Daisy Dooley Does Divorce

by Anna Pasternak

  I smiled. “That, my friend, you’ll never know.”

  “So, to Daisy deranged Dooley,” continued Jess, “our best mate and the most wonderful source of inspiration because however bad our lives may be, we only have to look at hers to feel a surge of hope.”

  “To Daisy deranged Dooley,” chorused Miles and Lucy. “Author-to-be of Daisy Dooley Does Divorce!”

  After I thanked Jess and told her that as soon as I had the first chunk of my advance from Insight, I’d be moving out and putting a deposit down on a flat of my own, Lucy said softly, “You never told me you shagged Julius.”

  “Because I knew you wouldn’t approve and I didn’t plan it, it just happened.” I shrugged. “Look, I don’t feel great about it but the weird thing is, I don’t feel guilty either. It felt right, so it was clearly meant to be.”

  “Still Daisy, still in denial,” said Lucy.

  “Listen, Luce,” said Jess, “there are lots of ways to get over someone. The most pleasurable is simply to shag him out of your system.” Lucy pursed her lips.

  “Now, now, you two,” I said. “Anyway, it was far more than that. For the first time I know what it’s like to make love as opposed to merely having sex.”

  “There’s no ‘merely’ about having sex, you romantic fool,” said Miles.

  “Well, all I hope is that you practiced safe sex,” said Jess. “We don’t want a repeat of Troy Powers.” She looked at me. “You did use a condom, didn’t you?”

  “Of course we did,” I lied.

  If it’s possible to know the second you get pregnant, then in the back of my mind, in some teensy place in my body, like an intermittent throb in my psyche, I knew. I didn’t allow it to fully surface but as soon as I got the book offer, I heard something inside me say jauntily, “Oh, and I bet you’ll be pregnant too.” I waited until the morning of my fortieth birthday to do the test because I wanted it to be meaningful, to me at least. I was only a few days late but it was no real surprise. As I peed on the stick, I didn’t feel cold and sick as I had before. I felt secure. I watched the blue line appear and it was a wonderful relief to feel myself expand with joy. This was a life, a fresh start for me and a baby—and Julius, too, if he wanted it—and nothing on earth was going to persuade me to throw this shot at happiness away. I felt unusually calm and clear. I knew exactly what I was going to do. I wasn’t going to shout it from the rooftops, get everyone’s opinion, and then let myself be swayed. For the first time in my life I was going to do what I wanted to do.

  I put the pregnancy stick in my handbag and walked to work. I stopped at a post office and bought a jiffy bag and sent the stick to Julius. There was no need for a note. I got to work and Miles was waiting with fresh croissants, coffee, and champagne. Christmas carols were blaring from the stereo and while I drank my coffee and pretended to sip the fizz, I couldn’t remember ever feeling this relaxed, as opposed to the usual volatile tension that ran through my veins. My secret gave me a feeling of being at home in my own skin in a way I’d never known before. It’s not that I wasn’t scared of the future, because I was. But for once I felt as if destiny was a galloping horse and the only way to control it was to let go of the reins. Then there is nothing to pull against.

  Later in the morning a courier arrived with a package for me. “No doubt it’s some ghastly gadget from one of my mother’s catalogs,” I said to Miles as I signed for it. “Last year I got a cherry de-stoner, so maybe this is an avocado de-pitting device to mark my fortieth?”

  I opened the brown wrapping and saw the pure duck-egg blue color of a Tiffany box. “My God, she’s outdone herself,” I said. “Finally, my parents have coughed up for a piece of statement jewelry.” It was the sweetest thing but immediately I thought, If I’m having a girl, I can pass it on to her.

  I opened the box and inside lay Julius’s Fabergé egg. As I stared at it I literally felt my heart lurch. I lifted it out, twisting it in my trembling hand, and opened the mechanism so the bejeweled butterfly rose up and the light bounced off the precious stones. “Bloody hell,” said Miles as he stared at the glinting rubies, emeralds, and diamonds. “You’re only celebrating your fortieth, not your coronation. How the heck did your Mum afford that? Or is it a fake?”

  I shook my head. “It’s not from Mum,” I said slowly. “It’s from Julius. And it’s a real Fabergé egg.”

  “How do you know it’s from him? Is there a note?”

  “No,” I said, swallowing hard. “He doesn’t need to leave a note.” I closed the egg and carefully put it back in its tissue nest in the box.

  “What’s this then?” said Miles, handing me a small envelope that I hadn’t noticed. I opened it and read in Julius’s tight scrawl: “Remember that butterflies are fragile survivors. They exhibit virtually no parental concern for their offspring, save choosing a safe place to leave their eggs.” I put the note in my pocket and hurried to the loo. I locked the door and stood against it in a bid to catch my breath. God, he must love me, I thought. But was sending me his ultimate symbol of undying loveJulius’s way of saying that this was the most precious thing I could ever have from him? How would he feel when he opened his post and saw the symbol of the egg I was keeping safe for him?

  Dad and I always had a pre-Christmas and post-birthday celebration lunch combined. This year he offered to take me anywhere I wanted, but in a daft way I had grown almost fond of the ritual of the yucky Thai Temptations. It looked incongruous in festive mode with silver plastic Christmas trees and garish pink flashing lights. For once I was there first and as I sat in our usual booth, I felt my nerves plucking. I hadn’t heard from Julius and it had been nearly two weeks since he would have received my package. As Christmas was this weekend and he was probably going away to the Caribbean or skiing in Gstaad with his family, the signs weren’t promising. He knew how much I loved him, so he knew I’d keep the baby. I wasn’t in any doubt over that, but the longer he stayed away and kept silent, the stronger my worst fear became, that he didn’t intend to get involved as he’d initially suggested. He wasn’t going to get all heavy and threatening like Troy had done, but it looked like he wasn’t going to give me his blessing or leave Alice to be by my side either. I tried not to let any heartbreak in because I didn’t want it to infect our baby, but deep down of course I had been praying that this would be the rallying call for him to come to me. To us. Once and forever.

  Dad bustled in wearing a flasher mac that was probably at least half a century old. His face looked raw from the cold and his skin around his mouth was cracked and peeling. Because he considered central heating an extravagance, he always had that bluey frozen look in winter, as if he slept on the street.

  “Ah, Daisy,” he said, dry-rubbing his hands as if warming them in front of a fire, “let’s order some of that hot and spicy soup. That will de-thaw us.” As soon as the soup arrived, he said, mid-slurp: “How was your birthday?”

  “Lovely, thanks,” I said. “I had a quiet celebration. I went out to dinner with Lucy, Miles, and Jess.”

  “Yes, I expect you didn’t feel there was much to celebrate. I suppose being forty and single and childless and with a job instead of a career, it was a bitter pill to swallow, eh? Life rarely pans out in the way we dream. I mean, I look at myself, past seventy-five now, and I think, ‘I didn’t expect to be on my own but then again, I didn’t expect to enjoy being on my own so much either.’” He let out a hearty chortle.

  I looked at my father, at his watery blue eyes, and couldn’t work out, as usual, if he was being deliberately crass or trying in some bizarre misguided way to be kind. “Actually, Dad, I’ve got plenty to celebrate,” I said, unable to keep my combative tone at bay. “I’ve got a book deal from Insight Publications to write a guide to surviving divorce and to cap it all, I’m pregnant!”

  Dad put down his spoon and stared at me. “What a terrible blow,” he said. “I’m so, so sorry.”

  Was I hearing straight? “What about? Being paid to write a book or having a chil
d by Julius? A man I truly respect and love.”

  “Well, you can’t accept a deal to write a book if you’ve got a deadline and you’re going to have a baby, can you? You’ll have to tell them the truth and they might think you won’t be able to deliver in time, unless you’re not going to have the baby, that is?”

  “I’m having the baby and I’m going to tell Insight about it. It is possible to do both. That’s what modern women and working mothers do nowadays.”

  “And Mr. Vantonakis? Is he doing the decent thing? Is he going to stand by you?”

  “I don’t know,” I said wearily.

  “Well what does he say about it?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t spoken to him.”

  “You haven’t spoken to him?” echoed my father. “Does he even know?”

  “He knows.”

  “Ah, so you’ve written to him? How very Jane Austen. Imagine the shame of illegitimacy in those days? At least today the stigma is less and by the time your child is at school, maybe you’ll have married him or someone else, so the poor little bastard won’t feel embarrassed when he’s asked in the playground why his mother and father aren’t married . . . I do think, Daisy, that however progressive one claims to be, a father figure is still vital . . .”

  “Like you were?” I said acidly. My adversarial glare gave Dad a jolt of surprise. “You may have been there during my childhood but were you really present? It felt like Mum did all the parenting and all the loving on her own. Sure, my situation isn’t perfect but tell me, Dad, what is? And I can tell you that I’ve realized that I’d far rather be having this baby on my own than having had a baby when I was married to Jamie. Because however good or ‘legitimate’ it might have looked on the surface, being with the wrong person makes you feel much more lonely than being on your own.”

  My father seemed to shrink back into himself, as if trying to protect himself from my hostile glare. “I’ve never seen you more certain,” he said at last. “So you’re having this baby at exactly the right time, unlike so many, myself included, who discovered that they were going to be parents and felt unsure. But we went ahead anyway because it was the right thing to do. That’s what I most admire about you, Daisy. Finally, you’ve learned to do what feels right on the inside, not what looks right on the outside.”

  Lucy, Jess, Miles, and I met for pre-Christmas drinks in the bookshop two days before Christmas Eve. Miles was going to his parents’ after closing time on Christmas Eve, Lucy was taking her girls to her parents’ the next day, and Jess was coming to spend Christmas with me at Mum’s after she was finished at the surgery.

  This time it was my turn to stand on the chair. I cleared my throat and said, “Eh-erm, I’d like to say a few words.”

  The others settled into their seats and looked up. “Please, spare us from any psycho-crap or hypno-speak,” said Miles.

  “I promise, I’m not going to say anything offensively spiritual but this is from the heart.”

  I looked at Jess, still wild and promiscuous, still searching in her hypersexed way to overcome her deep loneliness and find something meaningful in her life apart from her career, and I thought about how much I loved her. I looked at Lucy, still beautiful and still hurt by Edward, her aura seemingly forever fractured by his betrayal, and I felt my heart go out to her. And I looked at Miles, still gorgeous, still irresistible, yet recently scarred by what life had thrown at him, and I thought of how much I’d always adore him. These were my closest friends and here we were, after more than twenty years together, struggling like everyone else in the world to make sense of our lives.

  “I just want you guys to know that I couldn’t have gotten through the last shitty year without you,” I said. “However, I’ll need you more than ever in the shitty nappy-filled years ahead because I’m pregnant. It’s Julius’s baby and I’m having it.”

  “You liar!” screamed Jess. “You didn’t use a condom, did you?”

  “Nope. I openly and wantonly lied,” I giggled.

  “When are you going to learn that sex without protection equals a baby?” laughed Jess.

  “And are you ever going to be tempted to risk it?” I asked. She shrugged, still smiling. It was the first time I’d seen her waver. Maybe she was considering committing to something deeper after all.

  Everyone hugged and congratulated me and they all readily agreed to be godparents. “Great, if it’s a chick I can seduce her when she’s sixteen and if it’s a boy I can take him to his first hooker at fifteen,” said Miles.

  “Fifteen?” said Jess. “Isn’t that leaving it a bit late?”

  “And Julius?” asked Lucy gingerly. The room fell silent.

  “Truth is, I don’t know,” I said. “He knows I’m pregnant because I sent him the pregnancy stick but I haven’t heard from him since.”

  They eyed each other knowingly. No one said it but I knew what they were thinking: no surprises there, then.

  Mum had decorated the tree and Archie seemed to have a tray of eggnog permanently stuck to his hand.Wherever you went in the house, he’d pop up and beam, “How about a snifter for Santa?” Home felt especially festive because it was Mum’s first Christmas with Archie and she was having his children and grandchildren over on Boxing Day. She was in a terrible frenzy but I could tell she was relishing every second. She looked madder than ever, wearing a festive red silk kaftan under her green sleeveless down jacket and mud-encrusted wellies. She was plastered with makeup, her neck was strung with her fattest pearls, and I couldn’t ever remember seeing her this happy. Archie was equally cheered in his cherry-red cords and tweed jacket. With his bushy white eyebrows and sprouting of nostril hair, he seemed, unlike my father, incredibly jovial. He may not have had the quiet insight of Dad but he didn’t have the melancholy either. It was obvious by the way he watched Mum stuffing her arm up the turkey bum with gusto that he simply adored her. I loved him for that.

  When he went out to fill the log basket, I put my arm around my mother’s shoulder and said, “I’ve got something to tell you.” I was terrified that she was going to freak out and that I would wreck her Christmas by announcing that I was going to be a single mother, so I got it over with as fast as I could. “Mum, I’m pregnant and it’s Julius’s baby and it wasn’t planned and he knows all about it but he doesn’t appear to want anything to do with it but I am going to have it and I’m pleased and scared and excited but I pray you’ll be happy for me too.”

  Mum stood statue still, holding her hand covered in turkey stuffing and grease in the air, as the tears began to roll. Oh Christ, I thought, here we go. I was willing Archie to return because I thought at least she wouldn’t go off the Richter scale in front of him. Just then the doorbell rang. Thank God, Jess had arrived. She’d get my mother under control.

  “It’s Jess,” I said. Mum took me in her one free arm—the other was sticking out as if she was hitching a lift—and wailed, “I can’t tell you how long I’ve waited for this moment. I never told you how much I envied my friends who were grandparents before because I thought it would upset you.”

  Just then Archie entered the room. “You’ve got a visitor,” he said.

  “Archie,” screamed my mother, kicking her legs to the side in a little jig, “I’m going to be a grandmother! Can you believe it?” I left them half dancing, half embracing and I could hear him say, “Diana, that’s marvelous news,” and then in a loud whisper, “Who’s is it?”

  I ran to the front door, relieved to be seeing Jess, a surefire beacon of sanity. But she wasn’t waiting in the hall. I rushed into the drawing room. But she wasn’t there either. And that’s when I saw him. He was standing with his back to me, staring into the fire, but I recognized him immediately.

  When he heard me enter, he turned around and as our eyes met, he came toward me.

  Julius held out a jar of green olives.

  “Because I know you can’t stand black olives,” he said.

  GLOSSARY OF DOOLEY TERMS

  dati
ng Dharma. As we get older we get the face and the body we deserve. We also get the dates we deserve. Don’t want to kiss another frog? Then get your inner bitch under control.

  dick delivery boy. One who sexually services you, whether a one-off or a regular stud muffin, at your place. Best enjoyed with postcoital take-out pizza.

  emotional contagion. The ability to pick up on your partner’s feelings without speaking.

  erotic intelligence. Skilled flirting. A Double First in seduction.

  hook ups. Sex on an ad hoc basis with a male friend. Emotionally safe as there is no dating agenda.

  manscaping. When a man pays extra attention to pruning his pubic topiary and sculpting his chest hair.

  married singles. Husbands who have convenient amnesia about their wives and kids when poised to score. Permanent bachelors during the week, they dip into daddydom on weekends.

  McSex. A fast-food coupling—i.e., a quick shag—that leaves you feeling empty and slightly nauseous. No emotional fulfillment on the side or to go.

  mercy jump. When your best male friend sleeps with you out of pity. Can it really have been that long?

  post-divorce date (PDD). That all-important terrifying first date when you have to get back into the dating saddle after having been bucked to the ground and had all your confidence shattered by divorce.

  post-traumatic date syndrome (PTDS). Obsessive rumination and mild depression, coupled with chronic mating fatigue, following a date on which you haven’t found The One.

  premature we-jaculation. A dating dysfunction where you start referring to “we” before he has acknowledged that you are a couple.

  radical acceptance. The maturity to realize that life sucks, and your ability to shoulder existential disappointment. So he was a total shit? Deal with it, drop him, and move on.

  Rasa. Your sweet spiritual nectar. The essence of who you were before he broke your heart and poisoned your future.