The Aftermath Of You

Chapter Thirty Eight

"Look, Jack!" I pointed to the sport's shop. "A brand new bicycle, I bet it isn't even stuck in hill gear - only two hundred and fifty dollars! Do you want that for your birthday?"

Audible sigh.

"I'll take that as a no. New clothes for work?"

Audible sigh.

When I was a child, I remember Granny Smith telling me that sighing is a little bit of your soul escaping your body, like air from a balloon. I think I was restless because it was a rainy day and I would have much preferred playing in the garden to sitting around pompously having tea and biscuits with her friends. So I had tried to stop sighing all together, but it made me restless. Delirious. I struggled to keep myself together but the cup hit the saucer a little too loudly and the spoon hit the plate a little too angrily. That's when my grandfather had taken me aside and told me that sometimes it was important to let air out of balloons – otherwise given the slightest obstruction it would burst loudly. After this weighty comment he'd made me perform fifty star jumps and hop around the house holding a tray of glasses, and if I spilt a drop I had to start again.

I examined Jack's face now. Could star jumps and physical torture fix this? I would try anything, before all of Jack's soul escaped. "Jack is there anything you want to talk about?"

"I just – I don't know – I guess I'm not feeling that chirpy. That's all. And it doesn't help that you keep talking about spending money."

"We don't have to buy anything! I just thought that since it was your thirtieth birthday that you might want a treat."

"We don't have the money, Toni."

"Sure we do!" I laughed. "I just checked the bank. We have four thousand dollars and we just paid off the mortgage. We have saved up a storm, like we're growing it on trees! You deserve a new bike, Jack."

"So we have four thousand dollars. Does that means you want to spend it on superficial things? I thought we were on the same page, Toni. I thought we were working on this together."

"I'm sorry."

Audible sigh.

At that moment the door to the shop swung open and a woman stepped out onto the street holding the most ghastly umbrella I have ever seen: red PVC riddled with large floppy pink ribbons. Sophie. I hadn't seen her since her tete-a-tete with Jack.

"Hello," Sophie said, coming to a standstill.

I managed a hello and Jack sighed audibly.

"How have you been?" she continued.

"Really, really good," I said, beaming like a lunatic. "Just tootling along. Being pregnant is great." A small white lie; if Jack wasn't there I might have dared to elaborate and say all of those ghastly things that pregnant woman say like, 'oh being pregnant has really done wonders for my libido' which, I must point out, it hadn't.

"And you, Jack?"

Jack avoided Sophie's gaze by staring morosely at his shoes.

After she had made us suffer a little more, she sauntered off with her ungainly gait. Sophie walked best in gumboots, not the tiny little stilettos that adorned her large feet now. Her body swayed like a dinghy in rough seas. And for the briefest moment I wanted to run after her. I couldn't decide why. Did I want to prop her up? Wring answers out of her? Beg her to take me with her or clout her for taking liberties with Jack? I couldn't tell you. I really couldn't.