The Marriage Gap Year, page 6
Chapter Nine
The flashing lights of Crown Casino caught Emma’s attention as she jogged past. Cabs were lining up outside the entrance, their red taillights blinking in the violet dawn.
Six years ago, she and Rob had spent a night at Crown Towers for their twentieth wedding anniversary – pool, massages, buffet dinner and breakfast. They’d even had a flutter at the slots and the blackjack table. Emma didn’t usually drink much but joined Rob that night, and their shared abandon to the booze, the posh room and the twinkling city views allowed them to surrender to their wilder sides. They had sex three times in twenty-four hours, something they hadn’t done since Will came along.
In the morning, they’d waited for a cab, right over there, where the honeymooners, the out-of-towners and the people who’d been up all night gambling shuffled toward their ride back to normal.
A determination to succeed was part of Rob’s appeal from the beginning. They met in a bar in Brunswick, at the start of her third year of university. He was the only one of his mates who wasn’t slobbering drunk and he came over to apologize to her and her friends for the boys’ rude behavior. They got talking and Emma was immediately impressed by Rob’s maturity. While Emma was still waiting to have a career, to become a proper adult, Rob was already there. He was working for a large construction firm in the city, building malls and high-rise towers. “Get in, get out, get paid.” That was his mantra.
He’d gone straight to trade school and bought his first investment property when he was nineteen. He was smart too, not book smart but street smart. He had an opinion on things, especially the political subjects that Emma and her university friends liked to talk about, even though he didn’t use the same language they did to express his views. Like when he told them Australia should remain a monarchy because traditions made people feel like they were part of something. All her friends had shouted him down. But he wouldn’t budge. She was impressed by that, the way he stood his ground.
It was reassuring to be around Rob. He was more like the people in the neighborhood she grew up in than most of the people in her university crowd. He was a real person, not one of those private school jerks who looked down at her because she came from a public school in a lowly neighborhood.
Rob’s clear-eyed orientation toward the future also felt like a tacit promise that they would avoid the bickering of her own parents about money. She and Rob were realists, ready to reap the rewards of hard work.
He was attractive but not intimidatingly so, more cute than handsome, but he was tall and strong, and she liked that. Nagged by Germaine Greer and Gertrude Stein to feel suspicious of feeling safe around Rob, these intellectual reservations collapsed under the weight of her physical and emotional needs. She felt protected by his imposing size.
Over the course of the next few years, the contours of the life Emma could foresee with Rob took shape against the backdrop of cultural expectations and her own social and professional disappointments. Her best friend from high school, Chloe Mathers, had already become Chloe Zevelekakis, exerting the pressure of new measures of maturity and success.
Emma turned to look in the other direction, toward the Yarra River, which seemed to flow at the pace of the clouds drifting in the mottled sky. Her pace slowed to a shuffle as she fiddled with her phone, switching from music to a podcast. The peaceful jingle of Dr Priya’s theme music suited the scene. Along the promenade, restaurateurs swept their patios and wiped down their tables. This episode was called “Who Do You Think You Are,” and Dr Priya began with a personal story about how she was bullied at school and how it got worse the more she tried to fit in, say the right things, wear the right clothes.
Emma ran faster, fighting back tears that sprang from nowhere.
A boy on a skateboard cruised past, standing like Michelangelo’s David, leather jacket slung over his shoulder. A young woman riding an electric scooter also whirred passed, trailing a wake of fluttering blonde hair. Emma ran faster, trying to catch up to them, but they disappeared into the maw of the underpass at Princes Bridge.
Emma was crying now and willed herself to keep going. Under the bridge, she pulled out her headphones and propped herself against the wall, supported by the dark heavy stones. Her chest tightened and she struggled to gulp a full breath. The rhythmic thump of unseen traffic passed on the bridge overhead.
A fit couple ran past. The woman looked back.
“You right?” she said, and stopped. The man said nothing, only turned and jogged on the spot.
“I’m fine.” Emma fanned herself with her hand.
“You sure?” The woman approached, hands out.
“I’m okay.” Emma braced herself against the stone wall and straightened. “Just went a little hard, that’s all.”
The woman remained concerned.
“All good?” said her stony-faced partner, giving a thumb’s up, his eyes hidden behind mirrored sunglasses.
Emma nodded and waived them on their way.
The pair continued their run, no doubt congratulating themselves on their fitness, leaving Emma behind as a cautionary tale. She put her earbuds back in.
What’s your excuse? said Dr Priya. How do you get in the way of your own success? Emma walked, catching her breath as she went.
Why are you afraid? What are you worried about? Why do you have doubts? If you knew the answers to these questions, you probably wouldn’t be here.
A cyclist sped past and a boat full of rowers sliced through the river, heaving their oars in unison.
Let me ask you another question, maybe a more approachable one. Whose life do you use a model for your own?
Dr Priya paused, as if willing Emma to answer. A succession of names and images in Emma’s mind filled the silence: Mom? Dad? Mrs Burton, her Year 9 English teacher? Frida Kahlo? Ruth Bader Ginsberg? This wasn’t working. She couldn’t even do a wellness podcast right. Emma was relieved when Priya spoke again.
Come on, my lovelies! We all do it. Maybe your model’s a celebrity, or someone in your family. Or maybe it’s some more perfect version of yourself. Maybe that person’s got more money, a bigger house or a flashier job. And maybe being with them feels good on one level, but on another, it can leave you feeling flat, like a bit of a failure.
Emma was thankful to have her breath back.
Or maybe you use someone’s life as a warning, an example to avoid. Maybe you know someone who’s hanging onto a job they hate, or a bad relationship because they’re afraid of being lonely. Or maybe they’re using drugs or alcohol or food or gambling to cope with negative feelings.
Emma made a mental note to catch up with her friend Kendry.
The point is whose life choices do you strive to emulate and whose do you avoid? And is their example (for better or worse) what you really want? Because maybe their example is confusing you, maybe it’s holding you back. What I’m asking is…what do you want? Whose life are you living?
Emma thought of her father and how his stubbornness about not getting tied down by a regular job had driven a wedge between her parents. Her mother thought making stained glass windows was basically the same as being a glazier and couldn’t understand why Bill didn’t just get on with it, hustle more, take an ad out in the paper, sell his services like the handyman he was.
Dad said he needed freedom to create. Mom learned not to roll her eyes in front of him when he said that. But when he wasn’t around, she made it clear her husband was a slacker, who valued a beer and a bet on the football game as much as he did his “art.”
Emma didn’t see it that way. Her father was his best self when he was in his shed. He was quiet in there. His movements were smooth and self-assured as he reached for the right mallet, pliers, or twisty bit of lead tubing that he kept upright in a wooden pail, tubes that fanned out like a bouquet of metal flower stems with the tops pulled off.
Time didn’t exist in that shed the way it did elsewhere. It sped up and slowed down and Emma spent her happiest moments with her father in there, where he made things. He loved working with his hands, a tangible skill that she later valued in Rob. Thinking on it now, she wondered whether she had driven Rob the way her mother had driven her father.
Her father was happy to take the odd commission to fix a church window after a hailstorm or repair a smashed glass panel at a sailing club, usually when his old Mustang needed fixing, but he relied more on his networks at the local bar for work than he did on advertising his services or pounding the pavement.
After her parents fought (always about money), Dad would go out and get a “proper job,” like Mom wanted him to. It was usually a spit-and-handshake deal between him and one of his mates, like the time he sold terracotta pots at a nursery in Lilydale with his friend Massimo. Or the stint at a thrift store in Carlton. These jobs never lasted more than a few months. Dad would eventually insult a customer or break one too many pots, or just stop showing up altogether in protest of some perceived slight against him.
Mom would get angry, Dad would get angrier, and Emma would stay quiet. She loved her parents separately but steeled herself whenever they were together. Occupying the no-man’s-land between them for all those years was heartbreaking.
When her parents eventually divorced, Emma could see it was good for them both. Mom now lived in a one-bedroom unit in Bairnsdale and said she was glad to be out of Melbourne, which had become “too big, too crowded and too snobby” for her liking.
Even though Mom’s grumpiness was draining, Emma thought she should call her more. She must be lonely, all by herself. More than she let on. But it was work calling her mother and Emma didn’t often feel up to it.
Dad was remarried now and living in Brisbane, and she didn’t see much of him beside what he posted of his new family on Facebook.
You are not these people, said Dr Priya. You are not destined to live by their example or their expectations of you.
Emma picked up the pace. She trotted, then jogged, then ran, past the boats on their moorings, past the burning in her chest. She would not feel embarrassed, she would not feel frumpy, she was not old. She ran the rest of the way to work, grateful for the air that flowed to her lungs.
The floor numbers lit up as she ascended in the elevator, the glow of those numbers helping her feel present, tracking where she was in this moment. Floor 7, 8, 9. She was here. She was in control.
It wasn’t her plan to go to the office in her new workout gear, but her panic attack, or whatever that was, meant she’d taken longer than she intended and didn’t change. It’s not like she was wearing a spandex onesie. The new tracksuit was perfectly respectable and would do fine until she cooled down enough to shower and change in the staff facilities. At least she had the elevator to herself. Then the elevator stopped. The doors opened and Jarod got in. Did he just avert his eyes? What was he doing on the eleventh floor?
“I went for a run,” she said.
He raised his eyebrows. “Great.”
“Yeah,” said Emma, and dabbed her forehead with the gym towel that hung around her neck. Why was she doing that? She didn’t need to validate her exercise. So what if she only managed to do three kilometers? She was starting out. And, besides, she didn’t need Jarod’s approval. Emma let the sweat trickle down her neck in little rivers, which gave her a pleasant shiver and pooled at the small of her back.
“Good for you.” Jarod smiled. Condescending little prick. “How far did you go?”
“I didn’t really keep track.” Emma dabbed her forehead with the towel.
The elevator doors opened. She and Jarod both moved to exit first and bumped shoulders in the doorway.
“Sorry,” said Jarod. He stepped back, held the door open and leaned forward in a kind of awkward, exaggerated bow. “Ladies first.”
“Thanks,” said Emma, sliding past him. “Do you mind swiping me in,” she said, rummaging in her backpack. “My card’s in here somewhere.”
“Sure.” He reached for the swipe card at the end of his lanyard and hovered it over the security pad with a needless flourish. The frosted doors with the Catch logo opened with a mechanical whoosh. They both walked in and headed to their desks in the open-plan office.
“Oh, hey,” said Jarod. Emma turned around. “We should catch up later.”
“Sure,” she said, turning away. “You know where to find me.” She hoisted the shoulder strap of her backpack further up on her shoulder and waved to Angie and Mish as she walked past them, both on their phones behind the low partitions of their workspace. They smiled and waved back as Emma walked past. Mish’s shiny lavender nails were like candies on her fingertips.
Maybe it was the exhilaration of the run, or the residual glow of her honest talk with Will the other day, but Emma felt a welcome sense of comfort and reassurance at the sight of her desk – the u-shape arrangement of books and folders drew her in like an embrace. This was her little base in this sprawling office, a spot put aside just for her, a place where she could be useful and productive in ways that were entirely independent of her identity as a wife and mother. She’d spent many years convincing herself that her career was second to her family. And it was. But life didn’t really work that way. Before her family, work was everything. Home life helped put things into perspective. Maybe that’s what Dr Priya meant by bringing your “whole self” to your job. Work-Emma reinvigorated home-Emma and she was grateful for both. Maybe work and life were never meant to balance at all. Maybe they were supposed to blend and marble, like cake ingredients.
She put her backpack on the floor and plonked down on her office chair – the weight off her feet soothed the oddly pleasant muscle fatigue tingling in her legs. It had been so long since she’d exercised regularly, not since high school, so young and full of dreams.
She’d been going to be a “businessperson,” someone who wore nice clothes to work. She would be a trailblazer, work in advertising, for Oxfam and the United Nations. She’d make money to give it back. She would be a role model, an entrepreneur, and wherever she went, she’d hear the cracking of glass ceilings. Her life would be full of interesting people who devoted their lives to worthy causes, people who would enrich her in ways she did not yet know existed.
There would be lovers and tousled sheets in exotic hotels with views of the Eiffel Tower, the pyramids of Giza, the World Trade Center. She would be awakened by the garbled chorus of unfamiliar birds outside her window, or sober calls to prayer from distant minarets. An open spirit would bring her a life of adventure. It would all just happen.
As the end of high school loomed, lack of money was front of mind when Emma declared a career path. She enjoyed her art classes, the screen-printed T-shirts, the linocuts and the shoebox pinhole cameras, but Mr Blundell’s art studio, with its drying racks and paint-splattered walls came to feel more like a guilty pleasure than a realistic vocation, a distraction from Maths, English and Computer Studies. She had helped put together the school yearbook but eventually dismissed “graphic design” as whimsy and soberly directed herself toward a job in “business and communications.” That felt suitably grown-up.
Emma had left university energized and emboldened, only to discover the world of work had little interest in what she’d learned. She had no professional network and no experience outside of working at Mr Leung’s sandwich shop, which had helped put her through school. When potential employers bothered to call her back, they all told her versions of the same thing: “we’re looking for someone with more experience.”
Her first job was as an office temp. The feminist theory she’d absorbed at university ran against the entrenched, male conservatism of Melbourne’s old boy network. She worked in a series of consulting firms doing general office duties, preparing spreadsheets, proofreading copy, only to have the paperwork thanklessly snatched up by a succession of young men in suits who’d graduated from the “right” schools, captained the “right” teams and whose fathers had, no doubt, laid solid foundations for their sons’ success. The patriarchy was not a mythological thing – it was an invisible hand directing traffic inside this network of glass office towers.
Being an adult meant making rational choices, and Emma had been in a hurry to become an adult. She was keen to become a person whose sound decisions would correct the bohemian laxness of her upbringing. She’d grown up in a house with few rules, a place where she sometimes woke to find her dad’s mate Massimo asleep on the living room couch as she left for school, the coffee table full of empty bottles and the hubcap ashtray still smoldering with cigarette butts.
When the time came, she would offer her own family a more stable environment. Rob was part of that stability. But now she’d gone and blown it apart. In the end, she was just as selfish and impulsive as her father.
Emma dabbed her temples with the gym towel and turned on her computer. She glanced up at the spines of her publications on the bookshelf above her desk. There was solid work there and she was proud of it. Those publications offered a career timeline, a testament to how she’d balanced work and motherhood by squeezing out friends and hobbies to make room for part-time work through most of Will’s childhood. Emma’s transition from full-time work to casualized labor was visible on that bookshelf – in the transition from the thick government reports and glossy magazines with professional photographs, to the thin stapled booklets she’d produced for small-time clients as a freelancer. She’d made those sacrifices for her family, but she had not, until now, appreciated how this shift in priorities had plateaued her career. By contrast, Rob’s clients had kept getting bigger and better, his career an upward trajectory.
What happened to all her ambitions? Turns out they were dreams enough for five lives, not one.
Emma picked up the tin of green tea with jasmine and dried pear, and lightly shook it. Enough left to make a small pot. She opened the lid and sniffed its contents. Summer in Japan. She’d never been to Japan, but this floral odor is how she imagined it. When she opened her eyes, Isabella was looking down at her from behind the partition, tall, blonde and statuesque with a cell phone phone in her hand. “Got a sec?” she said.
