3
THERE IS A beat of silence as Mac and I look at Joel and Bianca. I haven’t met Bianca before but I know what she looks like. I have stalked her extensively online, obviously. That’s standard, normal ex behaviour. It would actually be a red flag if I didn’t do that. Joel and I were together for eight years .
I had imagined Joel being with a severe woman after me. Severe in personality—a very brilliant, judgmental person—and severe in looks, beautiful but stark, with a blunt-cut bob and a wardrobe of expensive natural fibres. Someone who could wear linen all day without it creasing. An intellectual who doesn’t watch TV at all and only reads books published at least twenty-five years ago that have been reviewed in the New Yorker .
This vision comes from my own insecurities of course. That Joel never considered me his intellectual equal—how does one insist their work as a marketing coordinator is as important as a neuroscientist researcher looking for the cure to Parkinson’s disease? That my job is just a cog in the capitalist machine, and my book is a laughable piece of commercial junk. And that I dress badly. Joel has style. He would surely move on to a woman more at his level.
But Bianca is nothing like I imagined.
She is a bubbly, shiny, happy, fun person—on social media, at least—who keeps her hair long and wears polyester and bright colours and reads self-improvement books written by podcasters and plays netball and loves life and looks incredibly cute while doing so. Joel doesn’t usually respond to cute. An extrovert with a zippy zest for life would disgust the Joel I know. But maybe that’s the point. Maybe I never knew him as well as I thought I did.
Today Bianca is wearing a cute summery dress and is as pretty as her social-media pictures led me to believe she is, but she seems decidedly less bubbly. She looks quite pale. Joel is wearing shorts, which is the first thing I register about him. Cargo shorts . He hates shorts. He never wore shorts around me unless he was working out. Cargo shorts! He would rather die. I look up from staring at his shorts and meet his eyes. He’s noticed me noticing his shorts.
Nice pockets, I want to say. Lots of storage room. But I don’t. Because I am thirty years old and I have moved on.
‘Bianca! Hi! So nice to meet you,’ I say, stepping forward. ‘I’m Anna.’
‘Yes, this is Anna,’ Joel says, looking mildly annoyed that I have taken over before he could do the introductions.
‘It’s so nice to finally meet you,’ Bianca says. We smile at each other, and I try not to immediately fixate on the word finally in that sentence. I will not be analysing every word this woman says. Well, not until after the wedding is over and Hayley is free to analyse with me. I should keep notes in my phone so I can remember everything. No, I should not. Never leave a paper trail.
Joel makes a little throat-clearing noise which I know means he’s nervous, which makes me feel better.
‘And this is Mac,’ I say, as Mac leans across to shake her hand.
She looks between us, clearly thinking I’m introducing him as a boyfriend, and I laugh.
‘Oh we’re not—I mean, we just met,’ I say. ‘We don’t know each other.’
‘And yet you’ve already caused me bodily harm and seen me naked,’ Mac says looking at me.
I smile. An oh-isn’t-he-charming smile. Fake, obviously. I am not charmed by anyone in this room.
‘We’ll have whatever bedroom is left,’ Joel says, looking around.
He would be absolutely hating that they are the last ones here.
‘I got us lost on the way here,’ Bianca says.
I can’t help looking at Joel. His face is hard to read. Did that cause a fight for them? It would have if it had been me and Joel. But he’s in those shorts . A person who wears cargo shorts is a person unbothered by getting lost and running late.
I could commiserate and say I also got lost, or more accurately, my mother got us lost, but I am not about to offer that information. Let Joel think I was here hours before him.
Joel turns towards the queen room, and Bianca says, ‘Wait, we’re the last here, who took this room?’ pointing to the bunk beds.
‘Me,’ I say. ‘And Mac. We’re trading off.’
‘Oh no, take this room,’ Bianca says.
‘It’s fine. Don’t worry about it. There’s two of you. You need the bigger bed.’ It feels intensely weird to be discussing the size of the bed Joel needs for his new lover, but I am doing well, I am being the bigger person here.
‘She’ll be happy in there,’ Joel says, waving a hand at me and pushing Bianca into the queen-bed room ahead of him.
‘Well, I didn’t say that ,’ I say. Happy implies I’m not making a sacrifice for everyone else. I want to make sure everyone knows that I’m not happy to be in this child’s room with an undersized bed on a wafer-thin mattress but that I’m the kind of generous, selfless person who will make do without complaint.
‘You like being enclosed,’ Joel says. ‘You always wanted one of those canopy beds.’
‘That is not the same thing,’ I say.
‘Oh, I had a canopy bed growing up,’ Bianca says.
Of course she did. I was always intensely jealous of the girls with canopy beds and fairy lights and dressing tables with jewellery boxes on them.
‘Hang a sheet off the top bunk to make it feel like a canopy bed,’ Joel says to me. He must know this ridiculous suggestion will annoy me. There’s no other reason to say it. His face is mild. He looks like a man who thinks he’s saying something helpful, but I know better.
‘That’s a good idea. You should hang a sheet,’ Mac says, smiling at me. ‘Make it fun.’
‘I am not hanging a sheet. It’s fine, I’m totally fine in here,’ I say.
‘See?’ Joel says to Bianca. ‘She’s fine.’
Joel and Bianca head into their bedroom and shut the door behind them, which strikes me as a little bit odd. The only reason to shut the door is if they’re going to have sex or talk about me or have a fight. It’s definitely not sex, because Joel rearranged our whole bedroom three times because he was worried about the bed making noises that a neighbour might hear. Unless he and Bianca have a sex life so hot, they can’t keep their hands off each other, and all of Joel’s old neuroses and quirks have been overridden by his insatiable appetite for her.
No. They must be fighting about getting lost.
Mac and I walk out to the lounge room and sit on the couch and look at each other.
‘What do you think they’re doing in there?’ he whispers.
I shrug. I don’t want anyone to think I have any interest in what Joel does. But then I ruin it by being unable to resist the urge to gossip.
‘Fighting,’ I whisper back.
The front door opens, and Hayley and Luke walk in with a flurry of bags and noise.
‘We’re baaaaack !’ Hayley yells.
She and Luke fuss over Mac, hugging him and asking him about the flight. Hayley doesn’t like Mac much. She once emailed him about a surprise birthday she was organising for Luke, to invite him on the off-chance he’d be back in Australia, and he replied to her ‘sorry can’t make it’ without even a nice little preamble or a greeting or ‘thanks for the invite’. Not even a comma between sorry and can’t. The lack of effort was galling. And Hayley holds a grudge.
No one expected Mac to actually come to the wedding. Hayley was nervous about making him a groomsman because she was sure he would cancel at the last minute. There had been talk of trips home before that never eventuated. But he’s here this time.
Hayley might hold a grudge but she’s also an excellent host, and she knows how excited Luke is to have Mac here, so she’s putting the rude email aside to be her best hostess self.
‘Joel has arrived,’ I say to her. ‘And Bianca.’ I try to say ‘Bianca’ with as much neutralness as possible. Bianca. Bi-anca. Bian-ca ! I should have practised.
‘They have? Where are they?’ Hayley asks.
‘They’re in their room with the door shut.’
‘Oh.’
‘That’s weird, right?’
‘It’s weird. What are they doing in there?’ Hayley whispers, and then she gets up and puts her ear to the door.
‘Hayls, no,’ Luke says, but she ignores him.
‘Silent,’ she mouths to us, listens a second longer, and then walks back.
‘Odd,’ I say.
‘Very odd,’ Hayley replies.
‘I hope they’re still alive,’ I say.
‘Do you?’ She grins at me.
‘I don’t wish death on them.’
‘Okay, good. That’s a positive step.’
‘Joel and I are ancient history at this point,’ I say, which is actually a line I prepared for this weekend. It doesn’t quite come out in the way I want it to, but, still, it feels good.
‘I wouldn’t say ancient ,’ Hayley says. ‘Wasn’t it only a few weeks ago you said—’
Joel and Bianca open their bedroom door and come out, and thankfully they cut Hayley off from whatever deeply betraying comment she was about to make. What did I say a few weeks ago? Maybe that was my rant about how Joel was rebounding way too fast with Bianca and he would probably try to come crawling back to me. It could have been my rant about how the fact he was bringing Bianca is surely a sign that he is feeling insecure around me. Or my rant about how I didn’t think he and Bianca would even still be together by the time the wedding happened. There have been a lot of ill-advised rants—they’re all blurring into one at this point. If it wasn’t completely inappropriate, I would note in my bridesmaid speech how Hayley has indulged me to the point of absurdity.
‘Hey,’ Joel says.
Bianca smiles, but then she says ‘excuse me’ and walks quickly towards the nearest bathroom. We all watch her go without comment, and then moments later, there are sounds of retching.
Joel coughs, as if it will cover the noise, and then puts his hands in his pockets and looks down, avoiding any eye contact. Hayley looks at me, horrified, and then at Joel, wild-eyed and panicked.
‘Joel! Is Bianca sick?’
‘Uh.’ He pauses, and we can hear more retching noises. ‘Well, yes, just a little bit.’
‘Oh my god. She’s going to give the whole wedding party gastro!’ Hayley is backing up, towards the door, hand over her mouth and nose, as if she’s about to run.
‘Is she okay? Should you go and see if she’s all right?’ I say.
‘She’s fine,’ he says.
‘She doesn’t sound fine,’ Luke says.
‘She’s just a bit carsick,’ Joel says.
‘You stopped driving quite a while ago,’ I say.
‘Late-onset car sickness. It’s a thing she has. You can’t catch anything, don’t worry.’
We all look at him.
‘Or maybe food poisoning,’ he adds, a desperate note to his voice now. ‘We ate, um, a pie from the petrol station.’
‘You would never eat a pie from the petrol station,’ I say. Shorts or not, there’s no way he could change that much. Joel is the kind of man who checks and double-checks the use-by date of the milk every time he uses it.
‘No, I’m sorry Joel. I can’t accept that. You’re lying. I need to know the truth. Right now,’ Hayley says.
‘That is the truth,’ he says.
‘Anna?’ Hayley looks at me.
‘Yes?’ I say.
‘Is he lying? You would know.’
‘Come on, Hayley. Let’s not do this,’ Joel says.
‘He’s definitely lying,’ I say. I don’t need to look at his face to know. I can tell from his voice.
‘Joel. It’s my wedding . I cannot get sick. Tell me the truth right now.’
‘Okay. Okay.’ Joel licks his lips. He is looking at me, not Hayley. ‘Anna, maybe we should talk first.’
‘Why?’ I say.
‘I just want to talk to you for a second.’
My stomach is tight, tense, twisting. My mind is refusing to follow that sentence to any possible conclusions.
‘Joel, just say it. Whatever it is.’
‘I really think we should talk first.’
‘Just say it.’ I’m angry, because I’m scared.
Don’t let it be. Don’t let him say—
‘Bianca is…umm. Look. This is not how—or when—we wanted to tell everyone. Bianca is…’ He stops. I can see him reaching for courage. ‘Bianca is pregnant. She’s seven weeks pregnant and has really bad morning sickness and that’s why she’s vomiting.’
I feel very hot, and then very cold, and then a little bit like I might throw up myself. Hayley and Luke have both turned to look at me, and Joel is watching me too, and I need to hold it together, to keep everything from spilling out everywhere, to battle with the desire to scream What the fuck? at Joel and launch myself at him and bodily attack him, crack his head open so I can see into his brain and then his chest open so I can see his heart, and figure out how he could do this to me.
‘Oh my god,’ Hayley says.
I have still said nothing. I don’t think I could speak if I wanted to. The silence between us all feels like a syrupy abyss and I will be drowning in it forever.
‘Wow,’ Luke says.
Joel is looking from face to face.
‘I know it’s very soon, and we haven’t been together long. It’s not planned, it’s not ideal. But. But we’re keeping it. Obviously, or I wouldn’t be telling you all like this. We’re having a baby, and we’re excited about it.’
There are several more beats of silence.
‘Congrats man,’ Luke says, snapping out of the shock first, standing up and walking over to Joel and giving him a hug. ‘This is amazing.’
‘Yes! Congratulations,’ Hayley says, clearly trying to recover. She walks over and hugs Joel as well.
‘Congratulations,’ Mac adds, although he doesn’t sound overly congratulatory.
I am the only one not speaking.
‘Thank you,’ Joel says. His eyes are on me. I am trying to form the word congratulations. It’s somehow in my throat, it’s working its way up, slowly. I open my mouth. I’m scared I might scream. Or sob.
‘Congratulations, Joel,’ I say, and the words are out, but that’s not really my voice, it’s the voice of a stranger, a horror-movie voice.
‘Now can I talk to you, Anna?’ Joel says.
‘I’m okay, I mean, I’m good. We don’t need to talk.’ My voice is shaky now, rising in tone. I sound like a woman on the edge, which I am.
Bianca walks out of the bathroom then and smiles weakly at everyone.
‘Sorry. I’m just going to lie down for a minute.’
‘Can I get you some water, babe?’ Joel asks.
‘No thanks.’
‘Apple juice? Saladas?’
‘Yes, I might try that.’
‘I told everyone our news,’ Joel says. He’s nervous, but also happy, I can see it, in his eyes, in the way he looks at Bianca. He’s excited. He wants this. He’s going to be a dad.
‘I’m sorry,’ Bianca says to the room at large.
For what, it’s not clear. Vomiting? Stealing Hayley’s spotlight? Destroying my soul?
‘Don’t be sorry!’ Hayley says, leaping up. ‘Congratulations.’ Hayley hugs her and I look away.
My legs feel weak. My throat is very dry. I could use some of that apple juice Joel is pouring for Bianca. I need to go outside and be alone, but I don’t want to run off and make a dramatic exit.
‘I’m just going to get something from my car,’ I mumble, and slip out the front door.
I don’t have my car keys, so I walk around to the backyard. It’s sunny, and balmy. The yard is thankfully very large, and at the back, behind some greenery, is a big two-person hammock. I sit in it, and then lie back and look at the blue sky and try to deep-breathe. What’s the thing you are supposed to do to ground yourself? Find five things you can see, four things you can touch, three things you can do, like walk back into the house and grab your ex by his shoulders and yell, Why, why, why you fucking bastard? I want to cry so badly it is like a physical force taking over my body.
But I’m not crying this weekend. I’m not.
‘Anna,’ Hayley says, climbing into the hammock beside me. It swings and she slips, falling out the side, in an ungraceful way that is slapstick and hilarious, but neither of us laughs. The gravity of the situation, of Joel having a baby , overrides any possibility of humour. She gets up and climbs back in.
‘I’m fine,’ I say, before she can say anything. ‘I’m fine.’ If I keep saying it, can I make it true?
‘You’re not fine,’ Hayley says. Our faces are very close. There’s no hiding from her.
‘I’m going to pretend I’m fine, and I need you to pretend to believe me okay? Otherwise I don’t know if I can handle this.’
‘Okay.’ Hayley is nodding. ‘We push it all down this weekend, and pretend you’re fine, and then in three days, you have a breakdown and be a total emotional wreck with my full support.’
‘You’ll be on your honeymoon.’
‘I’ll cancel it.’
‘Hayley.’
‘Anna.’
‘I appreciate it, but I can fall apart on my own.’
‘I know you can. But I don’t want you to. And this is all my fault. For making you stay here with him, and her. I would never, if I thought—’
‘I know. And I told you I could deal with it. And I can! I can. I just need a second. Alone.’ I squeeze my eyes shut.
‘Be alone with me.’ She wraps her arms around me. ‘I’m not going to leave you right now.’
It helps, having her beside me, but it also hurts more, because it’s harder to hold it together with her. Hayley makes me go mushy, she sees the real me, and I need to be cold as ice, hard as steel. I need armour on armour on armour.
She kisses my cheek.
‘I love you, and I love you for doing this for me,’ she says.
‘You are the only person in the world I would do it for.’
‘We can’t be mean to Bianca now,’ she says. ‘You can’t be mean to a sick pregnant woman.’
‘We were never going to be mean to her.’
‘I know, but we were going to say something bitchy behind her back, weren’t we?’
‘Were we?’ I am acting innocent. Of course we were. And I know Hayley actually quite likes her and would have only been doing it for me.
‘Well, I feel like I need to look after her now.’
‘Go and be a good host, look after her. Get her a ginger biscuit or whatever it is you give sick pregnant people.’
‘I’m not leaving you.’
‘It’s better if you do. I need to think. And regroup.’
‘I’ll send Luke.’
‘No.’
She squeezes my arm and leaves, and I use my foot against the tree trunk to set the hammock swinging. I lie there until it stops, then I push it again, and I do this three times, thinking, if I can just stay here and do this all night, I will be okay.
‘Anna?’
I open my eyes and Luke appears above me.
‘Come on, we’re going food shopping. Let’s get out of here.’