As he entered the house, a wave of nostalgia swept over him. Michael had been thirteen when the family upped and moved from Serena to Adelaide in 1980, a move he remembered with fondness. His dad had been following the lure of a partnership offer in a nearby doctor’s practice and had bought the house soon after. Like the house in Serena, this one was situated just a few streets from the beach (so close, in fact, he could hear the waves crashing on a still night). Those years were filled with happy memories – high school, university, the early days of dating Angie – when things had been a lot simpler.
Robert Joseph was wearing a white apron with yellow flowers over his shirt and trousers when Michael walked into the kitchen. He greeted Michael with a smile and a playful slap on the back. “Good to see you, Mikey,” he said, removing the apron and tossing it onto the edge of the sink. “What can I get you? A beer?”
Michael nodded. It was probably what he needed to help loosen his tongue. He stepped past the shorter, stockier man and sat down at the kitchen table. While his father rummaged inside the refrigerator, Michael looked around the room. On the near wall was a corkboard pinned with photos and lists of chores. One photo caught his attention in particular. It was a family snap taken last Christmas when nobody was looking at the camera, what he figured professional photographers would call a ‘real life’ shot. It was probably midafternoon, after the presents had been exchanged, because there was wrapping paper strewn all over the carpet and everyone was sitting in the lounge room eating with plates on their laps. He saw himself sitting next to his mother, smiling lopsidedly. His nose was slightly hooked and prominent, salient almost, though by no means large, as were his chin and forehead, which others had told him suggested intelligence but which he just considered unappealing. How such a gorgeous woman like Angie could find him attractive, he was at a loss to explain. Perhaps it was his jade-green eyes; she was always complimenting him on their color.
Robert now put two cans of West End Draught on the table. “I took that with the new camera you and Angie gave me,” he said. “Not her favorite photo, is it?”
Michael didn’t need to answer. Though almost everyone thought her pretty, it wasn’t a flattering photograph. Angie was frowning and looking particularly grieved. Robert’s present hadn’t been well received, and Michael knew his father was feeling a tad guilty at the prank he had played that day. Michael opened his beer, took a sip and glanced back at the photo, also feeling a little bad at his role in the mix up. It had been his suggestion to buy her something to take her mind off her problems, but in the end it had backfired. It was best left unsaid.
Still gazing at the photo, Michael took another sip of beer. Angie was sitting next to his cousin, Julian Joseph, Jude to his family. Where Michael had the brains in the family, Jude had the looks, by far and away the most attractive of all the Joseph men. He had mesmerizing crystal blue eyes that burned like polished sapphires and he was never without a different girl tagging eagerly onto his arm. His rise through the ranks of SAPOL, the South Australian Police Force, was as swift and dynamic as the number of women he seemingly bedded, so it was always a surprise to Michael that Jude soured his face with a perpetual frown, as if everything he’d achieved wasn’t enough, as if everything and everyone, especially his family, was a source of constant disdain and contempt.
In the picture, Jude was slouching into the soft cushions of the couch, dressed all in black. His blonde hair, whiter than Angie’s more golden color, was neatly coiffed, befitting his newly promoted rank to Chief Inspector. Michael examined his expression more carefully. There was something on Jude’s face he hadn’t noticed on the day. Jude was staring at him with scorn, and even in the photo Michael could feel his blue eyes stabbing like daggers of ice. He wondered why Jude hated him so much.
“I know he’s a cop,” Robert said, following Michael’s gaze, “and as his uncle I should be more understanding of his faults, but I don’t trust him. I bet you a million bucks he’s bullshitted his way into that promotion. Worse than that, he bullshits us, his own family.” Shaking his head, he sat down at the table directly opposite Michael. Then he relaxed, like someone letting go of a troubling problem, and smiled. “Is there something on your mind, Mikey, or have you just popped around to look at old photos?”
Michael didn’t know where to begin. There were just too many things overwhelming him at the moment. He lowered his eyes to the can of beer, running his fingertip around its lip. Robert chuckled quietly. Michael flicked his eyes up to his father’s face, then quickly down to the beer can again. A wry grin adorned his face. “Is it that obvious?” he asked.
“It’s not that difficult when you’ve watched someone grow up over the last twenty-eight years of their life,” Robert said. “You get to know them pretty well, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say it was obvious.”
Michael saw the kindly look of concern on his father’s face and for the first time saw his true age, not the young man kicking the football with his son in the backyard, or playing beach cricket after work, but as a man only a few years from retirement and desperately keen to see his grandchildren grow up before he dies. That only accentuated the problem. As the months passed, it seemed more and more likely that it would never happen.
Michael’s finger continued running around the lip of the can. Robert waited for him to begin. “You know we have been struggling to have a baby,” Michael said, finally.
Robert cleared his throat and briefly glanced at the photo on the corkboard. “Everyone knows you and Angie have been trying for a while,” he said. “I hope she wasn’t too offended by the present I gave her for Christmas. It was only meant to lighten the situation.”
“You mean the book of Kama Sutra?”
Robert nodded.
“She’s over it now,” Michael said. “We had a laugh about it later. It made trying for a baby more fun, at least.”
Robert seemed happier. “So what’s worrying you at the moment?”
Michael ran his hand through his long hair, contemplating the intricacies of how to put into words what had been only vague concepts till this moment. “It’s been nearly three and a half years since we got married,” he said, “and don’t get me wrong, I love Angie and the fact that we’re married, but I’m worried that not being able to have a baby is going to, you know,” and then he stopped.
“You’re worried it may split your marriage,” Robert finished.
Directly hearing out loud what had been on his mind for some while made Michael feel somewhat dour. It was a reasonable reflection of his general state of being over the past six months, and he nodded, saying nothing for a while. “Angie seems to be taking it badly,” he said, eventually. He reached for the beer can, then stopped halfway and withdrew his hand to his lap beneath the table again. “She doesn’t say much, but I know it’s affecting her, and not in a good way. Know what I mean?”
Robert shook his head in agreement, and said, “It’s my experience, both professionally and socially, that in matters where a couple is unable to bear children, it’s usually the woman who gets hit hardest. If a woman can’t have kids she tends to blame herself, for lots of reasons. Sometimes she feels she’s a failure, or worse, that she’s no longer a woman. I suspect Angie is doing a lot of this blame at the moment.”
Michael smirked; it was precisely what he had been thinking. Not that she’d ever said it outright, that was not her style, but he’d suspected that self-blame had been the problem for a while. “She won’t talk about how she’s feeling,” he said, sighing. “She’s using her work to avoid confronting the issue. Yesterday she left at seven in the morning and didn’t come home until after ten at night. I wish I could do something, but I feel helpless. Whenever I try to talk to her I feel like she’s deliberately avoiding me. I don’t know what to do.”
Pausing at first, Michael took hold of the beer can and brought it to his lips, not knowing how to proceed. The friendship he had with his dad was great, but he wasn’t sure how much he should, or could, relate the depths to which he and Angie had fallen. The worst part was being