The harsh buzz of the doorbell woke Jennifer Harding from her alcohol induced slumber. She was lying on the lounge of her suburban home in the same shorts and t-shirt she remembered she had worn the day before as she had opened her first bottle of wine. She peeled her legs off the sticky leather, and searched for an empty space on the floor to place her feet.
Her toe brushed against cold glass, and before she realised what had happened the sound of glass against glass ignited a splitting headache. It was a feeling she was beginning to grow accustomed to.
The day before had been her tenth wedding anniversary. She had cleaned the house and shopped for hours in preparation for the romantic meal she would share with her husband. She had even shipped Lisa, her seven year-old daughter, off to her mother-in-law's apartment for the night, a rare event considering Jennifer's determination not to let her mother-in-law control her family.
All had been proceeding according to plan when the phone rang unexpectedly halfway through the afternoon, a warning siren echoing throughout the house.
Hey honey, just calling to let you know I won't be home for dinner.
He didn't even remember what day it was. There was no apology, just a husband informing his wife that he wouldn't be home at a decent hour. She muttered something, and hung up.
For months Jennifer had suspected her husband had been having an affair, but she was prepared to forgive and forget. She just wanted things to go back to how they had been in the years immediately after their wedding. She had hoped that on the anniversary of their wedding she and her husband could begin to repair their marriage.
Turning the oven off, leaving the half-cooked meal inside, she walked into the garage. It was her husband's area: she could sense his presence, every object had him deeply engrained into its heart.
She pulled a draw in the ancient workbench open angrily, throwing the odds and ends onto the cold concrete floor. Underneath was an old porno, a packet of smokes and a lighter. They had both given up together when she was pregnant with Lisa. He had told her he hadn't touched a smoke since, although she had been aware of the secret stash hidden under the magazine.
She was upset that he couldn't even make this tiny sacrifice. She had left her home in a small country town almost twelve years ago to be with the long haired Romeo that she had met while working at the town's only pub. He had stopped in town for the night. She extracted enough information from him to know that they were on the way back to Sydney. The young Jennifer had dreams of becoming an artist: she was the pride of the town, a creative spirit in a region known only for the cattle that stumbled around the green paddocks.
Sydney was a magical, utopian place to her. She had never been further south than Newcastle, and here was a man from a land where lights turned night into day, and people danced in the streets between benevolent skyscrapers, and families lived a perfect existence in that wonderland called suburbia. The thought of being surrounded by people excited the country girl, who had rarely seen more than a few hundred people in the one place. She had been here for eleven years since she escaped the one pub town, and had grown to hate the sprawling wasteland of suburbia that hid underneath its smiling neighbours and freshly mowed lawns the disease of conformity.
She opened the pack to find it was almost full. She lit up her first smoke in almost eight years and inhaled deeply. The magazine was thrown into the middle of the garage without care or concern. Crouching down next to it, she swore loudly as she attempted to light the glossy photographs. Finally it lit, and within seconds a small fire danced on the concrete floor. The orange glow twinkled in her eyes, reflected by the tears that had formed in her soul over the past years.
The fire died down, leaving only a pile of blackened ash, and the distorted figure of a well-endowed woman.
Jennifer made her way back into the house, and with a glass of wine in one hand, a fag in the other, she sat on the lounge and buried her misery.
The doorbell rang again, the electronic buzz piercing the natural sounds of the house.
For fuck's sake, Jennifer whispered as she stumbled towards the door. She pulled it open, only to be greeted by a cold gust of wind and an empty veranda. Sealing the world off from her hell, she made her way back to the lounge.
She counted three bottles of wine as she threw them into the recycling bin. She heard glass break as the bottles landed among the countless others, products of nights spent on the lounge.
Had Lisa noticed how much she had been drinking recently? Had she told her friends at school? Had they told their parents, and was she now the school joke, the drunk to bitch about after the smell of alcohol lingered momentarily when she departed? No, surely one of her friends would have been over to check up on her.
Bullshit, Jennifer thought. The mothers at Lisa's school weren't her friends. They would only come over to make sure the rumours were true under the guise of friendship, and would be on their mobile phones as soon as they left the front door. She had no friends here, no one to confide in. At first she had her husband, now she only had wine.
At first she had been something exotic: a person of interest. An artist living in the suburbs of Sydney. But soon, when invitations to galleries and lunches with famous people didn't arrive, the interest died and politeness became the only reason anyone would speak to her.
No, Lisa was a smart girl. She would have remained silent, aware of the embarrassment and pity that would follow if she spoke out. Jennifer had that much to be thankful for. Thankful for what, she asked herself. That she could suffer in silence, while maintaining the image of loving mother and caring wife? She wanted tears, yelling, screaming, anything to distinguish her from the women that lived only metres on either sided of her home.
Sitting on the lounge, Jennifer remembered the little girl who had run away from her home when her own mother had hit her, sworn at her, mocked her, the stench of alcohol mixed with her words. The girl had sat underneath a willow tree, watching the cool water slide over smooth rocks, waiting until it was safe to return home.
Jennifer cried softly as she remembered the young woman who had sat beneath the same tree, smoking a packet of cigarettes within a few hours in a bid to forget her pain. Her tears ran freely down her face as she thought of the promise she had made to herself: to never become her mother.
She sat on the lounge for what seemed to be an eternity, curled into a ball and sobbed softly.
This was not the life she wanted to live. She didn't want Lisa to be embarrassed by her, to see her look away whenever she appeared at the school gate to pick her up, to hide the shame in her eyes. She didn't want her daughter to make a promise that she would never become her mother.
As the tears dried, Jennifer began to develop a plan. She walked calmly into her bedroom and began to pack her bags. She wouldn't leave any indication that she had ever lived here. She threw clothes, novels, and photographs into three suitcases. It was depressing, she thought, that one could pack all of their possessions into three small suitcases. It was the sum of her existence, her life as a wife and mother.
On the kitchen bench she noticed a note in her husband's messy scrawl: We need to talk. She scribbled a short note in reply: It's too late. Be back soon.
She drove away without glancing back, leaving only memories behind. She promised to only return when she wasn't an object of embarrassment for Lisa, or the subject of ridicule among the circle of witches she had stupidly considered to be her friends. Within two hours she had escaped the dangerous clutches of the city, once again feeling the soft breeze against her skin as she sat underneath a familiar willow tree.

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