“Oh, it’s all so stupid. It’s not me who’s worried, it’s him! Dom is a sleepwalker, and he’s read these articles about ‘sleepwalking murder.’ It’s, like, really rare, but it’s real, it happens, and Dom is just…he’s just…”
She stops because the cathedral bells have begun to toll. It’s so somber and dramatic. Church bells always give her those feelings, like: Life! Big! Tragic! Mysterious!
“He wants to do all sorts of stupid things now, like sleeping in separate rooms, when we’ve only got one bedroom!” She hears the brittle, tense sound of her voice. It’s familiar. She realizes she is sounding like her mother. “He suggested he lock himself up in the bathroom! Like he’s a werewolf.”
Paula nods. Something seems to be opening up in her face.
She says, “I get how Dom feels. It’s because you can’t control it. I’ve been a bit irrational too.”
“How?” says Eve.
Paula says, “I’ve got Timmy enrolled at three different swim schools. It’s the only time I feel calm, when he’s swimming.”
It’s like she’s admitting a huge secret.
“Does he not like the swimming lessons?” Eve tries to understand.
“Oh, no, he loves swimming, he’s crazy about it,” says Paula. “It’s just…it’s weird for me to do this many swimming lessons. I mean, if anyone knew, they’d think I’d lost the plot.”
“But if he loves swimming, like, who cares what people say, whatever!”
Paula smiles as if Eve has said something amusing but also revelatory. For a minute they don’t say anything. They listen to the bells and give each other kind of appraising looks, trying to work each other out.
“The lady is probably not coming to the funeral,” says Eve.
“It’s a long shot,” agrees Paula. “She might not live in Hobart. She definitely doesn’t advertise. I’ve looked at thousands of websites.”
“She might not even live in Australia,” says Eve. “Although I reckon she does. It felt like she did.”
“Yes, you know, I actually thought I recognized her,” says Paula. “But I can’t remember from where.” She scrunches her forehead so hard it looks painful. “I’m normally good with faces.”
“Do you get a feeling when you think about her face?” asks Eve. “Once I saw a guy on TV who reminded me of someone and I got a sleepy bored feeling and I realized it was my history teacher.”
“Oh,” says Paula. She closes her eyes. “I think the feeling is a kind of sadness. But also, at the same time, maybe, joy? What could that possibly mean? I don’t know. But, look, maybe we should join forces to try to track her down.”
Eve is about to answer yes, she would like that very much, but her phone is vibrating with a message from Dom, and she glances down and reads the headline of an article he’s sent her:
“Woman Kills Beloved Parrot in Her Sleep.”
His message says: We need to talk.
That’s very upsetting, but she’s not a parrot.
We need to talk. It’s never good when your partner needs to talk.
She looks up at Paula. “We need to find her fast.”
Chapter 81
I thought I couldn’t live after I lost Jack, but I just kept right on living.
I had three women in my life—my auntie Pat, my mother, and my grandmother—who had all lost the men they loved, and they refused to let me sink too far into the dark muddy depths of grief and depression. There was always someone there to yank me back up by the elbow. It was a combined effort, involving endless cups of tea, long walks I didn’t want to take, hot baths and hot water bottles, and sometimes just a hand on my back while I lay on my bed and cried a million tears for the future that was no longer mine.
And there was television.
Every weeknight at 8:30 p.m., the four of us watched Number 96, a racy, groundbreaking soap opera following the lives of the residents of an apartment block in Paddington, which caused us to gasp and laugh and my grandmother to make the sign of the cross, even as her eyes stayed glued to the screen. Its first episode was advertised with the tagline Tonight Australian television loses its virginity, and that was not an exaggeration. We were all four as deeply addicted as Auntie Pat was to her ciggies and Bex. I can still see the enthralled profiles of my mother, grandmother, and aunt illuminated in the flickering monochrome light from the television.
Of course, I kept up with my studies and my marks didn’t drop, but I walked through the grounds of Sydney University in a daze. Nobody felt quite real to me. Bev, Don, and Aldo—characters from Number 96—felt more real to me than the people seated next to me in lectures.
It feels trite to admit a television series helped with my grief for Jack, but it’s true. You can avoid grief but you can’t do it for twenty-four hours a day. You need distraction, and as long as it’s legal and doesn’t hurt you or anyone else, I recommend you take that distraction where you can find it.
Ivy and I had a terrible falling out during this time. She wanted me to get on with things. One day she snapped, “You weren’t even engaged to him, Cherry, stop wallowing! You will waste your life like your auntie Pat did for a man you hardly knew!”
I found that deeply offensive to both Auntie Pat and to me. Jack and I might not have announced an engagement but we planned to marry and have four children.
A year later Ivy sent me a letter of apology. It was a very nice letter and of course I forgave her.
It’s never too late for an apology.
Correction:
Sometimes it is too late.
Never mind.
After I graduated, everybody smugly waited for me to accept the fact that the only job I was now qualified for was teaching math, but I was determined. I went through the White Pages and wrote down the names and addresses of any organization I thought might be able to find some use for someone with a math degree. I posted forty letters.
Two weeks later, the phone rang, and a man with a musical Scottish accent said, “Cherry Hetherington?”
