Chapter 14
FRASER
‘You and Audrey should take the tickets,’ I tell Maggie.
There’s a strict two-tickets-per-family policy at Parker’s scholarship concert, which presents the three of us with an awkward problem.
‘She’s spent the last six months preparing Parker for this.
I’ve heard nearly every practice. You two should go. ’
Maggie and I are at a playground with Parker, having ‘family time’.
Her theory is that if we do this now, it will normalise shared birthdays and Christmases and Parker’s wedding and the grandchildren’s naming ceremonies.
But now that I’ve mentioned Audrey, she looks like she’s at an awards ceremony, camera zoomed on her face while another nominee’s name is announced as the winner.
Parker is at the top of a zipline, waving at us. Nothing to see here. Just Mum and Dad about to rip through another swing of the split-family gauntlet.
‘Can’t Audrey get a ticket herself as the piano teacher?’
‘Come on, Maggie. You know she’s more than that.’
She shoots me the expression she’s been wearing since the moment I delivered the certainty she was craving: You were right, Mags. There is something there …
Perhaps I shouldn’t have understated things, but I was still reeling. Swept into a relationship without my usual full battery of controlled tests and a thoroughly examined hypothesis.
‘It’s serious,’ I tell Maggie. What it is, is a chaotic, out-of-character, electric, tumbling freefall, and I need to restrain that joy during this conversation.
‘Serious?’ Maggie parrots, as if she’s lost her own vocabulary and can only recycle mine. I watch as she grapples with the idea that her ex-husband might have a second chance at romantic happiness and that it’s not the flash in the pan she predicted. ‘Fraser, it takes you ages to fall in love.’
We stare at each other, her statement cocooned from the noise of the playground while the truth lands.
It’s true that our relationship was more of a slow burn, a cautious start.
But Audrey makes me rush to the water’s edge.
I don’t care about doing this right or waiting for a sensible amount of time to elapse before I plunge towards her.
I want her to crash into my life. I want her to rip up all the stones I paved so carefully and change the landscape of everything.
‘Mummy! Daddy! Look!’
We smile and clap and yell ‘Great job, Parks!’ hoping she won’t tumble off the monkey bars and break her wrists before the concert.
I wouldn’t say this to Maggie, given psychology is generally her turf, but after Audrey found an article about the link between playground bravery and performance risks, part of our daughter’s rapid musical development has been the result of the two of them dangling from tree branches and diving from platforms while I keep my eyes shut.
Maggie’s inner authoritarian was always going to be threatened by the concept of another woman making micro-decisions about Parker’s life. Does she have permission to watch a PG-rated movie in class? Is she tall enough for the roller coaster?
She’s ready to call Parker down, but I reach for her arm and pull her back.
‘If you just spent some time with Audrey—’
She looks at me, annoyed, as if this divorce hadn’t been her idea and she hadn’t brought this outcome upon herself. As if it had been me who’d sat her down unexpectedly that rainy Sunday afternoon and said, This isn’t working anymore, is it? Don’t we both deserve more?
‘I know this isn’t easy, Mags—’
‘It seems pretty straightforward for you!’
Straightforward? She flung me from our nine-year marriage! It was lonely and devastating and heart-wrenching—
‘Sorry, Fraser,’ she says, pinning dark hair nervously behind her ear. ‘I didn’t mean that. Maybe you’re right. Audrey and I should take the tickets.’
It’s as if we’re defusing a bomb.
‘Just wait until I meet someone and you’re the one facing the prospect of some strange adult sharing your daughter’s life,’ she suggests.
‘I hope you do. I want you to be happy.’
She nods.
‘And then we can rise above ourselves the way I’m sure we can now if we just stay focused on the right thing. Look at our daughter.’ Parker is running towards us, beaming. ‘Isn’t she worth it?’
The three of them—Parker, Maggie and Audrey—burst through the door late on Friday night, Parker elated.
‘Daddy, I won!’
She’s brandishing a trophy, a certificate, and a letter of offer awarding her a semester’s tuition at the music school. It’s reminiscent of so many nights from my childhood when we’d all tumble in after another of Joshua’s wins and I’d think, There he goes! My incredible brother!
But this is my incredible child, flanked by the woman who brought her into the world and the one who is mothering her creativity, and for just these five seconds, at least, it feels like we are doing it. We’re making this work.
Parker rushes straight to the piano, and Maggie’s smile is radiant. ‘I have to hand it to you,’ she says to Audrey, ‘what you’ve done with her is extraordinary.’
Have we crossed some magical threshold of marital dysfunction and turned ourselves into one of those gold-threaded Japanese vases, crafted from our brokenness?
‘Parker, I’m heading off now!’ Maggie calls. ‘Come and say goodbye.’
She drags her finger up the keyboard in an enthusiastic glissando, jumps up from the piano, runs over, and gives Maggie a hug before dashing upstairs to her bedroom.
‘Always so busy, Bee!’ Audrey says, using the nickname Parker loves, though it gets under Maggie’s skin. As settled as she has become with our new arrangements, our daughter still avoids this doorstep goodbye. It’s why we generally do the handover via the bookends of a school day.
I reach for the door handle. ‘Wait,’ Audrey says, glancing upstairs. ‘Something’s not right with Parker.’ Her voice is low, brow furrowed. ‘I heard it in her piece.’
Maggie recoils at the very suggestion. ‘She was unbelievable tonight. She swept the whole thing. I don’t think she needs extra pressure, Audrey. I know what you musicians can be like, but she is nine years old—’
Audrey stands her ground. ‘I’m not pushing her. I wouldn’t. She was amazing and she deserved to win. But there was something off about her performance.’
‘I’m sorry, were we at the same event? She brought the house down. I was moved to tears!’
Audrey, trembling, is rattled at having raised this, but she won’t back down. ‘Technically, it was flawless. But her dynamic range was limited. Emotionally, it fell a bit flat and that’s what worries me.’
Both women turn to me, expecting me to mediate.
‘Could it be nerves?’ I ask, pushing down an inconvenient thought that ‘emotional flatness’ can be hereditary.
Audrey shakes her head. ‘Nerves only elevate her.’
Maggie is staring at Audrey. Grappling, perhaps, with the fact that this piece of parenting intel is being dropped by the woman in the room who is not certified by the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists.
‘I can’t say I’ve noticed anything,’ I begin, even though it feels like I’m betraying Audrey. ‘But, Maggie, Audrey is exceptionally gifted. She hears things we don’t.’
I’m met with a silent ‘thank you’ in Audrey’s eyes.
‘All I’m saying is that I think we should watch her,’ she says. ‘Something is missing in her music.’
‘Please fill out this questionnaire,’ Dr Kumar says, three days later, handing me a sheet of paper with a range of scenarios asking how I’ve felt over the last month. If something is wrong with Parker, this is no time for paternal heroics.
Maybe it’s a midlife crisis. I read that midlife is late thirties, statistically speaking. Maybe it’s existential dread. Overexposure to climate crises at work? Burnout?
How often did you feel tired for no reason? the question reads.
There’s always a reason. I can’t think of the last time I got an uninterrupted night’s sleep. Even at nine, if Parker is with us, she inevitably crawls into our bed, and if she’s with Maggie, I wake up anyway, listening for footsteps.
How often did you feel nervous? So nervous nothing could calm you down?
I tick none of the time. I’m not anxious.
How often did you feel hopeless?
This test isn’t nuanced enough. Of course I’ve felt hopeless. I have a child with some sort of problem and a job that exposes the threat of human extinction …
How often were you so sad nothing could cheer you up?
I undo a button at my neck. Until this moment I’d thought this appointment was a waste of time.
An overreaction, in response to all the men’s health advertisements in bus shelters and on the back of restroom doors.
I have a fascinating job. A beautiful daughter.
An amazing new partner. Even things with Maggie have settled down. I should be on top of the world!
Should be on top of the world … Dad said that to me once. University entrance scores were out. I’d been thrilled with 98.85 until they pointed out that, two years earlier, Josh had scored 99.00. And majoring in music, Fraser, where it’s harder to scale up.
My whole childhood had been an effort in scaling up against my brother, striving to impress Mum, in particular, never quite making it no matter how well I did. Every prize. Each scholarship. None of them ever quite as good as whatever Josh pulled off, and I wonder if that’s where this all began.
How often have I been so sad nothing would cheer me up? My hand shakes as I mark the applicable box, knowing this one answer will unlock a ‘mental health plan’ and psychology appointments and medication. And having to burden Audrey with this, right in the dizzying thrill of our ‘honeymoon period’.
You never have to struggle alone, I reassured Parker the other night.
Is the advice the same for an adult male?
Because even as I hand the paper back and the doctor tallies up the score, and despite how enlightened I pretend to be on this stuff, even before the official diagnosis is handed down, I’m already making a mental list of all the people I am not going to tell.