Happily Ever After_ - Benison Anne O'Reilly [35]
He would say I’m talking shit, of course.
None of this was helped by the fact that Isabel turned out to be a difficult baby: difficult to settle, difficult to breast feed, difficult in general. She would sleep fitfully for at most three hours at a stretch and every evening, starting at about 5pm, would cry for several hours straight, a high pitched whine that seemed to penetrate to my very bone marrow. The older generation declared her ‘colicky’ and our medicine cabinet overflowed with every colic remedy known to man, but nothing seemed to relieve her distress. Then she added vomiting to her repertoire: I had to change her clothes at least half a dozen times a day and became accustomed to wearing a new perfume, that distinctive fragrance known to new mothers as Curdled Milk. My GP referred us to a paediatrician in case it was reflux, but a prescription he wrote didn’t seem to have much effect. I was even admitted to the Tresillian residential facility for a few days and whilst I did at least get to catch up on my sleep all the advice the nurses offered, which seemed simple enough to implement when I was there, somehow became much harder to apply at home. The quaintly naïve thoughts I’d had in hospital about settling her into a routine, so she would sleep peacefully while I went out for coffee, to the hairdressers and the gym were all turned on their head. Mum helped out when she could but the only excursions I took in those early months were to the doctors, the chemist and the grocery store. In the brief hours when Isabel was asleep I would simply try to catch up on my own. In this nightmarish netherworld night and day merged into one. It was purely survival mode.
Throughout all this, Tony kept flying and preparing meticulously for his interview at Cathay. Interviewing for a position with an airline is not just a case of dusting off the CV and rocking up for a chat. It’s a very rigorous process. If I remember correctly he had two demanding interviews (one in Sydney, and then when he passed that, another in Hong Kong), a technical assessment, psychological profiling, a full medical and a flight simulator assessment. Only the very best candidates make it through. No doubt this is reassuring for all the Frequent Flyers out there, but all it meant to me was more time away from the neglected wife. I was actually meant to accompany him to Hong Kong so they could check me over as well, but in view of the fact I’d recently delivered a baby I got an exemption from that part. I had a few mutinous thoughts about going along anyway and sabotaging the whole process, but I still wanted to stay married at that stage.
For a while I attempted to keep up appearances. The first few occasions that Tony went away I would clean and wash like a madwoman before his return, but I think after the third or fourth time I realised I might kill myself and perhaps my child in a psychotic sleep-deprived rage if I continued along this path, so I stopped.
I can still remember the look on his face when he walked in that evening.
‘Jesus Christ…what’s happened here? The house looks like a pigsty.’
‘Sorry, but if it’s a choice between sleeping and cleaning the house I’ve decided I’m going to choose sleep.’
‘You know I’ve been working all day. You’re not the only one who’s tired. Is there anything to eat in the house?’
‘No…I haven’t had a chance to get to the shops either.’
‘So what am I meant to do?’
‘Get takeaway or go to your mother’s place, I don’t care.’
I think he took one look at my Medusa hair and sunken eyes and comprehending that he might be the next victim of a psychotic rage incident if he pursued this further simply said, ‘I might just do that.’ Although first he couldn’t help clearing the benchtops and loading