She’s ready to call Parker down, but I reach for her arm and pull her back.
‘If you just spent some time with Audrey—’
She looks at me, annoyed, as if this divorce hadn’t been her idea and she hadn’t brought this outcome upon herself. As if it had been me who’d satherdown unexpectedly that rainy Sunday afternoon and said,This isn’t working anymore, is it? Don’t we both deserve more?
‘I know this isn’t easy, Mags—’
‘It seems pretty straightforward for you!’
Straightforward?She flung me from our nine-year marriage! It was lonely and devastating and heart-wrenching—
‘Sorry, Fraser,’ she says, pinning dark hair nervously behind her ear. ‘I didn’t mean that. Maybe you’re right. Audrey and I should take the tickets.’
It’s as if we’re defusing a bomb.
‘Just wait untilImeet someone and you’re the one facing the prospect of some strange adult sharing your daughter’s life,’ she suggests.
‘I hope you do. I want you to be happy.’
She nods.
‘And then we can rise above ourselves the way I’m sure we can now if we just stay focused on the right thing. Look at our daughter.’ Parker is running towards us, beaming. ‘Isn’t she worth it?’
The three of them—Parker, Maggie and Audrey—burst through the door late on Friday night, Parker elated.
‘Daddy, I won!’
She’s brandishing a trophy, a certificate, and a letter of offer awarding her a semester’s tuition at the music school. It’s reminiscent of so many nights from my childhood when we’d all tumble in after another of Joshua’s wins and I’d think,There he goes! My incredible brother!
But this is my incredible child, flanked by the woman who brought her into the world and the one who is mothering her creativity, and for just these five seconds, at least, it feels like we aredoingit. We’re making this work.
Parker rushes straight to the piano, and Maggie’s smile is radiant. ‘I have to hand it to you,’ she says to Audrey, ‘what you’ve done with her is extraordinary.’
Have we crossed some magical threshold of marital dysfunction and turned ourselves into one of those gold-threaded Japanese vases, crafted from our brokenness?
‘Parker, I’m heading off now!’ Maggie calls. ‘Come and say goodbye.’
She drags her finger up the keyboard in an enthusiastic glissando, jumps up from the piano, runs over, and gives Maggie a hug before dashing upstairs to her bedroom.
‘Always so busy, Bee!’ Audrey says, using the nickname Parker loves, though it gets under Maggie’s skin. As settled as she has become with our new arrangements, our daughter still avoids this doorstep goodbye. It’s why we generally do the handover via the bookends of a school day.
I reach for the door handle. ‘Wait,’ Audrey says, glancing upstairs. ‘Something’s not right with Parker.’ Her voice is low, brow furrowed. ‘I heard it in her piece.’
Maggie recoils at the very suggestion. ‘She was unbelievable tonight. She swept the whole thing. I don’t think she needs extra pressure, Audrey. I know what you musicians can be like, but she is nine years old—’
Audrey stands her ground. ‘I’m not pushing her. I wouldn’t. Shewasamazing and she deserved to win. But there was something off about her performance.’
‘I’m sorry, were we at the same event? She brought the house down. I was moved to tears!’
Audrey, trembling, is rattled at having raised this, but she won’t back down. ‘Technically, it was flawless. But her dynamic range was limited. Emotionally, it fell a bit flat and that’s what worries me.’
Both women turn to me, expecting me to mediate.
‘Could it be nerves?’ I ask, pushing down an inconvenient thought that ‘emotional flatness’ can be hereditary.
Audrey shakes her head. ‘Nerves only elevate her.’
Maggie is staring at Audrey. Grappling, perhaps, with the fact that this piece of parenting intel is being dropped by the woman in the room who isnotcertified by the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists.
