“Jesus, Lola, you’ve got your whole life to be miserable. You should be on Snapchat.”
Her delicate fingers unraveled the guy ropes, but her smile remained beatific, like a nun remembering something pleasant.
Our camp was contained in a corral of trees that gave the reassuring illusion of walls. We had three tents—mine, Joni’s yurt, and a mini marquee-style shelter that I’d thrown in the car at the last minute so we’d have somewhere to prepare food when it rained. We reached our little settlement from the car park up a short but steep path that was flanked by granite slabs. When we’d first arrived, I’d told the boys that the camp was remote, but its elevation meant we could better defend it in the event of attack, which pleased them to no end. Billy asked me what remote meant. It meant he mustn’t fall out of a bloody tree.
“You’re sure these poles go on the outside of the tent?” I asked Joni.
“I’m sure. And it’s a yurt.”
“Goodness, I do hope we don’t run out of fermented mare’s milk.” I turned to see Billy unsnapping the pole I’d already built. “So a yurt. Why?”
“It’s circular,” said Joni. “You know, sacred, creates good energy.”
“The Native American thing?”
She stopped to tie her thick hair into a knot that held itself together by magic. The sheen from damp air and hard work threw her rounded cheekbones into high relief. “It’s like day and night, life and death, the sun and the earth—all circular,” she said.
“Shouldn’t you have a wigwam?” I asked. Joni snapped her poles together.
My antipathy toward Auntie Joni and her easy bond with my children could never be aired. Too much depended on it. She kept our family ship afloat with all the babysitting and school runs and sleepovers. But I could never let her go unpunished, either. If she had only ever passed one judgmental comment, let slip one sneer about “having it all”—if she’d just given me a little ammunition, I could shoot her down like I did the holier-than-thou mums at school drop-off. They never skipped a chance to harp on about how I’d missed Sports Day, and then exchanged smirks when I said I’d been at my factory in China, as though I was making it up and was actually getting botoxed or whatever it is they imagine I do while they’re posting pictures of cupcakes on Pinterest. Unlike the SAHMs and MILFs, though, Joni never criticized. It was as though she genuinely relished the thankless task of co-raising three extra children alongside her own turbulent teen. I was indebted up to the eyeballs to my sister-in-law, and I had no currency with which to pay her back. Sometimes, it made me so sharp I got this sensation in my fingers like I was pressing a scalpel into flesh: the resistance of skin and a sickening release as it burst open. I massaged my fingertips together to push out the feeling.
Once the poles were in place, we hoisted the canvas and stood back. Naturally, all the kids wanted to sleep in the novelty yurt with Joni, so I left them to soak in the sacred energy and started blowing up my air mattress now that I had enough space for it in our profane but practical tent. After a while, Joni joined me.
“Hello, neighbor.” She opened up a side flap to let in what was left of the daylight. “You got yourself a giant window here.”
“All the better to see the wolves with. And I just found a built-in wardrobe at the back.”
“You are kidding me. A tent with a closet!”
“One of Julian’s many purchases.” I switched on the million-candle integrated ceiling lamp. It burnt yellow squares into my retinas. “He researched it on the Internet for a solid week. He was all giddy. And when I got the bill, so was I. Of course, he never took the kids camping. First time the bloody thing’s been unpacked.”
Joni looked over her shoulder to check the kids were occupied in the yurt. “So is he really going to move out?”
I nodded without looking at her. If she wanted me to go through the motions of talking about my problems, I’d prefer to do it later, when there was darkness and gin.
“So where’s he going?” she asked.
I shrugged.
“What’s he going to do?” She pressed together the studs that fixed the flap, making out like we were just chatting.
“He could start by getting a job,” I said.
“Doing what?”
“Sucking cocks for loose change.”
“Marlene!”
“What do you want me to do, throw myself on a funeral pyre? He’s the one who’s leaving his wife and three children.”
Joni rolled her shoulders as though she could shrug off that unpalatable truth.
“Anyway, he won’t suffer,” I said. “If he divorces me, he’ll get half of everything.”
“You’ve spoken to a lawyer?”
“First person I called.”
“The way he’s let you down, that’s got to hurt. But I guess he’s entitled—”
“Entitled is exactly how I’d describe him.”
“—because he’s your husband, even if he doesn’t act like one most of the time. But, then, you could say the same for me. I haven’t brought home a paycheck in years.”
“It’s not the same at all. I’m talking about partnership. David can put in the long hours because you keep the household running—you and he are two cogs in the same machine. But Julian? You know what he’s like. A spanner in the works.”
Joni nodded her acknowledgment at the ground.
“I can forgive the fact that he doesn’t work—never has, never will—what I can’t forgive is that he doesn’t contribute anything. Never cooks. He won’t attend school meetings or help with homework. He refuses to collect our dry cleaning even though he walks past the place every day. You do little things like that for David, right? But Julian . . . he acts like it’s beneath him.” I rolled out the flaccid air mattress. “Believe me, having a husband is not the same as having a wife.”
Just looking at the foot pump lying next to the mattress filled me with exhaustion. Joni placed one hand on my shoulder blade like a warm compress. “And it costs me,” I said. “That detour on the way home, the time it takes to pick up my shirts or buy a pint of milk or whatever—something he could easily do during the day—that costs me the chance to read the kids a bedtime story.” My voice started to thicken, so I bent down to screw the nozzle into the pump, but the thread spun and wouldn’t catch. “Fuck’s sake!”
“Go easy on yourself, Marlene.” Joni took hold of the nozzle and twisted it into place. She started pumping, slow and deliberate. “For the record, David and I won’t be taking sides, even though they’re brothers.”
I was about to point out that Julian avoided his brother whenever possible, but one of the kids fell over in the yurt, and Joni ducked off to see to it. “Sorry, later—” she said. I wasn’t sure if her wave indicated me or the mattress.