The One Who Got Away (9 page)

And they're right. Twins are a blessing, but I'm not going to gloss over the fact that David wasn't supportive. I'm guessing that everyone has seen photographs of guys who get really into their wife's pregnancy? Who post pictures of themselves on Instagram, holding their wife's belly, and saying things like: ‘We're expecting a special delivery!'

That was so not David.

David was more, ‘You're pregnant, and therefore fat and uncomfortable. I get it. I just don't know how I'm supposed to help.'

In fairness to him, I wasn't my best self, either.

Five months into the pregnancy, I was starting to resemble a whale. The weight and the pain in my lower back had driven me to insomnia, which made me grumpy. I had swollen feet, and I developed that strange condition where I couldn't stand the smell of anything too strong or too chemical.

I had joined a group on the internet, called June Babies, which may have been a mistake.

‘I sent my poor husband out for ice-cream and peanut butter last night,' cried one mom-to-be. ‘Poor thing is being driven crazy by my cravings.'

Nothing like that was happening in my house. I could only imagine David's response to such a request: Couldn't I get the housekeeper to go in the morning?

Speaking of which …

It was six am on a Sunday morning during my eighth month of the pregnancy. David had called from work the night before to say he was heading out for drinks with clients. I'd expected him home around ten pm, maybe midnight, but midnight came and went, and so did one am, and two am, and before long, it was dawn.

He hadn't come home, and I hadn't been able to sleep.

Where was he? Had somebody spiked his drink or had he had an accident? Should I call the local hospitals?

I was just about to call the police when I heard the garage door lift. David's car seemed to crawl, as opposed to roar, into its usual space. I eased myself off our bed – my weight, at that point, was around 160 pounds – and padded down the hall to the kitchen.

‘Where have you been?'

Startled, David grabbed his chest. ‘Jesus, Loren,' he slurred. ‘You scared me half to death.'

‘Where have you been?' I repeated. I was standing with my hands on my hips, my feet wide apart, and my bitch face on.

‘I told you. I had to have drinks. Now I need water,' said David, rocking from one side of the kitchen to the other. ‘Water.'

‘Have you tried the tap?'

‘Tap. Yes, tap. And Advil?' He opened the cupboard where I kept saucepans. ‘Where the hell is a glass?'

‘Have you tried the dishwasher?'

‘Dishwasher,' said David, but how was he going to find it? We had only recently moved into our new house on Mountain View Road, having purchased from a friend of a friend of a friend for an off-market $3.5 million. David had known his old house – the bachelor pad with all the gadgets – very well, but this house was different. Our new appliances were hidden behind smooth panels. We had a dishwasher – we had three (one for pans, one for glasses, one for general crockery) – but David would need all the luck in the world to locate them, especially blind drunk.

‘You're not being nice to me,' he pouted. ‘Help me find the dishwasher. I need a glass of water. I have a bad headache, you know.'

‘Go to hell,' I said.

David sighed a big, woe-is-me, isn't-my-wife-a-bitch sigh.

‘Well don't help me, then,' he said, staggering off down the hall. I watched as he bumped from one wall into the other, and as he fell straight down onto the bed, where he lay like a starfish with his finely tooled shoes hanging over the edge. The smell that was coming off him, I can barely describe it. Beer. Cigarettes. Cigar smoke. Rancid stripper smells? Probably. Then he started to snore, leaving me free to search through the pockets of his suit jacket and, when that failed, through his wallet, and what did I find?

A receipt for $5176.50, including tip and tax.

Let me just repeat that. I found a receipt for five thousand, one hundred and seventy-six dollars! Bang, gone, spent on whisky and whores at some Low Side joint called the Pink Cat.

Five thousand dollars!

I was furious. I was also exhausted, and yet I felt like taking my huge carriage and dumping it on David's back. Squashing the breath out of him. See how he liked carrying all that weight when he was dead tired.

David slept for five hours. He woke to find me sitting in our kitchen, feet wide apart, and breasts resting on my stomach, and stomach resting on my lap. Not the prettiest picture, but then again, nor was he. In fact, what a sight he was. Messy hair. Dry mouth. Grit in the corners of his eyes.

‘Christ,' he said, rubbing his thumb and four fingers against his forehead. ‘I need that Advil.'

I got ready to unleash. ‘Would you mind telling me …'

‘Oh, Loren, please don't start.' David was not pleading with me. He was holding a glass against the ice-maker, and his expression was of a man who didn't want an argument.

‘Don't start? Would you mind telling me where you've been?'

‘Christ, Loren,' he said, holding the ice in the glass against his forehead. ‘Can you please, please give it a rest?'

‘Excuse me?' I said. ‘I'm your wife. I'm entitled to know where you've been all night.'

‘I told you,' he said, with eyes still closed, ‘I had clients in town. I had to entertain.'

‘At Pink Cat?!'

I was throwing down my trump card but David did nothing more than wipe the back of his hand across his mouth.

‘You're snooping now?'

‘This isn't about me,' I said, amazed. ‘This is about you. You spent five thousand dollars – five thousand dollars! – at a strip club.'

David didn't answer immediately. He paused to gulp down his water, then put his empty glass into the sink. ‘It's not your business.'

I put my hands defiantly back on my hips. ‘How is it not my business?'

‘It's work.'

‘How is it work?'

‘It's work because I was with clients,' said David, in a tone that suggested that he was speaking to a simpleton. ‘It's work because that's sometimes what I have to do: take clients to strip clubs. You have no idea, Loren. Clients come to town to see me about their investments. They come from LA. They come from New York. They're away from their wives. They're in a celebratory mood. They want to have a bit of fun.'

I could hardly believe what I was hearing.

‘Strippers are fun? How does that work? Do their wives know about this fun? And it's five thousand dollars.'

That was probably my weakest card. I was stupid to play it.

‘And what has that got to do with you?' said David. ‘What does it matter to you, what it costs? It's their money: they invest with me. I take a cut of the profits, but it's actually their money. So it's going back to them. Besides which, is there anything you want that you don't have?'

‘Excuse me?'

‘I said, is there anything you want that you don't have? Another pedicure? A manicure? Something else for the nursery? Something else for the house? Because you do have the black Amex. It has no limit. As you seemed to have noticed.'

With that, he turned to leave the kitchen.

I managed: ‘Hey, where do you think you're going?'

‘To take a shower,' he said. ‘I'm going to take a shower, and then I'm going to watch the ballgame. That okay with you, Loren? Or are you going to have a problem with that, too?'

* * *

Knowing what I knew then, why did I stay with David?

Two reasons.

I was eight months pregnant with twins.

I was also still in love.

Of course, I remember the twins' arrival as if it was yesterday: me lying on my back in the delivery suite, with a yellow-painted belly and mesh socks over my feet; David standing by my side in scrubs and a hairnet.

‘You okay there, Mr Wynne-Estes?' a nurse had said. ‘Wait, watch … he's going to fall.'

David didn't fall. He recovered himself in time for a nurse to catch him and so he was there, to see our girls arrive.

Hannah and Peyton.

Oh, how I love those girls.

My C-section had been booked for nine am. I'd have preferred something a little later but nine am suited David – his intention was to return to the office after the birth – and it suited our doctor, who was his client.

David drove me to the hospital at eight. I don't recall feeling nervous as they swabbed me with antiseptic. My exposure to babies before I had the girls was essentially nil. I had no younger siblings – alright, Molly, but I didn't know her as a baby – and no nieces or nephews, not even on David's side, since Janet has no children.

‘You're going to need help,' said the midwife at Bienveneda Private. I wasn't so sure. Mom had raised me without help (and without Dad around, since he was in the military when I was born).

‘Right,' said the midwife, when I explained, ‘but that was … a different time. You'll need a baby whisperer. In fact, you'll probably need two.'

‘One for each baby?' I said.

‘One for each shift. Six pm until midnight, and then midnight until six am. You'll probably have an hour alone before the day nanny comes at seven, but you should be okay for that.'

I remember thinking,
Is she serious?
She was serious.

‘The main problem you're going to have,' she said, ‘is finding somebody good at such short notice. This is something you really should have organised by now.' (To be clear, this conversation took place during a pre-natal; the girls hadn't yet been born.)

Part of me wanted to shrug the whole thing off, but by week's end, I had hired a ‘girl' – Maria – to come home from hospital with me, and by the end of our first week at home with
my daughters, Maria had hired another ‘girl' – Sophia – because, she said she couldn't be expected to ‘do twins' on her own.

‘So, how many staff will you have in total?' said Molly, when she heard.

‘I guess … four? No, five. I'll have the two night nannies, the day nanny, David's old housekeeper and the gardener. And the boy who does the pool, so six if you count him, or seven if you count the lady who comes to clean.'

‘Seven staff,' said Molly, shaking her head. She was cradling Hannah, or maybe Peyton.

‘I know,' I said, ‘it's ridiculous.' And it is, but then again, I quickly got used to having all that help. In the early days, it felt necessary because the girls weren't good sleepers. Then came the teething, which was difficult. Then Hannah started to walk while Peyton was still crawling, which prompted a round of appointments with an occupational therapist, because shouldn't they be doing things together and obviously it was just easier to have a nanny stay with Hannah while I tended to that, plus, who was going to keep the house clean, especially now that David's business had geared up, with an associated rise in the number of events – galas, fundraisers – he needed me to attend.

Before long, I found myself having a meltdown over the phone – one time, stupidly, to Molly – because ‘Nanny A hasn't arrived, and Nanny B won't answer her texts, and there's a function tonight, and I just can't see how I'm going to get there. I mean, they just switch off their phones,' I wailed, ‘when I need them to be answering me.'

‘Maybe the poor girl's phone is dead?' suggested Molly.

‘But it's not the point,' I said. ‘It's not supposed to be dead. She's on call. I get so sick of this. You pay good money, but it's like everyone says, you still can't get good help.'

There was a pause on the line.

‘What did you just say?' said Molly.

‘Oh, I'm just so frustrated,' I said.

Molly was laughing, but it was a strange kind of laugh. ‘No, did you just say what I think you said? Did you just say that it's so hard to get good help these days? I'm going to scream if you said that.'

‘You don't know what it's like. David is out of the house most of the day. He goes to the gym three mornings a week. He plays golf. He plays tennis. He's got the sailing club. He has these dinners. I'm supposed to get to most of them. But I've got things on, too. He's hooked me up with all these committee people who are raising money for this, that and the other. I'm supposed to go to lunch with the wives of his clients. I'm supposed to help organise fundraising dinners for the hospital. I'm supposed to be part of the Booster Club at Grammar. You have no idea.'

‘Lunches and dinners?' quipped Molly. ‘I can't imagine how you cope.'

She was being sarcastic, but the truth is that I coped the same way everyone on the High Side coped: I had help, which Molly seemed to find hilarious because apparently you can't have help if you don't go to work.

‘You're actually not fair on me,' I argued. ‘It's alright for you. You have your business, and that's it. I have these events, small talk, meetings, it's endless.'

‘If you hate it, don't get involved,' Molly said.

‘I have to get involved,' I complained. ‘David insists.'

Barely a week would go by without him arriving home from work with a new responsibility to dump on me. He'd stand there, all nonchalant, maybe undoing a cufflink, maybe undoing one
of his white business shirts, when he'd suddenly say: ‘Oh, look, don't let me forget, Jett Ryan's wife has this idea for denim-patterned diapers. I said you'd help.'

‘Denim-patterned diapers?'

‘Yes,' he'd say, ‘because you're good at web design. And Jett's a big client. And he adores his wife. And she needs help. I'm not sure she knows how to turn a Mac on.'

I couldn't really refuse because, as David also liked to point out, it wasn't like I was doing anything else.

‘You don't have to work,' he'd say, ‘and besides, don't you like the wives?'