Art Ache (26 page)

I sit and rub my belly. I check to see if I’m bleeding. I’m not. Just sharp pains.

The cab arrives quickly and Patrick tries to tell me how ridiculous I’m being, not letting him drive me to the hospital, but I don’t care. I need to be alone. It’s not that I’m angry, I’m not. I’m just deeply disappointed and sad. And I don’t know what’s going on with my body so I need to stay calm and figure it out. I need to think and I can’t if I’m around Patrick. He’s making me feel giddy each time I look at him.

After what feels like an hour, but is really only five minutes, the cab pulls up in the hospital car park. I breathe the images of strippers, lap dancers and loser best mates with beer goggles out of my mind. Why do men treat women like that? Because we let them.

The cabbie offers to get me a wheelchair.

ME

I’ll be fine.

And then I’m not. I collapse on the cabbie’s shoulder. He calls out to some bloke standing near the door.

CABBIE

Get a nurse, mate. Tell ’em to bring a trolley.

And in my delirium, I’m wondering why I’m not married to this lovely man who reeks of cigarette smoke, has about five teeth, three strands of hair on his head and drives a taxi for a living.
Why didn’t I make a better choice?
I ask myself as I’m wheeled into the lift.

I hear Patrick pull up in his car as the lift doors close.

. . . and that’s the last thing I remember.

Chapter 31

Later. Hospital.

“No legacy is so rich as honesty.” Wlliam Shakespeare.

I come to on the trolley bed. They stick lots of wires and straps and things on my belly, measure heartbeats and blood pressure and do scans and then tell me that I’m out of the woods. So too is the baby. I’m told sternly and repeatedly that I have to rest. I haven’t miscarried, but this is going to be a high-risk pregnancy. Understatement of the century, this has already been a high-risk pregnancy. Given all the drama thus far, it seems my body was trying to go into premature labour. My bundle of joy seems to have had enough and just wants to come out and join the party.

While I’m left alone to rest, I manage to surreptitiously ask one of the nice nurses if she wouldn’t mind arranging a few other tests as well. I’d noticed a discreet tattoo poking out from under the ring on her right hand and a not so discreet skull tattooed behind her ear. I figured she might be broadminded enough to help me out. Until I find out if I’ve contracted anything then it’s all a moot point. I’m dealing with this high-risk pregnancy one risk at a time.

Patrick has not left my side the entire time, apart from now; he’s ducked out for a coffee.

As my tattooed friend leaves my bedside, having reassured me that we’ll have the results by tomorrow morning, Patrick comes back.

PATRICK

I can’t believe you got a cab.

ME

Thanks for calling it.

He hands me a hot chocolate and sits on the edge of the bed. He looks exhausted and scared.

PATRICK

I’m so sorry, Pers. If I’ve given you something or the baby . . .

He starts to cry.

PATRICK

I’m so sorry. It’s not supposed to be like this.

I can see his remorse and I feel deep compassion for him.

PATRICK

I’ve never had anyone to teach me . . . I don’t know . . . teach me how to be a man, I guess. How to behave. I want to be better. And I want to teach the boys too. To learn from my mistakes. I want to be a good dad and a good partner. If it’s bad news, we’ll work through it together.

I start to cry too. For the loss of the innocence of this relationship and for all the losses. I’m crying for my ex-husband not loving me, for me not loving him, for the nuclear family Jack will never have, for my imperfections, for my failure as a wife, a girlfriend, a mother. I cry for it all. Everything. And so does Patrick.

PATRICK

I love you, Pers. I’ve been an arsehole, but can you forgive me?

Excellent question.

PATRICK

I made a heap of bad choices. Now I’ve got the chance to make a great choice. Can we start again? Please?

I take my time considering this question. What’s the bottom line for me?

ME

I will not be lied to ever again, Patrick. If you lie, I leave.

PATRICK

I understand that.

I see in him genuine contrition and a deep desire to change. In this moment, we have a fundamental point of connection. Neither of us wants to be a victim of the worst of male culture.

PATRICK

I’m so sorry. I broke the vase.

He remembered my vase analogy!

PATRICK

Mrs. Cunningham’s vase, or something.

ME

Carol Brady, actually.

PATRICK

I’m sorry.

He wipes his eyes with the back of his hand.

PATRICK

And I’m giving up drinking.

ME

I didn’t ask you to do that.

PATRICK

I know. But it’s important to me. My mum’s an alcoholic, and I can feel that in myself. I’ve made a lot of very bad decisions under the influence of alcohol. But I swear on a stack of bibles that I was stone cold sober when I met you.

ME

I wasn’t.

We share a laugh.

I decide to embrace the perfection of this imperfect relationship. I will, however, definitely need to pay Marjory a visit on the way home from the hospital. If they ever let me out of this hospital.

Chapter 32

One week later. At Home.

“I am not afraid of storms for I am learning how to sail my ship.” Louisa May Alcott.

A week later, they do. And no HPV! No herpes! No gonorrhoea, syphilis or chlamydia! Woohoo! The tests for various STDs, in particular Stacey’s potential legacy and my least favourite Greek word, are clear. It must have been a depleted immune system, after all. Whatever it was, now I’m free to go home, with strict instructions to keep my feet up and rest, rest, rest.

I do manage, however, to ring my brand new agent, Susan, and tell her we’ll need to meet next week instead. And my sister.

SISTER

That is fucking huge.

ME

I know, but I feel so much better now it’s all out in the open.

SISTER

Are you sure?

ME

Positive. I can feel it.

SISTER

You and your bloody feelings. Well, I’m never going to make fun of them again. You were right. There was more to his story.

ME

Heaps more.

SISTER

Sorry if I led you astray by being too flippant.

ME

Nothing to apologise for. At least I know what I’m dealing with.

SISTER

He’s your bit of rough!

ME

Ha ha.

SISTER

I think it’s great that you’re giving it a go, Pers.

ME

Me too.

I then break my hospital-imposed home detention to visit Marjory. She’s pleased to see me and I’m pleased that Patrick has volunteered to have his first experience of looking after Jack all by himself. Just in case, I’ve set Jack up with more stimulating activities than a Montessori school.

MARJORY

Good to see you, Persephone.

ME

Yes. And you.

MARJORY

Fill me in.

And I do. Every gory detail.

MARJORY

Why is his honesty so important to you?

Pertinent question.

ME

I needed to feel safe. I needed to know that he wasn’t just going to . . .

MARJORY

. . . turn up one day and tell you he was over you.

ME

Yes.

MARJORY

That you didn’t do it for him anymore.

ME

Yes.

MARJORY

That was your ex-husband, Persephone. Not Patrick.

ME

I know, but Patrick showed his own signs of dishonesty and then I went and fell in love with him. I didn’t plan on doing that. I didn’t want to fall in love.

MARJORY

Because you still loved Tom.

Awkward pause.

Did I?
She’s said it as a statement, not a question.

ME

Maybe.

MARJORY

Or maybe you still loved the
idea
of Tom. Who Tom was. Who you were. But not the reality.

ME

Yes. Tom had changed. I had changed.

MARJORY

So Tom deciding to leave wasn’t such a bad thing?

ME

No. Although it was a shock.

MARJORY

And when you met Patrick, you wanted to know EXACTLY what you were dealing with. No nasty surprises, like the one Tom had given you.

ME

Yes. I wanted him to fully disclose so I could make an informed decision.

MARJORY

I think what you really wanted was a written guarantee.

I laugh.

ME

Probably.

MARJORY

Would you still have chosen to be with Patrick if he had disclosed all this?

Another pertinent question.

ME

I honestly don’t know.

And that’s the truth. If I’d had all the information at the beginning, would it have changed anything? Would I still have chosen to be with him? There are so many things I like about Patrick. Love, in fact. His humour, his easy personality, his zest for life, his creativity, his looks, his smile, his curiosity and willingness to learn, the list goes on. But if I’m honest, probably not. I would have walked away. It would have been too much for me.

I’m sure Marjory’s awkward silences are deliberate. They encourage me to swim around in deep waters within myself that I’m usually too scared to dive into.

ME

Probably not, Marjory. I would have just judged him, found him wanting and moved on.

MARJORY

Yes. You don’t like having your buttons pressed, Persephone, and that’s exactly what Patrick did.

ME

I know.

MARJORY

But it’s forced you to grow. By not knowing all of Patrick’s history, you went in a direction you would never have gone. A direction you would never have taken if you’d stayed not-so-happily-married to Tom.

ME

Yes.

MARJORY

You’re doing very well.

ME

I think I am.

MARJORY

Yes. Keep honouring your SELF. If you need to come back and see me, just call. But I’m confident you are going to be just fine.

I realise that if I let go a bit, I could actually enjoy this road less travelled. I could be thankful for the trip to the dark underworld of my eponymous ancient Greek myth. It was a trip to the dark regions of myself. I can now choose to go back there on occasion, but only when I want to, when I have deep, dark things I need to sort out. Most of the time, however, I want to stay above ground, in the light. When I do visit the nether regions, Marjory suggests I go there by myself. I’m allowed to gaze at my navel and wait until I feel better and then I can return to the upper world, heralding, as Persephone’s return does, the beginning of spring.

Yeah, maybe I’m not really that out of step with my name. As I touch my expanding belly, I indeed feel like I am the goddess of spring growth incarnate. Then a wave of anxiety hits. Maybe the amniocentesis wasn’t right. Maybe the baby has been affected. Then I realise I’m starting to spiral into dark Persephone. Winter Persephone, returning to the underworld, heralded by the dying of plants and the halting of growth. So I remind myself that it’s my choice. There will be many challenging moments to come, no doubt so just breathe, breathe, breathe, Persephone.

There’s a challenging moment later that very night. My heart aches when Jack turns on Patrick and accusingly points the finger.

JACK

You made my daddy go away.

The truth is he didn’t, but this doesn’t seem to wash. Daddy went away because Daddy wanted to, but I guess time in a four-year-old’s world is not a logical or even comprehensible concept. I want to make it okay for him, but I don’t know what to say.

ME

Dad left because he wanted to live by himself.

JACK

Didn’t he like living with me anymore?

ME

Of course he did.

JACK

Then why did he go away?

ME

Because he didn’t like living with
me
anymore.

JACK

Oh.

I can feel him studying me for flaws and reasons why someone wouldn’t want to live with me as he tries to comprehend the concept. I can see the cogs turning in his brain. “Well, she does look pretty scary in the morning. Maybe that’s why he left.” I want to tell him that his dad doesn’t love
me
anymore, but I don’t want to create the belief that love dies. That it is a disposable commodity with a shelf life. So I resort to a hoary old chestnut.

ME

He doesn’t love Mummy in
that
way anymore.

JACK

What way?

ME

Well, like a mummy and daddy love each other. He still likes me as a friend.

JACK

He can still live with you.

ME

Jack, you don’t need to feel . . . un–normal . . .

My vocabulary has certainly gone downhill since I became
a parent.

ME

Just because your parents don’t live together, it doesn’t mean that our family is not as good as other families.

JACK

Okay.

ME

I want you to know, sweetheart, that there is plenty of love to go around. There’s enough for you and the baby and Patrick and your dad. I don’t want you to feel like you’re different or strange or weird just because our family structure is different.

I also explain to him that it’s okay to be angry about all of this. That he might even like to consider sharing some of his anger with his dad.

JACK

But why?

ME

Because maybe you’re angry with him for going away.

I know I’ll have to return to this concept down the track. It’s not a possibility in his world at the moment. His dad is a god, a deity. Ten foot tall and totally bullet proof. He can do no wrong. One day, perhaps, he’ll see him as a human being. A fallible, balding, nearly middle-aged man. And his mother as an equally fallible, not balding, nearly middled-aged woman. But that’s to come. At the moment, I’m happy to just revel in his innocence and make sure he eats his broccoli.

After dinner, I compile the file of information my new agent has requested—headshots, biographies, CVs, showreels—and with a sense of adventure I haven’t felt for a long time, I press the send button and shoot it through to her.

Then I open the mail that had piled up while I was in hospital. The card from Patrick’s mother is beautiful. A charcoal sketch of a mother and child. She apologised if she was rude when we met and said she wished us the best of luck and hoped she could be part of the baby’s life. Seems she has some insight into her troubling behaviour. There was also a comic pregnancy card from my sister, a homemade one from Mum and Dad, and an unexpected one from Mr. Gorgeous. Minimal, artistic, very New York Times. My heart skipped ten thousand beats when I saw his name, but when I read the card I realised just how far my life had moved on from him and his alluring coconut oil scent.