Big Little Lies (18 page)

O
h,
Jane
.”

Madeline wanted to sweep Jane into her arms and onto her lap and rock her back and forth as if she were Chloe. She wanted to find that man and hit him, kick him, yell obscenities at him.

“I guess I should have taken the morning-after pill,” said Jane. “But I never even thought about it. I had bad endometriosis when I was younger, and a doctor told me I’d have a lot of trouble getting pregnant. I can go for months without a period. When I finally realized I was pregnant, it was . . .”

She’d told her story in a low voice that Madeline had had to strain to hear, but now she lowered it even further to almost a whisper, her eyes on the hallway leading to Ziggy’s bedroom. “Much too late for an abortion. And then my grandfather died, and that was a big shock to us all. And then I went a bit strange. Depressed, maybe. I don’t know. I left uni and moved back home, and I just slept. For hours and
hours. It was like I was sedated or really jet-lagged. I couldn’t bear to be awake.”

“You were probably still in shock. Oh, Jane. I’m so sorry that happened to you.”

Jane shook her head as if she’d been given something she didn’t deserve. “Well. It’s not like I got raped in an alleyway. I have to take responsibility. It wasn’t that big a deal.”

“He assaulted you! He—”

Jane lifted a hand. “Lots of women have bad sexual experiences. That was mine. The lesson is: Don’t go off with strange men you meet in bars.”

“I can assure you I went off with my share of men I met in bars,” said Madeline. She’d done it once or twice. It had never been like that. She would have poked his eyes out. “Do not for a moment think that you’re in
any
way to blame, Jane.”

Jane shook her head. “I know. But I do try to keep it in perspective. Some people do really like that erotic asphyxiation stuff.” Madeline saw her put a hand unconsciously to her neck. “You might be into it, for all I know.”

“Ed and I think it’s erotic if we find ourselves in bed without a wriggling child in between us,” said Madeline. “Jane, my darling girl, that wasn’t sexual experimentation. What that man did to you was
not
—”

“Well, don’t forget you heard the story from my perspective,” interrupted Jane. “He might remember it differently.” She shrugged. “He probably doesn’t even remember it.”

“And that was verbal abuse. Those things he said to you.” Madeline felt the fury rise again. How could she fight this creep? How could she make him pay? “Those vile things.”

When Jane had told her the story, she hadn’t needed to try to think back to remember the exact words. She’d recited his insults in a dull monotone, as if she were reciting a poem or a prayer.

“Yes,” said Jane.
“Fat ugly little girl.”

Madeline winced. “You are not.”

“I was overweight,” said Jane. “Some people would probably say I was fat. I was into food.”

“A foodie,” said Madeline.

“Nothing as sophisticated as that. I just loved all food, and I especially loved fattening food. Cakes. Chocolate.
Butter.
I just loved butter.”

An expression of mild awe crossed her face, as if she couldn’t quite believe she was describing herself.

“I’ll show you a photo,” she said to Madeline. She flicked through her phone. “My friend Em just posted this on Facebook for Throwback Thursday. It’s me at her nineteenth birthday. Just a few months before . . . before I got pregnant.”

She held up the phone for Madeline to see. There was Jane wearing a red sheath dress with a low neckline. She was standing in between two other girls of the same age, all three of them beaming at the camera. Jane looked like a different person: softer, uninhibited, much, much younger.

“You were
curvy
,” said Madeline, handing back the phone. “Not fat. You look gorgeous in this photo.”

“It’s sort of interesting when you think about it,” said Jane, glancing at the photo once before she flicked it off with her thumb. “Why did I feel so weirdly
violated
by those two words? More than anything else that he did to me, it was those two words that hurt. ‘Fat.’ ‘Ugly.’”

She spat out the two words. Madeline wished she would stop saying them.

“I mean a fat, ugly
man
can still be funny and lovable and successful,” continued Jane. “But it’s like it’s the most shameful thing for a woman to be.”

“But you weren’t, you’re not—” began Madeline.

“Yes, OK, but so what if I was!” interrupted Jane. “What if I
was
!
That’s my point. What if I was a bit overweight and not especially pretty? Why is that so terrible? So disgusting? Why is that the end of the world?”

Madeline found herself without words. To be fat and ugly actually would be the end of the world for her.

“It’s because a woman’s entire self-worth rests on her looks,” said Jane. “That’s why. It’s because we live in a beauty-obsessed society where the most important thing a woman can do is make herself attractive to men.”

Madeline had never heard Jane speak this way before, so aggressively and fluently. Normally she was so diffident and self-deprecating, so ready to let someone else have the opinions.

“Is that really true?” said Madeline. For some reason she wanted to disagree. “Because you know I
often
feel secretly inferior to women like Renata and Jonathan’s bloody hotshot wife. There they are, earning squillions and going to board meetings or whatever, and there’s me, with my cute little part-time marketing job.”

“Yes, but deep down you know that you win because you’re prettier,” said Jane.

“Well,” said Madeline, “I don’t know about that.” She caught herself caressing her hair and dropped her hand.

“So that’s why, if you’re in bed with a man, and you’re naked and vulnerable, and you’re assuming that he finds you at least mildly attractive, and then he says something like that, well it’s . . .” She gave Madeline a wry look. “It’s kind of devastating.” She paused. “And, Madeline, it infuriates me that I found it so devastating. It
infuriates
me that he had that power over me. I look in the mirror each day, and I think, ‘I’m not overweight anymore,’ but he’s right, I’m still ugly. Intellectually I know I’m not ugly, I’m perfectly acceptable. But I feel ugly, because one man said it was so, and that made it so. It’s pathetic.”

“He was a prick,” said Madeline helplessly. “He was just a stupid
prick.” It occurred to her that the more Jane expounded on ugliness, the more beautiful she looked, with her hair coming loose, her cheeks flushed and eyes shining. “You’re beautiful,” she began.

“No!” said Jane angrily. “I’m not! And that’s OK that I’m not. We’re not all beautiful, just like we’re not all musical, and that’s fine. And don’t give me that inner beauty shining through crap either.”

Madeline, who had been about to give her that inner beauty shining through crap, closed her mouth.

“I didn’t mean to lose so much weight,” said Jane. “It makes me angry that I lost weight, as if I were doing it for him, but I got all weird about food after that. Every time I went to eat it was like I could
see myself
eating. I could see myself the way he’d seen me: slovenly fat girl eating. And my throat would just . . .” She tapped a hand to her throat and swallowed. “Anyway! So it was quite effective! Like a gastric bypass. I should market it. The Saxon Banks Diet. One quick, only slightly painful session in a hotel room and there you go: lifelong eating disorder. Cost-effective!”

“Oh, Jane,” said Madeline.

She thought of Jane’s mother and her comment on the beach about “no one wants to see this in a bikini.” It seemed to her that Jane’s mother had probably helped lay the groundwork for Jane’s mixed-up feelings about food. The media had done its bit, and women in general, with their willingness to feel bad about themselves, and then Saxon Banks had finished the job.

“Anyway,” said Jane. “Sorry for that little tirade.”

“Don’t be sorry.”

“Also, I don’t have bad breath,” said Jane. “I’ve checked with my dentist. Many times. But we’d been out for pizza beforehand. I had garlic breath.”

So that was the reason for the gum obsession.

“Your breath smells like daisies,” said Madeline. “I have an acute sense of smell.”

“I think it was the shock of it more than anything,” said Jane. “The way he changed. He seemed so nice, and I’d always thought I was a pretty good judge of character. After that, I felt like I couldn’t really trust my own instincts.”

“I’m not surprised,” said Madeline. Could she have picked him? Would she have fallen for his
Mary Poppins
song?

“I don’t regret it,” said Jane. “Because I got Ziggy. My miracle baby. It was like I woke up when he was born. It was like he had nothing to do with that night. This beautiful tiny baby. It’s only as he’s started to turn into a little person with his own personality that it even occurred to me, that he might, that he might have, you know, inherited something from his . . . his father.”

For the first time, her voice broke.

“Whenever Ziggy behaves in a way that seems out of character, I worry. Like on orientation day, when Amabella said he choked her. Of all the things to happen.
Choking.
I couldn’t believe it. And sometimes I feel like I can see something in his eyes that reminds me of, of him, and I think, ‘What if my beautiful Ziggy has a secret cruel streak? What if my son does that to a girl one day?’”

“Ziggy does not have a cruel streak,” said Madeline. Her desperate need to comfort Jane cemented her belief in Ziggy’s goodness. “He’s a lovely, sweet boy. I’m sure your mother is right, he’s your grandfather reincarnated.”

Jane laughed. She picked up her mobile phone and looked at the time on the screen. “It’s so late! You should go home to your family. I’ve kept you here this long, blathering on about myself.”

“You weren’t blathering.”

Jane stood up. She stretched her arms high above her head so that her T-shirt rose and Madeline could see her skinny, white, vulnerable stomach. “Thank you so much for helping me get this damned project done.”

“My pleasure.” Madeline stood as well. She looked at where Ziggy had written “Ziggy’s dad.” “Will you ever tell him his name?”

“Oh, God, I don’t know,” said Jane. “Maybe when he’s twenty-one, when he’s old enough for me to tell him the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”

“He might be dead,” said Madeline hopefully. “Karma might have gotten him in the end. Have you ever Googled him?”

“No,” said Jane. There was a complicated expression on her face. Madeline couldn’t tell if it meant that she was lying or that even the thought of Googling him was too painful.

“
I’ll
Google the awful creep,” said Madeline. “What was his name again? Saxon Banks, right? I’ll find him and then I’ll put out a hit on him. There must be some kind of online murder-a-bastard service these days.”

Jane didn’t laugh. “Please don’t Google him, Madeline. Please don’t. I don’t know why I hate the thought of your looking him up, but I just do.”

“Of course I won’t if you don’t want me to, I was being flippant. Stupid. I shouldn’t make light of it. Ignore me.”

She held her arms out and gave Jane a hug.

To her surprise, Jane, who always presented a stiff cheek for a kiss, stepped forward and held her tightly.

“Thank you for bringing over the cardboard,” she said.

Madeline patted Jane’s clean-smelling hair. She’d nearly said,
You’re welcome, my beautiful girl,
like she did to Chloe, but the word “beautiful” seemed so complicated and fraught right now. Instead she said, “You’re welcome, my lovely girl.”

A
re there any weapons in your house?” asked the counselor.

“Pardon?” said Celeste. “Did you say
weapons
?”

Her heart was still pounding from the fact that she was actually here, in this small yellow-walled room, with a row of cactus plants on the windowsill and colorful government-issued posters with hotline numbers on the walls, cheap office furniture on beautiful old floorboards. The counseling offices were in a federation cottage on the Pacific Highway on the Lower North Shore. The room she was in probably used to be a bedroom. Someone had once slept here, never dreaming that in the next century people would be sharing shameful secrets in this room.

When she’d gotten up this morning Celeste had been sure she wouldn’t come. She intended to ring up and cancel as soon as she got the children to school, but then she’d found herself in the car, putting the address into the GPS, driving up the winding peninsula road, thinking the whole way that she would pull over in the next five minutes and call them up and say so sorry, but her car had broken
down, she would reschedule another day. But she kept driving, as if she were in a dream or a trance, thinking of other things like what she’d cook for dinner, and then, before she knew it, she was pulling into the parking area behind the house and watching a woman coming out, puffing furiously on a cigarette as she opened the door of a banged-up old white car. A woman wearing jeans and a crop top, with tattoos like awful injuries all the way down her thin white arms.

She’d envisaged Perry’s face. His amused, superior face. “You’re not serious, are you? This is just so . . .”

So lowbrow. Yes, Perry. It was. A suburban counseling practice that specialized in domestic violence. It was listed on their website, along with depression and anxiety and eating disorders. There were two typos on the home page. She’d chosen it because it was far enough away from Pirriwee that she could be sure of not running into anyone she knew. Also, she hadn’t really had any intention of turning up. She’d just wanted to make an appointment, to prove she wasn’t a victim, to prove to some unseen presence that she was doing something about this.

“Our behavior is lowbrow, Perry,” she’d said out loud in the silence of the car, and then she’d turned the key in the ignition and gone inside.

“Celeste?” prompted the counselor now.

The counselor
knew her name
. The counselor knew more about the truth of her life than anyone in the world besides Perry. She was in one of those naked nightmares, where you just had to keep walking through the crowded shopping center while everyone stared at your shameful, shocking nudity. She couldn’t go back now. She had to see it through. She’d told her. She’d said it, very quickly, her eyes slightly off-center from the counselor’s, pretending she was keeping eye contact. She’d spoken in a low, neutral voice, as if she were telling a doctor about a revolting symptom. It was part of being a grown-up, being a woman and a mother. You had to say uncomfortable
things out loud. “I have this discharge.” “I’m in a sort of violent relationship.” “Sort of.” Like a teenager hedging her words, distancing herself.

“Sorry. Did you just ask about
weapons
?” She recrossed her legs, smoothing the fabric of her dress across them. She’d deliberately chosen an especially beautiful dress that Perry had bought for her in Paris. She hadn’t worn it before. She’d also put on makeup: foundation, powder, the whole kit and caboodle. She wanted to position herself, not as superior to other women, of
course
not, she didn’t think that, not in a million years. But her situation was different from that woman in the parking lot. Celeste didn’t need the phone number for a shelter. She just needed some strategies to fix her marriage. She needed tips. Ten top tips to stop my husband from hitting me. Ten top tips to stop my hitting him back.

“Yes, weapons. Are there any weapons in the house?” The counselor looked up from what must be a standard sort of checklist.
For God’s sake,
thought Celeste.
Weapons!
Did she think Celeste lived in the sort of home where the husband kept an unlicensed gun under the bed?

“No weapons,” said Celeste. “Although the twins have lightsabers.” She noticed that she was putting on a well-bred private schoolgirl sort of voice and tried to stop it.

She wasn’t a private schoolgirl. She’d married up.

The counselor laughed politely and noted something on the clipboard in front of her. Her name was Susi, which seemed to indicate a worrying lack of judgment. Why didn’t she call herself Susan? “Susi” sounded like a pole dancer.

The other problem with Susi was that she appeared to be about twelve years old, and quite naturally, being twelve, she didn’t know how to apply eyeliner properly. It was smudged around her eyes, giving her that raccoon look. How could this child give Celeste advice
on her strange, complicated marriage? Celeste should be giving her advice on makeup and boys.

“Does your partner assault or mutilate the family pets?” said Susi blandly.

“
What?
No! Well, we don’t have any pets, but he’s not like that!” Celeste felt a surge of anger. Why had she subjected herself to this humiliation? She wanted to cry out, absurdly,
This dress is from Paris! My husband drives a Porsche! We are not like that!
“Perry would never hurt an animal,” she said.

“But he hurts you,” said Susi.

You don’t know anything about me,
thought Celeste sulkily, furiously.
You think I’m like the girl with the tattoos, and I am not, I am not.

“Yes,” said Celeste. “As I said, occasionally he,
we
become physically . . . violent.” Her posh voice was back. “But as I tried to explain, I have to take my share of the blame.”

“No one deserves to be abused, Mrs. White,” said Susi.

They must teach them that line at counseling school.

“Yes,” said Celeste. “Of course. I know that. I don’t think I deserve it. But I’m not a victim. I hit him back. I throw things at him. So I’m just as bad as he is. Sometimes I start it. I mean, we’re just in a very toxic relationship. We need techniques, we need
strategies
to help us . . . to make us stop. That’s why I’m here.”

Susi nodded slowly. “I understand. Do you think your husband is afraid of you, Mrs. White?”

“No,” said Celeste. “Not in a physical sense. I think he’s probably afraid I’ll leave him.”

“When these ‘incidents’ have taken place, have
you
ever been afraid?”

“Well, no. Well, sort of.” She could see the point that Susi was trying to make. “Look, I know how violent some men can be, but with Perry and me, it’s not that bad. It’s bad! I know it’s bad. I’m not
delusional. But, see, I’ve never ended up in the hospital or anything like that. I don’t need to go to a shelter or a refuge or whatever they’re called. I have no doubt you see much, much worse cases than mine, but I’m fine. I’m perfectly fine.”

“Have you ever been afraid that you might die?”

“Absolutely not,” said Celeste immediately.

She stopped.

“Well, just once. It was just that my face . . . He had my face pressed into the corner of a couch.”

She remembered the feeling of his hand on the back of her head. The angle of her face meant that her nose sort of folded in half, pinching her nostrils. She’d struggled frantically to free herself, like a pinned butterfly. “I don’t think he realized what he was doing. But I did think, just for a moment, that I was going to suffocate.”

“That must have been very frightening,” said Susi without inflection.

“It was a bit.” She paused. “I remember the dust. It was very dusty.”

For a moment Celeste thought she might cry: huge, heaving, snotty sobs. There was a box of tissues sitting on the coffee table in between them for just that purpose. Her own mascara would run. She’d have raccoon eyes too, and Susi would think,
Not so upper class now, are you, lady?

She pulled herself back from the brink of debasement and looked away from Susi. She studied her engagement ring.

“I packed a bag that time,” she said. “But then . . . well, the boys were still so little. And I was so tired.”

“On average, most victims will try to leave an abusive situation six or seven times before they finally leave permanently,” said Susi. She chewed on the end of her pen. “What about your boys? Has your husband ever—”

“No!” said Celeste. A sudden terror took hold of her. Dear God. She was crazy coming here. They might report her to the Department of Community Services. They might take the children away.

She thought of the family tree projects the boys had taken in to school today. The carefully drawn lines connecting each of them to their twin, to her and to Perry. Their happy glossy faces.

“Perry has never ever laid a finger on the boys. He is a
wonderful
father. If I ever thought that the boys were in danger, I would leave; I would never, ever put them at risk.” Her voice shook. “That’s one of the reasons I haven’t left, because he is so good with them. So patient! He’s more patient with them than me. He adores them!”

“How do you think—” began Susi, but Celeste interrupted her. She needed her to understand how Perry felt about his children.

“We had so much trouble getting pregnant, or not getting pregnant. Staying pregnant. I had four miscarriages in a row. It was terrible.”

It was like she and Perry had endured a two-year journey across stormy oceans and endless deserts. And then they’d reached the oasis. Twins! A natural pregnancy with twins! She’d seen the expression on the obstetrician’s face when she found the second heartbeat. Twins. A high-risk pregnancy for someone with a history of recurrent miscarriage. The obstetrician was thinking,
No
way
. But they made it all the way to thirty-two weeks.

“The boys were preemies. So there was all that going back and forth to the hospital for late-night feeds. We couldn’t believe it when we finally got to bring them home. We just stood there in the nursery, staring at them, and then . . . well, then, those first few months were like a nightmare, really. They weren’t good sleepers. Perry took three months off. He was wonderful. We got through it together.”

“I see,” said Susi.

But Celeste could tell she didn’t see. She didn’t understand that
she and Perry were bound together forever by their experiences and their love for their sons. Breaking away from him would be like tearing flesh.

“How do you think the abuse impacts your sons?”

Celeste wished she would stop using the word “abuse.”

“It doesn’t impact them in any way,” she said. “They have no idea. I mean, for the most part, we’re just a very happy, ordinary, loving family. We can go for weeks, months even, without anything out of the ordinary.”

Months was probably an exaggeration.

She was starting to feel claustrophobic in this tiny room. There wasn’t enough air. She ran a fingertip across her brow, and it came back damp. What had she expected from this? Why had she come? She knew there were no answers. No strategies. No tips and techniques, for God’s sake. Perry was Perry. There was no way out except to leave, and she would never leave while the children were little. She was going to leave when they were at university. She’d already decided that.

“What made you come here today, Mrs. White?” said Susi, as if she were reading her mind. “You said this has been going on since your children were babies. Has the violence been escalating recently?”

Celeste tried to remember why she’d made the appointment. It was the day of the athletics carnival.

It was something to do with the amused expression on Perry’s face that morning when Josh asked him about the mark on his neck. And then she’d gone home after the carnival and felt envious of her cleaners because they were laughing. So she’d given twenty-five thousand dollars to charity. “Feeling philanthropic were you, darling?” Perry had said wryly a few weeks later when the credit card bill came in, but he’d made no further comment.

“No, it hasn’t been escalating,” she said to Susi. “I’m not sure
why I finally made an appointment. Perry and I went to marriage counseling once, but it didn’t . . . Well, nothing came of that. It’s hard because he travels a lot for work. He’ll be away again next week.”

“Do you miss him when he’s away?” said Susi. It seemed as though this wasn’t a question on her clipboard, it was just something that she wanted to know.

“Yes,” said Celeste. “And no.”

“It’s complicated,” said Susi.

“It’s complicated,” agreed Celeste. “But all marriages are complicated, aren’t they?”

“Yes,” said Susi. She smiled. “And no.” Her smile vanished. “Are you aware that a woman dies every week in Australia as a result of domestic violence, Mrs. White? Every week.”

“He’s not going to
kill
me,” said Celeste. “It’s not like that.”

“Is it safe for you to go home today?”

“Of course,” said Celeste. “I’m perfectly safe.”

Susi raised her eyebrows.

“Our relationship is like a seesaw,” explained Celeste. “First one person has the power, then the other. Each time Perry and I have a fight, especially if it gets physical, if I get hurt, then I get the power back. I’m on top.”

She warmed to her theme. It was shameful sharing these things with Susi, but it was also a wonderful relief to be telling someone, to be explaining how it all worked, to be saying these secrets out loud.

“The more he hurts me, the higher I go and the longer I get to stay there. Then the weeks go by, and I can feel it shifting. He stops feeling so guilty and sorry. The bruises—I bruise easily—well, the bruises fade. Little things I do start to annoy him. He gets a bit irritable. I try to placate him. I start walking on eggshells, but at the same time I’m angry that I have to walk on eggshells, so sometimes I
stop tiptoeing. I stomp on the eggshells. I
deliberately
aggravate him because I’m so angry with him, and with myself, for having to be careful. And then it happens again.”

“So you’ve got the power right now,” said Susi. “Because he hurt you recently.”