Beneath the Surface(43)

“How do you do it? How do you know when it’s time to stop?” Desperation clung to Sheryl’s words. This time she really did appear serious. Or perhaps all the previous times, Kristin had been too preoccupied with other things to listen.

“Because I can’t help but think about the consequences of one more glass and the prospect of a hangover is more than compelling enough to make me stop.”

“I suppose we can give it a try.” Sheryl covered Kristin’s hand in hers. “But enough about me. What are we going to do about you?”

“I wasn’t aware something needed to be done about me.” Kristin tried to sound shocked, but she knew exactly what Sheryl was talking about.

“You’re not someone who does well without a proper occupation.” Sheryl squeezed her hand. “Either you get yourself a very time-consuming hobby or you start looking for a new job.”

“Maybe I should become an adult student of Gender Studies. Go to all your classes,” Kristin joked.

“You’re very welcome to come to any of my classes, just don’t expect preferential treatment.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.” Kristin raised both their hands and planted a kiss on Sheryl’s knuckle. “Speaking of fun pastimes, when are we going to that shop we’ve been talking about in Darlinghurst?” Kristin waggled her eyebrows.

Sheryl fixed her with a stare. “Very, very soon,” she said.



Sheryl opened her eyes, then abruptly closed them again. It felt as though if she even so much as blinked, all the memories from last night came rushing back, whereas when she kept her eyes tightly shut, she could keep a lid on them. But no, even the darkness could no longer hold back the resurgence of the words that had fallen from her mouth last night—because that was the only way she could describe it. She hadn’t consciously spoken the words. That thought would make everything even more unbearable than it already was.

There was the memory, crystal clear in her mind: Kristin’s father had insisted on having a barbecue, the way he always did when Sheryl came over. Somehow, over the years, it had become a way for them to bond—as if the thought that Sheryl was the ‘male figure’ in the relationship she had with his daughter made him feel more comfortable. The one who ‘manned’ the grill with him while Kristin and her mother made salads in the kitchen. While this sort of stereotypical thinking went against everything Sheryl believed—and taught in her classes—she had allowed him to get away with it from the start.

“Lecturing them will make things very uncomfortable,” Kristin had said.

“Speaking the truth has a tendency to do so,” Sheryl had replied. “It doesn’t mean you should lie.”

But it had been the beginning of their affair and Sheryl wanted Kristin’s parents to like her and, really, if that was what it took, this tiny transgression, then yes, she would allow Kristin to convince her it was all for the better, to keep the peace and not ruffle anymore feathers.

After they’d eaten, and Sheryl had ignored Kristin’s subtle cues that four beers were enough, and as Kristin’s father cleaned up the barbecue, she had let him pour her some of that rice wine he always talked about, but Sheryl never felt compelled to taste. Surprisingly she had liked it. With the ingestion of it, an extra dose of verbal confidence, which was not something Sheryl lacked even when sober, had seemed to come over her. Looking back, it had been a bout of foolishness, but at the time, it had felt like the polar opposite.

“I guess your wife is kind of my mother now as well. And you’re kind of like my surrogate dad,” Sheryl had said, and it had felt so good and so true to her, that she had nodded approvingly at her own comment, completely ignoring Kristin’s father’s reaction.

But it didn’t matter how he had reacted. It didn’t even matter that she could have said much worse—something along the embarrassing lines of what a fine-looking woman his wife was. Looking back on that short bout of conversation, in the cold light of day, the only conclusion was that she shouldn’t have said it. It was not how the Parks conversed with each other. Way too much intimacy was conveyed in that stupid little sentence of which Sheryl didn’t even know the provenance. It was just utterly ridiculous. But a disturbing thing had happened.

When Kristin started putting a well-meaning hand on her knee and didn’t top up her glass the way she did with the others’, Sheryl had brushed her off with a simple flick of the wrist because she was convinced she wasn’t drunk. She felt a mild buzz, but it didn’t impair her in any way and it didn’t spiral into the boozy madness the way it used to. Instead, she was convinced that the copious amounts she’d put away didn’t affect her one bit. And went on to blurt out silly things like likening her not-even-legal parents-in-law to the parents she’d lost a long time ago, even though one of them was still alive.