The One Who Got Away

by Caroline Overington

  ‘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?’

  The wives referred to the women married to David’s Big Fish. Women who were rail thin and blonde, who got around town in Land Rovers and bug-sized sunglasses. Most were Bienveneda-born and Bienveneda-bred. High Side that is!

  Did I like them? I didn’t know. I wasn’t sure. It was difficult to get to know them properly. These were people who had been through Grammar together (I went to the local high school; I don’t need to tell you what side it’s on) or else their children were at Grammar together.

  ‘If we’re going to get ahead in this town, we need these people on side,’ David would say.

  ‘I get it,’ I’d tell him, and I did.

  * * *

  Is anyone still having sex?!

  I didn’t post those words to June Babies, but boy did I read the thread.

  Not here! came the first chirpy reply.

  Not here either! came the second.

  So, I wasn’t alone but it was disconcerting. Sex with David had been good from day dot, but it stopped dead during my pregnancy. That wasn’t my doing. I was the one who reached out and got rebuffed.

  ‘I don’t like the idea,’ said David, peeling my hands off his torso, ‘there are babies inside you.’

  ‘Oh come on,’ I said, ‘they’re safely tucked away.’

  David wouldn’t have it. ‘I’d rather wait it out. The idea of poking around in there … it feels like I’m invading their space.’

  I could have pushed the point, but who wants to have sex with somebody who feels uncomfortable? Not me, and anyway, it wasn’t like I felt particularly attractive during pregnancy. Some women do. I get that, but I didn’t. I felt swollen and tired and gross. Then came the months during which I was breastfeeding which wasn’t attractive to David, and again, fair enough, because my breasts were like blue-vein balloons, with cracked nipples on top.

  The girls weaned at four months, after which my boobs became like long socks. David was keen to resume relations but I felt self-conscious. One particular night, he rolled towards me, wrapped an arm around my waist and began feeling around. Back in the old days, he’d have found something he liked, but this was after the babies had left me with an apron of flesh around my middle.

  ‘Well, well, what’s this, then?’ he said, giving me a squeeze.

  I slapped his hand away. David had grabbed hold of my post-baby roll. I hated my post-baby roll. I recoiled from his touch, but David wasn’t having that.

  ‘Come on, babe,’ he said. ‘You’re still hot to me.’

  Is there even a worse thing for a husband to say?

  Thankfully, one of the babies cried. I got up. I didn’t have to get up. We had a night nanny to do that, but I wanted to get up. David rolled onto his back. I was gone for maybe twenty minutes and when I came back, it was clear to me that David had masturbated.

&nbs
p; Oh really? I thought. That’s our sex life now? Me feeling crap and you wanking?

  I would have had it out with him, but he was already asleep.

  I started exercising. Yoga, Pilates and spin classes, but I didn’t kid myself. I lost weight but my skin was so stretched after the twin pregnancy that after a certain point, it doesn’t snap back. The only solution was plastic surgery. That’s the business that Molly’s in – cheap Mommy Makeovers – but I didn’t really feel like going to Molly – who is two years younger, with no kids – and showing her my baby roll and my saggy boobs. I went to Beverly Hills instead. They did a good job. I look better than I did, but I will never look as good as I did before I had the twins.

  Not that it matters. Occasionally I will agree to sex, but I want it to be over quickly. It’s been more than five years since I felt raging desire. Part of that is the roles we’ve taken up. He’s Breadwinner. I’m Wife. Worse, I’m Mother.

  When did I sign up for that?

  I’m also never off the clock. Our family hardly ever takes a vacation together, because David is always working. The girls and I have been to Disneyland, Orlando, Bermuda and New York; David did not come. He has been to New York without us, many times. That is the dynamic.

  One time I talked David into an old-fashioned American-style holiday. We drove down to Palm Springs, with the girls watching the screens in the backs of the car seats. We didn’t take any of the nannies, and I thought that would be fun, like the Griswolds. Who was I kidding? Having driven all day, we arrived at the little resort shortly after four pm. David asked the hotel clerk for the wi-fi password. That was his priority. It was 107 degrees and there were no empty beds by the pool. David made a fuss and an attendant came and cleared some damp towels off beds that had been ‘bagsed’ or ‘saved’ by guests who weren’t at the pool.

  I changed the girls into swimmers and put blow-up rings around their waists. I applied the sunscreen, ordered fries and drinks, and splashed around with them. David sat and swiped. Two hours in, I wouldn’t have minded a bit of a swim. A swim-swim, across the pool, not a splash around in the shallow end, without one of the girls hanging off me, pulling me under, saying, ‘Mom, Mom, watch me, watch me,’ or ‘Mom, Mom, be a dolphin! Let me ride on your back.’

  I turned to David, lounging with his iPad on the bed beside me, and said: ‘Is it alright if I go for a bit of a swim?’

  David popped out one of his ear buds. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I said, do you mind if I go for a bit of a swim?’

  ‘Why would I mind?’

  ‘Because, you know, could you watch the girls so I can have a swim … by myself.’

  He said, ‘I don’t get it … why don’t you just go?’

  I tried to explain. ‘Well, I can’t … I mean, if I go, they’ll just jump on me.’

  Peyton was in fact already pulling on my leg, saying, ‘Yes, Mom, come for a swim!’

  I think David knew perfectly well what the problem was, yet he kept saying: ‘Just go if you want to go.’

  I got up from the sun-lounger, and told Peyton, ‘Mom’s just going for a swim.’

  ‘YAY!’ she cried. ‘Mom’s coming in!’

  I tried to peel her hands off me. ‘No, no, Mom’s going to have a swim on her own …’ but that made no sense to either of my daughters.

  ‘No, I’ll swim with you, Mom!’ cried Hannah.

  ‘No, no, you girls stay here with Daddy …’

  But of course they didn’t want to, and my swim descended into chaos, with the girls hanging off me as I tried to make my way through the water.

  What I’d wanted – what I had been asking for – was for David to put his iPad down and take control. To say: ‘Come on, girls, let’s go get ice-cream.’ Or: ‘Let’s go see what’s in the gift shop.’ To get the girls excited about something other than being in the pool with Mom. To take them – bouncing on the balls of their feet – away from the pool so I could slide quietly into the zone that people live in when they aren’t responsible for small children.

  But no. I had to get splashed in the face, climbed on, and pushed down, until I came up spluttering and thinking: So this is my life now. I’m a nuisance to my husband and a pool toy to my kids.

  That was, what, two years ago? Maybe closer to three. Did things at any point improve? I can’t say that they did. Things stayed about the same.

  Oh, who am I kidding? Things got worse. So much worse.

  * * *

  The tap on the shoulder. Who doesn’t love the good old tap on the shoulder to bring down their whole world? It happened to me.

  I was standing in the Kiss-and-Go lane outside Bienveneda Grammar. I had lifted Hannah down from the back seat of the Range Rover, and I was in the process of lifting Peyton down when I felt it.

  Tap, tap, tap.

  ‘Mrs Wynne-Estes?’

  I turned around. ‘Yes?’

  It was a mom I didn’t recognise. She handed me an envelope.

  ‘I’m sorry to do this,’ she said, face all prim, ‘but you deserve to know.’

  I’d been smiling when I turned, probably because I was thinking, This is a mom I haven’t met before. Maybe she has a party invitation for the girls, or a note about Booster Club; maybe this is about the problems Grammar parents are having with cars moving too slowly through the Kiss-and-Go. Smile and take the note, and worry about it later.

  But there was something about the way she strode away that made me think, No, this is different.

  I reached into the car for Peyton’s Frozen backpack, and slipped it over her shoulders, checking to see that the water bottle was in the side pocket. I kissed the top of her blonde head, and I called out: ‘Hold hands!’ as the girls skipped towards a teacher who was signalling to them to come inside.

  I climbed back into the driver’s seat and turned on the ignition. I wasn’t going to open the envelope then and there. Why? Because I was in Kiss-and-Go, where everyone’s impatient. And because I knew what the letter would say.

  I put the SUV into drive and coasted home. Part of me thinks I must have been on autopilot, because what streets I took, I can’t tell you. I beeped the garage open, and parked beside one of David’s cars. I sat in the quiet of the garage for a moment, collecting my thoughts. I rode the elevator up one floor, and sat down at the kitchen table, conscious of one of the housekeepers. She was running the Dyson over the carpet; the gardener was making a scratching noise with his rake outside the window; the pool boy was scooping leaves from the surface of the water.

  I opened the envelope. The note wasn’t handwritten. It was printed off somebody’s computer, in good old Times Roman, the idea being it would be untraceable.

  Dear Mrs Wynne-Estes,

  You don’t know me, but I am one of a number of moms who can no longer stand by and listen to the gossip without letting you in on Bienveneda’s worst-kept secret …

  Which was that David was having an affair with a woman at work. I didn’t have to be told her name. I could guess. It would be Lyric Morales. We had met, twice. Once when I had dropped by David’s office and there she was, all big lips and curves. Luscious and willing. That’s how David would see her. As opposed to out of shape and sagging, which is how he sees me. Buxom and pert, instead of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

  It wasn’t just how she looked; it was the way she looked at me. I should have known something then. Maybe I did, and maybe I couldn’t face it.

  The second time was at a party to celebrate the big five-O birthday of one of David’s Big Fish clients. Who didn’t see Lyric that evening? Her silk dress was slipping off her shoulders, and she had cut-outs over her hips.

  ‘Is she even wearing underwear?’ I asked.

  David looked flustered. ‘Who?’

  ‘Miss Half-Naked over there,’ I said. ‘Honestly, David. You want a certain kind of standard at the office, surely. She looks so cheap.’

  I definitely knew then, didn’t I?

  I think I probably did.

 
; And so, what to do? That’s the question I asked myself upon opening the envelope. What’s a wife supposed to do when confirmation of her husband’s affair is placed in her hands?

  Did I say: ‘Oh. Alright. So this is how my marriage ends. David leaves to take up with a twenty-something with lips like a fish; I sign up for Match with a profile that says: Single Mom of Two.’

  Or did I say: ‘No. I’m going to stay and fight.’

  Was there anything to fight for? Maybe David didn’t want to be married to me anymore. Perhaps he was in love with Lyric, and utterly done with me.

  I started to cry, and cried more when the realisation dawned on me that everyone at Bienveneda Grammar had known for who-knows-how-long what I was now discovering. That was humiliating. One of the things I had loved about being Loren Wynne-Estes was the fact that David had picked me from a group that included girls with much better pedigree.

  I could hear them saying: ‘Poor thing never really did fit in.’

  Also: ‘Have you heard? David’s wife? Well, she’s soon to be his ex-wife. Yes, I know! It was probably inevitable.’

  A voice interrupted my thoughts.

  ‘Madam? Please?’

  It was Marie-Claire, our new housekeeper. She had come into the kitchen and I hadn’t noticed. She wanted me to lift my feet so she could vacuum underneath. My reaction wasn’t rational.

  ‘Get out!’ I screamed. ‘Just get out!’

  Poor Marie-Claire. She dropped the Dyson and bolted for the door. You would think the housekeepers on Bienveneda’s High Side would be used to crazy white ladies, but perhaps not.

  I’m going to have to tip her big this Christmas.

  The important question was, what was I to do?

  Was I supposed to call David? Was I supposed to wait for the day to pass, and go to pick up the girls as normal? I could hardly bring them home and have things out with their father while they cowered in their bedroom.

  So I called him at the office. It’s something I rarely do. What would I call him for? To chat? We had long given up on that. To say: ‘Can you pick up milk?’ I could pick up the milk. The housekeeper could, or the nanny.