Chapter Four Sadie
Chapter Four Sadie
Chess and I were both tactile people, but she hadn’t hugged me this long and this hard since our mother’s funeral.
‘You’re cutting off my circulation,’ I said, voice muffled against her shoulder.
We were the same height, but she was still wearing her heels from the office, so I felt like a little girl again, being hugged by her quite-literally-big sister.
‘I don’t care.
’ Chess somehow managed to tighten her grip on me.
‘I’m so proud of you.
I’m so thrilled for you and I’m so devastated that you’re leaving Sydney, and – oh God.
’
‘Don’t you dare cry.
Then I’ll cry, and I’ve already cried so much I think I’m at risk of dehydration.
’
She drew back at last, framing my face between her hands.
‘I am so proud of you, Sadie. You’ve worked so hard.
You’ve earned this.
’
‘I don’t know about that.
Everyone I know works this hard, and—’
‘No.’ She pinched my cheeks.
I felt like an even littler girl.
‘We’re not letting in impostor syndrome.
We’re not letting in survivor’s guilt.
We’re not even letting in the fact that it’s going to break my heart when you move.
Tonight, we’re celebrating.
’
Chess let go of me and picked up the bottle of champagne she had resting in an ice bucket, taking the wire cage off with a few quick twists.
‘We’re celebrating the fact that you’re brilliant.
’ She popped the cork.
‘And that academia has finally recognised it.’
Despite my best efforts, my bottom lip started to tremble.
‘I love you, Chessie.’
Her eyes were soft as she looked at me.
‘I love you too, sweetie. To the end of the universe and back again.’
That was something she’d been saying to me since I was five years old.
She’d been doing my kindergarten reading with me – Mum had been off somewhere appeasing our father, leaving Chess, aged all of ten, to look after me – and she was helping me sound out the words in a picture book: I love you to the moon and back.
I was clearly already a budding literary critic, because I was putting pressure on my reading material before I could even properly read.
If I wrote this book, I’d say I love you to the sun and back, I announced.
Mrs Wilson told us the sun is further away than the moon.
There’s heaps of stuff further than the moon , Chess had agreed.
The stars are even further than the sun.
The front door had slammed closed so hard the walls of our house shook.
Mum was saying something in a pleading tone.
Our father was yelling over the top of her.
I’d put my arms around Chess.
I used to do that a lot as a kid – whenever I was scared or sad or overwhelmed, I’d cling to her like she was a teddy bear.
I love you to the stars and back, Chessie, I’d whispered.
Chess had hugged me back.
Well, I love you to the end of the universe , she’d declared, and back again.
Adult Chess had just passed me a glass of champagne when I lost the battle with tears.
‘I never could have done this without you, Chess.’
‘Oh, Sadie.’ She drew me into another hug – one-armed, this time, so neither of us spilled our wine.
‘You did this all on your own. All I’ve ever been is moral support.
’
I laughed, trying not to let this turn into a full joy-poignant-as-grief weeping jag.
‘That’s absolutely not true, but I know better than to have this argument with you.
’
‘Damn straight.’ She grinned.
‘You’ll lose.
’
She took a sip of her champagne.
‘Although you do have a point. I’m your legal counsel as well as moral support.
Make sure you send your employment contract over to me, okay?
I don’t want you signing anything that I haven’t gone over with a fine-tooth comb.
’
‘I wouldn’t dare.
’ I sipped my own champagne and tried to swallow down how much I loved her, and how terrified I was to be leaving her, before I completely fell apart.
Chess unboxed a cheeseboard which must have cost her an absolute mint, especially last minute in the pre-Christmas rush.
‘How did the private school boy take it?’
‘I don’t know.
I haven’t seen him yet.
’
Jonah hadn’t come out of his room.
I knew he was in there – I could see the strip of light underneath his closed door – but I hadn’t heard a single peep.
‘If it’s going to be awkward, living with him for this last six weeks before you go to Hobart,’ Chess suggested slyly, ‘you could always move in here with me.’
I pointed a piece of brie at her.
It started melting in my fingers, and I swiftly rescued it with a cracker.
‘Nice try.’
This wasn’t the first time Chess had suggested moving in with her.
Or the second.
Or the hundredth.
You don’t need to live in a share house with eight thousand different people.
I’ve got a spare room.
I’ve got all this space.
Save your money.
Stay here.
There wasn’t much I could resist her on, but this was a boundary on which I’d held firm.
She loved me so much, and she’d look after me forever if I let her – which meant I absolutely couldn’t let her, not if I ever wanted to be an actual independent adult in my own right.
We were both in our thirties now.
That five-year age gap between us that had fundamentally shaped our dynamic when we were kids shouldn’t matter anymore.
And more than that: I should be the one looking after Chess sometimes – even if I was never, ever going to be able to even the scales.
When I found myself in front of Jonah’s bedroom door later that night, I told myself that was why I was there.
I couldn’t pay Chess back, so I was going to pay it forward instead, by making a very mature, olive-branch-y offer to check up on his sister once I moved to Hobart.
Even though, if the shoe had been on the other foot, and Jonah had turned up at my door to say, ‘Well, I suppose I could have coffee with your sister once or twice, if that would make you feel better,’ I would probably have put two hands on his chest and pushed him down the stairs.
But after that night in the kitchen – where, even in the ambient lighting, I’d been able to see how tight and drawn the corners of his mouth were when he talked about how he’d failed Fiona – it felt like I had to say something .
Apologise, perhaps.
‘…please don’t cry, Fi,’ Jonah said.
I stopped, hand poised to knock.
His sister said something I couldn’t really hear, but even through the door, there was no disguising the sound of sobs.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Jonah said.
‘I tried. I really did, but… sometimes other people are just better.’
He must have turned the volume up, because Fiona’s response came through loud and clear this time.
‘No. Don’t think that, Jonah.
I don’t want you to think that.
I don’t want you to beat yourself up.
’
‘It’s too late for that.
’
I recognised the note in his voice.
It was the one he used when our students would come to us right at the end of semester.
I know I haven’t been to any of the classes and I didn’t submit the first assignment, but is there any way I can pass the unit?
they’d say, and he’d look them in the eye and say gently but firmly, I’m sorry, but it’s too late for that.
‘No,’ Fiona said.
‘This isn’t your fault.
This is my fault.
You told me not to get my hopes up, and I did anyway, and—’
She started crying again, but I thought I heard I’m sorry, Jonah in there.
‘Fi, please.’
This note I didn’t recognise.
I’d never, not once in fifteen years, not even that night in the kitchen, heard Jonah Fisher sound desperate.
‘Maybe I can figure something out,’ he said.
‘There’s nothing keeping me in Sydney, not really.
All the unis I work for are cutting back their casual staff numbers massively.
Maybe I even have a better chance of getting teaching work in Hobart.
Sadie might throw me some, if I ask her nicely.
’
I, like many workaholic thirty-something women, had persistent jaw issues from clenching too much.
My masseters were so tight that the myotherapist I saw whenever I could afford it told me it was amazing I could open my mouth at all.
My jaw still dropped to the floor.
‘Or I could try for something outside of academia,’ he went on.
‘My career is on its last legs anyway. Maybe I can move to Hobart and find some other job I can do.’
I fled, as quickly and quietly as I could.
This was none of my business.
None.
Sometimes, when I read particularly dense (*cough* French *cough*) theory, my brain would just slide over the words on the page.
I would understand the meaning of every word individually, but my mind simply would not absorb the meaning of the sentence.
I would have to go back and read it six or seven times before it came close to sinking in.
The idea of Jonah Fisher coming to me, hat in hand, begging for casual teaching work, was like reading Deleuze.
The idea of him no longer being an academic was like reading fucking Derrida .
No.
Worse.
I could at least get there with Derrida in the end.
But I couldn’t even imagine it: me, blithely building an academic career, while he was…
what would he even be?
Some guy who worked some nine-to-five in some office?
All that work – all that knowledge – all those arguments we’d had – just…
gone?
What would happen if I ran into him in Hobart, this unimaginable, defanged, non-scholar version of Jonah?
What would we even say to each other?
Oh, hello, nice to see you, how about this weather we’re having?
I’d won.
After all these years we’d been fighting, I’d won.
That meant something.
But who would I even be without him to measure myself by?