This Too Shall Pass Read Free Page B

think of her being broken-hearted. It was a type of yearning, a fretting that I’d only ever experienced in regard to Marcus. It winged me to the station platform. ( Was it me who said love is evolution’s most honed trick — that it’s the only presentation impossible to treat therapeutically? )
    The rest of the night – the train trip, the hour at Michael’s, the drive with Renny to stay with friends of hers – I let myself be led along like a donkey on a tether. It didn’t matter that I was going from a man to a woman. I was changing partners and the reality of that – for me, one of those “forever” people – was alarming. In my journal I wrote: I feel like I’m in a maze, going back is as fruitless as proceeding. There’s little choice but to wander about.

SEVEN
    I ‘ve only ever been in one maze – one real one, that is. The green walls of the hedge reached up, allowing only a narrow strip of sky to ingratiate itself overhead. The feeling, while not exactly one of claustrophobia, was odd enough. In essence I walked, quickly, over and over the same path. Disorientation set in. Anxiety inevitably rose.
    The maze that presented itself in my mind during my separation from Dave – time being elastic – lasted longer than you might think. Certainly long after the affair with Renny had been exposed or even my fleeing from Xmas celebrations. Metaphorically speaking, I’d only just stepped under the arbour at the entrance of the maze, little purple sarsaparilla flowers overhead, stern walls of fascist-like hedge facing me. And, just like at the actual entrance, it seemed to be still so straightforward. I was hopeful I was about to head off in a direction that would surely lead me to a central destination. I had no idea the confusion that lay ahead, or even that there were many turns to be made.
    A week after I left Dave, I drove along the winding unmade road to the house where Dave, Marcus and I had lived. While not being the most maternal of people, I was desperate to see Marcus. I was also conscious that – with Marcus in the back of his van – Dave had driven the long haul home from the city with the reality of my departure rattling in his bones.
    Outside, after hugs and kisses and ebullient hel-los from my little boy, I found myself nervously requesting to take him with me for a few days. ‘Ange has offered me the camp site at Seaspray,’ I explained.
    Dave looked past me onto the garden we’d landscaped, the stack of wood we’d carefully constructed for future colder months. I’d seen this distractedness before – a defence, a fall into bewilderment to avoid a kaleidoscope of unwanted actualities. He said, ‘Everything’s set up down there, I guess.’
    I knew he was a man warding off meltdown, a man hanging onto the tiniest sliver of hope, but this clinging to his position as overseer, as foreman of the factory floor when his duties had been rendered defunct, slapped at me.
    I swallowed, struck by how starkly and quickly alliances change. My head dropped dutifully, however. It would be hard for him to hand Marcus over, have the ensuing days totalling up in front of him for real aloneness. Or, perhaps guilt was producing submissive-ness. Certainly Dave and I had never fought. So how could we start now when everyone was so heartbroken?
    He turned to Marcus. ‘Would you like to go camping at the beach with Mum?’ (I was struck by the lightness of his tone. Was this unencumbered question a glimpse into a future of functional separation?)
    â€˜Yeah!’ Marcus stepped into action. ‘I’ll get my snorkel.’
    Showing his strong upper lip – just one notch under stiff – Dave turned to follow Marcus to his room. I stood awkwardly at the front door, alone and unfamiliar on the threshold of a house I’d lived in for nine years. Politeness didn’t count; so alien and peculiar