Just Another Week in Suburbia Read online

  First published in 2017 by Pantera Press Pty Limited

  www.PanteraPress.com

  This book is copyright, and all rights are reserved.

  Text copyright © Les Zig, 2017

  Les Zig has asserted his moral rights to be identified as the author of this work. Design and typography copyright © Pantera Press Pty Limited, 2017 PanteraPress, the three-slashed colophon device, great storytelling, good books doing good things, a great new home for Australia’s next generation of best-loved authors, WHY vs WHY, and making sense of everything are trademarks of Pantera Press Pty Limited. We welcome your support of the author’s rights, so please only buy authorised editions.

  This is a work of fiction, though it may refer to some real events or people. Names, characters, organisations, dialogue and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, firms, events or locales is coincidental or used for fictional purposes. Without the publisher’s prior written permission, and without limiting the rights reserved under copyright, none of this book may be scanned, reproduced, stored in, uploaded to or introduced into a retrieval or distribution system, including the internet, or transmitted, copied, scanned or made available in any form or by any means (including digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, sound or audio recording, or text-to-voice). This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent recipient.

  Please send all permission queries to:

  Pantera Press, P.O. Box 1989 Neutral Bay, NSW 2089 Australia or [email protected] A Cataloguing-in-Publication entry for this book is available from the National Library of Australia.

  ISBN 978-1-921997-84-6 (Paperback)

  eISBN 978-1-921997-93-8

  Cover Design: Steve Leard, Leard.co.uk

  Author Photo: J C Henry, Lime Photography

  Typesetting: Kirby Jones

  Printed in Australia: McPherson’s Printing Group

  Pantera Press policy is to use papers that are natural, renewable and recyclable products made from wood grown in sustainable forests. The logging and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.

  To Pantera Press, for believing in this book.

  Contents

  Monday

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  Tuesday

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  Wednesday

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  Thursday

  18

  19

  20

  21

  Friday

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  Saturday

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  Sunday

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Monday

  1

  Wallace’s yapping wakes me just as I’m nodding off. I flip onto my side, and bury my face in Jane’s hair, hoping he shuts up.

  He doesn’t.

  I sit up. Sweat cools on my brow and I wipe it away with my wrist. Damn belated summer has been unrelenting. The clock radio on Jane’s bedside table glows with the lime of its digital numbers: 12.09am. It feels later.

  I swivel out of bed, lock my feet into my slippers, and walk over to the window in my underwear, hoping I’ll be able to shhh Wallace from up here. Unfortunately, he sounds like he’s next door, which isn’t good because my neighbour Vic Booth hates him with an unholy passion. Vic must’ve been bitten as a kid to hate Wallace so much.

  I pull back our curtains and peek out. A street already cuts through the paddocks that unfold beyond our backyard, streetlights so bright they must use the bulbs from lighthouses. It’s only a matter of time before new houses like our own go up. But that’s all the suburb of Meadow is: uniformity.

  There was no sign of Wallace in the Booths’ yard. The beach table with the umbrella and banana lounges are blots of shadows, while light glimmers off the surface of the pool. No sign of Wallace. Sometimes I worry he’ll fall in the pool and drown. Instead of commiserating, Vic would probably charge us for the cleaning.

  I grab my bathrobe from the door, stumble from the bedroom, and turn on the light in the landing. The first thing that greets me is the picture hanging at the top of the stairs of Jane and me on our wedding day. Jane—in her flowing dress, her hair elaborately braided—smiles at me like she’s never known a harried thought in her life. I look mildly shocked, as if the photographer caught me unawares, an expression present in each of the six anniversary photos that chaperone me as I head downstairs. This was Jane’s idea, to mark our coupling as we grew older. We’re getting a seventh photo on Sunday morning, following a fancy dinner and a hotel room at the Sheraton in the city on Saturday night.

  My slippers suction onto the floorboards as I reach the front door. I unlock it, open it quietly. The night’s balminess strikes me. The heat’s simmered in the air and made it sticky. It’s meant to be hotter this week.

  The street itself is quiet, bar the echoes of Wallace’s excitement. The houses are silhouettes, trees in front of them small and still, silent tributes to the idealism of everyday middle-class suburbia. Everybody’s bins are out. I’ve forgotten ours.

  I go outside, grab the bins from around the side of the house, and wheel them to the nature strip while hissing for Wallace. The Booths live to our left. Wallace has the run of our backyard and has his own doggy door. The backyard is meant to be contained, but there are pockets where he burrows under the fence. The Booths don’t have a side gate like we do, so Wallace is free to explore their property, although he’s been told repeatedly he shouldn’t.

  No fence separates our front yards. Our garages and driveways are mashed together. My Fiesta’s parked on the nature strip. Our two-car garage is home to Jane’s VW Beetle and seven years of crap we’ve accumulated. There’s not much room for anything else.

  ‘Wallace!’ I say.

  His yapping stops. I can imagine him cocking his head.

  ‘Wallace!’

  I hope he’ll appear from somewhere else, but he comes sprinting from around the Booths’ house and bounds across their yard—he’s probably been chasing Silver, Vic’s stupid cat. I open the security door and he struts in, a ball of white fluff with a black spot on his back, an irrepressible wire-haired fox terrier. We got him after our efforts to have a baby didn’t work—not that he appreciates that.

  ‘Shhh!’ I follow him in and lock the security and front doors.

  Wallace peers at me as if to say, What? His little tail circles like a propeller, and his nose is dirty, so he must’ve burrowed under the fence.

  I’m wide awake now, so instead of returning to bed, I go into the study and, as I turn on the light, stumble on something: Jane’
s handbag. When she’s not forgetting it at work or in the car, she leaves it just inside the study door so she can scoop it up on the way out. Everything has spilled out. This isn’t our first tangle. I leave the clean-up for later and sit on my recliner.

  My sketchpad and pencils rest on my desk. I take my sketchpad onto my lap as Wallace tramps in, sniffs at the contents of Jane’s bag, looks at me, then hops onto the couch. He has a basket in the laundry but has made that couch cushion his home. He circles on the spot, then flops down and stares at me, as if reproaching me for interrupting his fun.

  I flick through my pad—lots of little sketches of fruit, furniture, a couple of Wallace. Jane says they’re okay, but wives are meant to say stuff like that. Beth, the art teacher at the school where I teach, says they’re good. Of course, she could be humouring me, since she’s also a friend. I used to draw lots. There wasn’t much time once Jane and I got married. I’ve just taken it back up and my efforts don’t enthuse me.

  I wish there were an inspiring landscape outside my window—waves crashing upon a precipice, maybe. But our yard’s a big block of grass rimmed by a Coldstream wall, the big stones fitted neatly together. Recently, I’ve taken a sledgehammer to it because I want to put up something new—like everybody’s done in the neighbourhood—but there’s a gulf between the theory and the practice.

  I move to draw a line on my page, but know if I do it’s because I want to commit to the pretence I’m sketching. I pull back. I don’t want to dirty the page. The page is perfect empty.

  I close my eyes, but there’s no tiredness there. Once I’m awake, it takes a while to switch off—especially after I’ve taken a jaunt like the excursion to shut Wallace up. This is his fault. He lies curled up on the futon, chin on his paws, asleep. I should wake him.

  I put my pad on my desk and decide to go back to bed. I can stay awake in there just as well as I can here. Anyway, there’s the risk of eventually drifting off in my recliner, only to have to wake myself again to go back to my bedroom.

  I kneel by the spillage of Jane’s handbag, begin throwing things back in: purse, make-up, keys (which jingle—Wallace wakes, lifts his head, then hops down and saunters over to check out what I’m doing) … and then I stop.

  A condom sits there—Four Seasons, glow in the dark. The corner of the wrapper is dog-eared. Maybe it’s been battered inside Jane’s bag, or maybe somebody started to tear it open.

  Wallace peers at it, as if recognising it’s foreign. He looks at me, sniffs the packet, then looks back at me. I pick it up in a trembling hand. Jane and I don’t use condoms—haven’t since before we were engaged.

  I shoot to my feet and storm up the stairs, Wallace trotting after me. The anniversary pictures flaunt our happiness, although we weren’t always happy on the days they were taken. The first was taken shortly after Dad died, the third only a fortnight after Jane miscarried, the fifth after we’d thrashed out a plan to save for IVF. I see the shock on my face over the course of the years, as well as some discomfort—a result of Jane dressing me in stiff suits and ties tight enough to be nooses. That’s the price of being immortalised. But now the shock not only mirrors what I’m feeling, but the potential for something much more insidious.

  My steps slow as I reach the landing.

  Falter as I reach the doorway.

  Then stop. Wallace bumps into my ankles.

  I don’t know what to say. It seems obvious: What’s this condom doing in your handbag? But it’s not. It’s like breaking bad news. There’s the way you hear it in your head and the way it’s said in the real world. The two rarely meet. And even when they do, you never want to know what comes next.

  I sit on the bedside, condom clutched in my hand. Jane’s still curled up, covers pulled to her chin. She sleeps in little silk boxers she buys to use as pyjamas because she likes the way they feel. Even in winter, it’s the boxers, so she’s always hogging the covers because she gets cold. You’d think she’d put a T-shirt on. I asked her once why she didn’t. She said she couldn’t sleep in one. Instead, she drags the covers up until she’s almost choking on them. It’s cute, in its own way, but God knows how she tolerates it in this heat.

  Wallace sits at my feet oblivious to what’s going on. I scratch his head absently. He waits for more attention, but when he doesn’t get it, he must realise this isn’t some new game we’re playing, and he gets up and leaves.

  I pull off my bathrobe, throw it aside, take off my slippers, and lie stiff alongside Jane, kicking the covers down to my ankles. There has to be a logical explanation that doesn’t mean the worst for me, for us. Maybe she found it. Or bought it for somebody. Maybe she was out for lunch and some high school brat wanted Jane to go into the chemist and buy her a condom because she was too embarrassed to do it herself, then ran off before collecting it. Do they even sell single condoms? The whole scenario’s stupid.

  It could be that Jane’s fucking somebody.

  She works in an office with a number of guys. Her boss, Henry, is about fifty. I think one of the full-time coders, Barry, is in his forties. But the other one, the one with the funny name—Kip or Kai or something—is only twenty-five or so. Five years younger than Jane, though age means nothing. The rest of the staff are subcontractors, constantly in and out. I wouldn’t know them if I bumped into them on the street.

  Jane rolls up against me, her body warm, breath hot on my skin. Her hand slides up my belly and entwines in my chest hair. These are all trademark Jane mannerisms—Janerisms—which have always reconnected me to her, little bonds that tie us tighter together.

  I want to know the truth.

  But I’m afraid of what it might be.

  2

  The clock radio wakes me at 6.25am. Jane rolls over and slaps it off. Outside, the garbage truck heaves as it collects the bins, a herald that the working week has truly started.

  Jane rolls back onto me and snuggles close. I put one arm around her and run it up and down her back. She kisses my jaw. I run my free hand through her hair. The shampoo she uses smells like roses.

  ‘I could do with another half hour,’ she says.

  She kisses my chin and her big grey eyes lock onto mine as her crotch grinds into my morning erection. Her breasts flatten onto my chest, like they’re melting into me and we’re becoming one.

  ‘You look tired,’ she says. ‘Wallace go off last night?’

  Last night. The condom. I brought it with me. Clutched it in my hand. Thought I wouldn’t sleep, but obviously did. Now where is it?

  ‘Yeah, he—’

  There’s a flurry of little footsteps, then Wallace hurtles onto the bed. Jane sits up, straddled across my crotch and cradles Wallace to her naked chest, her skin as pale as his white fur. He licks her cheek, tail quivering.

  ‘Were you a bad boy last night?’ she asks. ‘Were you a bad boy?’

  She babies Wallace and admonishes him for his foray into Vic’s while I look frantically around for the condom. As she rocks Wallace, the cover slips back—her left shin stretches like a bridge right over the condom, her foot propped up on her toes. I shoot into a sitting position, nearly knocking Jane and Wallace backwards.

  ‘What?’ she says.

  ‘Just …’ And I don’t know what comes next. I peck her on the lips.

  Jane shakes her head and smiles. ‘I’m going to shower. You feed his majesty.’

  ‘Okay.’

  She kisses me, clambers off and deposits Wallace in my lap. I jerk my left leg over the condom just as Jane’s line of vision falls on where it is—she frowns at me. I don’t think she saw it. No, she hasn’t, or she’d say something.

  I scratch Wallace behind the ears and smile at Jane as if I’m doing nothing more than admiring her. But of course I do—that’s never been in doubt. I watch her walk to the bathroom. She’s always been a bit on the thin side, although age is rounding her out. Her hair bounces down to the middle of her back.

  I first met Jane at uni when I was nineteen. She was this shy gir
l who didn’t talk much—at least not to me. I was studying teaching, she business. I don’t think we exchanged more than a handful of words in all the time we were at school. It wasn’t until a graduation party four years later that I bumped into her at the bar. We chatted, I grew infatuated. I timed my run of drinks to bump into her. The second time she remarked it was a coincidence. The third time she was onto me. The fourth time she asked if I wanted to sit with her.

  Jane stretches in the bathroom—a yoga pose where she lifts one leg, and plants her foot against her knee, then lifts her arms above her head and presses her hands together. Yoga’s something Jane used to do a lot but which, like a lot of things, fell away when we got busy making a life for ourselves. Now this is her last tie to it. She swaps which leg she has lifted, holds the pose—I think it’s called ‘the tree’ or something—then relaxes, pulls her boxers down and steps out of them. On her right buttock are two small bruises, no bigger than bottle tops. I wonder, are they the size of a thumb and fingertip? Was somebody clawing her too tight while fucking her? It would probably mean he was fucking her hard too.

  Jane turns on the shower.

  Steps into the water.

  And becomes a blur to me.

  I carry Wallace to the kitchen and empty a can of dog food into his bowl. He sniffs suspiciously at the food, then stares at me as if to say, This is it? Jane and I feed him too much from our own plates. He’d prefer steak or lasagne.

  ‘Eat,’ I tell him.

  He takes a bite, then turns his nose up. I try to coax him, digging a bit of food out with a spoon and mimicking eating it. He heads for his doggy door. I hear it flap open. Then, through our rear bay windows, I see him show up in our overgrown backyard, which reminds me of him getting into Vic’s last night.

  I follow him out and search the fence separating our house from the Booths’. I don’t know what it was with the builders, but the fence has to be at least ten feet high. I know Vic enjoys the privacy, but it makes me claustrophobic.

  I search the base, looking for where Wallace has burrowed through, but it’s the condom that’s on my mind. Jane’s given no indication she’s cheating. She’s never late home, always prompt when I text to check about dinner and things to do in the evening. Then there’s this morning, climbing onto me the way she did. If there were someone else, would she still be so affectionate?