Antarctica? Wow! Why?
p.s. Please tell me it’s the penguins?
‘It could be vaccines …’ Jill muses, her TED Talk taking a well-worn conspiratorial turn as Brenda, finally showing proof of life, flicks her eyes at mine.
The phone in my hand stays disappointingly silent. Fraser is probably a busy man. My imagination dresses him in a dark suit and deposits him in a high-rise boardroom, lobbying about some vital piece of environmental Antarctic business. I shouldn’t be fraternising with a client without chalking up the billable time, but as Jill is now drawing ‘causal links’ between my childlessness and what she frequently refers to in hushed tones as ‘feminism having gone too far’, I am absolutely desperate.
Sorry, I don’t mean to be inquisitive, Fraser. I’ve just never known someone to travel somewhere so remote. Are you a photographer? Is it the isolation?
‘It’s justunnaturalnot to want a baby, Audrey!’ Jill declares. ‘At church last Sunday, the pastor said—’
‘Audrey, can I have a word?’ Brenda interjects, finally roused from her mundanity-induced coma and hovering beside me, ready to airlift me out of Jill’s one-woman war on population decline. ‘There’s an anomaly in the weekly budget report you emailed earlier.’
Is this about Fraser Miller or some fresh mistake?Either way, I rescue my lunch from the microwave and trail behind Brenda to her immaculate desk, where it becomes apparent that there is a yawning chasm between where I am now and where the exacting KPIs of Bates, Scrivener and Daley Family Law expect me to be. It makes a refreshing change, at least, from being berated over my lack of maternal drive.
All through the conversation, I keep one eye on my phone.Have I offended him, somehow, with the inquisition?
Once Brenda lets me go, I type a hurried and professional followup while walking back to my desk.
Fraser, my apologies for taking up your time. I’ll be in touch soon re: your bill.
Tumbling into my workstation, I search ‘How to know if you’re having a quarter-life crisis’. Wait, that can’t be right. I’m thirty-ish now, four threes are twelve, carry the zero—Am I more than a third through my life already? What am I doing with it?
And that’s when a notification flashes, announcing an email from a former university classmate.
Subject: Bit of a weird one
Audrey, sorry to contact you out of the blue. Have you heard about this investigation into historic claims of academic misconduct?
I go stone cold. Everything rushes back. The confusion. The fear. The shame and guilt and defeat. Suddenly I don’t care about Jill or my fertility or Brenda’s spreadsheet or whatever percentage of a life crisis I was galloping towards. I can’t think straight about any of it, because I’m right back at that distressing fork in the road where I so spectacularly lost my way.
I drop my phone on the desk as if it’s poison, which nudges the mouse and wakes the computer, the whole exchange with Fraser Miller fluttering into the inbox like a burst of sunshine.
Thanks, Audrey. Appreciate it. And no need to apologise.
Cheers,
Fraser
(Ocean scientist. Likes penguins.)
2
FRASER
Another message arrives from Bates, Scrivener and Daley Family Law. From the partner this time, Peter Reed. The sight of his name shoots a Pavlovian pain to my heart.
It’s a shock that Maggie and I are here at all, seeing divorce lawyers, trying to steer ourselves and Parker through the wreckage without careening off this broken road, sheer drops on either side. Floundering at the wrong end of the story we began, barefoot and idealistic, beneath a hibiscus trellis on a Fijian beach nine years ago.
‘It’s not that I’m opposed to traditional weddings,’ I’d explained to Maggie back then. What I really opposed was the flamboyant version favoured by her parents. They’d wanted a splashy, blacktie affair at a Sydney rooftop bar, the guest list a Who’s Who of the people most likely to give us a leg-up. ‘I just think it would be nice to exchange vows on a finite resource before climate change devours it.’
‘You want to start our marriage on shaky ground?’
I took her hand in mine, gazed into her beautiful, disappointed face, and used what she would later describe as my ‘lethal Adam Brody charm’ as I said, ‘Not shaky ground, Maggie. Precious ground …’
And that had been it. No more acquiescing to her parents! She was in love with the symbolism. And with me. And I loved her.Still do love her, in changing ways that I’m fumbling to articulate, except that it’snot in the way she needs—a fact the shared-custody consent orders attached to the lawyer’s email make blaringly, heartbreakingly real.
Shared custody.I glance in the mirror at Parker’s empty car seat—sun hat and colouring book flung beside it—and there’s that growing band of pressure in my chest. Maggie and I have been separated for more than a year now. None of this is new. But I feel like I’ll never acclimatise.
