3. Sophie
3
Sophie
She loved Meena, she did. After all, it had been Meena who had pulled her out of the doldrums when she’d wondered how she was going to get through the day with a toddler and a baby and a husband who worked long hours at a venture capital firm that invested in start-ups. It was Meena who had sought Sophie’s friendship and provided her with some of the best laughs of her life. That chick was hilarious, especially after she’d had a few drinks. But as Sophie left the cafe that day, relieved in many ways that Meena had decided to stay, she thought that if she never heard about Meena and Owen’s relationship problems again it would be too soon.
At first Meena’s relationship issues were a way for the two of them to bond. Sophie had needed someone to vent to about her own problems with Todd. He was always travelling for work and was never there when she needed him, despite the many guilt-ridden LinkedIn posts he wrote about being a time-poor father in the world of tech. In his posts he would mention how committed he was to his family, how much he loved them, how he wished there were more hours in the day, and how often he pushed back meetings to after bed and bath times so he could at least be there for his children when shit was hitting the fan and his wife was on her last straw. The reality was, Todd could barely make bedtimes. If he was there twice a week, it was a miracle.
Back then, Sophie wanted to write a comment under one of her husband’s posts, like ‘Bullshit’ or ‘Liar’ or ‘Your children are forgetting what you look like’. She knew the LinkedIn posts were about brand building. He wanted to show he was a modern man, in touch with his emotions and also confident enough in his masculinity to express that he wanted to be present for his children. And even though he failed often, he was trying and his intentions were good.
Meena had been the perfect companion to let off some steam with during those challenging early years of raising children. They’d share a babysitter and head to a swanky underground bar in the city, order expensive cocktails and complain about their husbands and children. Plus they both liked making dirty jokes and didn’t hold back when it came to describing their sex lives, or lack thereof.
But now that they were over those bits, it felt like they were going over old ground, talking about the same things they had for the last seven years. Couldn’t Meena see that nothing had changed with Owen for the entire time Sophie had known her? Plus – Sophie didn’t want to tell Meena, even though she often hinted at it – the woman needed to have something to do during the day.
It occurred to Sophie, as she walked down the street, her freshly blow-dried blonde hair billowing in the wind as if she was walking down a catwalk, that people – Meena included, as tough as she made herself out to be – were far too clingy. She herself had never been like that; she had learnt independence early on. Perhaps it was because she was an only child and her home had been sombre and reserved. She’d quickly realised that being reliant on others was an unattractive quality. It was why she’d often loathed herself when she needed Todd when the children were young. She had never needed anyone before like she needed him then. And now he wanted her to turn her life and the kids’ lives upside down, just so he could appease his guilt about his parents. It deeply irritated her.
‘Sexy,’ she heard a man quietly say as he slowly walked past her. At first she hadn’t heard him correctly and had wondered if he needed something, maybe the time or directions. He was now ahead of her and turned around, giving her a look that very quickly affirmed his statement. She looked away and blushed deeply. Her pace slowed to almost a halt as her heart rate increased. When she looked at him again the man shrugged at her before he continued on walking.
She was relieved that he was moving on, but a part of her was ... she wasn’t sure how she could describe that tiny glimmer of a feeling. She watched the man walking away. He looked like he had just come off a worksite. He wore a fluorescent yellow hi-vis safety vest and dirty work boots on his feet. His shoulders were broad and his arms brown and covered in tattoos. The tattoos snaked up to his neck, meeting a thatch of curly black hair on his head. For a brief second she imagined the man on top of her. What would it feel like, the heaviness of him? Would she be smothered by it, or excited? She had never been with anyone like him. Just then she wanted to smell his scent. She shook the image away as the man turned into a side street and disappeared.
That morning Todd had woken up before her, as usual. He’d showered and shaved and was feeding the kids their breakfast by the time she went down to the kitchen. The three of them were chatting and laughing as she entered the room. With the sun streaming from behind them they could’ve been in a commercial for idealistic home living – they’re just too blonde, too happy and look, who can afford a house like that?
Their living space was open plan, the marble-top kitchen expanding into the lounge area that had floor-to-ceiling windows which they opened on warmer days to extend the space into their manicured garden.
Despite the presence of two young and energetic children, their house never looked cluttered. In the early days it was because she employed a housekeeper, though really the girl was a uni student who was fastidious about tidiness. She’d helped twice a week, keeping the place clean, playing with the kids to give Sophie a sanity break, and babysitting on the odd evening if Sophie (sometimes with Todd) needed a night out. But now that Matilda was ten and Bodhi eight, they barely bothered with toys anymore. The kids were far more interested in their devices. While Sophie tried to keep a cap on their screentime, she often gave in, figuring the kids had so many extracurricular activities they probably got their social and sporting needs met there.
‘Dad made Nutella toast!’ Bodhi was saying, with a wide chocolatey grin. A sugary start to their day – but Todd had tried, and that was what counted.
‘All right, if we’re done, we’ll head off! Just need to wipe your mouth there, mate,’ Todd said, approaching Bodhi with a napkin.
Matilda had only taken a couple of bites of her toast and was fiddling with her hair. Sophie knew that tell.
‘All good, Tilly?’ she asked.
‘Dad said we’re moving.’ The words spilled out of Matilda’s mouth so fast, Sophie knew she’d probably been waiting all morning to talk to her about it.
Sophie gave Todd a look. He wasn’t supposed to discuss this with the kids till they had finalised matters, but he had broken his word and already told them.
‘He did, did he?’ Sophie said, trying to keep her tone even. She made her way to the coffee machine that used the pods even though it was bad for the environment. They had a fancy espresso machine glimmering on the marble kitchen benchtop, but she couldn’t for the life of her figure out how to use it, despite watching multiple YouTube tutorials.
‘I said we’re thinking about it, remember, Tilly?’ Todd said, a little abashed. ‘Sorry, it slipped out,’ he added to Sophie. ‘You know I’m terrible at secrets.’
That was true. It was hard to remain mad at him when he was such an open book. The coffee machine began to whir and Todd grabbed Bodhi’s bag.
Matilda remained in place, on the stool. Sophie felt her blue eyes burrowing into her back. She spoke up as soon as the machine quietened down. ‘Mum. Are we moving?’
Sophie downed her shot of espresso in one gulp and then added another pod. She needed a double before she was going to be able to deal with what the day was throwing at her.
‘Nothing is certain yet, darling,’ Sophie said, trying to keep her tone light.
She could tell, by the look that Todd was giving her, that maybe she hadn’t succeeded in sounding casual.
‘Cos I don’t wanna move,’ Matilda said determinedly.
‘All right pumpkin, we’ll talk about this later. Now let’s get going, or else you’ll be late for school,’ Todd said.
Matilda jumped off the stool, grabbed her bag and gave her mother a look. Sophie was glad she had cultivated this closeness with her daughter. Don’t worry, she tried to say back with her eyes, we’re not going anywhere .
Matilda gave her a small smile, grabbed the remaining toast from her plate and skipped out of the room.
Todd came over and gave Sophie a quick kiss on the cheek.
‘We do need to talk. You know that, right?’ she told him.
‘Any time,’ he said, ‘I’m here when you’re ready.’ He jogged out of the room. The front door soon closed behind him.
At least he was driving the kids to school, she thought. Not too long ago the pick-ups and drop-offs and everything that went in between had fallen to her. But recently, Todd’s work had eased up. His firm had made some good Series A investments, mostly due to his diligence, and as a result they had reaped the benefits. Their life seemed to be in a much better place, which was why it frustrated Sophie so much that at this point, when things were going so smoothly, Todd wanted to uproot them all and move to the freaking country, of all places.
‘How many Americans live in the outback?’ she had asked him, when he first told her of wanting to move.
‘Aren’t you Canadian?’ he had asked. She’d rolled her eyes. It was a recurring joke between them that when they first met, she had said she was Canadian. She knew he was trying to keep the tone light.
‘And aren’t Canadians tough, rugged folk used to all kinds of environments?’ he continued.
She felt annoyance rising inside her. ‘I love being American,’ she’d told him. ‘And don’t act like you don’t love America either. Isn’t that where you get most of your investors? Anyway, what am I meant to do in the backwater shithole you’re wanting to move us to?’
‘It’s not a backwater shithole, you know that. My parents and family are nearby and there’s a shopping centre a short drive away,’ Todd replied calmly.
‘The kids will hate it there,’ she said.
‘Maybe initially, but they’ll soon get used to it and maybe even enjoy it. You see how happy they are when we visit my parents. They don’t want to leave.’
‘Because it’s a holiday. Everyone enjoys themselves on a holiday. It’s a whole different thing when you’re going there to live.’
‘Look, kids are resilient. And you might even like it, Soph.’
She looked unconvinced.
‘I’ll never force you or the kids to do anything you don’t want,’ Todd continued. ‘But I think this will be good for us. The kids are in primary school, their studies haven’t become that serious yet. We’re still young. And with my parents nearby we could spend more time together, just the two of us. Maybe take some weekend trips, go interstate. What do we have to lose?’
She didn’t have an answer for that because she wasn’t sure of what she would say. Maybe that most of all she was scared of having to start all over again? That sometimes she found his close-knit family stifling?
Sophie’s phone buzzed. She still hadn’t logged on to her laptop to start her day and work was beckoning.
The part-time job working three days a week at a small software firm, doing bits of admin and marketing wasn’t arduous, but it gave her something to do. She was trying to go into the office less, using the excuse that she needed the flexibility to be there for her children. But really it was because she was over office life. Especially the fake displays of camaraderie and positivity that everyone tried to inject, despite the fact they were all probably looking at memes of how much working sucked the life out of their souls. Plus everyone seemed so young now. Before she had kids, she was used to being the youngest at her previous workplace and enjoyed informing her older colleagues of the latest trends and music they should be listening to. But now, at almost thirty-eight, she was one of the older staff members. She was the one being given pitying looks when someone mentioned a musician she’d never heard of. She was also decidedly aware of her lack of energy, of her body being sluggish and the bottom half of her stomach bulging when she sat down, which no amount of Pilates could get rid of.
She shook her head, trying to dispel those thoughts, and remembered that such easy, flexible jobs were hard to find. Especially on a part-time basis. A few months into her role she discovered the real reason this magically flexible job had fallen into her lap: Todd. Over the course of three separate golf games he’d convinced the Chief Technology Officer of the company to create a role just for her. And to sweeten the deal, Todd’s venture capital firm made a small investment in that software company, equating to triple the amount of her salary. So really in a way it was Todd who was paying her, not her firm at all.
A part of her wanted to be mad at Todd because she wanted to believe she got this role through her own grit and determination. Although, she supposed, her very first footing on the career ladder was through a family connection as well. After finishing college, her uncle had arranged an internship for her at the investment bank he worked for in Manhattan. She toiled away at the company for three years, getting through the internship and moving on into a well-paid financial analyst role that didn’t excite her. Money had never been something she’d given much consideration to because it was always just there. She had grown up around money – everyone she knew was comfortable.
Then she hit twenty-five and the scratchings of boredom grew in her stomach. If she didn’t do something about it soon, she’d be stuck in that world, going to endless meetings, spending evenings in expensive restaurants where they didn’t even look at the prices of the mains before ordering whatever they wanted and half the time the bill was covered by someone’s expense account. If she didn’t stop and take stock, her youth would disappear before she knew it and she would be like them, sipping their glasses of wine like medicine to dull the pain of existence.
It was a magazine article about a group of friends taking trains across Europe that stopped Sophie in her tracks. She read it as she was eating a desk sandwich, her computer monitor at work blinking back numbers from a report she wasn’t interested in making sense of. In the photos that accompanied the article, the friends looked so happy, sitting under a vine-covered terrace, sunburnt and laughing. She decided then that she wanted to experience the sense of freedom and lightness that could come with not knowing what the day was going to hold. As a calendar reminder popped up for yet another meeting, she decided on a whim to quit her job and travel around Europe.
The difficult part of the plan was figuring out who she was going to go with. Carly, an old school friend, was the only one who was free and able to go. She was someone Sophie kind of let hang around her outer circle, but at least she was able to ditch her job working in a bric-a-brac shop that seemed to solely cater to wealthy women with little taste and too much money and take off with Sophie. They had a good few weeks of travel before landing in Madrid. And then Sophie’s European adventure got cut short because, as she later lamely admitted to herself, she met a guy.
‘Nah, I’m never going to the States,’ Todd was telling someone the first time Sophie laid eyes on him. They were sitting on the floor of the lounge room in a hostel in Madrid. ‘Like what’s even to see there? It just doesn’t seem as interesting as everywhere else in the world, y’know? And the people! Don’t get me started on the people.’
How would you know what the people are like if you’ve never even been there? she wanted to march over and ask. Plus there was plenty to see in her country of birth! Anyone making such generalised statements would have riled her at another time. But at that point all Sophie could think was how good-looking the tanned, lanky Australian man with his legs stretched out in front of him was. His hair, bleached blond from too much time in the sun, was long enough to almost touch his shoulders, while his arms were brown and muscular and covered in rows of woven friendship bracelets. Who’d made all those bracelets for him? Sophie suddenly wondered. A pang of jealousy flared in her chest as she thought about the many girls he’d probably met on his travels. The feeling shook her. How could she be jealous when she hadn’t even spoken to the guy?
And then he looked up, feeling himself being watched by her. Their eyes locked across the room. Warmth flooded her body. He flashed her that sparkly, white-toothed smile she now knew so well, and she was hooked. She found herself walking over towards him.
‘Hey,’ he said. ‘Have you been to the States?’
‘Well, yeah, I’m Canadian, so it’s kinda unavoidable going there.’ The words spilled out of her mouth before she could stop them. Completely the opposite of what she thought she was going to say.
They fell into an easy conversation soon after. That night, she and Todd had sex on the top bunk of his hostel bed, surrounded by a dorm full of people who pretended they couldn’t hear them. In her tipsy state she tried to be as quiet as possible. The creaky bed springs, however, could not be silenced. She almost forgot she’d called herself Canadian until he mentioned it the next day and she had to come clean. Todd laughed and said he didn’t care.
Three days later, she decided to head off with Todd as he planned to explore North Africa. They were going to make their way to southern Spain before catching a ferry to Morocco.
‘Can’t I come?’ Carly had asked, in a way that Sophie judged to be a little pathetic. Read the room, girl, why would you want to be the third wheel?
‘Wouldn’t that be kind of weird? You’ll meet people, Carly. Just stick with the plan and stay in hostels. That way you’ll always be around other travellers.’ Carly had acted like she understood, though she seemed to be on the edge of tears. As it turned out, she took the next flight out of Madrid back to New York and Sophie never really heard from her again.
Sophie had always struggled holding on to her female friends. Except for Meena.
She stopped and took a breath. Counting in for one, two, three, four. Holding for one, two, three. And breathing out for one, two, three, four, five. She did that twice more before turning on her laptop.
The day sped by in a whirl of emails, Teams messages and a meeting that could have been an email. In the early afternoon she took her chair and went out into the backyard. The day was warm and the sun was shining, and she found herself relaxing. On a whim she picked up her phone and called Meena.
‘Sorry about leaving so quickly,’ she said as soon as Meena answered. ‘I was in a shitty mood and didn’t act like a best friend, let alone a BFF.’
She could hear Meena’s throaty laugh. ‘I love how you say BFF like we’re fourteen.’
‘I don’t even think fourteen-year-olds say that anymore.’ She paused. ‘Are you busy? I’m not getting in the way of anything, am I?’ Aside from perhaps a gym visit, Sophie didn’t think there would be much else occupying Meena that day. But she didn’t want to be unkind.
‘No,’ Meena said. As expected. ‘Though I was thinking of doing some gardening. It’s such a beautiful day.’
‘What? Since when do you do gardening? I thought we’d both agreed we had black thumbs.’
‘I’m hoping that one day my black thumb will miraculously turn green.’
‘In the meantime, a lot of plants have to needlessly suffer.’
Meena laughed a little and then they were both momentarily silent. Sophie wondered if perhaps their friendship was shifting a little. If she lost Meena as a friend, who would she have? There weren’t many people who she could laugh with like she did with Meena.
‘I saw a hot guy after coffee,’ Sophie said.
‘Tell me everything.’
‘There’s nothing to tell. He literally just walked past me on the street and called me sexy.’
‘Ugh, what a creep. But also, he was hot?’
‘Well at first I was like yuck, so gross. But then ... I don’t know. Something about him intrigued me. Have you ever slept with a tradie?’
Meena burst out laughing. ‘Ah mate, you need to get Todd to buy a hi-vis vest and fulfil your fantasy. You don’t need to actually sleep with a tradie.’
‘It wasn’t about the fact that he was a tradie. It was, I don’t know. I’ve never been with a guy like that before?’
‘Like what?’
‘I’m not going to spell it out.’
‘Yes you are.’
‘He was, god, this is embarrassing ...’
‘Hasn’t stopped us before.’
‘He was brown and tattooed and y’know ... dirty. Like he had actual dirt on him. Have you slept with a guy who’s got actual dirt on him? It was, I don’t know, kind of a turn on ...’
On the other end Meena was in hysterics. ‘I feel we need to dissect this more over some drinks. Not over the phone.’
‘Some of us have to work, Meena.’ It slipped out before she realised. And as soon as she said it, she knew it would rub Meena the wrong way.
‘You don’t have to work. You choose to work. There’s a big difference.’
‘Yeah ...’ Sophie started but Meena interrupted her.
‘Jesus, Sophie. You’re not even aware of the privilege you have. I have family members who have to work and they do so in petrol stations and supermarkets. You’re just choosing to do it because you don’t want to be another bored, rich housewife.’
Where was this coming from? ‘Whoa, Meena, what’s up with you?’ Sophie asked. ‘Also, you so don’t have family members who work at petrol stations.’
‘Uh, yes I do. I mean, they’re not close relatives but distant.’
‘Uh-huh ... And how often do you see these relatives?’
‘You’re missing the point.’
‘No, I think you are. You definitely can’t talk to me about privilege.’
‘Are you kidding? You have the sort of privilege I could never have. Let’s not pretend that’s not always been the case.’
Sophie felt her face getting hot as this conversation veered into uncharted territory. One that she was not keen to wade into, especially over the phone.
They were both quiet.
‘Any updates on the move? Have you convinced Todd to change his mind?’
‘No ... I don’t know ... Look, I should get back to work,’ Sophie said.
‘Sorry,’ Meena started. ‘I didn’t mean to derail our conversation by talking about privilege.’
‘No, it’s fine.’
‘Will you be at pick-up today?’
‘No, Todd said he’d get the kids and take them to their swimming lessons.’
‘Ah, right. Well, I guess I’ll see you later.’
‘Yeah, see you.’
When she hung up her heart was still racing. She wasn’t sure what had happened, but perhaps it was inevitable. Their friendship had been waning and perhaps this was the final nail. Though she didn’t want it to end. This didn’t have to be an ending, did it?
Back on her laptop, she couldn’t focus on the words on the screen. Her mind kept drifting back to Meena. What had just happened? They had never really discussed race, especially not each other’s, and how that might impact how they saw the world. But perhaps it was because in the past they had been so preoccupied with parenting. They’d been in the thick of it, and now that the fog was clearing, these other issues they hadn’t spoken about were coming up.
Sophie closed her eyes and tried to do her breathwork again, but the exercises didn’t help. Thoughts of the conversation with Meena and white privilege swirled around in her head. Finally at around 3.30 p.m. she fired off a message to her colleagues that she was going offline for a bit as she had to dash to the kids’ school. Then she closed down her laptop, went into the pantry to dig out a bottle of wine and called an Uber.