“That’s not true. I want a child as much as you do. I’m just not panicking about it.”
Angie glared at him and crossed her arms. “Well, at least that shows I care. It’s more than I can say for you. You just keep on saying not to worry. It’ll be okay. We’ll have a baby before Christmas. Well I’ve got news for you. I’m not pregnant and Christmas is almost here.”
Michael stared at her. “Why are you working yourself into a frenzy? It’s not good for either of us when you’re like this.”
“So it’s my fault is it?”
“Angel, come on, now you’re being irrational. No one is blaming anyone here.”
“Really? Then why do I feel as if you blame me for everything?”
The next instant, Michael was addressing thin air. He heard her hurried scuffles down the hallway, then the slamming of the bathroom door. Slowly getting to his feet, Michael thought it odd how his legs could feel as heavy as his heart. He went to the bathroom and heard some muffled sobs through the closed door. He imagined her sitting on the toilet seat with her face buried in her hands, probably smudging her mascara. Then he tried talking to her, apologizing for what he’d said, and when that failed he tried the doorknob. It was locked. Behind him, the grandfather clock said it was almost a quarter after ten. He figured there was no point in continuing like this. He’d just have to wait until she calmed down in her own time.
As he ambled up the hallway to the front bedroom, her crying faded until it fell silent. He felt a tug in his heart and a wrench in his gut, sad that she was so distraught, and angry that he couldn’t do anything to help her over it. Angie deserved better than this. They both did. His greatest fear was that they were pushing each other so far away they’d soon fall out of sight, and he knew all too well it wouldn’t take too much more before one of them plummeted over the edge.
Tomorrow, he promised himself, he would try and make amends.
THE NEXT MORNING began as normal. Angie was up at six, Michael at seven. When Michael sat down for breakfast at the kitchen table, she was dressed for work and drinking her obligatory cup of coffee, white, two sugars, from a mug with a yellow smiley face and a caption that said: DON’T WORRY, BE HAPPY. He smirked. Being happy wasn’t high on his list of possibilities today, as with any other day in the foreseeable future. As usual, Angie had readied some cereal and a cup of coffee for him. There was an awkward silence while he tipped the cornflakes into his bowl and took a sip of coffee. They hadn’t said a word since last night’s argument and he tried smiling and making small talk, but Angie only brought the happy mug to her lips and smiled faintly in return. It was rather tepid, like his coffee.
Half giving up on the likelihood of any conversation this morning, Michael wiped a dribble off his chin with the back of his hand and gazed outside through the sliding glass doors that opened onto the backyard. The weather forecast was for cloudy skies and rain, hence his black sweater and jeans, and yet a plethora of dusty rays were shining onto the yellow kitchen walls. He should have felt enlivened, but his mood seemed unchanged. He was dulled this morning from lack of sleep, having tossed and turned all night, a fitful night filled with nightmares of being chased by unknown assailants.
Over a spoonful of cornflakes, he briefly glanced at his wife. Flicking through the magazine she had brought home last night, Angie stopped at an article in the “True Confessions” section, some of which he was able to peruse upside down, a tearjerker about the horror one woman went through when her baby was kidnapped two years ago. Angie was captivated. She was frowning and taking quick sips of coffee, continually pushing her rimless glasses to the bridge of her nose. Her hair was tied into a professional bun, emphasizing her large brown eyes and the fullness of her lips, and all of last night’s creases had been ironed from her work suit. The gold crucifix she wore was dangling on the outside of her shirt between her breasts. She was wearing lilac lipstick, the same color she had worn on their first date to watch the bonfire and fireworks show on Serena beach. Despite their recent troubles, he reckoned she still looked as gorgeous now as then.
He remembered that night with fondness. November 5, 1989, Guy Fawkes night. As they drove along the peninsula to Serena, they had discussed how many children they’d like to have. It was an odd thing to discuss on a first date, he had to admit, but discuss it they did, in detail, and the answer had been three. They were both single children, and they shared the common hope of starting a family in the future. He told her that he had always wanted to have a trio of little ones; it had been that way ever since he could remember. (“One for me, one for my wife, and one for the grandparents,” he had joked at the time.) It was the same, he was happy to learn, for Angie, and the dream of having children was the seed that matured into the bond that eventually united them.
Back when he and Angie met, they were twenty-two and carefree and full of hope. Things were different in those days. Angie was different. They had a bright future, dreams to look forward to, a successful career, she as a lawyer and he as a teacher. After that, babies. There was a cheery purpose to their life. They seemed eager, if not ravenous, for each day, especially Angie.
Happiness, though, he came to realize, was only one side of a coin, misery the other. Your destiny was determined solely on the flip of that coin; heads you got lucky, tails you bummed out.
It was soon after they met that tragedy struck. They received news one night that her parents had died in a horrific bus accident on a local church outing. Angie, needless to say, was devastated. He tried imaging how he would have coped had it been his parents travelling in that bus and not Angie’s. As the months passed, she somehow managed to pick up the pieces of her life. Her strength to carry on was admirable. She graduated with honors from Law School that same year and was one of only fifteen graduates to find employment. It was the middle of the recession, the one that followed the stock market crash of ’87 and the one Paul Keating said was “the one we needed to have,” (could you believe Australia still voted him in as Prime Minister after that?) and Michael was as proud of her achievements as he imagined her parents would have been. He knew then that Angie was the woman he would marry. She was going to be the mother of his three children.
How things change, he thought now, watching his wife. Your dreams, your hopes, all of it decided on the flip of a coin that always lands bums up.
Angie finished reading the article, sipped the last of her coffee, then stood up. “I have to go,” she said, slipping the crucifix down the V of her shirt and out of sight. “I’m running late.”
“But it’s only quarter past seven,” he said, glancing at his watch.
Angie took her mug to the sink. Michael saw her rub her temple as she went. If the mornings started like this, he knew she was sure to have a migraine by lunchtime. “Don’t start on me, Michael,” she said. “I’ve got a lot of paperwork I have to get through at the moment. I don’t need this.”
It was a lie, pure and simple. He knew Angie took pride at being the most efficient worker in the firm, and he knew paperwork never mounted up on her desk. Unlike him, she needed the right conditions to be productive, namely a spotless desk where everything was in its correct place. If it weren’t, then she simply wouldn’t start until she had made it so, just as she always began the morning ironing her suit. He opened his mouth to say he didn’t believe what she was saying, and then quickly shut it.
“I’ll see you this evening,” she said, flashing something tired that was supposed to be a smile, but was more like a forlorn grin. “I’ll probably be late again. You know how it is.”
Michael certainly did.
THAT EVENING AFTER school, Michael decided to call in on his father and fulfill the promise he had