Josh
The New Year, 2019
She looked like she’d been crying again.
Josh hadn’t known what kind of welcome to expect from Lou as he fell through the kitchen door, arms full of bags – how much shit did two kids need for one night away? – but he hadn’t expected her to ambush him with a bear hug.
He dropped the bags on the floor to return it, holding his wife tightly to him, smelling her freshly washed hair, feeling her breasts push against his chest. But when she pulled away and looked up at him, Josh could see that despite the grin, her face was pale and puffy.
‘You okay?’ he asked, still surprised by her enthusiastic greeting as the girls tumbled in behind him.
‘Mumma!’ Rita shrieked, wrapping herself tightly around her mother’s legs, making her wobble. Lou stood there swaying, giggling, holding her daughter.
That was a good noise, that giggle.
‘Hi, Mum.’ Stella tried to slink past them, but Lou reached out an arm and pulled her older daughter to her, holding her tightly and kissing the top of her head.
‘Oh, hello, hello, my beautifuls,’ Lou said. ‘You have a good time at Grandma’s? On a scale of one to ten, how much did you miss me?’
‘One hundred!’ yelled Rita.
‘Six and a half,’ mumbled Stella from under Lou’s arm.
Josh went back to the bags, and was surprised again when Lou lifted her eyes from the girls and asked, ‘What about you? What’s your number?’
‘Number of what?’
Oh. Why was he such a dick? He knew what she was asking. ‘TEN, obviously.’ He smiled and winked, hoping that would make up for the cue he’d missed.
‘Did you hear that, girls?’ Lou said brightly. ‘TEN! It’s going to be a good year.’
Josh doubted that, if the last few had been anything to go by. But hey, if Lou was in a good mood, things were off to a better start.
‘I’ll just take the girls’ shit up and come fill you in,’ he said, heading towards the stairs.
The house was spotless. It often was if he left Lou alone for a day or so. She would say that was because he and the girls weren’t there to trash it, but he also knew that spending a couple of days putting everything in its place made her feel calmer, helped her head. She’d probably spent the whole of New Year’s Day cleaning up after the Christmas they’d had. Spent a wild night scrubbing the bathroom, most likely.
Personally, the show-home look made Josh itchy. Lou never used to give a shit about this kind of stuff. Neutral cushions in strategic spots and scrubbed-pine floors. The first few places they’d lived together had been full of clutter and colour and chaos. He kind of missed it. In this house, on a day like today, everything looked so much tidier than it was. It felt like bullshit to him. Not that he’d ever say so, of course.
Josh pushed open the door to the girls’ room and threw the two bags inside. Then he went over to Stella’s bed and lay down, stretching out his long legs so that his feet dangled off the end.
Twenty-four hours with the girls was knackering, even with his mum around. Lots of his mates said kids were much easier as they got older, but Josh wasn’t sure. Stella and Rita had been impenetrable mysteries to him when they were babies, that was true, and now, at almost eight and almost five, they could tell him what they wanted. But also, now they never stopped telling him what they wanted.
Sometimes, he was overwhelmed at seeing them grow so full of life and energy and emotion. ‘We made that,’ he’d say to Lou, as he watched Stella cartwheel around the garden, or when Rita was using him as a jungle gym, climbing over his shoulders and dumping wet kisses in his ear. ‘Would you look at this kid? She’s ours.’
But all that energy and emotion was exhausting. There were endless demands and questions and instructions, and there were so many opportunities to disappoint them. And to disappoint Lou with how he handled them. So many women to let down daily.
Josh rubbed his temples. Driving up to Mum’s yesterday with that New Year hangover was not one of his better ideas. What an idiot. Thank God he hardly ever drank like that anymore.
Still, he knew that Lou needed a break. Ever since Christmas Day she’d had this look about her like she might bite him if he came too close. And not in a good way.
He knew that look. They’d been there before. Best to clear out, if you could, even for one night. Might have worked, too. Despite the puffy eyes, she seemed a bit lighter.
Josh wiggled his toes, slipped his hands behind his head. How long could he get away with lying here? Five minutes or fifteen? He just needed a bit of peace.
Even as he thought that, he could hear Lou’s voice in his head, ‘One day with the kids and you’re so tired you need a lie-down? Poor you, I have no idea how you do it.’
How is my own internal critic now Lou’s voice? Josh found himself smiling at that. Could you know someone so well that not only could you hear their thoughts, but sometimes you got them mixed up with your own?
Not that Josh felt like he really knew Lou these days. He used to think he knew her better than he’d ever known anyone. But she’d begun to close off to him, bit by bit. Now he looked at her sometimes, the hard look around her eyes, the way her mouth slipped so easily into a tight line of disapproval, and he had no idea who she was, this woman in their house.
A lot of that’s your fucking fault, mate, he thought. What did you think was going to happen?
‘Daddeee!’ It was Rita, yelling from downstairs. ‘Dad-eeeeeee!’
So much of this had started after she was born, little Rita. It was ironic that she was such a sunny, smiley kid, when, really, her arrival had brought all kinds of shit with it.
All kinds of shit he hadn’t handled very well.
‘Josh!’ Lou now. ‘Are you coming? The girls say you’ve got to tell me the story about the stingray . . .’
She still sounded happy, despite the crying face. Maybe things were going to be alright.
‘Coming!’ he yelled.
Josh sat up, rubbed his belly and swung his legs so he was sitting on the edge of Stella’s bed. Time to go back down. Have a coffee to get through the rest of the afternoon. Two more days of holidays until he was back in the relative peace of the workshop.
He’d been working on being better at home. Working on atonement, and forgiveness, and moving forward without anger. All that stuff he and Lou had talked about. And talked about.
Last night, after the kids were in bed, Josh and his mum had sat on her verandah, listening to the surf and watching the stars come out. Emma had moved two hours north last year, to a gated village of bland, blond-brick bungalows. It was boring, but pretty as hell.
‘I think you’re a bloody saint, Joshy,’ she’d said to him, two glasses of white wine in as he nursed a lukewarm beer. ‘I really do. Just promise me you don’t let her have her way on everything. A man’s got to have his pride.’
‘Shut up, Mum,’ he’d said, but he was smiling. He knew where she was coming from. He would do pretty much anything to ensure his kids had a childhood free from the toxic bullshit that had hung over his family homes like smog.
But his mum didn’t know the half of it, really. She didn’t know how deep it went with Lou, how she was the only woman he could love like this and how he knew, for sure, that she was too good for him. How he’d proved that over and over.