“That thought’s crossed my mind more than once,” I agreed.
“But that’s not you, Dane,” Mum countered. Her expression was more reflective than I could recall seeing in a long time. “That poor girl! She’s been all alone for a long time. She has no idea how a real family works. That much is clear to me, Dane. More than once I caught her watching, assessing, trying to understand. I don’t think she’s seen much love in her life, my boy… And that’s a real tragedy because that girl’s got a big heart. She just doesn’t know who to trust it with, or how to go about it.”
I thought on that for a moment. “How can you be so sure? I thought so too but after tonight…”
“It’s the way she looks after her boy, Son. He idolises her. The things he tells me…” dad shook his head and grinned in amusement. “She’s a great mum and she puts her heart and soul into him. A woman like that, would do the same for the right man.” My dad speaking like that, put a lump in my chest. It only got larger when Dad glanced over at mum and gave her one of those grins that was just between the two of them.
“So what did you two actually argue about?” Mum was obviously cutting to the chase.
“She said something about not wanting me to feel bad about going to Vegas, and that she and Isaac will be fine. Then she said about not wanting to give me the opportunity to hold it over her head, or something like that…I was so pissed I can’t exactly remember the words but that’s what she meant.”
“How much do you know about her previous marriage?”
“Naff all.”
Mum nodded in understanding. “You need to talk to her, Dane. You’ve stirred something up and now you’ve got to deal with it. It was the first and it won’t be the last time it happens.”
Dad sat back in his recliner looking as if he’d just discovered the meaning of life. “Yep, relationships aren’t all hot sex and good meals, you know!”
“Dad, what the?” Sometimes my dad would just pitch stuff like that to rib us. Fortunately, he had the good sense to pick his audience.
Mum just giggled and gave dad an absent wave with her hand. “Don’t mind him. But he’s right you know. The secret of a long relationship is not being scared to have the fight. From time to time you’ll both need to get stuff off your chest, nothing better than a good blue to do that. Then you need to work out a way to move through it. Every couple is different on how they do that. You and Arianne have to work that one out if you’re going to have a future together. Just do it honestly. You’ll both need to bleed a little, but you’ll be better for it.”
Future together—shit just got real!
I sucked in a breath and felt a little green and hollow. Just as quickly it passed and a different feeling settled. It was the thought of Arianne by my side, in my bed, at the breakfast table in the morning. Isaac and his endless chatter, sharing things with them. Family dinners, like we’d done earlier. Yeah, that was much better than the hollow, green feeling, but was that really where I was going now?
“She hates me fighting,” I blurted out and I had no real idea why it popped out.
“No secret there, Son.”
“Thanks, Einstein.” Dad just chuckled in good humour.
“That’s something you’ll have to work out for yourselves, Dane. I can’t give you an answer whether you should or you shouldn’t. Just know that whatever you decide we’ll support you.” And that was what was great about mum. She’d always have my back.
“You told her where you went, didn’t you?” Dad asked.
I shook my head no and he sucked in a breath and winced.
“Son, that’s going to hurt. I suggest you get your arse back over there and see how badly you’re in the dog house. If you don’t get a wriggle on, it’ll only get worse and there won’t be a happy ending for you tonight.” He waggled his eyebrows at me. As if I could miss his point?
“Leave him alone, Gary. If the boy hasn’t figured out makeup sex is the best by now, then he’s a damned slow learner.” I didn’t know whether to cringe or laugh.
I went with the laugh off. “Yeah, thanks Mum. So don’t need the sex tips. Think I’ve got that part handled.” And with that I got up off the sofa.
“Thanks Mum, Dad.” It came out a little sheepishly.
“That’s what we’re here for.” mum got up and gave me a hug. “We’ve managed thirty-odd years of marriage, so we probably have a few clues.”
The old man got up as well and gave me our man hug and a slap on the back.
“If you want another word of advice.”
This time I really did cringe. “Do I?”
“Pick up some flowers and chocolate as a peace offering.”
“I’m not sure I’m actually in the wrong?”
“Son, have you learned nothing? Happy wife, happy life. And before you argue with me about you not being married, Arianne has been a wife. Every woman is a wife in training. Keep her happy.” He gave me a wink.
Then something dawned on me. “Why are you so certain she’s worth it?”
Mum rolled her eyes at me as if I’d lost my marbles. “Oh that’s easy! Why are you over here asking advice to sort this out? If she meant nothing to you then you would have blown her off or she’d have been one of those hook ups or whatever you call them.”
“Am I really that transparent?” I asked them as I stopped at the front door.
They both looked at each other then turned to me. “Yes!”
I had my answers, now I just needed to work out my strategy.
Dane
I took the old man’s advice and stopped for roses and chocolate from the convenience stored on the way home.
Big mistake!
Arianne was sitting on the sofa, legs tucked under her and a cup of something in her hands when I walked in. She looked despondent. When she saw the roses her eyes went wide with something that didn’t look good.
“Put the roses in the wheelie bin outside now Dane.” Her voice was shaky.
“What?”
“Just do it! The chocolate can stay.” This time there was no mistaking how definite she was. Okaaaaay!
I tossed the two giant blocks of chocolate onto the sofa and quickly dumped the flowers in the wheelie bin around the side of the house. They weren’t the nicest roses I’d ever seen, but still… I braced myself and took a couple of deep breaths before I walked in again.
“Sit down.” I hadn’t even had a chance to say a word.
I did as she asked and left about a foot between us, with my body angled to hers.
“Thank you for the flowers and I’m sorry I couldn’t accept them graciously.” She paused for a few seconds and I knew that first sentence was something she’d rehearsed in her head while I dumped the flowers. Now she was on to the real stuff.
I watched her take a deep breath and brace herself. Her eyes were a little unfocused.
“The roses specifically, are a trigger for me. Marcel used to beat the shit out of me then give me red roses. His family and friends would see them and make comments about how wonderful he was for giving me flowers. They didn’t know I was covered in bruises where they couldn’t see. Everything was about the show for others.” There were silent tears streaming down her face and I wanted more than anything to hug her. It was the first time she’d really given me anything other than the fact that she’d been abused.
I wanted to hug her tight but I wasn’t sure if she wanted that. Then she looked at me with her bottom lip trembling and I couldn’t help it any longer.
“Come here,” I said holding out my arms to her.
She flew across the distance and pressed her head into my chest.
“I’m so sorry,” she sobbed. “For the flowers and before. I didn’t realise till you were gone and I thought about it.” I pulled her tighter to me and stroked my hand through her hair. “I didn’t know if you were coming back.”
That made me feel like shit. “Yeah about that…I shouldn’t have taken off like that and not told you what I was do
ing.”
The sobs were more like quiet little snuffles. “I don’t have any claim on you, Dane.”
“But that was my point—you do. Whether you know it or not. I care about you. I want you to know where I am and what I’m doing. Just as I want to know where you and Isaac are and what you’re doing.”
She lifted her head. “You care about me?”
I took the opportunity to wipe away the tears with my thumb and pass her a tissue from the coffee table. “I do. I was trying to tell you that before I charged out the door. I just did it really badly.”
A little whimsical grin curled up the side of her mouth. “And I was hell bent on not having you use Vegas against me.”
“At the risk of upsetting you again, could you explain that to me please? I got the drift that Marcel used to hold things over your head but I don’t want to misinterpret what you were trying to say. I’m just a dumb jock after all.” I added a little chuckle on to the end.
Arianne needed to feel as at ease and in control of the situation as much as possible. I wanted her to feel that she was helping me to understand, and I needed to. Hopefully this way wouldn’t be as confronting as me directly asking her.
“Umm… it’s not easy to talk about him, Dane, or my time with him, but I’ll try.”
“Thank you.”
“Marcel worked on a scorecard, I guess. Everything had a price attached to it. Regardless of whether I wanted or needed something, Marcel would attach his own mental price to it.” Ari buried her face in my chest again before she started and I let her. If it made things easier for her, then so be it. I’d rather see her face but I needed to know the story more.
“He’d decide in his own mind whatever some action or purchase was worth. Don’t get me wrong, he’d never come out and say, ‘This is worth x’. It was more how he’d work it into a conversation. So say I bought a new dress he’d say something to make me feel bad about it and spending the money. Like I somehow owed him for it, but he expected me to be immaculate in public and at home. How could I do that without buying new clothes occasionally? Worse was when he’d come home with clothes or jewellery for me. He’d give it to me, then a few days later, he’d remind me at every opportunity how he’d given it to me and how lucky I was. How grateful I should be, how good he was to me. It was a huge guilt trip all the time. I got to the stage where I hated anything new whether I bought it or he did. I couldn’t stand the price tags. It was never about him giving me something because he wanted to, but all about what he could leverage from me.”
What a mind fuck!
Marcel was even more twisted and an even bigger arsehole than I thought.
“It didn’t just apply to tangibles. He’d apply the same system to events or whatever. So if Marcel was in your shoes, he would have been holding the fact that I was a burden to him over my head. It was just the way everything happened with him. I’m not proud of it, but I guess I just mistook your words and jumped to my conclusions based on him.”
I took her chin in my hand and dropped a soft kiss to her lips. She’d given me the gift of letting me in, telling me about her past. I wanted to reward her with something that I knew she’d enjoy, something I could give her. My lips plucked and teased a few times at hers before I pulled back.
Our eyes met for a moment and so much passed between us.
“How long were you with him, Arianne?” My voice was no more than a whisper and it ripped at me to ask, but I needed to know.
“I guess we were a couple from when I was fourteen until two years ago. So about twelve years give or take a few months.”
Fuck! He’d been her first everything. Marcel and his fucked up ways had been there throughout all those really important teen and early adulthood years. How was she not more damaged? Hell, how did she even like sex as much as she seemed to? However, something in her voice told me there was a lot more to it.
“How did you meet him?” That had been a question I’d asked myself many times since I met her.
Her voice was flat almost robotic when she answered, “I went to live with his family after my parents died. I was sent here to Australia when I was younger than Isaac. Marcel’s family took me in. His father was a business partner of my father.”
Fuuuuuuuck!
The voice she used was devoid of feeling, but the shaking of her body in my arms told me everything. I had so many questions, yet I was terrified to ask any of them. It had to be an emotional minefield for her.
“Yes, you’re probably right. It was almost an arranged marriage, I guess.”
“Oh baby…” I didn’t know what to say. My mind was only just putting it all together when she said that.
There were even more questions now.
I hugged her tight and tried to give her everything I could with my embrace, because I knew whatever I said would be nowhere near enough. How did you put this sort of stuff into words? What could you say?
“It’s okay, Dane. I know it sounds bad—it wasn’t always terrible. In fact, it was pretty good before Isaac was born and while Pierre, Marcel’s father was alive. Pierre was always kind and in fact he kind of idolised me, more so than Marcel. I think that was what ate at Marcel to a big degree. He was jealous of the affection Pierre showed towards me. You see, once Marcel was born Pierre and his wife Ursula, had tried to have more children but couldn’t. They wanted a girl and I guess by my parents passing they got one—me.”
There was no stopping my body from stiffening. It sounded all too incestuous to me. Fuuuck, Marcel was almost her stepbrother!
She must have picked up on my tension and thoughts. “I think I know what you’re thinking and it wasn’t really like that. Actually, Marcel kind of avoided me and hated me while I was a little girl. It wasn’t until I was fourteen that he paid me any notice.”
My stomach felt sick. “How much older is he than you, Ari?”
“Almost five years.”
“And his mother and father were okay with him being with a fourteen year old girl?” I was horrified. It wasn’t even the age difference that was so much the issue, it was the fact that she had been raised almost as his sister.
“We weren’t together, together until I was sixteen, but we were a couple I guess.” I hated to burst her bubble, but there were no nineteen or twenty-year-old guys I knew not getting some. They may have been a couple, but Marcel was most definitely getting some from somewhere. From the behaviour I’d seen I had absolutely no delusions that this guy was a saint. He’d cheated on her right from the beginning.
“When I turned eighteen we were married and I had Isaac about a year later. Isaac was four when he was diagnosed with Asperger’s. Pierre blamed Marcel even though there’s no real conclusive evidence to suggest why Asperger’s occurs. Pierre died about three months after that. That’s when Marcel became really bad and violent. Before then it had only ever been verbal. He took over the business and well I guess he got off on the whole power trip. He hated him then and it’s still the case.”
I could only imagine what she’d lived through—the arsehole!
“That’s the abbreviated version of my life with Marcel.”
“Ari, I don’t even know where to begin. But I do have a couple of questions.” Her eyes met mine once again and I wanted to check where she was at before I asked them.
“What?” I got the feeling that this might be a once chance kind of thing so I went for it.
“How did your parents die?”
“I don’t really know. They went on a business trip and never came back. I was staying with Leo and his wife at the time. They told me what had happened and brought me here to Australia. I was born and lived in France until then.”
God, my life was uneventful—ordinary. Nothing had ever happened to me and suddenly I felt quite thankful for it.
“Who’s Leo to you? I know you mentioned him to Mark but I didn’t feel I could ask then.”
I watched her chew on her lips as if trying to decide what to tell me. “Leo’s th
e man I gamble for now.” Her voice was so quiet, I had trouble hearing. That wasn’t the only trouble I was having. My mind was seriously struggling to get around the whole Leo and Pierre relationship.
“How did you end up with Pierre and Ursula?”
“It was in my parent’s Will. They had apparently organised for Pierre and Ursula to become my guardians if anything happened to them.”
Jesus! It just kept coming…
I was also certain that nobody outside these people she’d mentioned had any clue about any of this.
“I’m sorry Ari, I know this is really hard for you but I’m confused. How does the gambling figure in all this?” I was scrambling to get my head around everything and every time she said something more, the picture became murkier, rather than clearer.
“My parents, Pierre and Leo were…are, all professional gamblers. It’s kind of the family business, I guess.” She sounded resigned and that killed me. “From what I can gather Pierre, Leo and my father were all in some sort of gambling syndicate or something. They don’t talk about it and I learned early not to ask about the details. Then when I turned eighteen and was old enough to be in the casinos I was expected to well…gamble.”
“And I guess your Math skills had been honed from a young age.”
She nodded with a real melancholy. “Yes. It was obvious from a young age I excelled at Maths. Everyone just saw to it that I got better, I guess. My parents were both apparently brilliant mathematicians as well.”
The more she told me, the more I realised how much she had been manipulated over the years. From the sound of it, she’d been little more than a business asset to these people.
A long range plan.
I had a strong feeling mum was right—I should know by now never to doubt that woman. Arianne had seen very little love throughout her life. I also realised I had no real idea of what she did. There was a lot more that needed to be said and there was only so long we could sit like this for.
“I think we’re going to be here for a bit longer, Ari. Let’s get comfortable.”
I eased her body up then stretched out so I was in the corner of the sofa, with one leg up against the length the other hanging off. Arianne settled herself between my legs without protest and I took that as a good sign. I circled my arms around her middle and clasped my hands together just under her breasts. Things were going much better than I could have hoped for.
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