Page 8 of Has Anyone Seen My Sex Life?
On the flip side, maybe it was sent as hate mail. Maybe I was the dick? Not just any dick. I was an abnormally large dick. I thought of people I’d riled in the last weeks or so. There was that mum at the school gate, who’s always held that grudge against me ever since Tess overtook her daughter on the infants’ reading tree. Or maybe it was Trish from the gym who had finally worked out it was me who farted during yoga and blamed it on her. Then there’s that ex-boyfriend from uni who I dumped because he wore boat shoes. It becomes quite the problem when you suddenly realise there is an impressive list of people in this world who might have cause to send you a dick.
But then I remove the invoice from the box. I notice the address on the front. It’s for Danny. Danny’s the dick? Or he bought a dildo for me? For himself? For… I freeze for a moment.
Danny enters with Polly under one arm in the way he’s become accustomed to holding babies, like a farmer holding a newborn lamb. He’s in his pants and an old T-shirt, completing the look with a pair of old man slippers. He takes a thumb and rubs at Polly’s snot-crusted cheeks before sitting at our kitchen table. I clutch the box. Do I ask him why he’s ordered a dildo while he bounces our youngest on his knee? I study his face, the way he takes a handful of Cheerios and uses his palm as a bowl.
I haven’t used a dildo in years. Back when I was a single, independent woman, working as a journalist in theSex and the Cityyears, every woman owned one as a statement of owning their sexuality. When Danny and I first dated and had exciting, regular sex, it got brought out on occasion though my recollection was that Danny wasn’t overly keen – especially as the one I had was glittery and he was convinced it wasn’t wired up properly so was worried it’d overheat and meld to my bits. But then we had decent sex without it, we got married. Marriage didn’t dry up the sex. The chaos of babies and family did. Where was that glittery dildo now? In a box in the garage, possibly. Or worse, in a box in my parents’ loft.
It still begs the question why this blue one is here? Now? My throat goes a little dry as my mind runs through the possible reasons why. He probably bought it as a joke for his brother. Maybe he ordered it in complete error. Maybe he was looking for a rolling pin and he wasn’t wearing his glasses so clicked on the wrong item. Easily done. I should ask him, make a little joke. Danny has always driven that Northern straightforward sensibility through our marriage – a spade’s a spade, a dildo’s a dildo. I stare at the box for a moment, returning to the worst-case scenario.
‘So I told work I’d be in after lunch,’ Danny says. ‘We can walk girls to school, grab Stu from station and then he can come back here? He was going to stay with Mum and Dad but they’re putting up other guests for the party tonight. He can just bunk on the sofa.’
The words are going in but I can’t process them. I look back at Danny smelling the top of Polly’s head. Danny’s younger brother, Stu, has flown in from Sydney to be here for Bob Morton’s seventy-fifth birthday celebrations, starting tonight with some pasta and sparkling wine at the famous Francesco’s. Stu is our present. Then again, maybe it’s the dildo? Maybe it’s from Stu? He is the sort. He’s stayed here before but once got so drunk he soiled himself on our new rug which means our cat doesn’t quite trust him.
‘Yeah, that’s fine,’ I reply.
‘Mum rang – table’s booked at Don Francesco’s for seven thirty.’
‘Yup…’
‘Dad’ll love it. His golden boy’s back where he belongs, not on some surfboard halfway across the world. They’re coming around later to see their lad too.’
Danny talks everything through clearly, in the way that he does. There is always a method. He’d have been good in the military, or as a chef. Very little fazes him. I should just ask him, there is a reasonable explanation here.
‘Daddy…Mummy called me a sassy pants and won’t let me have biscuits for breakfast.’
Eve appears in a uniform covered in yesterday’s squeezy yoghurt. Danny gives me that look where he sometimes dares to support the five-year-old before me. I see him pop Eve on his other knee to hear her woes and brush her hair.
‘Thing is, Buttons, your mum is right. Only fools eat biscuits for breakfast. How you going to make your brain work on biscuits?’
I pause for a moment to see him balance both girls on his lap. Eve is Buttons for no other reason than she has big shining eyes like a cartoon kitten. She’s the quintessential Daddy’s girl mainly in the way she likes to curl into him and give me evils from across the room. I watch as she runs her fingers up and down his bearded chin.
‘Can you go back upstairs and change that cardie, lovely?’ I ask.
‘You call me lovely when you want something,’ she retorts.
‘I want you to go upstairs and find a cardigan that doesn’t smell like cat and doesn’t have yoghurt down the front.’ There’s a tremble in my voice.
‘Mummy’s just mad because of that thing in the box.’
‘What box?’ he enquires.
‘Junk.’ I realise my turn of phrase is not entirely inappropriate. Eve saunters off and I hear her footsteps skip up the stairs. Now’s good a time as any. I open up the box. I don’t say a word, I just hold up the contents like I would a pair of skid-marked pants that he’s left on the floor in the bedroom.Care to explain?I can’t read his look. There is mild surprise but I can almost see his mind whirring like he’s thinking of what to say next. It’s not the reaction I was expecting.
‘I don’t think Polly should be looking at that. You’ll blind her.’ He shields the baby’s eyes and she giggles.
Choked up, I manage to get an important word out: ‘Why?’
He pauses for a moment. ‘It were a gift.’
‘For me?’
‘For you.’
‘Flowers are gifts.’
‘But flowers die…’
‘Well, the message you’re sending here is that you want to kill me instead with a sex toy. This is bloody ridiculous…’ To prove my point, I struggle to get my fingers around it.
