Chapter Fourteen Jonah
Chapter Fourteen Jonah
Our new apartment was in Bellerive, the same tranquil small-town-esque suburb that Fi lived in, only a short bus ride away from campus – and it was, by any measure but certainly by comparison to the other places we’d looked at, an absolute miracle.
The bedrooms were big enough to fit our desks and our bookshelves.
The kitchen made me salivate: wide black stone benchtops and cabinetry, picked up in the tapware and in the industrial-style light fittings throughout.
There was a spacious balcony with a view over the river and the cricket stadium, which the outgoing inhabitant – our new landlord, Isamu Tsukamoto – had covered in plants.
There had been no doubt that we were going to take it, the Hobart rental market being what it was, but when Isamu mentioned that the internal courtyard of the complex was also a community garden, it was clear we’d gotten very, very lucky.
Not to mention that we were getting the place absurdly cheap.
‘You’re doing me a favour,’ Isamu told us when we met him to inspect it.
‘I want to lease this place so I can move to the vineyard permanently. Having to list it and spend time vetting potential tenants would mean more time in Hobart.’
‘But you don’t even know us,’ I felt obliged to say.
‘I know your sister. She vouches for you. I trust her.’
Presumably Fiona hadn’t mentioned just how strained our relationship had been until very recently.
‘And if the Francesca Shaw I’ve been sending wine to for the last three years is indeed your sister,’ he said to Sadie, ‘then I’ve got collateral.
Trash my place and I’ll cut her off.
’
Sadie laughed, but dejection flickered across her face.
‘If I had even the slightest inclination to trash the place, that threat would put me right off.’
If I’d had even the slightest inclination to trash the place, the sight of Isamu – an unsmiling man with black hair pulled back severely in a man-bun and biceps which could crack walnuts – would have put me right off, no further threats required, but I didn’t mention it.
I just put my hand on the small of Sadie’s back instead, in a way I hoped she would interpret as supportive.
I know your sister’s still not speaking to you, but I’ve got you, Shaw.
We’d found our groove again, after the horrible Friday night fight we’d had on the way to Fiona’s.
I’d spent ninety minutes sitting on Fi’s couch, barely even noticing that the twins had put on Bluey and were snuggled up on either side of me, 39 wallowing in my pit of guilt.
Was one lone mention of my dad really all it took for me to go full well, actually, I think you’ll find it’s extremely difficult to be a straight white well-connected man ?
I’d planned to abase myself at Sadie’s feet and apologise, but to my great surprise she got in first.
‘I’m sorry I was such a bitch to you earlier,’ she’d murmured into my ear under the pretence of kissing my cheek when she and Fiona got back from the bar.
‘You didn’t deserve that.
’
Before I could protest, she was reaching into her handbag.
‘I got you something.’
It was a book of excerpts from various Elizabethan plays, scribbled on and marked up by some previous scholar.
‘You probably have all of these already,’ she’d said, ‘but I know you love marginalia.’
Thankfully, Lex’s squeal of delight over the books Fiona had brought home for them distracted her, or she would have seen me go a brilliant shade of crimson.
If Sadie ever found out how often I scribbled YES or THIS or RELATABLE CONTENT next to passages about pining, then…
Later that night, back in our serviced apartment, she sat me down on the bed, apologised again for our huge blow-up and, after I’d apologised in return, told me to stop picking petty fights with her.
‘I know you’ve been doing it to distract me, and I appreciate the thought,’ she said, ‘but please don’t.
’
‘I’m sorry,’ I’d replied, somewhere between horror and panic that she could read me that easily.
If she could see I’d been doing that, what else could she see?
‘I meant what we said that night too,’ she said.
‘I don’t want to fight anymore either.
’
I’d nodded.
She’d half-smiled.
I braced myself for what would come next – probably her saying something flippant (almost certainly an insult) to end the conversation.
But then, to my great surprise, she’d gone up on her knees and put her arms around my neck.
‘You’re a good husband, Jonah,’ she’d said.
‘I’m sorry you ended up with such a terrible wife.
’
‘You’re all right, Shaw.
’ I’d allowed myself to stroke her hair just once.
‘Don’t sell yourself short.
’
Then I let go, because if I let myself get used to the feeling of her close to me, I would say something stupid like stay there or don’t move or can I kiss you or I love you and this tender, blossoming thing between us – this last, true ceasefire – would die.
Because no matter how badly I wanted to say those things to her, I couldn’t.
It would be thoughtless and selfish.
If there was one lesson I had really taken away from that very first ceasefire of ours all those years ago, it was that Sadie Shaw did not feel about me the way I felt about her.
She never had.
For fifteen years, I’d adored her; and for fifteen years, she’d abhorred me.
I owed her so much.
If I was ever going to begin to repay her for everything she’d done for me by marrying me, the best gift I could give her was not my love, but my silence.
She was already miserable.
Why make her even more uncomfortable?
So I said goodnight instead, and jammed three pillows between us.
It didn’t help.
Every single day, no matter how high we built the wall and how clearly we set our boundaries, I woke up with her sprawled across my back.
It was getting harder and harder, 40 spending every second of every day with her.
Sitting next to her in a café or our cupboard office or at Fiona’s dinner table or on the bed in the serviced apartment, it was unbelievably difficult not to reach out and tease a lock of her hair between my fingers and say, you are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.
Watching the dejection slide over her face every time she looked at her phone and there was nothing from Chess, it was painful not to put my arms around her and tell her, you can yell whatever the fuck you want at me, I’ll still love you.
And all those mornings, when I woke with her pressed against me…
God, it was just about impossible not to turn over, pull her closer, and make an impassioned pitch to her on the idea of properly consummating our marriage.
Thank God we had our lovely new rental lined up.
I had survived some extremely difficult tests in my academic career, but nothing – nothing – had ever been as difficult as sharing a bed with my wife.
We ended up moving about a week and a half later, on, of all days, Valentine’s Day.
Despite the teetering tower of our workload – we still had fifty of those fifty-two lectures to write – we took a half-day off work and met Isamu at lunchtime to pick up the keys.
‘As discussed, I’ve left the whitegoods for you,’ he said, holding open the door of the apartment for us.
‘I’ve also left—’
‘Oh my God,’ Sadie breathed.
‘—the herb garden.’
The apartment itself was empty now, all cold polished concrete floors and black strips of lighting against the white walls and ceilings, but the balcony was still alive with greenery.
It was an incredible tension between order and chaos, leaves spilling wildly from plant pots organised into raked tiers with military precision.
Sadie’s face was alight as she looked at Isamu.
‘This is amazing.’
One corner of his mouth lifted slightly.
‘I saw you admiring the plants when you inspected the apartment, and I have a well-stocked kitchen garden at the vineyard already,’ he said.
‘We also have some spare outdoor furniture from Tsundoku, if that interests you. All it’s doing currently is taking up space in Satoshi’s storeroom, so you’re welcome to it.
’
‘Thank you so much!’
I had no right to dislike this man, who had been nothing but extremely kind and unnecessarily generous to us.
But as I watched Sadie look at him, starry-eyed – and as I watched him later, biceps flexing as he hauled an outdoor table and chairs up the building stairs for us with no apparent effort – a green-eyed monster took up residence in my heart.
What would I say, if she came to me and said, Remember how we were going to be the Sartre and de Beauvoir of Literary Studies?
I’m off to be de Beauvoir with our jacked winemaker landlord ?
How would it feel, sitting in his apartment while he put his hands on my wife?
‘Jonah, are you okay?’ Fiona asked, tapping on the frame of the propped-open front door.
‘You look like you’re about to be sick.
’
‘I’m fine.
Just thinking about work stuff.
’
That, at least, was a perpetually plausible excuse, and Fiona bought it immediately.
‘Your movers are downstairs, by the way. They pulled their truck up on the lawn, which means people are going to start shouting at them any minute, so you might want to go down and help them.’
It was another unusually warm day, 41 and Sadie and I both shed articles of clothing as we helped the removalists haul all the stuff we’d shipped over from the share house up to our apartment.
‘Why the fuck did we go into a career that – careful, mind the corner – required so many fucking books?’ Sadie panted, as we manoeuvred one of her bookshelves into place in her bedroom.
She rubbed the back of her hand over her forehead, leaving a long streak of dust.
My fingers itched with an almost uncontrollable desire to reach over and gently wipe it away.
‘Jonah?’
‘Sorry,’ I said, trying to pull myself together.
‘I thought that question was rhetorical.’
Of course, Isamu – apparently not yet convinced that he had done enough for us – chose that moment to walk in carrying an especially heavy box of my books like it weighed nothing.
42
Sadie and I had disagreed strenuously over who should get the slightly larger bedroom, but eventually I’d proved victorious, insisting that she, as the person who had actually got the job that brought us here, should take it.
Thankfully, our removalists were the kind who took apart and rebuilt your furniture for you, 43 and they had put together Sadie’s bed and were halfway through mine when Fiona returned from her dual mission of placating our neighbours and getting us coffee.
‘Why did you bother shipping two beds over?’ she asked, putting the cardboard coffee-tray down on the black stone kitchen bench.
‘In case we have guests,’ I said, at the same time as Sadie said, ‘Airbnb.’
Fiona looked quizzically between us.
‘We wanted to keep our options open,’ Sadie said.
‘Exactly,’ I improvised.
‘If someone wants to come and visit us, then we’ve got a spare room.
If we need a bit of extra cash every now and then, we can list it on Airbnb.
Which one of those coffees is mine?
’
Fi passed the one marked decaf to me, seemingly satisfied with our comically bad handling of her very simple question.
‘I also have a gift for you. Two gifts, actually.’
The first one was from Isamu’s brother Satoshi.
‘He wanted to welcome you to Bellerive,’ Fiona explained, presenting Sadie with a beautiful gift box stamped with the Tsundoku logo, which contained cheese, condiments, crackers, and a bottle of riesling.
‘And also thank you for taking the apartment, because, in his words, “It’ll be a lot harder for Isamu to interfere in my bar from the vineyard than from around the corner.”?’
Then she handed me a rectangular object wrapped in sparkly pink paper with unicorns on it.
‘This one is from me. Sorry for the wrapping. I didn’t have time to buy anything more adult.
’
I opened it, carefully freeing the tape from the paper so it wouldn’t rip.
‘Oh, Fi.’
She’d had three of our wedding photos framed.
Two of them – one of us with our foreheads pressed together, and one of me kissing Sadie’s hand – were in small frames.
The third – the one of me wrapping my jacket around her – was blown up bigger.
‘I thought these two could be for your desks at work,’ Fiona said, tapping the smaller ones, ‘and this one could hang right –’ she took the larger one from me, ‘here.’
There were three hooks on the wall in the living room.
Fi hung the picture on the middle one, adjusting it carefully until it was straight.
‘I know you got married on the cheap, but your photographer did an excellent job.’
‘Yeah, they did,’ I agreed vaguely.
I was going to have to write a very nice Google review about Going to Gretna Green.
Fi had chosen my favourite of the photos.
My fingers were curled tightly around the lapels of the jacket, creating the illusion that I was using it to pull Sadie into me.
Sadie was looking up at me, an emotion in her eyes that I knew, realistically, had been gratitude, but which the photographer had translated into something…
else.
There was movement beside me.
Sadie.
She didn’t take my hand, but her fingers curled around the bare skin of my upper arm, like I was about to escort her into a ball.
I stopped breathing.
‘I really like that one,’ she said.
‘Me too, darling,’ I murmured.
‘It’s gorgeous, isn’t it?
’ Fi said.
‘It really shows how much you care about each other – oh God, I’m sorry.
’
I had to sacrifice the feeling of Sadie’s fingers on my skin, because tears had started to stream down Fiona’s face.
‘Don’t cry,’ I said, pausing awkwardly for a moment before putting my arms around her.
‘It’s okay.
’
‘I know, I know,’ she sobbed.
‘I’m being stupid.
’
‘No you’re not.
’ I tightened my grip on her.
‘You’re not stupid, Fiona.
’
Her tears were soaking through the fabric of my shirt.
I could feel them pricking at the corners of my eyes too, but I forced myself to hold them back.
She had done her best to look after me when I was younger, and now it was my turn.
‘You’re not stupid,’ I told her firmly.
‘I know I’ve made you feel that way before, and I’m so sorry.
I was wrong.
’
‘I didn’t know , Jonah!
’ she exclaimed.
‘This was going on for years. Years! And I had no idea! What kind of moron misses something this massive?’
‘There’s nothing stupid,’ I insisted, ‘about believing someone when they tell you that they love you.’
Fiona looked at me for a long moment, searchingly, before her forehead fell forward onto my shoulder again.
‘Sometimes it all just… hits me, you know?’ she said, voice muffled in my shirt.
‘How much I cared about Matt. How little he cared about me.’
I didn’t know how to respond to that.
I just held her tighter instead.
She let me hug her for a few moments, then she drew back, extricating herself from my grip and scraping her wrist roughly over her eyes.
‘If it was just me, then maybe that would be okay,’ she said.
‘Maybe I could live with that. But he’s got those other kids in Melbourne, and he cares about them more than our kids – he won’t even pay child support, for fuck’s sake, and he’s shown no interest in seeing them since he left, and…
how am I supposed to explain that to them?
’
‘I don’t know.
’ Shit, what was I supposed to say?
My first real test at being a good brother, and I wasn’t going to pass.
‘I’m sorry.
But—’
‘You don’t need to explain it to them,’ Sadie said.
Fiona and I both looked at her.
‘My dad was a piece of shit.’ Sadie shrugged as she leant back against the kitchen bench, but her fingers were folded around the edge so hard her knuckles were white.
‘No one ever needed to explain that to me. It’s a cliché, but actions speak louder than words.
Your kids are going to be able to read Matt’s actions just fine.
’
She paused for a second, biting her lip.
‘But they’re going to be able to read yours too, Fiona.
And Jonah’s, and everyone else in their lives who shows up for them, and who keeps showing up for them.
They’re never going to have a single doubt that they’re’ – her voice cracked – ‘loved.’
‘Oh God, Sadie,’ Fiona said, the tears starting again.
And then the two most important women in my life stood there, in the middle of our new kitchen, hugging, for a long time, while I desperately hoped I could do something – anything – to make sure neither of them felt like this ever again.
I offered to go with Fiona when she had to leave for school pickup – leaving her alone after she’d broken down like that seemed like a terrible idea – but she refused.
‘This is not the first time I’ve cried over Matt, and it won’t be the last,’ she said.
‘Trust me, I’m going to make you both come around to my place all the time – like, all the time – but there’s no way I’m taking your first night in your new home away from you.
Especially not on Valentine’s Day.
’
She hugged me goodbye.
‘Enjoy the wine and cheese. And whichever bed you pick.’
‘Fiona!’
She grinned at me.
‘And thank you ,’ she said, hugging Sadie again.
‘For being here. For bringing him with you. For everything.’
‘You don’t need to thank me,’ Sadie said.
‘Really.’
Her eyes met mine over Fi’s shoulder.
It made me feel so many things that I almost had to turn away.
Almost.
In the fifteen years of our gruelling education, I had never quite learned how to look away from Sadie Shaw.
What was slightly more unusual was the fact that this time, she hadn’t looked away from me.
By the time Fiona left, we were still looking at each other.
There was a long, extended, agonising silence.
Sadie bit her lip.
And I nearly broke.
I nearly broke like a first-year student in a lecture who couldn’t handle the quiet after a question.
I nearly flung myself at her feet and wrapped my arms around her waist and said I love you, I love you, I love you, the words are too citational to express how I feel about you but maybe if I say them enough times that’ll get the meaning across, and maybe if I keep saying them you won’t be able to get the words ‘that isn’t why I married you, Fisher, get off your knees, you pathetic fool’ in edgewise.
Then Sadie covered her face with her hands.
‘I can’t believe the first thing that jumped into my mind when she asked us about why we have two beds was Airbnb .
What the fuck was I thinking?
’
‘I’ll admit,’ I said, just barely managing an appropriately jokey tone, ‘that I’ve heard you make slicker arguments.
’
‘Just laugh at me and be done with it.’ She groaned into her hands.
‘I might as well have said that the second bedroom was for our good friend Bunbury.’
‘I’m sure we’ll find some people for you to try that line on.
Maybe we can make a game of it, see how long it takes before someone goes, “Hang on, isn’t that Algernon’s fake friend from The Importance of Being Earnest ?”?’
She glared at me from between her fingers.
‘Don’t patronise me.
’
‘I’m not.
I’m just refusing to laugh at you.
We’re not fighting, remember?
’
She dropped her hands from her face, exhaling.
‘I did say that, didn’t I?
’
‘You did. And there’s no walking it back now, Shaw.
’
I don’t know where I found the courage 44 to flick the tip of her nose gently with my finger, but it made her smile, and that sent some harp-string in me thrumming, a gentle, warm vibration.
‘Come on,’ I said.
‘Let me help you hang your fairy lights.’
The summer sun was setting by the time we’d finally managed to unpack everything, which left us with two fully kitted-out bedrooms, with desks squeezed in front of the windows and books carefully organised, if haphazardly stacked, on the shelves – and a living room which was completely empty, apart from our wedding photo on the wall.
‘So we clearly need to buy some stuff,’ I said, leaning against the kitchen bench and regarding the empty space.
‘A couch, to start with.’
Sadie nodded, taking her hair down, shaking it out and then I assumed tying it up again, although by that point I had averted my eyes.
‘Want to go furniture shopping next weekend, once we get our first pay cheques?’
‘We could try looking on Facebook Marketplace. We might be able to get one cheap.’
She shook her head, hair now safely tied in a topknot.
‘I love cheap, don’t get me wrong, but I’ve been burnt before with second hand couches.
Someone gave my mum one after my dad left.
They must have really wanted to rub salt into the wounds, because it was full of bedbugs.
’
‘Jesus Christ, Sadie.’
‘Not interested in your pity.’ The acid note in her voice was deeply familiar.
‘But I’m not interested in bedbugs either.
Besides…
’
‘Besides what?’ I prompted, after a few moments.
‘It’ll be a good test, don’t you think?
’ The expression on her face was almost shy, and it was deeply un familiar.
‘Seeing if we can get through buying a couch without some stupid argument?’
‘You’re on,’ I said, making up my mind then and there that we were going to pass this test with flying colours.
She could have whichever couch she wanted, even if it was neon pink and cost eight million dollars.
‘Let’s go shopping.
’
‘It’s a date.
’
I nearly melted into a puddle at her feet.
Then something in her eyes lit up, and the urge to fall to my knees before her got even stronger.
‘I’ve got an idea.
Get your doctorate.
’
‘My doctorate…?’
‘The piece of paper ESU gave you the same day they gave me mine, Fisher, keep up.’ She snapped her fingers.
I obeyed, because my brain wasn’t working fast enough to argue.
She fetched hers too, and then she hung them on the living room wall, on either side of our wedding photo.
‘The actual most important day of our lives deserves to be commemorated too,’ she said, standing back, regarding the wall.
‘Good idea,’ I said faintly.
‘Looks good.’
I wasn’t going to let that sting.
I was not .
I knew, as well as she did, that what we now had on our wall was two truths and a lie.
Sadie laced her fingers together and stretched her arms over her head.
I had to avert my eyes again.
‘Want to eat that cheese? I’m starving.
’
‘Sure,’ I said, to the black industrial lighting strip on the ceiling.
We didn’t own any glassware – like the couch, the wineglasses in our share house had been someone else’s property – so we ended up drinking white wine out of tea mugs: hers, the ridiculously enormous one with the C.
S.
Lewis quote on the side; mine, a normal-sized black one with the logo of the Australian and New Zealand Association for Medieval and Early Modern Studies on it.
We took them out to the balcony, setting the cheese platter down on the table Isamu and his incredible arms had brought up for us, and sitting on either side of it, chairs wedged in close to avoid crushing the herb garden.
Sadie put some brie on a cracker and ate it, closing her eyes as she tipped her face up towards the sky.
‘This is nice.’
The sun was setting over the river.
The light was Aperol Spritz orange.
It caught faint freckles on her skin, turning her hair into living flame against the green backdrop of the plants.
‘Yeah,’ I said, unable to take my eyes off her.
‘It is.’
‘That was nice before too,’ she said, meeting my gaze.
‘With Fiona. You… she’s lucky to have you, Jonah.
’
‘Thanks,’ I replied.
‘For saying that – and for saying what you said to her.’
I was never going to tell Sadie how I felt about her.
She didn’t feel the same way I did, and it would be unfair to make her carry the burden of my feelings.
But sitting there beside her in the gentle evening breeze, drinking wine and looking over the river from the balcony of our home, I made a decision.
If I could have this – have Sadie as a real friend, a real ally, a real companion – then even if our marriage would only ever be on paper, maybe, just maybe, I could be happy.
39 Thank God Lex was there, honestly.
I had a long way to go as a babysitter.
40 Yes, literally as well as metaphorically.
41 Climate change is real, it turns out.
42 It was the one I’d put all my Norton Anthologies in.
Anyone who has ever dropped one of those on their foot, and consequently not been able to walk for a week, will understand how deeply galling this was.
43 And doubly thankfully, Isamu had left after hauling that box of books upstairs, because if Sadie had seen the horrifying sight of me trying to wield an Allen key, there was every chance she would have run after him.
44 Stupidity?