‘You are not safe, Fraser.’ This time it is not a question. It’s an educated observation. And I am far too exhausted to keep up the pretences. It’s easier just to admit it, because she didn’t ask; she just told me how it is, and she is right.Am I meant to ask her for help now?
‘Here’s what we’re going to do …’ she says, before I can.
An hour later, we’re in the waiting room at the doctor’s. The receptionist, who’s known us since before Parker was born, seems enthralled by our presence. Probably wondering why the two of us are here as a team, without our child, knowing as she does that our accounts are now separate.
‘Fraser. Maggie.’ Dr Kumar welcomes us into the room we’ve sat in together ever since we first found double lines on that pregnancy test. We’ve been here with baby Parker on our laps,checking for ear infections or getting needles or asking if it was normal that she hadn’t rolled over yet or that she hated tummy time. ‘How can I help?’
Maggie lets me do the talking. A rarity for us in this setting. But she is a solid presence beside me, and I’ve never, even throughout our marriage, felt like the two of us were more united.
‘There are a number of ways we can tackle this,’ Dr Kumar explains, once I’ve outlined the sleepless nights, the overwhelm at work,the thoughts. ‘I’m going to increase your dosage of sertraline and add another medication to help you sleep at night. I’m recommending some leave from work. Just a few weeks to help you catch your breath. And here’s a referral to a new psychologist who’s just moved to the area. These are just first steps. There’s much more we can do. It’s not unusual for the lines to blur between grief and depression. How you’re feeling and what you’re tackling is very much to be expected with trauma like yours.’
Trauma like mine?It hadn’t occurred to me that our family deserved that label, but Dr Kumar is right. Of course that’s what we’ve been through. A violent, accidental, sudden loss.What else would you call it?
Maggie’s hand takes mine, just briefly, and squeezes it. A tacitYou are not aloneand a reminder that, despite all the time I spend questioning what went wrong and grappling to understand her point of view, there was a lot that was always right. She is a good person. She has a kind heart. We have a long history and an even longer future together, and even if our shared parenting wasn’t a factor in our continued presence in each other’s lives, at times like this, I realise I’d hope we could be friends.
31
AUDREY
When I wake up, I don’t know where I am. I can feel someone shaking my shoulder and calling my name.
‘Parker?’
‘Audrey! Wake up.’
It’s not Parker. It’s a louder voice and it’s angry.
‘Wake up, Audrey. Come on. Sit up.’
I risk opening my eyes. Crushing pain shuts them again. Crushing pain and the sight of Fraser’s ex-wife standing over me like a fire-breathing dragon.
My mouth is parched. Throat burning. Someone across the room knocks a wine bottle onto another one, and the sound of the glass clanging feels like the thundering of an earthquake.Or is this an actual earthquake?Everything is spinning.
‘Sorry!’ It’s Parker’s voice. She must have knocked the bottles. ‘I had to call Mum. I was scared.’
Oh, shit. Things are starting to come into view. I struggle to sit up. World off its axis. And finally I open my eyes and take in the scene.
The living room looks like it’s in late-stage atrophy. The same piles of washing are on the couch, just continually recycled from there. Glasses on the table, not just last night’s. Takeaway food containers. It resembles the quintessential scene in a movie whenthe person has gone through some breakup or personal tragedy and is discovered at rock bottom. Except I’m hitting rock bottom in front of the last two people in the world who should be seeing it.
‘Parker, pack your bag, please,’ Maggie says. Parker starts crying across the room, pulling at the cuffs of her sleeves the way she always does lately. In the back of my mind, I have a terrible suspicion I know why, but I can’t think about that right now, and the fact that I can’t think about something so important tells me all I need to know about how dire this situation has become.
‘I’m so sorry!’ she reiterates, and I realise she means she’s sorry for calling her mother in. She thinks I’m in trouble. Iamin trouble. What have Idone?
‘Maggie—’ I want to apologise. Explain myself. Explain how it is that she trusted me to take care of her daughter last night because we havesuch a special bond, and I repaid that trust withthis.
‘Don’t even start, Audrey. I’m furious.’
She deserves to be. How have I possibly sunk so low that I’ve prioritised knocking myself unconscious with wine over the safety of achild?
Our daughter is thumping about in the bedroom upstairs. Maggie’s daughter.Fraser’s daughter.His precious child. This is the kind of neglect that has kids taken away from families. Although I don’t have that sort of arrangement. She’d been begging for a sleepover for weeks, and Maggie finally relented. She hadn’t wanted to ‘confuse’ her by setting an expectation of some sort of shared parenting continuation now that Fraser is gone, and I abused the opportunity.Because I can’t go one single night.
Maggie picks up the bottles. She tosses them in the recycling bin in the kitchen and comes back for the glasses.
‘Is it just alcohol?’ she asks, casting a glance around the room for evidence of anything else.
‘Yes,’ I assure her. Yes. Although there’s no ‘just’ about it. This roaring tidal wave has engulfed me, and I am powerless against it. I can’t outrun it. Every morning I promise myself it will never happen again; every night it does. I know people drink, some every day, but they stop at one glass or two.I don’t know how.
‘I want you to have a shower,’ Maggie says. ‘I’m going to drop Parker at school—’ I check the clock on the wall, and my head pounds anew at the idea that it’s now mid-morning and she’s so late. ‘Then I am cancelling my appointments for the day and coming back here.’
