Of course those weren’t really the days, because now, with the benefit of modern knowledge, any layperson would diagnose her mother’s depression, although Pearl refused to accept that. ‘Oh, no, it was something physical, Joy, I had nothing to be sad about!’ she said. ‘I had you! A beautiful baby! You would have looked better if you didn’t have that big round head, as bald as a cue ball, but you were a sweet little thing.’ Her mother specialised in the tiny razor-sharp dig wrapped in a soft compliment, so you didn’t notice the blood until afterwards.
‘And I had a handsome husband!’ That was before the handsome husband went off to ‘meet a friend’ and never returned.
Joy’s limbs felt as heavy as perhaps her mother’s had felt that long-ago morning, yet her heart raced. Was this a glimpse of depression coupled with anxiety? Was this how Amy suffered? A dull ache crept across her forehead. She never got headaches. The universe must have decided it was time she experienced what both her daughters endured.
Why had her daughters had to suffer these invisible illnesses that no-one seemed to understand?
‘Might I suggest a firmer hand,’ said their family GP with a droll wag of his finger in Amy’s face. And then: ‘Is this one a bit of a hypochondriac maybe? Baby of the family? Likes the attention?’ He’d winked at Joy over the top of Brooke’s pain-stricken, dead-white face. Another daughter’s eyes begging Joy for relief she couldn’t give.
It was easy when she took the boys to see him. Their illnesses were masculine, visible and curable: coughs and blocked noses, rashes and broken bones.
The GP didn’t know what he didn’t know about mental health and migraines. Even the specialists didn’t seem to know much more, and they were even more expensive and patronising. But why had Joy been so polite in the face of their ignorance? So meek and grateful? Thank you, Doctor. I’m sure you’re right, Doctor. And then she’d get back in the car with a miserable daughter beside her, and the girls misinterpreted her frustration at her own impotence as anger at them, and they blamed themselves just as she blamed herself.
That GP was dead now. So was at least one of those specialists, as far as she knew.
Useless rage directed at long since dead men propelled her out of bed and into the shower. She gathered and stoked the rage as she showered. There was only her shampoo and body wash in the shower stall now. No evidence of a husband. Stan was using the other bathroom.
Perhaps it was time to finally accept defeat on this marriage: to meet at the net, shake hands, clap each other respectfully on the shoulder, wave to the fans and walk away.
She scrubbed her head hard. Her broken fingernails gouged her scalp.
She thought of all the truisms she and Stan had passed on to their children and their students.
You can still fight back from match point down.
If you want to overcome a losing streak, you re-evaluate your game.
She was a fighter. She was a winner. She was Joy Delaney. She would not give up on this marriage. She would take decisive, aggressive action today.
She would make an apple crumble, that’s what she’d do. Stan might at times be obtuse but he would understand the symbolism of Joy making his mother’s signature dish. She would try out Savannah’s suggestion. There was a bottle of whiskey in the back of the pantry.
She took two Panadol for her headache. She brushed her teeth for twice as long as usual. She blow-dried her hair using the big round brush Narelle said she should use but that she avoided because it made her wrist ache. She put on a flattering dress, one that Stan had once lavishly described as ‘very nice’。 Lipstick.
She walked out of the bedroom feeling peculiarly self-conscious. The house was silent. Was he even here?
‘Stan?’ she called out. Her voice cracked. Surely he would answer her. ‘Stan?’
No answer. She walked to the front room, pulled back the curtain. The car was gone. He was out early. She wondered where. Well. It was stupid to feel hurt that he had not told her he was going out, because this was the way they were living right now, but still her heart felt newly hurt, as tender and soft as bruised fruit.
She went to the kitchen, put the jug on for a cup of tea and opened the refrigerator to get out the apples for the crumble.
She’d bought five plump green Granny Smith apples when she was in the shops on Thursday, but now there was only one left, rolling about sadly in the crisper.
Stan had managed to eat four apples in two days.
She considered going back to bed and aborting the mission.