Chapter Nine Jonah
Chapter Nine Jonah
My parents weren’t attending the wedding.
‘If you’d given us more notice, perhaps we could have figured something out, Jonah,’ my dad had said sharply, ‘but as you’re well aware, this conference trip has been planned for months.
’
I didn’t mind.
A wedding without them – without my dad lobbing grenades at Sadie or her sister, who would probably punch them out of the air and directly back into his face – sounded infinitely more pleasant than one with them there.
Plus, with my life and furniture all packed up and being shipped across the country, it meant I had a place to stay for my last couple of nights in town that blessedly didn’t have them in it.
26
I spent the night before my wedding in my childhood bedroom, the suit I’d rented for the ceremony hanging in the wardrobe next to my old high school blazer.
I slept poorly, and consequently slept late.
The sun was streaming in through the windows by the time I shuffled down to the kitchen to scrounge up some breakfast—
Only to be greeted by the rich aroma of freshly brewed coffee, and my brother standing in front of the toaster.
‘Elias!’ I exclaimed.
‘What the fuck are you doing here?’
‘Surprise.’ He grinned.
‘What do you think I’m doing here?
You’re getting married!
’
I didn’t know how to name the feeling that started – not to sweep over me, like a wave, but roll over me very gently, like a cloud moving across the sky.
It was…
warm.
Pink.
There were notes of surprise: surprise that he was here, but also that the thought of coming here had even occurred to him.
Something like satisfaction, too, like when the lid finally pops off a hard-to-open jar.
‘Please tell me you didn’t fly all the way from Germany just for my wedding.
That’s so much money.
And it’s not even a real wedding!
’
‘I’ve got one return flight built into my fellowship funding.
I figured I might as well use it while Dad is somewhere else.
’
‘You should have gone to see Fi.’
‘I did. I spent the last couple of weeks in Tassie.’
I blinked.
I’d talked to Fiona almost every day since Sadie and I told her we were getting married, and she hadn’t said a thing about Elias being there.
‘She didn’t want to ruin the surprise,’ Elias explained.
Or, the Fisher part of my brain translated, she didn’t want to risk him and me falling back into old Dad-established patterns and ruining this fragile new bond the three of us were building by over-exposing us to each other.
Elias had been nothing but helpful 27 since I reached out to him about my job application, but our devil’s advocate programming ran deep.
Supportive siblinghood didn’t happen overnight.
Two pieces of toast popped out of the toaster.
Elias slid them onto a plate and passed them to me.
‘Bridegroom first. I’ll make more.
’
I’d been dreading spending the day alone, given the million-plus possible ways for me to drive myself into an anxiety spiral, so having Elias there helped.
We lingered for a long time over breakfast, talking about his fellowship, my new job, what a piece of shit Matt was for refusing to pay child support even though he’d somehow managed to financially support two families for more than a decade, how Fi’s eldest kid Lex was like a tiny adult now, how devastated Rosie and Georgia were that they weren’t going to be at the wedding because their sole ambition in life was to be flower girls.
‘I’m under strict instructions to film every second of the ceremony,’ Elias said, reaching for the almost-empty jar of Dad’s fancy marmalade.
‘Fi’s just as sad as the girls that she won’t be there.
She’s given me a list of requested angles and everything.
’
I’d been about to fight him for the last of the marmalade, but I let him take it.
‘Do you think it’s the right thing to do?
Not telling Fi that Sadie and I aren’t real?
’
‘Do I think it’s a great idea?
No.
But would telling her be a worse idea?
Absolutely.
’
He spread the marmalade on his last piece of toast.
‘One, she doesn’t need more things to worry about, not right now.
And two, she might not be a scholar, but she’s still a Fisher.
She’s as competitive as we are.
If she knew you were faking a whole marriage for her, who the fuck knows what she’d try to do to one-up you?
’
It was hard to argue with that logic.
‘Besides,’ Elias said, taking a bite, ‘the marriage is real. History is full of people who were married to each other for reasons other than love.’
That phrase, casually uttered over breakfast, ricocheted repeatedly around my brain as the day went on, the volume turning steadily up and up as the time came for me to start getting ready.
I am not in love with you , Sadie had snapped at me, the day she’d come to me with this scheme, this madness with some method in it.
I have also figured out that you’re not in love with me.
But she was still going to marry me.
In the eyes of everyone – the law, the world, the university, my sister – Sadie Shaw was going to be my fucking wife.
‘Your Gretna Green package didn’t come with any flowers, did it?
’ Elias said, poking his head into the bathroom.
‘No,’ I replied, trying and failing to get a rogue piece of my hair to lie flat as I stood in front of the bathroom mirror in my shirt-sleeves.
‘We went with one of the cheapest packages they offer. It includes the ceremony, the paperwork, half an hour with a photographer and that’s it.
’ 28
‘Then I didn’t risk incurring Mum’s wrath by picking some of her precious roses for nothing.
Or ruin my algorithm forever by searching for “how to make a boutonniere”.
’
Elias had pinned a yellow rose and a spray of greenery to the lapel of his suit.
‘I think yellow roses have traditionally meant platonic love,’ he said, helping me into my jacket, ‘but the language of flowers is outside my particular area of historical expertise.’
‘Sadie might know.’ I took the boutonniere he handed me and turned it over idly in my fingers, surprised and touched by the gesture.
‘She likes gardening.’
It had been a familiar sight in the share house, Sadie putting on her gardening gloves and going off to work in the vegetable patch she’d established in the backyard.
When we’d sat down one night and written our wish list for rental properties in Hobart, she’d scribbled ‘green space’ under the Would Be Nice column.
It’s not a must, she’d said, but if we could find somewhere I could make a garden, I’d like that.
Gardens didn’t happen overnight.
Sadie Shaw and I were going to make a home together.
Elias took the boutonniere back from me and pinned it to my lapel.
‘I’m looking forward to meeting her.
It’s a rare woman who’d have the gall to do something like this.
’
What an incredibly profound understatement.
‘Can I ask you something?’ I said.
‘Mm-hmm.’
I hesitated.
‘When you were in my shoes,’ I said at last, ‘if Julia had come to you with an offer like this… would you have done it?’
‘Yes.’
Elias’s demeanour was distracted as he tried to rearrange the greenery to best showcase the rose, but his voice was certain.
‘She wouldn’t have even had to finish the sentence.
If she’d mentioned that partner hire was an option, I would have been down on one knee.
’
I might not know my brother as well as I should, but I didn’t think he was just talking about the allure of secure employment.
‘Unfortunately for me, though,’ he said, ‘Julia already had a husband.’
‘Do you still think about her?’
It was hard to describe the look that came over him.
Wistful, maybe.
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘Every day.’
Then he slapped me on the shoulder.
‘But today’s not about me.
Let’s get you wed, little brother.
’
We got to the park half an hour early.
I’d been worried it was going to rain, but the grey clouds of the morning had cleared to a cool, crisp afternoon, the leafy debris under the fig tree crunching, rather than squelching, beneath my feet.
Ten minutes later, the celebrant and the photographer arrived, and five minutes after them came Van and Annie, who we’d asked to be our witnesses.
‘Still can’t believe this is happening, man,’ Van said, giving me a bro hug I had to step back from lest I crush my boutonniere.
‘You and Sadie. You and Sadie .’
‘Me and Sadie,’ I echoed vaguely.
‘She was getting ready when we left,’ Annie said.
‘She looks beautiful.’
I blinked.
I’d thought Sadie was spending the night with her sister.
Oh God.
Had she not told her sister?
!
‘As soon as the bride gets here, we can get started,’ the celebrant said.
‘Do you have any questions for me?’
I shook my head.
She smiled, patted me like you would a dog about to go into the vet’s office, and went back to chatting with the photographer, casual and cheerful and calm, like she wasn’t about to fundamentally change my life.
In less than an hour, I was going to be married.
I was going to be a husband.
I was going to have a wife.
We were going to say some words that would change reality, and no matter how we felt about each other, I would be married to Sadie Shaw .
Unless she chickened out.
Because if she hadn’t told her sister…
I took a few steps away from everyone, deeper into the sheltering shade of the fig tree, and took some deep breaths.
Four o’clock came.
Four o’clock went.
Four ten.
Four twenty.
‘I’ll need to charge you extra if the bride is much later, Dr Fisher,’ the celebrant said to me.
‘I have another wedding at six.’
I nodded numbly.
What a way this would be for Sadie to cement her ultimate victory.
To really, truly, profoundly humiliate me.
And you thought beating Elias for a job was good, she’d cackle to Julia, in some bar where the clientele was solely made up of Fisher nemeses.
Let me tell you about how I beat Jonah for a job – and then left him at the altar.
‘Look!’ Annie said suddenly.
‘There she is.’
As a scholar, I had been trained not to make sweeping generalisations, but I’m fairly confident this is true: everyone who has ever got married feels like the time between laying eyes on your partner on your wedding day and them reaching your side is endless.
No walk is longer than a walk down the aisle.
In our case, the walk itself was long.
The path across the park was much longer than your standard aisle.
The way time stretched as my bride walked towards me, though, was not simply geographical.
Sadie was wearing a white knee-length sundress, the skirt fluttering slightly in the breeze.
So was her hair, pulled half back.
Her handbag was over one shoulder, a bunch of supermarket flowers sticking out of it.
With her other hand, she was pulling a cherry-red carry-on suitcase.
She was so beautiful.
And even at a distance – even with my terrible eyesight – I could plainly see that she wasn’t okay.
‘I’ll go and help her,’ Annie said.
‘No,’ I said.
‘I’ll go.
’
Sadie relinquished the suitcase to me without argument, a clear sign that something was terribly, horribly wrong.
‘I’m sorry I’m late,’ she said, her voice coming out high-pitched, fast-paced, a bubbling fountain of words.
‘It took me longer to get ready than I thought – and then I was like flowers , I need flowers, the photos will for sure look fake if I don’t have a bouquet, and…
’
‘Shaw, slow down.’
I caught her wrist with my free hand, pulling her to a halt.
She looked up at me.
She’d done a good job on her makeup – God, she was beautiful, no wonder teenage Jonah had had such an enormous crush on her, I would compare her to a million summers’ days – but the whites of her eyes had a pinkish tinge to them.
She’d been crying.
‘Your sister…?’ I asked.
She shook her head.
‘Did you tell her?’
I couldn’t marry her if she hadn’t.
That I knew, deep in my bones.
‘I told her. She, um, she… I don’t think she’s coming.
’
Oh fuck.
Fuck .
I didn’t want to ask the question, but I had to.
‘Do you still want to do this?’
Sadie closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
I braced myself.
I’m sorry, Jonah, I can’t.
But then she opened them again.
Her spine straightened, and when she spoke, her voice was as certain as her handshake.
‘What I want,’ she said, ‘is to get this over with.’
And so I married Sadie Shaw at four thirty on a Tuesday afternoon, in the shade of a hundred-year-old fig tree.
Elias held the cheap bouquet of slightly wilting pink roses she’d bought, so Sadie could hold my hands.
Van and Annie watched, her bags sitting at their feet.
‘I call upon the people here present to witness that I, Jonah, take you, Sadie, to be my lawful wedded wife,’ I dutifully repeated after the celebrant.
‘I call upon the people here present to witness that I, Sadie, take you, Jonah, to be my lawful wedded husband,’ she echoed.
My hands were shaking as I slipped a ring onto her finger; shaking worse as she slipped one onto mine.
Standing this close to her, I could see that her dress was actually a very pale green, like the stone from her engagement ring had bled into it, ever so slightly.
‘Let us hope this day will form a milestone in your lives, one that you will look back upon with much joy and happiness,’ the celebrant said.
‘It therefore gives me great pleasure to pronounce you husband and wife. You may now both kiss, if you wish.’
Our eyes met.
We’d talked about this.
We don’t have to kiss, if you don’t want to , I’d said.
There’s a reason they say ‘if you wish’.
It’ll look weird if we don’t , Sadie had replied.
Plus, the photographer’ll probably make us kiss later anyway.
I can handle one little peck, Fisher, if you can.
She didn’t look like a person who could handle it.
I cupped her face in one of my hands, lightly, slowly, giving her every opportunity I could to push me away.
Her fingers travelled up to clutch my lapels.
I felt the weight of it, emotionally and mentally, but also physically.
My jacket was pulling taut across my shoulders.
Sadie Shaw was clinging to me.
What I want , I saw again, in her pleading eyes, is to get this over with.
So I kissed my bride.
Gently.
Softly.
Chastely.
One little peck.
That was all.
I drew back.
But she was still clinging to me.
The pull of her hands curled in my lapels kept me close.
Our noses brushed together as we shared the same air.
Her breath – my breath – our breath – was coming quick and hot.
Van whooped.
Something snapped.
Sadie sprang back.
‘Congratulations,’ the celebrant said warmly, as if my bride hadn’t just jumped away from me like I was on fire.
‘Now let’s get the marriage certificate signed so we can make this legal.
’
It took less than a minute for everyone to sign the papers that would irrevocably change who we were to each other – so short a time, so small a gesture, for so big a change.
‘Okay, let’s loosen up!
’ the photographer declared.
‘You’re married!
Let’s celebrate.
’
‘Are you all right?’ I whispered to Sadie, as the photographer made us pose with our foreheads leaning against each other, fingers intertwined.
‘What does it look like?’
The acid in her voice should have unknotted something in me.
That was the Sadie I knew, caustic, acerbic.
It didn’t, though.
The knot twisted itself even tighter, guilt shooting through me like an electric current.
‘Let’s try something old school romantic!
’ the photographer said.
‘Jonah, I want you to kiss Sadie’s hand.
Make sure we can see that beautiful ring!
’
Sadie had goosebumps all up her arms, I noticed, as I pressed her knuckles to my lips.
‘Are you cold?’
‘A little,’ she admitted.
I took my jacket off and wrapped it around her, the smallest possible way I could placate my conscience.
‘It’d be a pretty bad start to our marriage if I let you get hypothermia in the first fifteen minutes.
’
It was a weak attempt at a joke, and the laugh she gave was weak in response, as the photographer kept clicking away (‘Oooh, yes, lovely, very romantic!’).
My boutonniere was looking a little worse for wear, the petals of the yellow rose bruised from where she’d curled her fingers into my lapels when we’d kissed.
My wife.
I’d kissed my wife .
Once the photographer had taken a few more shots and then left with the celebrant for their six o’clock wedding, and we’d waved Van and Annie goodbye, Sadie took off my jacket.
‘Thanks for this,’ she said, practically throwing it back at me and then slinging her handbag over her shoulder.
‘I’ll see you at the airport tomorrow.
Text me when you get there and I’ll let you know where I am, okay?
’
I caught her wrist.
‘Sadie, wait.’
‘What?’
‘You, um… When we talked about how this night would go before, you said you’d stay with your sister.
But…
’
She pulled her wrist out of my grasp, fished in her handbag for an elastic, and tied her hair back.
‘Another night on the share house couch won’t kill me.
’
‘Come on, don’t be ridiculous.
You’re not going back to the share house.
’
‘You will note,’ she said tersely, pulling out the handle of her carry-on, ‘that nowhere in the contemporary marriage service does it say I have to obey you.’
‘What would Van and Annie think? We’re newlyweds, and yet you’re running away from me to crash on their sofa?
’
She shrugged.
‘They’ll probably think we had our first fight.
’
‘Come home with me.’
She looked right through me.
‘My parents are away. It’s just me and Elias, and he knows that we’re…
you know.
’
‘Spend some time with your brother, Jonah.’
‘Oh, his brother has plans,’ Elias said, sticking his head into the conversation.
‘I’m off to dinner with an old colleague.
Nice to meet you, by the way, Sadie.
Welcome to the family.
’
‘We can order a pizza,’ I said, as Elias strode away.
29 ‘You can have Fiona’s old room for the night.
’
Sadie bit her lip.
It left a fleck of lipstick on one of her front teeth.
It felt like a sign she might be wavering, so I played my trump card.
‘You don’t even have to talk to me if you don’t want to.
’
‘Fine,’ my wife said.
I thought she was going to take me up on it.
She disappeared as soon as we got back to the house.
The pipes groaned as she took a shower so long I was vaguely concerned even my parents’ state-of-the-art hot water system would run out.
Finally, there was silence for such an extended period of time I thought she’d gone to bed.
But then she emerged, wearing a familiar pair of pyjamas, 30 wrapped in a huge olive-green cardigan.
‘Were you serious about pizza? I’m starving.
’
‘Sure. The usual?’
She nodded.
One of the few things we’d never fought over was our pizza order.
Sometimes, despite that promise we’d made when we moved into the share house to stay out of each other’s way, we’d both be conscripted into a pizza night, and whenever that happened, she and I always split the same thing – pesto chicken pizza, side of garlic bread.
I’d eat my share in one sitting, but she’d always save one or two pieces of pizza and have them for breakfast the next day.
31
‘I hope your sister doesn’t mind me borrowing this cardigan,’ Sadie said.
‘It was hanging on the back of her desk chair.’
It was actually my cardigan – Fi had stolen it from me years ago, back when we were still close – but I wasn’t about to tell Sadie that.
‘She won’t mind.
Want something to drink?
I can raid my parents’ wine cellar.
’
‘No. That’s okay.
’
Then she rubbed a hand over her face.
‘Actually, you know what? Yes. Maybe a drink will help.’
‘Any preference? White? Red? Rosé? Sparkling?’
‘Not red,’ she said, a little stiffly.
‘Anything else is okay.’
I second- and third- and fifteenth-guessed myself before I finally decided that no, it wasn’t too much to choose a bottle of champagne.
32 ‘They won’t notice,’ I said, when Sadie protested.
‘They order cases of it from France on the regular.’
‘I don’t care what they think.
It just seems like a waste.
I probably won’t drink more than a glass.
’
‘Elias can drink the rest when he gets home.’ I popped the cork.
‘We should celebrate.’
She made a noise somewhere between a scoff and a disdainful snort.
‘We’re both gainfully employed.
’ I poured the champagne too fast and it started fizzing wildly, so I had to stop before the glasses overflowed.
‘And we’re pioneers of a bold new strategy for casual conversion.
Future higher education union heroes.
That deserves celebration.
’
The pizza arrived as I finished filling up our glasses.
We carried it to the lounge room, setting everything down on the coffee table.
‘They won’t give a shit about the wine, but this, my parents would care about,’ I said, passing Sadie a plate.
‘There’s a strict no-eating-on-the-couch policy in this house.
’
‘Sometimes I wonder why you are the way you are, Jonah,’ she said, ‘and other times it makes perfect sense.’
I wasn’t entirely sure what that meant, but I had a strong suspicion that if I tried to find out, it would lead to an argument – and much as that would signal a return to normalcy, it didn’t seem like the most auspicious beginning to a marriage, even one like ours.
So I raised my glass instead.
‘Cheers, wife.’
Sadie rolled her eyes, but she clinked her glass against mine.
‘Cheers.’
We drank.
‘Want to watch something?’ I nodded my head at the TV.
‘Okay.’
I helped myself to a piece of pizza.
‘Any preferences?’
‘As my wedding gift to you,’ Sadie said, tearing open the foil wrapper of the garlic bread, ‘I’ll let you choose.
’
She broke off two pieces before passing the bread to me.
‘Within reason, anyway. No documentaries. And nothing about men doing violence and not having emotions. Preferably something where women at least speak, even if it doesn’t technically pass the Bechdel test.
’
‘Noted.’ I took a bite of pizza, chasing the cheese, before turning on the TV.
‘Just for clarity, my “within reason” excludes all reality TV apart from Superchef .’
‘You’re such a fucking snob, Fisher,’ she said, but there was no venom in it.
I almost picked Suits , which I’d been vaguely intending to watch for a while, but stopped myself just in time.
Given the pointed absence of her sister at our wedding, and the fact that Sadie was here and not with her, a show about hotshot lawyers seemed…
not ideal.
We ended up with some gentle small-town drama, set somewhere green and mountainous.
The protagonists were both kind and competent, the stakes were low, the scenery was pretty.
It didn’t require a lot of attention.
The overall effect was somewhat meditative.
‘Top-up?’ I asked Sadie.
‘Maybe just half.’ She wrapped my old green cardigan tighter around herself.
I obliged, adjusting the air-conditioning so it’d be a couple of degrees warmer as I went to put the champagne bottle back in the fridge.
I’d been psyching myself up for a good half hour to ask what had happened with her sister when I realised Sadie was asleep.
She’d burrowed into the corner of the couch, face pillowed on one of her curled hands, hair loose around her face.
People were supposed to look younger when they slept.
I’d read more than enough books to know that.
Sadie didn’t, though.
In repose, she looked like she’d been holding her burdens at bay all day, only for them to collapse in on her now she was unconscious and unprotected.
Twin worry lines cut deep furrows between her eyebrows.
My fingers itched with the need to reach out and smooth them away.
The noise from the TV stopped.
Are you still watching?
popped up on the screen.
I turned it off.
I could fall asleep here too.
It would be easy.
It was warm and cosy.
The couch was soft.
The two glasses of champagne had partially liquefied my bones.
If I fell asleep here, next to her, and it were a few hundred years earlier, it would count as the consummation of our marriage.
Once you spent the night alone in the same room as someone, that was it.
There was no going back after that for regretful newlyweds in the early modern period, no take-backs on the vows you’d spoken.
You were married .
I ran my thumb over my wedding ring.
I’d never really been a jewellery guy, and wearing it felt strange.
Not wrong, exactly, but strange.
Then I exhaled.
‘Shaw.’
No response.
‘Sadie.’
‘Mmmm…?’
‘Time for bed.’
‘Mmmm.’
‘Come on. Up we go.’
She didn’t resist as I worked one arm beneath her knees and the other under her shoulders.
Her own arm draped bonelessly around my neck as I picked her up, her head lolling into my chest.
My bride was heavy in my arms as I carried her upstairs, over the threshold of Fiona’s old bedroom, the one next to mine.
I couldn’t resist stroking some of those loose fiery strands out of her eyes as I tucked her into bed, cardigan and all.
‘Sleep well, okay?’
‘Mm-hmm,’ was all she said in response.
I went back downstairs.
I cleaned up, putting the rest of the pizza in the fridge so she could have it for breakfast.
I wiped down the coffee table, poured the dregs in our wine glasses down the sink, put a spoon in the neck of the champagne bottle and left a note about it on the kitchen bench for Elias.
I made myself a cup of the ginger tea Sadie hated so much and stared out the kitchen window for a long time, trying to resist the urge to twist the unfamiliar ring round my finger.
I didn’t want the cheap gold finish to wear off too quickly, even if we did have spares.
Eventually, I went back upstairs.
It took me a while to fall asleep, given the way my thoughts were stumbling and tripping over each other, but I managed it.
I awoke in the grey pre-dawn.
It took me a while to realise what had woken me.
I was not and had never been a morning person.
My brain didn’t really turn on properly until I’d had several cups of coffee.
But on the other side of the wall, my wife was weeping.
26 Our brief engagement had gone smoother than it had any right to, but perhaps the only truly awkward moment had come when my mother called me, said ‘Don’t tell your father about this, but—’ and offered to pay for a honeymoon suite in a fancy hotel for our wedding night.
Obviously I had to tell her no – newlywed or not, there was no way Sadie was spending our last night in Sydney anywhere but with her sister, and I couldn’t run the risk of someone reporting it back to Mum if I stayed in the suite alone – but trying to come up with an explanation as to why my new bride and I would absolutely prefer to spend our first night as a married couple together under my parents’ roof rather than drinking champagne at the Ritz-Carlton was legitimately harder than my PhD.
27 Blunt – combatively blunt, even – but helpful.
28 We’d had an argument about whether we needed the photographer, which Sadie had eventually won.
‘It’s like the engagement ring,’ she’d said.
‘If we’ve got a couple of wedding photos on our desks at work, it’s an easy way to signal that we’re legit without having to act like a couple of horny teenagers in public.
’
‘But—’
She’d sighed.
‘Which one of us knows more about romantic comedies, Fisher?’
29 I would put the odds of Elias actually having plans at about fifteen per cent: possible, sure, but terribly convenient.
30 You know the ones.
31 Despite the fact that pairing pizza and coffee was objectively disgusting.
That we had fought over.
32 If we couldn’t go to the Ritz-Carlton, then…