Chapter 4

The next day, I had a series of virtual meetings, but we did manage to find time to move my office.

What we had done during the first lock down was that we had sub-divided my office. Instead of one big office with a nice impressively big desk, and a round table with seats for meetings, which is what I had at the start, we had divided it up into a series of soundproof work desks. Each work desk had space for the owner’s laptop, a web cam and mike, space to work with paper and pen, a chair, and a hook for a t-shirt. The soundproofing was clear plastic, so that we all got as much sunlight as possible.

The cameras were focused so that the only thing visible was the head and shoulders of whoever was using the desk, and a background poster of their choice. I noted that the kids often didn’t bother with a t-shirt – only when they were actually had the camera on, which wasn’t very often when they were doing remote school, though it was at least once per day.

We had built that room so that it had five desks, but as of last night, we now needed six. Kat and I had talked about it and decided that I would move into the little workspace at the back of our bedroom. Kat didn’t use the desk space that much, whereas I used it all day, and I often got distracted during calls by the kids goofing off, or whatever. I had been thinking about moving anyway. I couldn’t have done it before 2020, but what with everything going remote, I pretty much had nothing on paper anymore; I just needed to squeeze my three-screen setup into the back of our bedroom, and both Zach and Tim helped me during their lunch time.

We had just finished that when Kat called me to say that her work had called an urgent all hands meeting for all the clinical staff, and she’d be getting home late. I asked her what it was about, and she told me that the physio business had been losing money quickly during the first lock down, and she expected that they’d be asking some staff to stand down for the duration of the second lockdown.

“I’m going to volunteer,” she told me. I understood the logic of that, really. She had few post-op patients since all elective surgery had been cancelled back in March. They had been just about to restart it when all this happened. And compared to most of the other staff, we were well positioned to ride out the storm financially. My business was absolutely flying, and we would be ok with her just getting job-keeper allowance until things picked up again.

So that would mean that Kat would be home all the time, not working. I groaned to myself. It was already enough of a challenge to keep up with her...

When Kat arrived home and joined us around the dinner table, it was clear she had been crying. The kids wanted to know, of course, so she told them what had happened with her work. But that wasn’t why she was crying, she said. The business had also asked another physio to stand down, a friend, and the friend didn’t know how her family was going to survive the next few months financially, and the friend had fallen apart in her arms in the car park.

“This is my people we’re talking about,” she said.

This is another feature of Kat, one that causes me grief sometimes. Kat is fiercely parochial. She naturally divides the world up into people on her side, and people who are not. And she thinks that people should really stay in their lane, and make the best of what they have.

Given this, Kat is quite antagonistic to immigration – people should be staying where they came from. Some people mistake this for racism, but it isn’t that at all – she has really close friends who are immigrants of all colours and religions but have come to be at home here and for some reason or another have slipped into being in one of Kat’s groups – work, parents of our kids friends, etc. Her opinion challenges my kids, sometimes, who are solidly progressive and pro-immigration, mainly on the basis that they are against nutty wingnuts from the loony right who don’t want to do anything about climate change. I know that as they age and get more perspective, they’ll start to understand the many nuances to this question. My own position is that some immigration is necessary for economic reasons, and, most importantly, once people are here, we just have to treat them well.

But it’s not the immigration question that troubles me. It’s closer to home that this is sometimes a problem, when it comes time to show some basic Christian generosity. Kat’s like ‘is this one of us?’, and if it’s not, then they’re going to miss out. See someone begging for money on the street? Tough luck. I would rather give them money, myself. I know that they’re not going to use it well, absolutely, or they wouldn’t be begging. But if they’ve got to that point ... I feel for them. Kat, though, doesn’t. For Kat, empathy is something that only applies within her circles. It’s an ongoing work project, to encourage her to show - and feel - love to people outside her circle.

But like everything with Kat, it has an upside. When she’s a friend, she’s a very good friend, and faithful. She’s going to keep track of this friend, I know. And I’m already mentally allocating a chuck of cash to a contingency fund for the friend’s family. Kat doesn’t manage our money, or even think about it at all, really, but the only time she splashes money around is her impetuous generosity to her friends. And our kids, of course, though that competes with her desire to teach them to be financially frugal.

Michelle wanted to know how she felt about being stood down. Kat said that she was actually quite happy. She’d get much more time with her family, more time talking to friends, more time for swimming (that’s a code word to me for more sex), and also have time for some further education. But she didn’t seem quite convinced about this, and she admitted that she was going to miss work, and working, and her work friends.

Michelle declared that she needed cheering up, and tonight’s family activity was dancing and karaoke, and the next thing I knew, we had jumped up from the table, and we were dancing and singing to some loud fast music. You ain’t seen twerking, btw, until you’ve seen Michelle doing it (naked, of course). Tim’s eyes were boggling.

Right in the middle of that, I heard my phone ringing. I walked around the kitchen to pick it up, and saw that it was my sister Sal.

I hadn’t heard from my sister for quite a few weeks. She lived on the other side of Melbourne, with her husband Lem, and her twins Michael and Jael, who were 14 now. We don’t talk much; she doesn’t respect us, since we’re not the right kind of Christians for her way of thinking, and so we’re on the outer with her.

I ran up the hall and answered the phone in the wet area (the good waterproof door is also soundproof).

“Hi, Sal.”

“Hi, Dave. How are you?”

I knew right away that this was going to be a difficult call from the sound of her voice – she was obviously upset.

“Dave, I’m sorry to do this to you, but please, you need to rescue us. Please, please, I can’t live with Lem through another lock down. We won’t be ok, either me or the kids. He’s been abusing us, and now he’s getting physical with the kids.”

Sigh. I let her talk, tell me her story. During that, I could see Kat looking down the corridor, wondering where I was, and I waved to her to come and listen to my sister on speakerphone. Sal’s story was messy, and repetitive, which meant that Kat got the full picture. The summary was pretty straight forward, really. Lem and her hadn’t been getting on well for a few years, but the first lock down had dramatically escalated their problems. They’d been arguing, and he was stood down from his job, and started drinking more. That had made things worse, and he’d hit her. Then she’d then refused to sleep with him – in either sense of the words. In response, one night he’d dragged her to bed and forced her to have sex in the middle of the night. After that, she’d decided to pretend, and let him bang her, but that didn’t make him happy either. And now Jael was acting out, and she’d started refusing to wear appropriately modest clothing, and so he’d hit her a couple of times too. Then Michael had gotten mouthy with him in defence of Jael, and so he’d hit Michael as well.

The thing about all this is, it’s my sister. I know her. I’m sure that she’s partly at fault here – she’s ... well, she’s notoriously toxic. But that doesn’t justify any of Lem’s behavior. No way at all. And it doesn’t matter how much my sister contributed, the relationship has completely broken down, and they do need to get out for their safety. He’s hitting his teenage daughter? That’s the end of the road, right there. No coming back from that.

I’ve been watching Kat, during this story, who knows exactly what I think about my sister, and who’s never been accepted by my family. They’re not in her circle, that’s for sure. I can see from her facial expressions when she alternates between wanting to kick sense into my sister, and wanting to smack Lem in the face. Because she does like my niece and nephew, even though she often feels sorry for them.

Eventually, my sister gets to the point. Can she come live with us for the second lockdown that’s obviously coming?

Right.

I can see it in Kat’s face. She’ll be ok with my sister living here the day hell freezes over. That’s exactly how I feel too.

But where else can she go? Well, my parents and brother and family live in Brisbane. She could go to them, but it’s too late for that now. The state borders are closed or closing, so she can’t get there now. But there’s my uncle and aunt, who live near her, have plenty of space and no one living with them. I asked her about them.

Bitterly, she moans and says, “They just told me to go to hell.”

I draw my breath in surprise. There’s something more going on here. My family might be narrow in their thinking, but they’re very serious about being Christians. Lem too. So they should take her in no problems. This just isn’t making sense. Without really thinking, I said “What did they do that for? What’s going on Sal?”

She burst into tears and sobbed “I had an affair with the pastor from the church.”

Ahh.

“His wife busted us during the first lock down. Everyone knows all about it.”

It all made sense now. I saw the whole picture. Not a pretty one, but all the pieces were in place for me. What a mess.

“So, I don’t have anywhere. You have to save us, please.”

I muted my phone, and looked at Kat, shaking my head.

She burst out, “That stinking slut, calling me immoral! What a bitch - can you believe that? No wonder everyone hates her!”

I sighed. “You know I totally understand how you feel, after all those years they’ve looked down on you, while you’ve been such a wonderful and faithful wife and mother. But just imagine, having a fraction of the sex drive you have, with no support, no guidance, no fulfillment, just abuse. How would you have ended up?”

I see a change come over Kat as I’m saying this.

“Sal was raped as a teenager. I’ve never told you about it, but it’s the key source of all this. I’ll tell you the whole story later.”

It’s a sordid story. She was just sixteen, a rebellious teenager. She got invited to a party, and when my parents said she couldn’t go, she snuck out through window and went anyway. Then she got drunk, and the guy who took her to the party raped her in the car on the way home and got a friend to do it with him. They dropped her off at home naked and bloody. My brother found her and cleaned her up. My parents still don’t know about it. I’d left home shortly before this point, but my brother told me about it a few years later. Good guy, my brother, but way out of his depth on this one. But who wouldn’t be? Still, he should never have agreed with her that it was all her fault.

We listened to my sister wailing on the phone. She was gradually tailing off.

“I really, really don’t want to have her come live with us. And I know you don’t either. But tell me, do you think we have any choice?”

Kat shook her head. Slowly, she said. “No. We don’t. And as you keep telling me, what would Jesus do? But how can any of it work?”

I turned back to the phone and unmuted it.

“Well, you can’t stay there, that’s for sure. But I don’t see how you would come and live here with us.”