The One Who Got Away

by Caroline Overington

  ‘Alright, ladies and gentlemen!’ the MC cried. ‘Let’s hear from the father of the bride!’

  The crowd – Big Fish included – roared their appreciation.

  Dad got to his feet. He was as red as a tomato, his bow tie was wonky, the front tails of his shirt were out, and one silky button, right in front of his shirt, had burst over his belly.

  ‘Alright, alright,’ he said, shifting from one enormous foot to the other. ‘Is this thing on?’

  He tapped, and the microphone screamed. The MC rushed forward, adjusted things – shirt button included – patted Dad’s broad back, and stepped back, grinning.

  ‘Well, now,’ said Dad, wiping his brow with the back of his hand. ‘First of all, thank you everyone for coming. As most of you will know, I’ve got two daughters. I’ve got Loren here, who is the bride’ – at this point, the crowd whistled and cheered – ‘and I’ve got Molly, who is younger. And they’re both pretty good-looking, right?’

  The crowd whistled.

  My face flushed. In truth, I felt a bit miffed. Molly had lived with Dad for a long time, longer than me. She definitely calls him Dad, but I am his only biological child. I found myself thinking, Hang on, you are my father, and this is my day, but there was no time to get sore, or to stay sore. Dad was on a roll.

  ‘That’s right, they’re both pretty good-looking,’ he said. ‘Loren’s the eldest, and she’s definitely been the ambitious one, going off to college and getting a job in New York City, and to be frank with you, I wasn’t expecting to be marrying her off in her hometown, but what do you know? Here we are.’

  Somebody shouted: ‘Hear, hear!’

  Dad stuck a finger into his collar and gave it a pull, trying to let in air.

  ‘What’s more, we’re here to see her marry a fellow born and bred in Bienveneda,’ he continued, prompting more cheering.

  ‘Not from the Low Side, mind you!’ said Dad, grinning over the microphone. ‘Although that’s where my lot is from. In case you can’t tell by the number of sleeve tattoos we’ve got. No, no, no, I’m kidding. But no, Loren’s decided to go with somebody from the High Side. And people say never the twain shall meet!’

  The crowd was really laughing now, and Dad, loving an audience, ramped things up.

  ‘So yes, here she is, marrying David Wynne-Estes,’ he said.

  The crowd cheered and clapped some more. Dad took a moment to mop more sweat from his brow with one of the linen table napkins.

  ‘Well, I have to tell you, I was a bit wary when Loren told me who she’d chosen,’ he continued, ‘and that’s because my side has always thought people on this side were a bit up themselves!’

  The crowd roared again, although not David’s parents, who looked at each other with eyebrows slightly raised.

  ‘And this guy here, this David Wynne-Estes, we’re told that he’s done particularly well for himself setting up his own business, getting hens to lay golden eggs or whatever it is he does.’

  The Big Fish, especially some of the younger ones who had flown in from New York, loved that. One of them hollered: ‘Hell, yeah!’

  ‘And I’ll be honest,’ Dad said, ‘since the two of them got engaged, I’ve had a few people say to me, well, your Loren, she’s done pretty well for herself, hasn’t she?’

  The crowd went to clap, but Dad held up his hand, shook his head and said: ‘No. No, no, no, I’ve had a few people say that to me, but let me tell you, I’ve got no idea what they’re talking about. Because from where I’m standing, looking at my daughter there, it’s David that’s the lucky one.’

  The crowd went: ‘Awww …’

  Dad nodded. ‘That’s right,’ he said, gazing directly at me. I was trying not to cry, because it would be Panda Eyes if I cried.

  ‘And I hope you know I mean that, Loren,’ Dad continued, ‘because I love you. Maybe I wasn’t the best father that ever lived, but you are the best daughter a man could wish for, and I wouldn’t change a bit of you.’

  I put my hands together and blew a kiss in Dad’s direction. Then I glanced at David to see his reaction. He was leaning way back in his throne, so much so that the two front legs were off the ground.

  Dad pointed a pistol finger at him. ‘And now to my new son-in-law. It’s a pleasure to welcome you to the family, David … and make sure you take care of my girl.’

  The crowd was clapping and cheering and looking to David for a response but David wasn’t getting up. He wasn’t settling the chair on which he was balanced. He wasn’t reaching into his top pocket to take out a speech of his own. No, he was reaching down towards the ground, to where he’d left his half-drunk bottle of beer.

  He picked up the bottle and tilted the neck in Dad’s direction.

  ‘Well, you don’t have to worry about that,’ he said. ‘Loren’s in good hands now that she’s with me.’

  * * *

  About a month after the wedding, I was on my knees in the en suite, vomiting. ‘I feel awful.’

  ‘That’s the second time this week you’ve said that.’ David was tucked away in the walk-in wardrobe, dressing for work.

  ‘I cannot be pregnant,’ I said.

  ‘Sure you can,’ said David, coming out of the wardrobe. He was grinning and fastening a cufflink. ‘We’ve been doing it often enough.’

  ‘Please stop,’ I said, mainly because David was right. We were only just back from our honeymoon, which had been a cruise down to Cabo, followed by a few weeks in a private villa owned by one of his clients, which was more like an estate, with an army of housekeepers and a militia patrolling the border.

  ‘What does this guy do?’ I’d asked David. ‘Run a drug cartel?’

  We had nearly run out of condoms on day three – surely a good sign on a honeymoon – and when we arrived in the villa I’d been loath to add them to the list of things I wanted the housekeeper to get from the market (mangos, bananas, Trojan Pleasure For Her). Plus, we’d had a lot of tequila, and so we probably weren’t as diligent with the remaining condoms as we should have been.

  * * *

  ‘You’re pregnant,’ my doctor confirmed, snapping off her silicone gloves. ‘No question. You are.’

  ‘No way,’ I said, struggling back into a sitting position, and then of course came the double whammy. It wasn’t one baby; it was twins.

  ‘This wasn’t part of the plan,’ I moaned to Molly, because the plan had been for me to come home from the honeymoon and find a new job in Bienveneda (I couldn’t stay on at the Times; the commute was too great).

  But David was ecstatic.

  ‘Twins,’ he said, staring at the two bleeping lights on the screen in the office of Bienveneda Ultrasound. ‘I cannot believe that. That is just fantastic.’

  Oh yes, fantastic, except if you have to carry them.

  I’m not going to pretend that I loved being pregnant. Some women do, but I am not one of them. Likewise, I’m not going to pretend that David’s pride in having conceived twins translated into him being amazing during my pregnancy because he wasn’t amazing.

  Some days, he was horrible.

  Let me see if I can explain. Three months into the pregnancy, I was as big as a woman at full-term with a singleton, and I had pain in my lower back. I don’t know if that was because of the way the babies were pressing on my spine, but I moaned: ‘Can you please rub my back?’

  David was propped in his usual corner of the L-shaped couch with his iPad at the ready.

  ‘Sure,’ he said, reaching forward with one hand to rub his knuckles over my spine.

  ‘No, I mean, I need you to massage my back for me. I’m in agony.’

  ‘I don’t know what you want me to do,’ David said grumpily. ‘I’m not a massage therapist. If you’re in pain, you should go to see somebody.’

  ‘I don’t want to go to see somebody,’ I said, dismayed. ‘I want a massage from my loving husband.’

  David turned his attention back to his iPad. ‘I don’t feel comfortable,’ he said. ‘What
if I hurt you? And how am I supposed to concentrate on what I have to do here, if I’m giving you massages every night?’

  Does that sound cruel to you? And yet I could see his point. Mine was a twin pregnancy; David wasn’t a specialist in pregnancy massage. He was a specialist at making money, and God knows we were going to need it. We had been inspecting new houses, and researching new and bigger cars. We were going to have two children at Grammar before we knew it, plus, down the track, there would be college fees.

  Maybe it was me who was being selfish. It wasn’t like we couldn’t afford a massage therapist.

  I decided not to push it and changed tack, instead.

  ‘How did the girls in the office react when you told them about having twins?’ I asked.

  ‘They’re thrilled for us,’ said David, ‘and Fat Pete was in today – you’re nearly bigger than him now, you know – and he was saying, “Double trouble. Ha-ha! This is going to make you want to work even harder.” Like I don’t work hard enough for that fat bastard.’

  Part of the pleasure of twins is the reaction of other people. Everywhere I went – the pharmacist, the tiny baby boutique on Main, the stroller specialist at Macy’s – they were all saying the same thing:

  ‘Twins! No way!’

  ‘Twins! How lucky!’

  ‘Twins! What a blessing!’

  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.