortable in a makeshift bed someplace? Alone. The tarp flapped violently, banging against something metallic outside.
He tore the drop sheets off and strode through stinging rain, scanning the roofline. Nothing broken. He headed for the car and sat in the passenger seat, breathing heavily, wiping rain off his forehead. The wind hissed against the car. He reached between his legs and felt around for the bottle of whiskey, instantly soothed by its familiar shape in his hands. He held the bottle in his lap, the rain pelting the windows like hail.
It was him or the bottle, wasn’t it?
One of them had to go over the cliff. It couldn’t go on. Not like this. He teared up, wishing things could’ve been different, that he could be different, a better person, a better father, a better husband, a better man. They deserved more. Emma. Will. They deserved better.
He picked up the whiskey and opened the car door, the wind beating it back. Rain lashed him as he leaned into the storm.
He opened the front door and strode toward the kitchen. He put the bottle on the floor and prised up one of the old floorboards. Then another and another, tossing them aside. He dangled his legs into the opening and lowered himself into the trench under the floor. His hand surfaced like a periscope and felt around for the Johnny Walker and he pulled it down.
He flicked on his phone flashlight and groped around in the dark, rain dripping from his chin. He searched for that chalked date on the floor joist. His and Sareena’s footprints still looked fresh in the dry soil under the house. His narrow light shone on the raw timbers, streamed with cobwebs. The flaky chalk flashed under the cold light of his phone.
1891
Rob fished his pen knife from his pocket and scratched into a neighboring joist, splintering dry timbers that rained onto the powdery dirt until the chunky writing was clear:
Rob 2023.
He ran his fingers over the carved writing, dropped to his knees. He looked at the gold lettering on the bottle of Johnny Walker, dragged the back of his hand across his mouth. Rob put the bottle down, turned and scooped out a shallow hole in the dirt with his hands. He placed the whiskey bottle inside and covered it with earth.
He flopped down on the mound and felt for his phone. He dialed and listened to her voicemail with his eyes closed, cleared his throat before he spoke.
“Em, it’s me.” He shimmied, rearranging himself on the dirt floor. “I know you don’t want to hear from me, but I wanted to call. I had to. I…” He licked his dry lips. “I don’t really know what to say…I didn’t plan this, just sort of did it…I think maybe because I just wanted to hear your voice.” He took a long, deep breath and swallowed.
“You should see this house, Em.” He looked up at the floorboards above his head. “I want you to.” He breathed into the phone, puffs of static into the night. “I’ve had a few. But I know you already know that. You can always tell. And I know you don’t like it…” He shifted his weight, making a more level crevice for himself in the dirt. “Doesn’t change the way I feel about you, though.” He sighed. “I miss you. I do.” He coughed. “I miss the sound of your voice. I miss seeing your face at night and first thing in the morning. I miss the feeling that life’s just better when you’re around. At least mine is. Cause…I love you…I know I’m bad at telling you that, but I do, and I want to make it up to you. If I can. Because I want to do better. So, if you can – if you want to – I want to see you. I’ll wait another three months or however long if that’s what you want. If it’s what you need. But I want to see you, if only to say…I’m sorry.” He held the phone out in front of him, feeling a little wobblier than he realized. He stabbed his finger at the screen to hang up and slumped back, enveloped by the mossy odor of cold dirt. He nodded off, somewhere between sleep and oblivion.
His phone chimed. Rob sat up and searched for his cell phone. Not Emma. A text from Sareena:
Someone once told me he could understand wood. Me, I speak stone. Strong combo, don’t you think? No “I” in team, right?
Below the message was a new sketch of the stone house, where a large section of granite blocks was replaced by a wall of glass that disappeared into the stone.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Emma bumped against the heavy glass door of Haimon Young, Corporate Services. The receptionist behind the mahogany counter made a pulling motion with her arm. Emma pulled the door and it opened.
“Well, that was an impressive start,” said Emma cheerily, trying to reverse her first impression. “Hope that wasn’t the interview?” Emma laughed at her own joke in a pretense to be upbeat. Her heart was racing, her mouth was dry and she felt jittery.
The prim lady at reception smiled uneasily and looked at her screen. “You’re Janeen?”
“No, I’m Emma. Connors.”
“Right,” said the receptionist, blushing slightly. “Sorry.”
“That’s okay.”
“Just take a seat, they won’t be long.”
Emma smiled, sweat beads forming inside her navy suit, her good suit, her I-can-do-anything suit.
She took a seat in the waiting area, glancing at the magazines spread out on a large, glass coffee table: Australian Company Director, CEO, The Financial Review. How much could you read into a place from the magazines in the waiting room?
The big glass entrance door thumped, rattled, and Emma looked over. The receptionist made a pulling motion with her arm. The door opened slowly, effortfully, with enough difficulty for the receptionist to stand as if she was about to assist.
“It’s okay, I got it,” said a large, well-dressed woman of Emma’s vintage, her voice hoarse and panting with exertion. “Sorry I’m late. I’m Janeen.” She caught her breath, glanced at Emma and looked away.
