Chapter Six Jonah
Chapter Six Jonah
Sometimes, when you’re cooking, your ingredients will defy all the laws of chemistry and physics and do something completely unexpected.
Once, for example, I was making dinner for a girl I was seeing.
It was our third date and I wanted to impress her, so I was making Roquefort soufflés.
It’s a difficult recipe, but I’d mastered it – I’d made it dozens of times before – so I was smugly confident that once I put my beautiful, evenly risen, golden soufflés down in front of her, she’d be so impressed we wouldn’t even make it to the macarons I’d made for dessert.
They collapsed the second I took them out of the oven.
I’m so sorry , I’d said.
I don’t understand what happened.
Jonah, it doesn’t matter , she’d replied.
I bet they’re still delicious.
No.
I can’t let you eat these.
I have to remake them.
My next attempt failed too.
She left halfway through my third attempt, and I ended up sitting miserably at the kitchen table late into the night, shoving my face full of macarons, trying to work out how this rock-solid recipe I’d used so many times could have possibly failed.
Up until this moment, the Roquefort Soufflé Incident was the most incomprehensible, inexplicable thing that had ever happened to me.
‘…I’m sorry?
’
‘I’m wondering if you want to get married.
’
It didn’t make any more sense the second time.
‘I recognise this sounds insane,’ Sadie said again.
I was fairly sure I was having some kind of out-of-body experience, which is the only excuse I have for what I said next.
‘I didn’t know you felt like that about me.
’
‘Oh, fuck off, Jonah.’
‘You just asked me to marry you!’
‘No, I asked if you wanted to marry me .’
‘What makes you think I want to marry you?’
‘Just – shut up, okay?’ Sadie snarled.
‘I am not in love with you. Believe it or not, I have managed to use my powers of deductive reasoning over the past fifteen years and have also figured out that you’re not in love with me.
This is a business proposition.
’
She sat down on my bed – Sadie Shaw was sitting on my bed, that was infinitely more unlikely than me fucking up those soufflés three times in a row – and opened her laptop.
‘My contract has a provision for partner hire.’
She turned the screen towards me.
She’d highlighted the relevant section.
I tried to read it, but it was like my astigmatism had suddenly got a thousand times worse.
‘They’ll consider partner hire where relocation is involved, and the partner is suitably qualified for employment at the institution,’ Sadie said.
‘You were shortlisted. You’re suitably qualified.
’
No I wasn’t.
Suitably qualified people for the role of Lecturer in Literary Studies could presumably do things like ‘read’ and ‘speak’.
‘I thought maybe we could fudge it by being like, “Hey, you already know that we live at the same address, look at our applications,” and then we could pretend that we, you know, “live together”.’ She put scare quotes around it with her fingers.
‘But that wouldn’t work.
I did some research, and they make you sign a statutory declaration about the nature of your relationship.
Chess told me once that you can go to jail if you lie on a stat dec, so we’d have to get married.
’
‘What?’
She gave me a look that was the equivalent of her snapping her fingers in my face and saying, come on, keep up .
‘If we sign a stat dec that says “we’ve lived together for several years, and recently got married”, none of it will be a lie.’
I stared.
‘Like I said, it sounds extreme,’ she said, ‘but I genuinely don’t think it would be that big a deal.
’
That – the most ludicrous in a series of cascadingly ludicrous statements – finally broke through the white noise.
‘Not that big a deal?!’
I stood up, but I had nowhere to go.
My bedroom was tiny and there was barely enough space for me to squeeze into my chair between my desk and the bed Sadie was currently sitting on.
If I wanted to leave, I’d have to jump over her legs.
I faced the wall instead, running a hand through my hair and tugging so hard at it that it was astonishing half of it didn’t come out.
‘Think about it, Jonah.’ How did she sound so calm?
‘It wouldn’t have to change anything.
We already live together here.
Why not live together there too?
It’d solve a problem for me, honestly.
Hobart rent is bonkers expensive, and this way I won’t have to try and find another share house.
’
‘Are you asking me to marry you so you can have a flatmate ?’
‘Obviously not. Don’t be ridiculous.
’
‘Only one of us is being ridiculous.’
‘I’m trying to help you!
’
‘I don’t need your help!
’
I turned around.
‘I don’t need your help,’ I repeated, trying to keep my voice down so our housemates wouldn’t come running to try and separate us.
‘I don’t need your charity, and I don’t need your pity.
Please leave.
’
Sadie stood too.
It brought her topknot level with my eyeline.
Just like that night in the kitchen, it was listing to the left.
‘Jonah,’ she said, ‘think about your sister.’
‘Why do you care about my sister? You don’t even know her.
’
‘I know, but – look, can we sit down? You’re looming over me.
I hate it.
’
We sat, me in my desk chair, her on my bed again.
The fabric of my pyjama pants brushed hers as our knees touched.
‘Like I told you,’ Sadie said, ‘I have a soft spot for sisters.’
She made a sound that was somewhere between a sigh and a laugh.
‘Not that Chess would ever need anything or anyone.’
That, I believed.
Sadie’s sister was terrifying.
‘So I know what it feels like,’ she said, ‘to love your sister, and feel like there’s nothing you can do for her.
’
I put my hands underneath my thighs, sitting on them so I didn’t have to find something to do with them.
‘I know we’ve had our differences, Jonah.
’
That was putting it mildly.
‘I know that’s putting it mildly.
’
Beneath my thighs, my fingers twitched.
‘But the thought of you not being able to help your sister – of me being the thing that stands between you and her – I hate that. And I’m not sure I can live with it.
’
The room was bright.
Too bright, really.
The globe in my desk lamp had burnt out, so I had the overhead light on.
It was harsh, bluish-white light, the kind that did nobody any favours.
Despite that, it felt like we were in the kitchen again.
In the quiet, still darkness, the remnants of that terrible mug cake on the table in front of me, Sadie’s hand on mine as she asked, Truce?
‘And honestly, I feel like you have to appreciate the genius of the scam,’ she said, tone lighter now.
‘What a way to outsmart the managerial classes and get more casuals into permanent jobs, right?’ She tapped one of the union stickers on her laptop.
‘I’m not sure how popular arranged marriage would be as a conversion strategy with the rank-and-file,’ I said tightly.
‘This isn’t arranged marriage.
’ Sadie looked thoughtful for a second.
‘This would typically be called marriage of convenience. Maybe marriage-in-name-only. When romance was serialised in women’s magazines in the mid-twentieth century, it was such a popular trope that they used to call it MINO as a shorthand, and—’
‘I don’t need the lecture.
’
She raised her eyebrows.
‘I’m sure it’s a very interesting lecture,’ I amended.
‘But – think about this, Sadie. Think about what you’re proposing.
Literally, down on one knee, proposing.
’
I expected her to snap back at me, but her voice was almost gentle.
‘Do you really think I would come to you with a proposal this extreme if I hadn’t thought it through?
’
‘Look, I might not have always shown it, but I have every respect for your intelligence,’ I said.
‘But no, I don’t think you’ve thought this one through.
You said yourself that it was insane.
’
‘I said that it sounded insane. Not that it was.’
‘Do the semantics really matter?’
‘Of course they do.’
Only Sadie Shaw could turn a discussion about her literally proposing to me into an argument about close reading.
‘It’s not insane,’ she said.
‘Nothing about our relationship or our living situation changes. You get a job you deserve just as much as I do, with the bonus that you get to help your sister and I get to sleep at night. All that’s different is that we sign a piece of paper.
’
‘It’s a pretty important piece of paper.
Would you call that,’ I gestured to my framed doctoral degree, ‘just a piece of paper ?’
‘Of course not. You had to earn it. Anyone can get married.’
‘What if the university caught us?’
‘How would they catch us? The marriage will be legal. Everything we’ll put on the stat dec will be true.
They’ll have no way of proving any different.
’
I paused.
‘Doesn’t this—’ I struggled to find the right words.
‘Doesn’t this mean something to you, though?
You read all those romance novels.
’
‘So that means I’m dreaming of a white dress and a picket fence and a Prince Charming?
’
I’d heard this sharp, clipped note in her voice before.
It usually meant she was going to tear someone 25 a new arsehole.
‘I’m a woman in academia, Jonah.
I’m familiar with all the research on how marriage benefits men and disadvantages women.
All the stuff about division of domestic and emotional labour.
I’ve read all those books by all those pale, male, stale scholars where they casually mention in the acknowledgments that their wife typed the manuscript and did like ninety per cent of the research.
’
She probably didn’t know it, but she was very accurately describing my parents.
‘Love – now that means something to me,’ she said.
‘Marriage, not so much.’
Sadie put her hands on the bed behind her, leaning back slightly.
I studiously did not look at what that manoeuvre did to her breasts in her thin camisole.
‘Not that I’m suggesting we actually stay married until death do us part,’ she added.
‘Just until we both pass probation. We’d be much harder to fire then.
’
I wasn’t considering this – no, I absolutely wasn’t considering this – but the unfriendly lighting was catching fiery highlights in her hair, and—
‘How long is probation?’ I asked.
‘Three years.’
‘Three years ?’ My voice hadn’t hit a note this high since before it had broken.
She shrugged.
‘We’ve lived in the same house for eight years already and managed to not kill each other.
What’s another three?
’
How was she so nonchalant about this?
‘Although it doesn’t have to be the full three,’ she added.
‘That’s for your protection, not mine.
No skin off my nose if you want to end it earlier.
’
I could hear my own heartbeat pounding in my ears.
‘Come on, Shaw. You haven’t thought this through.
Not really.
’
She gave me a pointed look.
‘When, exactly, over the last fifteen years, have I given you the impression that I don’t think things through?
’
‘There are so many reasons why this is a bad idea,’ I said.
‘What if… What if we got married and you fell in love with someone else? What would you do then?’
‘Who says we can’t have an open marriage?
We could be the Lit Studies equivalents of Sartre and de Beauvoir.
’
‘Sartre and de Beauvoir weren’t married.
’
‘I know that, Jonah.’
She exhaled through her teeth.
‘Listen, I relate to your sister more than I’d like to, okay?
’ she said.
‘I especially relate to her kids. I know what it’s like to be abandoned.
’
I remembered what she’d told me all those years ago when we won the University Medal.
Her mother dying.
Her father leaving.
The look in her eyes when she’d said, When I said I fought hard for this, Fisher, I didn’t just mean I fought you.
‘My dad was an abusive shithead birthed directly from Satan’s arsehole,’ Sadie said.
‘Leaving was the best thing he ever did for us, but it still hurt.’
She folded her hands in her lap, lacing her fingers together.
‘It wasn’t my mum’s fault, but when she died, you can bet that felt like being abandoned too.
’
I couldn’t even imagine what that was like.
For all that my parents were terrible – for all that they’d pitted Elias and Fiona and I against each other – they were always there.
Even when my dad had made that awful, awful crack about not being able to catch me if I fell because Fi had come begging for money, I knew he didn’t actually mean it.
If I fell, he would never let me hear the end of it.
That dirtiest of words – failure – would be wielded against me like a weapon for the rest of my life.
But there was a reason Fi had set aside her pride and gone to them when Matt refused to pay child support.
She’d fallen, and – financially, at least – they’d caught her.
‘There’s only one person in my life that hasn’t abandoned me,’ Sadie said.
‘My sister.’
She took her listing topknot down.
That glorious hair of hers fell wild around her shoulders.
I swallowed reflexively, hoping she hadn’t heard the way my breath caught in my throat.
‘I’ll never be able to pay Chess back for everything she did for me.
Not in a thousand years.
The only thing I can do is pay it forward.
’
Then she paused.
‘Your sister is going through a nightmare,’ she said.
‘But if we can pull this partner hire thing off, and you can show up for her, be there for her, the way that Chess was for me, then… then in the middle of that nightmare, something good happens. ’
I swallowed again.
I knew – I knew – this was a terrible idea.
I knew what I should say.
This is unbelievably generous of you to offer, Sadie, and I don’t want you to think I don’t appreciate it – but I can’t.
‘All right, Shaw,’ I said instead.
‘Let’s get married.
’
25 Usually me.