Sam's parents were going to look after the girls for the day. 'It might actually be quite fun and stimulating to learn something new together!' Sam's mother had said hopefully. There was a suspicious Pam-like flavour to Joy's tone. The mothers were circling. Clementine suspected her mother had been on the phone to Sam's mother, worrying over the state of their marriage.
It was interesting how a marriage instantly became public property as soon as it looked shaky.
She looked at the clock and saw that she'd slept later than normal. It was past six but that was fine. She could fit in a solid two hours of practice before the girls woke. The audition was only a week away now. This was the home stretch. You had to time it right, like an athlete, so that you peaked on audition day. She put on her old shapeless blue cardigan over her pyjamas (for some reason the cardigan had become her practice cardigan) and went quietly downstairs. The absence of the sound of rain opened up a soaring sense of space around her, as if she'd gone from a tiny warm-up room into a concert hall. She hadn't realised how oppressive that background noise had been.
As she rosined up her bow and the dust-flecked early morning sun created tiny glints of jewel-like light around the room, on the glass of their grandfather clock, on a picture frame, a vase, she felt a deep sense of peace about her progress. The strange thought occurred to her that she wasn't resisting this audition, like she had so often in the past. She wasn't wasting precious energy bemoaning the injustice of the system: the oversupply of qualified musicians on the audition circuit, the fact that auditioning was a skill entirely separate from someone's playing ability. Ruby's accident had somehow stripped her clean of what now seemed like a sort of petulant pride, of fear masquerading as outrage.
'Good morning.' Sam stood at the doorway.
'Good morning.' She lowered her bow. 'You're up early.'
'The rain has stopped,' he said glumly. He yawned hugely. He looked so pale and haggard in the sunlight. She wanted to hug him and at the same time she kind of wanted to slap him. 'I might take the girls to the park, so you can practise.'
'We're doing that first aid course today,' said Clementine. 'Remember?'
'I might give that a miss,' he said. Each word was a sigh, as if it were an effort just to speak. 'I'll stay home with the girls. I'll do it another time. I'm not ... feeling great.'
'You're fine. You're doing it,' said Clementine, as if he were one of the children. 'The girls are excited about spending the day with your parents. They have plans.'
He made a sound, an exhausted exhalation, like an elderly person seeing yet another flight of stairs to climb. 'Fine. Whatever.' He turned around and slouched off. It was like being married to an octogenarian who spoke like a teenager.
'It starts at ten!' she called out after him briskly. She felt so brisk today, she was the very essence of brisk, and if he didn't pull himself together soon she was going to briskly tell him that he wasn't the only one capable of throwing around dramatic, hurtful words like: separate.
chapter seventy-seven
'Doesn't that look pretty,' said Oliver.
'What?' said Erika. They were standing in her mother's disgusting, squelchy front yard; it seemed unlikely there would be anything pretty to look at. She followed his gaze to her mother's liquidambar where tiny glistening raindrops quivered on each leaf in the sunlight.
'Look at them sparkle. Like tiny diamonds!' said Oliver.
'You're in a poetic mood,' said Erika. It must be because they'd had sex last night for the first time in a week.
Her eyes returned to her mother's stuff. Now that the sun was out, everything looked even more depressing than it had the day she'd been here in the rain. She kicked at an unopened, soft, sagging cardboard box with an Amazon label, and the puddle of dirty water on top sloshed onto her foot. A leaf clung to her shoe and she tried to kick it off.
'What are you doing, darling? Line dancing?'
Erika's mother appeared in the front yard wearing a red and white polka-dot scarf tied over her head and blue denim overalls, like a 1950s housewife ready to start spring-cleaning. She stuck her thumbs into the pockets of her (brand new-looking) overalls and kicked one leg behind the other and then out to the side while humming some twangy song.
'You're quite good at that, Sylvia,' said Oliver.
'Thank you,' said Sylvia. 'I have a line dancing DVD somewhere if you'd like to borrow it.'
'I'm sure you could put your hands on it easily,' said Erika.
Sylvia gave a pretty little shrug. 'It's no trouble.' She looked around the front yard and sighed. 'Goodness. What a mess. That rain was extraordi
nary, wasn't it? We've got quite a task ahead of us.'
Today's choice of delusion was that Sylvia's front yard looked like this because of the rain.
'Well, we're not alone,' said Sylvia with a brave tilt of her chin. 'People across the state are out there today, mucking in, cleaning up.'
'Mum,' said Erika. 'Those people had their houses flooded. This isn't because of a flood of rain. It's a flood of crap.'
'I was watching TV this morning,' continued Sylvia obliviously, 'and it was so inspiring! Neighbours helping neighbours. I had tears in my eyes.'
'Oh, for God's sake,' said Erika.