Rosie was looking at me.
‘You’ve made your point. Go and squeeze me an orange before I change my mind. And then you can show me how to do this fucking analysis.’
Gene was in my office at the university when Inge brought in a small FedEx package.
‘This was at reception for Don. From Australia,’ she said.
While Gene and Inge made lunch plans, I deciphered the sender’s details, written in untidy script: Phil Jarman, retired Australian Rules footballer, current proprietor of a gymnasium, and Rosie’s father. Why had he sent a package to Columbia?
‘I presume it’s for Rosie,’ I said to Gene when Inge had gone.
‘Is it addressed to Rosie?’ said Gene.
‘No, it’s addressed to me.’
‘Then open it.’
It was a tiny box, containing a diamond ring. The diamond was quite small, smaller than the one on the engagement ring I had given Rosie.
‘You expecting this?’ said Gene.
‘No.’
‘Then there’ll be a letter.’
Gene was correct. There was a folded piece of paper in the package:
Dear Don
I’ve enclosed a ring. It was Rosie’s mother’s and she would have wanted her to have it.
It’s traditional to give an eternity ring on your first wedding anniversary, and I’d be honoured if you’d accept it as a gift from me and Rosie’s mother to give to her.
Rosie’s not the easiest person in the world, and I’ve always been concerned that the man she married might not be up to the job. You seem to be doing all right so far from what she tells me. Tell her I miss her and don’t ever take what you have for granted.
Phil (your father-in-law)
PS I’ve got that aikido move of yours worked out. If you screw up, I will personally come to New York and beat the living shit out of you.
I gave the letter to Gene. He read it, then folded it up again.
‘Just give me a minute,’ he said. I detected emotion.
‘It seems Phil is unimpressed with me,’ I said.
Gene stood up and paced around the room. It is a habit we share when thinking about difficult problems. My father would quote Thoreau—‘
Henry David
Thoreau, American
philosopher, Don,’ he would say as I walked around our living room working on a mathematics or chess problem—‘Never trust any thought arrived at sitting down.’
Gene closed the door.
‘Don, I want you to do an exercise for me. I want you to imagine that your baby is born, and it’s a girl, and she grows up to be ten years old. And one day Rosie crashes your car and you’re in the passenger seat because you’ve been drinking. And—you know how the story goes, and I know because you told me—but the evolutionary imperative cuts in and you save your daughter instead of Rosie. And you’re left with just the two of you.’
Gene had to stop due to emotion. I helped him out.
‘I’m familiar with the story, obviously.’ It was the story of Phil, Rosie’s mother and Rosie, with a substitution of names.
‘No, you’re not. You’ve only heard it as something that happened to someone else. The same as if you read it in the paper about a family in Kansas. I want you to imagine yourself in it. Be Phil. And then imagine your daughter marrying some guy who broke your nose and isn’t exactly average and going away to New York and getting pregnant. Then imagine yourself writing that letter.’
‘Too much imagining. Too many overlaps. Rosie is in both stories in different roles.’
Gene looked at me with an expression I had never seen him use. This was possibly because he had never been angry with me before.
‘Too much imagining? How long did it take you to get a black belt? How long to learn to bone a fucking quail?
I am telling you, Don, that you will sit down and work this through no matter how long it takes until you
are
Phil fucking Jarman, walking around that car with a smashed pelvis to get his kid out, and then you will write that letter yourself, and then try to come to me and say, “Phil is unimpressed with me”.’
I waited a few moments for Gene to calm down.
‘Why?’
‘Because you’re about to be a father. And every father is Phil Jarman.’ Gene sat down. ‘Go and get us both a coffee. And then I want to talk to you about the anniversary. Which you’ve planned nothing for, right?’
Rosie’s exercise habits were random in the extreme, in violation of The Book. Medical classes were due to resume in two weeks, and now seemed like the ideal time to address the problem. My plan was to insert a workout an hour before she would otherwise have departed for university. She could then travel directly from the exercise venue. As a result of our recently improved proximity to Columbia, the net impact on waking time would be only forty-six minutes.
It all seemed straightforward, but new initiatives require piloting.
I woke Rosie forty-six minutes before her usual time. Her reaction was predictable.
‘What time is it? It’s dark. What’s wrong?’
‘6.44 a.m. It’s only dark because the curtains are closed.
The sun rose approximately forty minutes ago and there would have been pre-dawn light prior to that. Nothing is wrong. We’re going to the pool.’
‘What pool?’
‘The indoor swimming pool at the Chelsea Recreation Center on West 25th. You’ll require your bathing costume.’
‘I don’t have a bathing costume. I hate swimming.’
‘You’re Australian. All Australians swim. Almost all.’
‘I’m one of the exceptions. Go by yourself and bring me back a muffin. Or the legal equivalent. I’m feeling a bit better. For this time of the morning.’
I pointed out that Rosie had limited experience of this time of the morning, that she was the person requiring the exercise and that swimming was a recommended form of exercise for pregnant women.
‘Swimming is the recommended form of exercise for everything.’
‘Correct.’
‘So why don’t you do it?’ she said.
‘I don’t like the crowds in the pool. I strongly dislike getting water in my eyes. And putting my head under.’
‘So there you go,’ said Rosie. ‘You can empathise. I won’t make you swim if you don’t make me. In fact, maybe there’s a general rule there.’
I began the Phil Empathy Exercise as I jogged to Columbia, imagining myself in his shoes, a practice also recommended by Atticus Finch in
To Kill a Mockingbird
. It was a terrible scenario, but I could not achieve what Gene wanted. I was
reaching the conclusion that the exercise would require months, and possibly the intervention of a hypnotist or bartender, when my subconscious took over.
I woke that night from the World’s Worst Nightmare. I was in command of a spaceship, typing instructions at the console. Rosie was in the scout capsule, drifting away from the mother ship, and I couldn’t bring her back. The keyboard was touch-sensitive and my fingers kept making mistakes. My frustration turned to anger and I was unable to function.
I woke up breathing rapidly and reached out. Rosie was still there. I wondered if Phil had similar nightmares and woke to find that the world was exactly as he had dreamed it.
Our first wedding anniversary was on 11 August. This year it was a Sunday. Gene’s instructions were to make a booking at a high-quality restaurant, purchase flowers and acquire a gift made from a material determined by the ordinal year of the anniversary.
‘You’re suggesting I purchase some object every year? For the duration of the marriage?’
‘The two may be related,’ said Gene.
‘Did you do this for Claudia?’
‘You have the opportunity to learn from my mistakes.’
‘Rosie agrees that we don’t require vast quantities of junk.’
‘Claudia said the same thing. I suggest you ignore it and buy something made from paper.’
‘Can it be a consumable? Disposable?’
‘As long as it’s paper. And demonstrates thoughtfulness.
You may want to run it past me first. You
will
run it past me first.’
I began to make plans in accordance with Gene’s instructions, but they were derailed by an envelope that I found on my bathroom-office floor on the Saturday morning, the day before the anniversary. I had the door closed as I was working on the Bud sketch for Week 12; Gene or Rosie must have slipped it under the door rather than risk interrupting some bodily function. There were advantages in combining bathroom and office.
It was an invitation—identifiable by the word
Invitation
on the front. Inside was a small, thin notebook with a red cover. On the first page, Rosie had written:
Don: I want to give you the maximum surprise without exceeding your tolerance. Turn the pages until you’re happy. The fewer the better. Love, Rosie.
It seemed that the Jarman family had decided to communicate with me via handwritten letters. I turned the page.
Our wedding anniversary is tomorrow. I’m in charge.
I had booked a restaurant, which I would now need to cancel. Already I was being surprised and disrupted by an initiative that was intended to buffer me from these effects.
I was about to turn to the next page when Gene knocked on the door.
‘Are you okay, Don?’
I opened the door and explained the situation.
‘As a man of integrity, you can’t read the whole thing then pretend you haven’t,’ said Gene.
‘My intention is to minimise stress, and then to tell Rosie.’
‘Wrong. Accept the challenge. She’s not going to do anything to hurt you. She just wants to surprise you. Which she will enjoy doing. You’ll enjoy it too if you loosen up a bit.’ Gene snatched the book from me. ‘No choice now.’
I cancelled the restaurant and began to prepare my mind for the unexpected.
The unexpected began at 3.32 p.m. on Sunday. The doorbell rang. It was Isaac and Judy Esler, neither of whom I had seen since the Bluefin Tuna Incident. They were on their way to view the
Search for the Unicorn
exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and wondered if I would like to join them.
‘Go,’ said Rosie. ‘I see Judy every week. I can use the time to work on my thesis.’
We took the subway to the exhibition, which was moderately interesting, but it became clear that the primary purpose of the excursion was to verify that our friendship was still operational following the Bluefin Tuna Incident. Judy did almost all of the talking.
‘I couldn’t believe Lydia. She hasn’t shown up at book club since, and we’ve had three meetings. I’m so sorry, Don.’
‘No apologies required,’ I said. ‘You did nothing wrong and I was guilty of insensitivity regarding food preferences. Rosie would also object if I ordered bluefin tuna.’
It seemed sensible not to reveal that I had been seeing
Lydia for professional assessment. In any case, another matter was more critical.
‘Did you inform Rosie of Lydia’s assessment of me?’ I asked.
‘I told her what Lydia said. And that Isaac put her in her place.’
‘It was Seymour,’ said Isaac.
‘I’m sure it was you. It doesn’t matter. Lydia has her own issues. I thought she and Seymour would be a good pair. He’s not happy unless he’s got someone who needs him and she’d have her own private therapist. I’m not telling you both anything when I say she could use one.’
Judy had not answered my question, or at least not provided the information I wanted.
‘Did you mention anything to Rosie about what Lydia said concerning my capabilities as a parent?’ I said.
‘I don’t remember Lydia saying anything about that. What did she say?’
I stopped myself just in time. ‘These paintings are so interesting.’
Judy obviously did not notice the change in topic. I was getting better at it.
I returned home at 6.43 p.m. having purchased a single high-quality red rose (indicating one year of marriage) on the way. As I opened the door, it occurred to me that Rosie might have organised the Eslers to remove me from the house while she prepared some sort of surprise. I was right, and my worst fears were realised.
Rosie was in the kitchen
.
She was cooking, or at least preparing food. Or attempting
to prepare food. On our first date, Rosie had confessed that she ‘could not cook to save her life’ and I had seen no evidence to contradict this. The scallops on the night of the Orange Juice Incident, when I was unavailable due to meltdown and then sex, were the most recent culinary disaster.
As I headed to the kitchen to deliver advice and render assistance, Gene emerged from his room and pushed me back out the door, which he closed behind us.
‘You were about to help Rosie out in the kitchen, am I right?’
‘Correct.’
‘And you would have started by saying, “Do you need any help, darling?”’
I reflected for a few moments. In reality I would have assessed the situation, and determined what needed to be done. As would be appropriate for a qualified person arriving at the scene of an accident.
Gene spoke before I had formulated a response. ‘Before you do anything, think about which is more important: the quality of one meal or the quality of your relationship. If the answer is the second, you are about to have one of the great meals of your life, prepared without any assistance from you.’
Naturally my focus had been on the meal. But I could see the logic of Gene’s argument.
‘Nice work with the rose,’ said Gene.
We walked back inside.
‘Are you guys okay?’ said Rosie.
‘Of course,’ I said and gave her the rose without comment.
‘Don had dog crap on his shoe. I saved the carpet,’ said Gene.
Rosie instructed me to dress formally, which meant wearing my collared shirt and my non-bushwalking jacket. The leather shoes would also be required.
‘I assumed we were eating at home,’ I said from the bedroom.
Gene came in again.