So what? Suck it up. What percentage of people on this ferry felt passionate about their jobs? It wasn't a God-given right that you would love your job. People said to Clementine all the time: 'You're so lucky to do what you love.' She wasn't grateful enough for that privilege. Sometimes she'd answer, 'Yes, but I've always got the fear of wondering if I'm good enough.' Her neuroticism about her music had always baffled and bugged him, just play the damned thing, but now for the first time he understood what she meant when she said, 'I just feel like I can't play today.' He saw again his computer screen filled with the letter p and felt the panic rise. He couldn't afford to lose his job, not with their mortgage. You have a family. A family to protect. Be a man. Pull yourself together. You had it all and you risked it all for what? For nothing. He looked out the window as the ferry dipped into a swell of green-grey water laced with white froth and he heard himself make a sound: a mortifying high-pitched squeak of distress, like a little girl. He coughed, so people would think he'd just been clearing his throat.
He found himself remembering the morning of the barbeque. It was like remembering someone else, a friend, or someone he'd seen playing the role of a father in a movie. Surely it had been somebody else, not him, strolling about, strutting about his sunlit house, so sure of himself and his place in the world. What happened that morning? Croissants for breakfast. He'd tried to set up the mock audition for Clementine. It hadn't really worked. What happened next? He had meant to take the girls out so Clementine could practise. They couldn't find Ruby's shoe with the flashing sole. Did they ever find that damned shoe?
If someone had asked him that morning how he felt about his life he would have said he was happy. Pleased about the new job. Actually kind of psyched about the new job. He was all smug about how he'd negotiated flexible hours so he could continue being a hands-on dad, the dad his own father never got to be, and didn't he just lap up all the praise he got for being such an involved father, and laugh sympathetically, but enjoyably, over the fact that Clementine never got any praise for being an involved mother?
He might have had doubts about his role in the corporate world but he'd never had doubts about his role as a father. Clementine always said that she could tell when Sam was talking to his dad on the phone because his voice went down a notch. He knew he was more likely to tell his dad about some manly DIY project he'd completed around the house than a promotion he'd got at work, but he didn't care about the bemused expression his dad got when Clementine said what a great job Sam did doing Holly's hair for ballet (better than her) or when he took Ruby off to change or bathe her. Sam was one hundred per cent secure in his role as a husband and a father. He thought his own father didn't know what he'd missed.
If someone had asked him about his dreams on the morning of the barbeque he would have said that he didn't want for much, but he wouldn't mind a lower mortgage, a tidier house, another baby, ideally a son but he'd take another girl no problem at all, a big motherfucking boat if it were up for grabs, and more sex. He would have laughed about the sex. Or smiled at least. A rueful smile.
Maybe the smile would have been exactly halfway between rueful and bitter.
He found he was smiling bitterly now, and a woman sitting across the aisle from him caught his eye and looked away fast. Sam stopped smiling and watched his hands resting on his knees clench into fists. He made himself unclench them. Look normal.
He picked up a newspaper someone had left behind on the seat next to him. It was yesterday's issue. ENOUGH ALREADY was the headline above an arty-looking picture taken through a spattered window of Sydney's rainy skyline. Sam tried to read the article. Warragamba Dam was expected to spill at any moment. Flash floods across the state. The sentences started jumping around, the way they did now. Maybe he needed his eyes checked. He could no longer read for a sustained period of time before he felt twitchy and anxious. He would look up in sudden terror as if he'd missed something important, as if he'd fallen asleep.
He looked up and caught the eye of the woman again.
For fuck's sake, I'm not trying to look at you. I'm not trying to pick you up. I love my wife.
Did he still love his wife?
He saw Tiffany's face in that gold-lit backyard. Come on, Muscles. That smile like a caress. He turned his head towards his ferry window, as if he were facing away from Tiffany's physical presence, not just the thought of her, and looked instead at the bays and inlets of Sydney Harbour under a low grey forbidding sky. Everything had an apocalyptic feel to it.
There were things he could say to Clementine. Accusations he wanted to hurl, except he knew as soon as they left his mouth he'd want to snatch them right back, because he deserved far worse. Yet still the accusations hovered, not on the tip of his tongue but at the back of his throat, lodged there, like an undigested lump of food, so he sometimes felt he couldn't swallow properly.
Today she was doing another one of those senseless community talks she now did. At some library way out in the distant suburbs. Surely nobody would turn up in this weather. Why did she do it? She was turning down gigs to do this unpaid work. It was incomprehensible to Sam. How could she choose to relive that day when Sam spent his days trying so hard to stop the flashes of shameful memory flickering over and over in his head?
'Excuse me?'
Sam jumped. His right arm flew out violently as if to catch something falling. He shouted, 'Where?'
A woman in a beige raincoat stood in the aisle staring at him with wide Bambi eyes, both her hands crossed protectively over her chest. 'I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to scare you.'
Sam felt pure, unadulterated rage. He imagined leaping at her, putting his hands around her throat, shaking her like a rag doll.
'I just wondered if that was yours? If you were finished with it?' She nodded her head at the newspaper.
'Sorry,' said Sam hoarsely. 'I was deep in thought.' He handed her the paper. It shook in his hand. 'It's not mine. There you go.'
'Thank you. So sorry about that,' said the woman again.
'No, no.'
She backed away. She thought he was mad. He was mad. As the days went by he was getting madder and madder.
Sam waited for his heart to slow.
He turned his head to face th
e window again. He saw the Overseas Passenger Terminal and remembered that he and Clementine were meant to be going to a restaurant there tonight. A fancy, overpriced restaurant. He didn't want to go. He had nothing to say to her.
The thought crossed his mind that they should break up. Not break up, separate. This is a marriage, buddy, you don't just break up like boyfriend and girlfriend, you separate. What a load of shit. He and Clementine weren't going to separate. They were fine. And yet there was something strangely appealing about that word: separate. It felt like a solution. If he could just separate himself, detach himself, remove himself, then he could get relief. Like an amputation.
He stood suddenly. He held on to the backs of seats to balance himself as the ferry rocked, and went to stand outside on the deserted deck. The cold, rainy air slapped his face like an angry woman, and the kid in the raincoat looked at him with disinterest, then his gaze slid slowly away, as if Sam were just another feature of the dull, grey landscape.
Sam clung on to the slippery railing that ran along the edge of the ferry. He didn't want to be here, he didn't want to be at home. He didn't want to be anywhere except back in time, in that ludicrous backyard, at that moment in the hazy twilight, the fairy lights twinkling in his peripheral vision when that Tiffany, a woman who meant nothing to him, nothing at all, was laughing with him, and he wasn't looking at the outrageous Jessica Rabbit curves of her body, he was not looking, but he was aware of them, he was very aware of them. 'Come on, Muscles,' she'd said.
Right there. That's where he needed to press 'pause'.