Art Ache (25 page)

I can’t believe how excited I feel. How free and fresh and . . .

My mobile is ringing. It’s my agent. My old one. Turns out they do have mobile reception in Sydney and she does want to speak with me. I take a deep breath.

ME

Hi.

WITCHYPOO

So you think the cancelled commission is my fault?

ME

No. I think you should have told me about the cancelled commission when it was cancelled.

WITCHYPOO

Call reception, make a meeting, and we’ll talk about it when I get back. I’m in Sydney. Not that I’m getting any work done, another bloody agent is poaching my best people.

ME

I know. She’s poached me.

WITCHYPOO

You? You’re not one of my best people.

And this is the confirmation I need.

ME

She thinks I am.

WITCHYPOO

I meant Peter and Sarah.

ME

And me. She’s asked me to join her agency.

WITCHYPOO

You?

ME

I guess she thinks I have something to offer.

WITCHYPOO

She’s ringing everyone. She’s desperate, darling.

ME

I don’t believe that. I’ve checked out her website. She represents some great people.

WITCHYPOO

So do I.

ME

Do you?

WITCHYPOO

Absolutely. Peter. Leanne. Lauren. Sarah.

ME

And me. Why aren’t I included in the list?

WITCHYPOO

They’re the top, you’re . . .

ME

See, that’s the problem. You’re supposed to be representing me professionally, yet you don’t even hold me or my work in high regard. You criticise me, intimidate me, and then forget to tell me my commission has been cancelled. I’m sorry, but I’ve decided to go with the new agent.

WITCHYPOO

You’re making a huge mistake.

ME

Maybe. But she’s nice and she’s friendly and she thinks my work is great.

WITCHYPOO

Listen to yourself. ‘
She’s nice.’
You’re making a decision based on the fact that someone is nice to you?

ME

No. I’m making a decision based on the fact that someone
values
me. I’ll have my accountant contact you to organise any outstanding invoices owed to me.

WITCHYPOO

You can’t do that.

ME

Seems I can and I have. Goodbye.

Deep breath as I hang up. Patrick squeezes my arm and kisses my cheek. Jack gives me a high-five.

JACK

Good work, Mummy!

And I have to agree.

Chapter 30

The following day. Morning. Doctor’s appointment.

“What it lies in our power to do, it lies in our power not to do.” Aristotle.

The following day, on a high of positive energy and action, I check out my to-do list. I need to drop Jack to childcare, do a huge voice-over session, then a routine doctor’s appointment, after which I’ll collect Jack and meet Patrick at my parents’ house for dinner.

They love him. Patrick, that is. And Patrick loves them. He hasn’t really had much of a family life and seems to love my suburban Ma and Pa Kettle parents. They’ve all embraced each other like a warm, woolly jumper. It feels good. And we haven’t heard a peep from Patrick’s mum. I’m getting the feeling that she just blows in every now and then, stirs up a bit of trouble and leaves. Oh well, small doses works for me.

After such a huge day by the time tonight rolls around I’ll be champing at the bit for Mum’s mid-week roast. Never underestimate the skill of being able to cook a decent roast. Or crochet around a face washer. My mum can do both, to what I’m sure is an Olympic standard. I can do neither. But at the moment, I seem to be able to sustain a portfolio career while pregnant, deal with an ex-husband, care for my five-year-old, negotiate the ins and outs of a new relationship. It’s a bit like juggling, but I appear to be keeping all the balls in the air.

I kiss Patrick goodbye as he walks out the door to work, have one of my many loo stops, bundle Jack into the car, drop him off, drive across town to a recording studio and read a pile of scripts selling everything from holidays to land packages to nasal sprays. I feel good. I feel hopeful, like my career has a renewed energy. Like I’m finding another part of my SELF.

Then I stop off for a late lunch and quickly high tail it to the doctor’s surgery for the appointment. Surprisingly, the doctor’s running to schedule. I’ve gone with whomever’s available, as my lovely Indian doctor with the unpronounceable surname is on long service leave.

The physical examination complete, I join the doctor at his desk.

DOCTOR

All seems fine with the baby. Measurements are good. But you seem to have a case of recurrent thrush. I’ll have to send the specimen off, but it looks like that to me.

The doctor looks down his nose, through his half-glasses. He looks a kind man, but I feel uncomfortable talking about thrush with him. Then I feel even more uncomfortable when he suggests I might like to talk to my husband.

ME

What about?

DOCTOR

Well, we will need to test you for an underlying infection.

ME

Oh . . . I have recently had chicken pox.

DOCTOR

Yes, I know that. I mean a sexually transmitted infection.

What! Are you kidding me?
In my head, I shriek like the banshee I sometimes feel I’m turning into. But then I take a deep breath and manage to sound relatively calm and normal when I address the doctor.

ME

Pardon?

DOCTOR

Well, the underlying cause of recurrent thrush can be an infection, often a sexually transmitted one.

ME

What?

DOCTOR

Or it could just be that your immune system is very depleted from your chickenpox episode. Nevertheless, I think you need to talk to your husband.

Yes, with a cricket bat!

DOCTOR

Is there any reason to suspect you might have been exposed to herpes perhaps, or HPV, possibly gonorrhoea, syphilis or chlamydia? Although those last few are quite rare these days.

ME

No. Well . . . I don’t think so.

DOCTOR

Talk to your husband.

I don’t have a husband!
But this seems an irrelevant and petty point. My face is bright red by now and I’ve sweated through my once crisp linen shirt. I just know when I stand up there’s going to be a little W mark on the seat, that embarrassing little mark your crotch likes to leave when you’ve been sitting comfortably on a vinyl chair, sweating into your undies. Just like at high school. I remember how embarrassing it was, those brown plastic chairs and 45 minutes of sweating through maths after lunch. You could kind of smear your bum over it before you stood up to disguise the W imprint, but that usually made it worse and then you looked like you’d wet yourself. Why am I thinking about sweat marks on high school chairs? I’m not at high school now, I’m in my grown up life, sitting across from the most conservative, kind old doctor you could imagine. A conservative, kind old doctor who so far this morning has screwed a steel duck bill apparatus into my vagina, scraped out some of the thrush onto a specimen slide and then gone in up to his wrist in a rubber glove, having a good feel around to make sure everything’s okay. Now he has looked me in the eye and suggested my “husband” might have given me an STD!

I feel like the dirtiest, ugliest, most trailer park trash woman on the planet. One hundred percent bogan! Persephone of the underworld. How the hell do I get out of this office with some sort of dignity still intact? Probably impossible.

DOCTOR

Here’s a referral for a blood test. If there’s any reason to suspect you might have been exposed to a sexually transmitted disease, you must have this test. This is very important. Herpes, in particular, can be fatal for newborn babies and the other diseases . . . well . . .

ME

Thank you.

I get up and leave with my head held as high as I can manage. I’m sure back in his day, pregnant women didn’t turn up for their regular antenatal check-up with thrush and the possibility of sexually transmitted diseases.

This was the nagging doubt. The feeling that I mentioned to my sister. The gut feeling that if Patrick had told the first few lies there would surely be more. Obviously, he didn’t come clean about it all.

I drive calmly and slowly. Don’t want my cortisol levels to rise any further and impact the baby. He (or she) has been through enough. Breathe. Breathe.

Off for a mid-week roast with Mum and Dad and then home to talk to my supposedly loving husband (who isn’t actually my husband) about STDs. How things have changed. It seems I’ve been cast against type in this drama that is my life.

Don’t spiral down, Persephone. Stay out of that underworld. You don’t need to go there. Stay in springtime, Persephone. Stay away from the underworld. Whatever happens, you’ll know soon enough. In the meantime, just drive. Maybe you need to cancel that mid-week roast.

I manage to drive home without crashing the car and ring my mum to tell her I’m not feeling up to dinner tonight. She offers to collect Jack and take him to her house for a sleepover so I can rest. What would I do without her? I’d like to explain my situation to her, but she wouldn’t understand. I couldn’t bear the sadness, confusion and disappointment in her voice. I’ll just let her think I’m exhausted. Of course she’s worried, but I reassure her that it’s just tiredness. She understands. She’s been there herself, she reminds me. Three times. With me and with my sister. And with the one she lost. The one she doesn’t like to talk about. The one she’s sure was a little boy.

Part of me wants to talk to my sister, but I resist the urge. I need to sort this out by myself. Time to be a big girl, Persephone.

I grab the mail on my way into the house. I notice a card with an interstate return address. Patrick’s mum? I can’t deal with that right now. I toss the mail on the coffee table, plonk myself on the couch and wait for Patrick. He hasn’t moved in yet, but he does call in each afternoon on his way home from work and stays a couple of nights a week.

As soon as he enters the lounge room, he knows something’s up.

ME

I went to the doctor today.

I cut straight to the chase, full of embarrassment and shame.

ME

He thinks I might have a sexually transmitted disease. I’m guessing there’s more you need to tell me about your more than ten, definitely less than twenty.

I breathe deeply. Very deeply.

PATRICK

I’ve told you everything.

I keep it businesslike. I sound almost like a doctor, myself.

ME

Is there any way you might have been exposed to herpes, for example? Or perhaps HPV or gonorrhoea? Syphilis even?

I say these names like they’re something normal to me. Something acceptable and familiar. Something casual, easy and not life-threatening to a newborn baby. Who have I become? What the hell has happened to my life?

PATRICK

Are you for real?

ME

Yes, I am. If there’s any reason to believe that you’ve been exposed to herpes, gonorrhoea, chlamydia . . .

There I go again, talking in such an offhand way about these diseases. They have become part of my life. My frame of reference. A cluster of Greek words that are now going hand in hand with my Greek name. Great. Couldn’t I be associated with different Greek words? Maybe Agape or Eros? What about Haloumi?

Just get through this dark underworld, Persephone, and then you and your stupid Greek name can resurface for spring. Spring in the Aussie suburbs.

ME

I just need to know. It could impact the baby.

He doesn’t respond.

I tell myself to hang in there. If I’ve learnt anything over the last life-changing few months, it’s that I need to trust my gut feelings. Casual sex is one thing, but infecting your partner through a blatant lack of disclosure and then possibly endangering the health of your soon-to-be newborn baby, is quite another.

ME

Ow!

I grab my stomach as I feel a particularly sharp pain. It’s way too early for Braxton Hicks contractions.

PATRICK

You okay?

Another sharp pain.

ME

I need to lie down.

Is this the potential miscarriage the obstetrician warned me about? Has it just been delayed? I thought we’d passed the danger zone. I thought we were clear. Please hang in there. Please.

Take it one step at a time, Persephone.

I get up and move to the bedroom. His voice stops me.

PATRICK

Stacey had herpes.

I want to hit him, but I’m also relieved. I can’t believe how calm I’m being. I tell myself to stay present and take it all in. Whatever the outcome I’ll handle it. If it impacts our baby, I’ll kill him.

I make a mental note to get tested as soon as I can.

ME

Who’s Stacey?

PATRICK

An ex. From ages ago. We were together for a couple of years. She had it.

ME

You didn’t think this was something you should disclose to me at the beginning of our relationship?

PATRICK

We weren’t in a relationship.

ME

We made a baby together. I’d call that a relationship.

PATRICK

I’m disclosing it now.

At least that’s something.

PATRICK

And there’s more.

ME

I need to put my feet up.

He follows me into the bedroom and I settle myself on the bed. No more pains. Yet.

I breathe, try to stay calm and listen to Patrick. I gently rub my belly.

Finally, he gets real. He tells the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Once I hear it, I understand why he wanted to conceal it.

There’s a litany of confessions. Not all about Patrick, but about the culture he’s come from and the friends he’s hung around with. The incidents are many and varied, involving strippers, buck’s nights, hook-ups, drunken shags in alleys, drunken shags in restaurants after hours, lap dancers, B&S balls, dares, bets about women, so many beer goggle shags they can’t even remember the girls’ names, Darren’s many dalliances at dodgy life insurance seminars, blah, blah, blah. All of it written off as “laddish” behaviour. Suffice to say that these blokes have sprayed their scent around the entire city. And I was worried about fessing up about Bandana Bloke? I look like Ma Kettle compared to this lot.

And of course there’s the long-term partner, Stacey. She was an interesting woman. She’d dated Darren before she dated Patrick and another couple of members of their circle of friends before Darren. One of the prior liaisons had resulted in an unwanted pregnancy, she wasn’t sure who the baby belonged to. But give the girl her due, she’d girded her loins and shagged Darren in the bushes outside the bowls club a couple of weeks after the abortion. Charming. She’s got stamina, if nothing else. None of the girlfriends ever liked her. Can’t imagine why. She lives overseas now and no one’s heard from her in years, although she did request Patrick’s friendship on Facebook, which he declined.

All the lads have married up now and none of the girlfriends or wives in their circle of friends knows any of this. They certainly don’t know about their partner’s exposure to sexually transmitted diseases. I want to take out a full-page ad in the newspaper and warn them all. Get tested! Maybe I will.

ME

You didn’t think to tell me these things?

PATRICK

You would have rejected me.

He has a point.

ME

Owwww!!!

I have a shooting, sickening pain deep in my pelvis.

ME

Something’s wrong. Please call me a cab.

PATRICK

I’ll drive.

ME

I need to be alone. A cab please.

My tone of voice is definitive. Patrick calls the cab.