Page 39 of Lessons in Love at the Seaside Salon
‘Ah …’ His eyebrows lift and she realises they’re still outside and she should really invite him into the house he still owns.
‘Sorry, come in,’ she says, standing aside.
‘Thanks,’ he says. ‘Are the kids …?’
‘Asleep,’ she repeats, because she wants him to think it’s true.
He nods, and she feels like adding,As they usually are when you get home. But she doesn’t. There’s no point.
Ushering him past the door of her workroom, she walks to the sitting room and takes a spot on the couch. In the middle, so he’s not tempted to sit beside her.
‘What can I do for you?’ she says and he looks pained in response.
‘You can’t – I’m not …’ He sighs. ‘I can’t get anything right, can I?’
‘Is that what this is about – trying to get things right?’
‘Isn’t it?’ His frown is so deep she wonders if he might disappear inside it and, if so, how she would feel about that.
Sad. She’d be sad. Because despite it all, she still cares about him. The Gary she fell in love with is in there somewhere. She doesn’t think he was faking it all those years; he’s never been a good actor, not able to keep up a fake smile when they bumped into someone he didn’t like or pretend her sister-in-law’s cooking was great. It’s just that she doesn’t know what he’s done with that Gary and she knows if he reappeared she’d love him again.
‘Anna … what’s happening?’ he asks with a plaintive tone.
‘What do you mean? Nothing’shappening. It’shappened.’
‘To us.’ That frown is still in place. ‘What …’ He sighs and it’s ragged and Anna realises he may be about to cry.
That makes her want to cry, partly because she doesn’t understand why sticking up for what she needs and what she wants should lead to her husband crying. Surely he should understand and support her. If he really loved her. Maybe he doesn’t. That’s definitely something she’s been contemplating for a while, after months – years – of him working late every night.
‘I love you,’ he says, and it’s strangled and desperate and it sounds like the plea of a condemned man, which she guesses he is.
She realises something then that has never occurred to her before: she has power in this situation. That’s what he’s just shown her, that she has the power to break him. And she doesn’t want to. Even in this flush of knowing she has the power, she has no inclination to use it maliciously. Rather, she wishes she’d known it before, back when he was in the process of alienating himself from the house, from her, from the kids. She could have wielded it. Maybe she could have stopped what happened between them. Stopped the withering of their marriage.
She remembers something her mother said once – and she really does get irritated that her mother is so regularly wise,because Anna would like to have some of that wisdom herself one day.
‘Women can control the moon and the stars, the tides and the heavens,’ Ingrid said. ‘That’s why men are so scared of our power. That’s why they tell us that we have none. But here is the thing, darling: with that power comes responsibility. And freedom. If we are prepared to accept that power, we can do what we want, when we want, as long as we uphold our responsibilities.’
Or it was something like that. Anna might be making it more grandiose in her memory because it sounded like such a shocking thing, really, to hear at the time, that she – Anna of the Central Coast, Anna of the sewing machine and the old Corolla and the hair she hasn’t been looking after for years – might have the power to move worlds.
Yet here’s the proof, in front of her: her husband, desolate because he isn’t with her any more.
This moment, right here, feels like an opportunity for a reckoning. With her power. With what she can use it for. With him.
He’s waiting for her to say something and she knows that he wants her to say she loves him, but she doesn’t feel she can. It doesn’t feel true. Not yet. Not again.
Instead she pats his hand, then his cheek. Caring gestures; not declarations of love but loving all the same.
‘I know,’ she says. ‘But it’s one thing to say it, Gary. It’s another to show it.’
His mouth opens and he looks a little shocked. Probably because she’s never said anything like that to him before.
‘Then I want to show you,’ he says. He sniffs and glances away, then huffs like a steam engine gathering pace. ‘I would like to take you out to dinner,’ he says, his voice sounding stronger than it has in months.
‘Oh?’ she says, trying to recall when they last went out for a meal, just the two of them. It was before they had children, she’s sure.
‘There’s a French restaurant in Gosford,’ he says.
The spiteful part of her wonders how he knows about that. When has he gone there? Who with?
