Page 44 of The Therapist
Will the kids notice? Maybe. He’ll just tell them he fell at work. They’re too young to question the validity of the statement.
He pulls up outside the school and, mindful of other parents, takes a cap out of his glove box and jams it on his head, pulling it low and keeping his sunglasses on.
Even so, as he walks through the school he can feel some curious looks but Felix and Lila are standing together instead of playing in separate areas, so they are in and out quickly.
‘Is Mum at home?’ asks Felix as soon as they are both buckled into their booster seats.
‘No, she’s still on her…holiday,’ he replies.Maybe she’s not on holiday, maybe she’s run away, maybe she’s with another man, maybe she’s dead. I hope she’s dead.
‘How come she wanted a holiday without us?’ demands Lila.
‘Because she needed to rest, I’ve told you.’
‘It’s not fair. I need to rest too.’ Lila pouts and Mike has one of those moments when he understands that if his life were different right now, he would be able to laugh. If the right Mike was picking up his kids from school, he would try and remember his five-year-old telling him she needs to rest. It would be a cute anecdote to repeat at the pub or work. But he can’t go to the pub because he has to take care of the kids, and soon, he won’t have a job to go to. There’s nothing to smile at or laugh about right now.
Nothing is funny right now; nothing can be.
‘How about pizza for dinner?’ he says instead and both Felix and Lila cheer at the unexpected treat.
‘I’ll pick it up now and then warm it up later,’ he tells them, mindful of how much cheaper it is to pick up a pizza than to have it delivered.
He has no idea how much money the administrators will allocate to paying off staff. He has a few thousand in his bank account and some money in an emergency fund.
As he pulls away from the school, he can feel his frustration mounting. How can Sandy have put him in this position and why would she have done this?I think I hate her. I really do.
Stopping outside the pizza place, he turns around and looks at his kids, two children who would not be here if not for an accident that led to Felix. Who would he be now if he had told Sandy that he wasn’t ready for a baby, if they hadn’t both still been in the stupid infatuation phase? She would have happily terminated the pregnancy, he knows that.
He’s pretty certain they wouldn’t be together; he wouldn’t be tied into an awful marriage with a woman incapable of real feelings for him or his children. He would be free, maybe still single.
‘Don’t move, guys,’ he says sternly and both children nod, happy to stay in the car.
Stepping inside the small store, he orders and keeps an eye on the car through the large windows. And he allows himself a few minutes of fantasy, of embracing the idea of freedom from everything.
Picturing himself on a motorbike riding around Australia and working in bars, a sense of calm settles over him. He can almost feel the rush of the wind as he drives through the vast desert. He’s always wanted to have a motorbike but he’s never had the money to buy one.
‘Dude,’ he hears, ‘dude,’ and he’s jolted back to reality, where a teenage boy with scraggly hair is standing behind the counter, three pizza boxes in front of him.
‘Sorry,’ says Mike, the fantasy evaporating as his real life hits him in the face with the smell of melted cheese.
At home, he lets the kids grab junk food snacks from the pantry even though he knows Sandy says they should have a healthy snack when they come home from school but,Screw that, he thinks.I’m in charge now.
He grabs a beer and sits down at the kitchen table, scrolling through videos until he sees it’s nearly 5.00 p.m. He has no idea where the time has gone and he goes upstairs to their bedroom to change and is immediately struck by the lingering smell of Sandy’s perfume, as though she has just been here instead of gone for nearly two days.
The floral musky scent is so strong he feels like he’s imagining it. He is compelled to go to the bed, lifting the mattress to check on the phone: it’s still there, right where he left it.
If he knew the lock pattern on Sandy’s phone, he would have read everything on there, gone through her text messages and emails to try and figure out if anything was going on. He’s tried as many combinations as he can think of but after three, the phone freezes up for a few hours.
She could be anywhere with anyone. She could be with another man. That’s really likely. She likes telling him about the men who flirt with her and once…a long time ago, he even enjoyed hearing her stories, knowing that she belonged to him. Maybe she’s met someone and they’ve gone off together. Maybe Sandy has been having an affair for some time now and that’s where she is. He finds that the idea of her with someone else doesn’t bother him at all but the idea that she would simply walk out of her children’s lives makes him furious. What if she never returns and he’s left taking care of the kids? How will he get a job and manage?
Looking around the room, he tries to figure out if anything has changed or if he’s just imagining the smell. He goes over to her dressing table, lifting her bottle of perfume and spraying it into the air, coughing as it catches in his throat, and then he sits down on the small stool she has there and goes through all her drawers, wondering why he hasn’t thought to do this before. He should have gone through everything, not just the clothes. Thefirst drawer contains make-up and face creams, small pots of incredibly expensive creams that make him crazy each time they show up on the credit card statement. Why hasn’t she taken any of it? Another drawer contains her hairdryer and hairbrushes in different shapes and sizes. It looks like she’s actually left everything behind.
He opens her jewellery box, a birthday present from him, timber inlaid with a diamond-shaped mother of pearl decal, creating a beautiful multicoloured sheen. Lifting the lid, he can see that her costume jewellery is still there but her wedding and engagement rings are not. She wears those every day. If she’d left him, would she have left them behind?
Standing, he goes to the door of the bedroom and listens for the kids but he can only hear the television so they are probably zoned out, staring at the screen. He needs to give them dinner and get them into bed. The hours are getting away from him.
He moves over to Sandy’s bedside table, emptying everything, throwing nail polish and nail files, an article on plastic surgery that she’s torn out of a magazine somewhere, a book on parenting that he scoffs at, all on the bed. There’s nothing of value. Sighing, he goes to the closet and feels around on the top shelf, coming across a shoe box that he pulls out.
Inside there are two envelopes. Sitting down on the bed, he opens each one. They are the life insurance policies, one for her and one for him. Did Sandy really not remember the discussion the two of them had about taking policies out? She looks after the household bills and the mortgage and he does occasionally just sign stuff when she asks him to, like he did with this. He remembers her saying, ‘I think we need to have life insurance policies in case something happens to either of us.’ He agreed with that. Money meant breathing room and stability. Why did she accuse him of doing this without her knowledge?
