‘You tell me that you fucked up in your relationship with her. You keep notes that she wrote you, not to mention a photo of her. She practically invites you over for a friendly fuck in the middle of the afternoon despite the fact that I’m sitting right there. That is not ancient history. Danielle and her fake boobs are in my fucking face.’
‘They’re not fake.’
Wrong answer. Although by the look on his face, Chris knew that as soon as the words came tumbling out of his mouth.
‘You’re making a mountain out of a molehill.’
Still the wrong answer.
‘Well, the choice is yours, Chris: you either tell me the truth about Danielle or you seriously consider calling everyone and explaining why there isn’t going to be a wedding.’
My cards are on the table. But I can’t help but wonder –what have I done?
----------26----------
I’m going insane. I never should have given Chris that ultimatum. I should have just forgotten about Danielle and been thankful that Chris was with me and happy to get married. But no, I had to push, I had to be the one to come out on top. Why do I feel like I’m the one who’s going to lose?
I’ve avoided seeing Chris since our confrontation but that hasn’t stopped him calling and trying to see me. Doesn’t he realise that I just need to be left alone right now? Who the hell was I fooling when I thought I could do the normal things that women do when they meet a guy and fall in love? Who was I to think that anything would go smoothly?
‘Just go away, Chris.’ Which part of ‘I don’t want to talk’ is he failing to understand? I don’t want to talk to Chris, or to my mother or to Ricki or anyone else.
‘You’ve been avoiding me like the plague all week. You tell me the wedding is off if I don’t tell you about Danielle but every time I try to talk to you, you shoot me down and won’t give me a chance to speak. What the hell is going on?’
‘I just don’t want to see you right now. I want to be left alone.’
‘Des, two months before our wedding is not the time to be freaking out on me. What the hell have I done?’
What hasn’t he done? It’s all his fault. He’s a guy, isn’t he? He has a penis, doesn’t he?
‘Just leave me alone, Chris.’ I think slamming the phone down has got the message across that I don’t want to talk to him. I just want to crawl into bed and under my covers and pretend that the outside world doesn’t exist for a while. Is that too much to ask?
This can’t be happening to me. Not now. A year or two down the track would be okay, but not now, two months before my wedding. It can’t be happening now, when I don’t even know if there is going to be a wedding. My mother will completely freak out if I tell her. All of her illusions will be shattered. I wonder if I stay in bed and under the covers for the rest of my life it’ll just go away? It’s worth a shot.
I hear a knock on my bedroom door.
‘Despina. Get up.’
I don’t want to get up. I want to stay in here forever. But that’s not going to work. Mum’s in here now and I can tell she’s got no intention of leaving.
‘Go away, Ma. Leave me alone.’ Why the hell is she pulling the covers off me? Jesus, she’s opening the curtains, too. I don’t want light in here. Leave me in my darkness. Oh, shit. Chris is standing behind her.
‘Can you leave us alone, Mum?’
She’s so happy about Chris calling her ‘Mum’ that she would do anything he asked her. Even if it meant leaving her beloved daughter to face the music with her estranged husband-to-be. Thanks a lot, Ma.
‘Get up, Des.’ Was that an order? Does Chris think that just because there is a diamond ring on my finger he can order me around? I don’t even know how long that ring is going to be there anyway.
‘Go away.’ I do not have the energy for macho bullshit right now. ‘I told you that I want to be left alone. Which part of that indicates I want visitors right now?’
‘That’s it.’ He pulls me to my feet. ‘Enough bullshit, Des. What the hell is going on with you?’
‘Nothing.’ Lets see how he likes it.
‘Des, cut the crap. You’ve been avoiding me all week, you don’t leave your room and you didn’t go to your fitting.’
Shit, I had a fitting for the wedding dress this week. Maybe it’s best that I didn’t go.
‘You haven’t been to work and you haven’t even spoken to Ricki this week. This is about more than just my ex, isn’t it?’
No one ever said he wasn’t bright.
‘So you’ve been keeping tabs on me?’ Great, he’s following my every move.
‘Don’t you dare turn this around on me, Desi. You’re freaking out on me and I’m supposed to just sit back and let you? I’m supposed to be this understanding guy who can put up with all this bullshit and not be given one straight answer? Do you think that the whole world stops because you’ve decided to take a break from reality?’
Oh, shit. I don’t think I have ever seen Chris this angry. Not even when I put a slight scratch in his SAAB.
I’m the one who should be angry! After all, this is happening to me, not to Chris.
‘Desi, have you suddenly decided that you don’t want to marry me?’
What? God no.
‘Have you decided that you don’t love me any more? And you’re looking for any angle to get out of this without it being your fault?’
‘Of course I love you, Chris, and I want to marry you.’ I just don’t know if he truly wants to marry me –he may just be looking for an out so he can make his way back to Danielle. Well, if I tell him my news I may as well draw him a map back to her.
‘Then what the fuck is going on? How much am I supposed to write-off as pre-wedding nerves?’
I’m going to have to tell him.
‘It’s not pre-wedding nerves.’ How the hell do I tell him? How the hell do I turn his life upside down and inside out?
‘Then what? I’m not walking out of here till you tell me what is going on.’
Does that mean he’ll walk out when I tell him? I guess there’s only one way to find out.
‘I’m late.’
Why is there a blank look on his face? Doesn’t he understand what this means? Me, being late? Me, who is as regular as clockwork? Hell, I planned my wedding around the date I’d be getting my period.
‘What are you talking about? What are you late for?’
Do I have to spell it out to him? God, is he really that dense?
‘I’m not late for an appointment, Chris.’ How do I explain this? ‘I’m late. You know, Aunty Flo hasn’t visited this month.’
‘Oh …’
I think he gets it now, given how he’s just plonked his butt down on my bed. He’s starting to realise just what this means.
‘How late are you?’
‘Just over a week.’ Which means I could be up to four weeks pregnant. I think I’d better sit down. Just thinking about the word makes me queasy. Must be morning sickness setting in early. Great, I’ll probably throw up the main course at our wedding. If there is a wedding. I wonder how long it’ll be before he runs back into Danielle’s ample and welcoming bosom.
‘Have you been to the doctor yet?’
I shake my head. How could I go to my doctor? He’s known me all my life. He knows my parents and even my relatives back in Greece. I can’t go to him with this.
‘Have you done one of those home tests?’
‘No. I’ve been too busy trying to avoid reality.’ At least I can still joke.
‘You suck at avoiding reality, babe. It always catches up with you.’
Well, at least I try.
‘I think it’s time we find out for sure what’s going on, hey?’
Why does Chris always have to make sense? And does he mean finding out about everything?
‘I don’t want to find out.’ That would make it all too real.
‘Why not, babe?’ He’s not running away, and he’s not running in Danielle’s direction �
� not the way he’s holding me right now.
‘I can pretend it’s not happening as long as I don’t know.’ I know that doesn’t make sense. But as long as I don’t have confirmation, I can just avoid it all together.
‘Come on, we’ll go to our place so your Mum doesn’t get sus.’
Our place. Boy that sounds good. Chris’s place has become our place. But I don’t want to be decorating a nursery there when I’m not even sure if I belong there anymore.
‘Do we have to?’ Why can’t we just avoid reality for a little bit longer?
‘Unless you want your mother to walk in on you while you’re peeing on a stick, we’re going.’
I want to be like an ostrich and bury my head in the sand. Meanwhile, Chris has become a comedian.
‘Okay, okay.’ If Chris is going to force the issue then he can walk into the pharmacy and buy the pregnancy test. No way am I subjecting myself to that.
‘Des are you going to pee or what?’
‘I can’t pee on demand. There are biological factors to be considered, you know.’ And if he keeps hassling me, I’m going to do such a guy thing and suffer performance anxiety. ‘I’ll pee when I need to.’
‘Just relax, honey.’ If he tells me to relax one more time I am going to throw something at him. How the fuck can I relax when more than likely I’m pregnant?
‘You think it’s easy to stay relaxed and calm because it’s not happening to you. Well, it’s happening to me!’ It’s about time I did some yelling. After all, his penis did this to me. It’s happening to my body. It’s my hormones that are in turmoil.
‘Damn it, Desi.’
Did Chris just slam his fist against the wall? Jesus.
‘It is not just happening to you. It is happening to us. We might be having a baby. We might be getting ready to become parents. Don’t you think it’s time we found out?’
God how I wish he would just shut up. ‘I don’t want to be pregnant. I don’t want to be a parent yet. I don’t want to know.’
‘Well, you can either find out now or in about eight months’ time when I drive you to the hospital with contractions and broken waters.’
Why the fuck is he yelling at me now? As if this is all my fault? At least he’s planning on being there in eight months’ time. That’s got to be a positive.
‘Just stop it. Stop trying to be logical. Stop trying to be calm. Stop trying to make everything okay. You can’t.’ Not this time. This time no one can make anything okay.
This changes everything. A baby. I mean, yes, we were planning on having children, a couple of years down the track, after we had travelled a bit, set ourselves up a bit, when I could take my long service leave as well as maternity leave. It’s not supposed to be like this. We were supposed to experience as much as possible as a couple before we became a family so that we could teach our children as much as possible. It’s too soon and I’m not ready. And I do not want all the wogs counting on fingers to see just how premature my baby is. I don’t want all their gossip and innuendo. I don’t want it.
‘I just want this and that stupid Amazon woman you were hooked up with to go away and never have happened. It’s not fair.’
I can’t stop crying.
‘Everything was going along so smoothly and it all went to custard when Danielle showed up. She bloody cursed us.’
‘Sweetheart …’
Oh, thank God he’s stopped yelling at me. I don’t think I could deal with Chris yelling anymore.
‘Danielle didn’t curse us. Things were going smoothly until you got all paranoid and insecure. Danielle is not a threat to us. I should have told you about her but I just didn’t think there was a point. I wasn’t a very nice person then. And I know that right now things aren’t quite going the way we planned, but if the test is positive, then we’ll just change our plans a bit. We’ll get ready to be parents. And we’ll face it together.’
I’m too tired to argue. I can’t do it anymore. What’s the point in arguing now anyway?
‘Okay, I’ll pee on the stick. But on one condition.’
‘What?’
He’s not going to like it but he shouldn’t be surprised.
‘Tell me about Danielle. Now – or I go without peeing.’
‘You’re not going to let this go are you?’
I think the shaking of my head answers that question. I don’t want to talk, I just want to listen. Like it or not, I have to know what went on between them and what Chris did that was so bad.
‘Des, you’re not going to like what you hear so just hear me out from beginning to end. Let me finish.’
Should I run now? I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want to know. I can’t move from this spot. It’s too late though, he’s started talking.
‘I was a lot younger when I met Danielle. I was starting up the business and I was an arrogant upstart. The world was my playground. Danielle worked for one of my first clients, and she and I had chemistry. I worked with that company for six months, reviewing their operations, implementing changes and corrections, and Danielle was assigned to assist me.’
I can see where this is going. Office romance developed into something more. I’ve heard this story before.
‘We hooked up. I thought we were both on the same page. But we weren’t.’
Why has he stopped? Chris told me he just wanted me to listen and I am working so hard at not interrupting him. This can’t be it. This can’t be the extent of the history of Chris and Danielle.
‘What page were you on?’
‘Des, my main interest then was getting my company up and running. I wasn’t interested in a relationship with Danielle. I thought she understood that we were just having some fun on the job. We never discussed exclusivity and I never thought there was a need to talk about it.’
He’s right, I don’t like where this is going.
‘I thought she knew that we weren’t exclusive and was fine with it. So, I wasn’t just seeing Danielle. When she found out … well, it got messy.’
No kidding.
‘Danielle thought that our relationship would lead to marriage and a family and all that sort of stuff. And I then had to let her know that our thing was never going to move in that direction.’
‘Why not?’ I have to know why he didn’t consider her a suitable candidate.
‘Come on, Des, you’ve seen her. She’s not exactly the type you take home to meet your mother.’
The type? What the hell is he talking about? Physically, aside from the humungous boobs, I didn’t see any flaws with her. She didn’t look deformed and she seemed quite intelligent.
‘Des, you’ve got to know that marrying outside of our faith was never an option for me. There are some things that are just a given. I always knew if I was ever going to get married it would be to a Greek Orthodox girl.’
Huh? I always believed that you couldn’t control who your heart chose for you – that the heart had a mind of its own. I know Chris likes to control things, but to control right down to his emotions? Right down to things that by their very nature are uncontrollable?
How could he do that?
‘I never thought you could be that narrow-minded. What happened when Danielle found out?’
This explains the old dog and new tricks comment that she had made all that time ago. I guess she thought he just wasn’t the marrying kind.
‘It wasn’t pretty, Des. She also found out about another girl I had started seeing, who happened to be Greek. It was then that I realised she was reading more into our relationship than was there. She was looking at things long term, having kids and the whole package. I had to tell her it wasn’t an option. She offered to convert to Orthodoxy, said she’s get baptised.’
‘If she was willing to do all that, even after finding out about the other girl, then why did you end it?’
‘Des, I didn’t love her. There was no chance of me falling in love with her, so there was no point in giving her false hope. Now do you see why you didn’
t need to know about this? Now do you understand why I didn’t want you to know?’
I understand. My fiancé was a cheating bigot. No wonder he didn’t want me to know. Now I wish I hadn’t pushed. I wish I could wind back the hands of time – just by five minutes – and tell him that I didn’t want to know, that I had gotten over my paranoia, that I was secure in my relationship and that whatever happened before we met was irrelevant. But now that I do know, it’s all very relevant. He strung a woman along so he could get his rocks off. He used her just for sex because she wasn’t a good Greek girl that he could consider having a proper relationship with. He was oblivious to the fact that this woman obviously loved him. It can’t have been easy to offer to convert to Orthodoxy and be baptised in the Greek Church. I mean, it’s hard enough for babies to go through that dunking, but for an adult it is absolute torture, not to mention changing your entire religious beliefs. This can’t have been an easy decision for her to make and it sounds like Chris didn’t even bat an eyelid. Is this the sort of influence I want on a child? Do I want this racist and sexist attitude imparted on my child? Is this the same man I fell in love with?
‘Why did you keep that note from her?’
‘She sent it just after you and I started seeing each other. I think she thought if she offered to come back on the terms I wanted, then we could pick up where we left off. I told her it wasn’t an option, that I’d met someone who completely changed my outlook. I don’t know why I kept the note – maybe to remind me of the person I was then and why I never want to be that person again. I don’t know, Des. I put the note away and didn’t think about it again.’
‘What about that other chick you were seeing? What happened there?’ If she was a good Greek girl then why I am here instead of her?
‘Danielle tracked her down and told her all about it. So that was the end of that. It was over before it had a chance to begin.’
‘Serves you right.’ A part of me wants to take Chris into my arms and tell him it doesn’t matter, that what’s done is done, that it doesn’t make a difference to our relationship and that we both have past relationships where we regretted our behaviour. But there is that other part of me that thinks I should be cautious; if Chris could do this once, he could do it again. That he cheated, and whether he saw it as cheating or not is really just semantics. Can I marry him knowing this and, more to the point, can I have a child with him knowing this? I may not have a choice about the second bit.
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