The Right Time (13 page)

Of course that wasn't good enough either, what they were really after was Botox. Liz was quite horrified by the rapid take-up of the procedure; it was becoming as common as having your hair streaked or your legs waxed. So she told her clients exactly what ‘bo-tox' was – ‘botulinum toxin', a
toxin
derived from the same bacteria that grows on decaying meat. They would in fact be injecting botulism into their skin. Then she would hammer home the gory details – it was the most acutely toxic substance
known to man, a mere ninety nanograms could kill an average ninety kilogram person. Possible side effects included headaches, muscle weakness, flu-like symptoms and allergic reactions. Paralysis of the wrong muscle group could result in a drooping eyelid, an uneven smile, or loss of the ability to close the eyes, chew solid food or even swallow. Worse, Botox had been known to spread to other parts of the body causing pneumonia, speech disorders and breathing problems. Although these were extreme and rare, why would anyone take the risk for a nonessential procedure which offered nil health benefits?

Of course Liz wanted to shock them, except she was the one who usually ended up shocked – she even had one woman respond that the inability to swallow or chew solid foods wouldn't be so bad, it might help her lose some weight!

Liz was a doctor, she was supposed to heal people, not enhance them. So she refused to administer Botox or anything else for purely cosmetic reasons. And lately she was wondering more and more often if she shouldn't try to get into a surgery program again. Her income would take a substantial dive, but that didn't bother her. She earned far more than she knew what to do with anyway. She wasn't built for the high life. She had a reliable but standard car, a comfortable but ordinary apartment – without harbour views, a gym, swimming pool or concierge. She didn't spend a lot of money on clothes, and almost nothing on cosmetics.

Her accountant was always pleading with her to lease a luxury car, take more overseas junkets, buy an investment property he could negatively gear,
do
something with her money . . .

‘Why?' Liz had asked him.

‘So that I can minimise your tax burden.'

What a concept. ‘Tell me, have you been inside a public hospital lately?'

‘Ah . . . can't say that I have.'

‘Well, if you had, perhaps you'd understand why I'm happy to pay my fair share of tax.'

So it wasn't the drop in income that was stopping Liz from applying to join a surgical program. However, she suspected that a thirtysomething woman who had practised what was considered
‘soft' medicine for nearly a decade was not going to be high on any list of candidates.

There was a light knock and then Michelle stuck her head around the door. ‘Is everything all right?' she asked Liz. ‘Your next appointment's waiting, and it's ten minutes past, and you have a full schedule this afternoon.'

Liz smiled to herself. That was something she'd miss, having an assistant to keep her on track. ‘Sorry, Michelle. I'll be right there.'

Ellen swung around the corner again on her third lap of the block; parking around Emma's place was always a nightmare.

‘Someone's coming out up there, Mum,' Kate said, pointing further up the street.

‘Well spotted.' Ellen accelerated, pulling up behind a four-wheel drive manoeuvring its way out of the space. It would leave plenty of room for her modest hatchback. She positioned herself for a reverse park, but as she started to back in, the car stalled.

‘Damn,' she said under her breath. She started the ignition again and the engine rattled back to life. ‘I don't know what's wrong with this car, it's running so rough,' she said, backing into the spot. ‘I'm going to have to book it in for a service and get it checked out.'

Ellen sighed inwardly, mentally counting the likely cost. Everything seemed to be breaking down lately. An element had blown on the stove, and she hadn't had the chance to replace it; besides, she figured they could do without it for a while. Same with the microwave that had decided to die the following week. But when the washing machine refused to drain water, she had no choice. She rang up the local repairer and was shocked to discover it would cost ninety dollars just to get him in the door. She felt like asking him to do a tap dance on the threshold for that kind of money. Three hundred and eighty-five dollars and a new pump
later, her washing machine was working again, and then the toilet sprung a leak, necessitating an emergency callout from a plumber, and the resultant extortion. Ellen mentioned it to Tim when he was picking up Sam one Friday afternoon.

‘Mm,' he murmured disinterestedly. ‘I just got my first electricity bill. Bit of a shock. Airconditioning must be expensive to run.'

‘Well, I wouldn't know, we don't have airconditioning, remember?' Ellen said tightly. ‘Which is just as well, because with my luck it would break down. But then again, being a
luxury
, I'd just do without it, like I'm doing without a whole lot of things these days.'

‘We knew this wasn't going to be cheap, Ellen,' was all he had to say to that.

‘Yes, I know,' she returned. ‘But you're renting, Tim, you don't have to worry about maintenance costs.'

‘Well, I do actually, I pay maintenance for the kids. That's calculated to cover a share of all that.'

She hated this, hated the constant negotiations, the forced politeness. She no longer had any right, apparently, to tell Tim that something needed to be done, or paid for, and he seemed to be deriving a certain amount of pleasure from her diminished power. He didn't seem to understand, or care, that she wasn't asking for anything for herself; Ellen was doing without, across the board. Everything was for the kids, or for the house, and as the kids lived in the house most of the time, really, it was all for the kids.

But Tim had changed. Almost overnight he had become quite profoundly self-centred; he had his own life now and everything and everyone else came second, or so it seemed. Ellen had never expected that. The preceding years had not been happy ones, for either of them. Sticking it out in a loveless marriage was not for the fainthearted. At times it had been positively gruelling, to say the least. But Ellen hadn't been able to bring herself to make the break any sooner because of the kids. She had been blessed with the happiest of childhoods; she had witnessed real, abiding love between her parents, and had grown up with the kind of security that that provides. She had always hoped to give her children the same.

So when she fell pregnant at nineteen, there was no choice but to marry Tim. Not that she didn't want to at the time – in truth, she didn't think about it all that much. She was pregnant, he was prepared to marry her, so that's what they did. She loved him as any nineteen year old loved her boyfriend; without any real perspective of life, the future, even of herself.

Babies took up all their focus for those first few years, and Tim was a good father, it had to be said. He changed nappies, got up in the middle of the night, whatever was required. Ellen thought she'd hit the jackpot, and she boasted as much to her friends who complained that their husbands never did anything, except pester them for sex at the end of a long, tiring day caring for small children. Ellen was glad Tim didn't pester her, but she didn't boast about that. It took quite some years, once the kids had started school and their life settled down into a more predictable routine, for Ellen to realise that Tim wasn't really present. He was operating on some kind of autopilot, reacting or responding automatically to his surroundings without really being engaged. And their sex life didn't pick up, despite the fact the kids went to bed at a civilised hour and slept right through the night.

Ellen began to think there was something wrong. She got hold of some books on the subject and they confirmed her fears. One of the major sources of conflict for married couples was a mismatched desire for sex – men almost exclusively wanted more than their wives did. Men who didn't want sex were barely mentioned in the literature. Ellen began to doubt herself, her attractiveness, whether Tim even loved her any more. Was it her fault, had she put him off too many times when the kids were babies? Maybe she wasn't any good at it. How would she know? Ellen didn't even know if she liked sex that much, she felt she hadn't really had a chance to try it out enough to see.

It came to a head when finally, on their tenth wedding anniversary, they had their first weekend away alone, ever. The kids went to stay with their grandparents and she and Tim went to stay in a flash hotel in Terrigal. They checked in late morning, and though the room was luxurious and inviting, Tim was keen to get out and enjoy the day. Ellen was okay with that; sex in daylight hours might be a bit of a leap at this stage.

So they enjoyed a pleasant couple of hours on the beach, and then lunched in an overpriced café, the kind they would never have stepped foot in with the kids in tow. Tim had a light beer and Ellen indulged in a glass of champagne. They were both definitely unwinding, and Ellen started to feel hopeful about the evening ahead. When Tim announced he could do with a nap, Ellen harboured the small hope that he was making a veiled suggestion – which was dashed when they returned to their hotel room and he promptly fell asleep. She consoled herself that it was difficult to break the habits and routine of years; certainly their entire married life had not allowed for spontaneous sex in the middle of the afternoon. She just had to be patient.

They went out to dinner and talked about the kids and work and the food, all very amiable but not very romantic. Ellen wanted to lead the conversation into more intimate territory, but realised she had no idea what to say. You don't just blurt out in the middle of your entree, ‘Are you satisfied with our marriage? Are you satisfied in bed? Do you love me?'

Back in their room, with a few glasses of wine under her belt, Ellen picked up the nightgown she had bought specially for the occasion, and headed for the bathroom. When she slipped the slinky nightie over her head, she sighed, lamenting the shape of her body. It didn't sit right under the unforgiving fabric, with no underwear to smooth things out and keep things in. And hold things up – her breasts just sagged. She adjusted them into place and tightened the straps. That was a little better, at least she had a cleavage now instead of a chasm. She pulled a brush through her hair and fluffed it out a bit, squirted some perfume in strategic locations, sucked in her stomach and opened the bathroom door.

Tim was sitting in the one single armchair in the room, staring fixedly at the telly, clutching the remote.

‘Hi,' she said, hoping he'd only turned it on to fill in time.

‘Hey, I've always wanted to see this movie,' he returned without so much as a glance in her direction. ‘How lucky that it's on here!'

Ellen's heart dropped in line with her breasts. She couldn't demand he switch off the TV and ravish her, that was hardly the point. Maybe she had to give him more time, not put the pressure
on. She got herself a mini bottle of wine from the fridge and poured the contents into a glass, before draping herself across the bed. Little or no conversation passed between them at all for the next hour and a half, except for Tim making the occasional remark about the amusing regional ads. Meanwhile Ellen made her way through half the contents of the minibar, eventually even succumbing to a chocolate that she didn't really want, and which probably cost what ten of the same would in a supermarket. But she didn't care, she was becoming quite thoroughly pissed off with the whole scenario. Finally the interminable film ended and Tim got up from the chair. ‘Do you want me to turn it off?' he asked.

‘Yes,' she said, through gritted teeth, ‘I want you to turn it off.'

He didn't seem to notice. He walked into the bathroom and presently she heard the toilet flush, the water running in the sink, the brushing of teeth. He reappeared and went around the room turning off all the lights. Then he changed in the near dark and made his way to the bed, slipping in under the covers. Ellen gave him the benefit of the doubt that, in the dark, he hadn't realised she was still lying on top of the covers. She got up and threw them back, startling him, before dropping down onto the mattress beside him.

‘Happy anniversary,' she said, lurching across to kiss him.

Thank God he responded or Ellen didn't know what she would have done. But the sex that followed was perfunctory at best. Not a great deal of foreplay, just enough to get the motor running, and it was all over in about ten minutes. He rolled off her and lay flat on his back. Ellen turned on her side and nestled her head on his chest. ‘I love you,' she said.

‘Love you too,' he replied.

They lay that way for a while longer, until she heard his breathing settle into a steady rhythm. He made a couple of grunting noises and shifted, bringing his arm up and over her. She shrunk out of his way and he rolled straight over, his back to her. Ellen lay in the dark, as tears slowly filled her eyes, brimming over to slide down her cheeks. This couldn't be right, this couldn't be normal.

She slept fitfully, and when she woke in the morning, feeling groggy and washed out, Tim wasn't in the bed beside her. She
could hear the shower running. She'd had enough, they had to find a way to connect, they would be home with the kids again in just a few hours and the opportunity would be lost.

Ellen got up out of bed and walked across to the bathroom door to open it. But it was locked.
What?
She knocked.

‘Can I come in?' Ellen said through the door.

‘Nearly finished,' he called back.

She felt like she'd been kicked in the stomach. What was going on? This was not the way a couple behaved on their tenth anniversary weekend away, or any weekend alone together for that matter.

Ellen was sitting composed at the end of the bed when Tim emerged from the bathroom, fully dressed. He'd obviously taken his clothes in there with him.