A Terrible Whore

It was hardly as if I could call the police. Not only did I have no actual crime to report, because I knew if I walked in the station and tried to complain that my ex-husband had called an ex-employer to tell them I'd lied during the application process or that he'd rung my current employer to tell them I'd done sex work, they'd give zero shits, but because I knew that reporting might actually land me in hot water. Prostitution is legal in Queensland. Not paying tax on your income most certainly isn't.

I put my head down and my arse up, concentrating on working over worrying. Emotionally I was exhausted, but my work performance was obviously where it needed to be, because my boss made it abundantly clear that he was glad he'd hired me. Then he threw in a reminder about finding a lawyer, and I nodded as if that was something I actually felt was an option.

Come Sunday, Elise refused to see Carl.

'Tell him I'm sick,' she said. 'I need a break from him.'

I understood what she was saying, and the frustration and exhaustion in her face. I knew it, because it was my own. Rather than argue with her, rather than try and coerce her into visiting her father, I instead texted Carl.

He showed up anyway.

'I want to see if she's really sick,' he told me.

'No. No, not today,' I replied. 'Let her be.'

'If you don't let me in to see her, I'm going to sue you for custody.'

'Carl, she's sick.'

'Exactly. She needs her father.'

He just pushed me aside and barged into my apartment. I went to chase after him and saw Elise had already opened her bedroom door and was standing in the doorway in her pyjamas.

She looked Carl in the eye. 'I'm sick, Dad. I've been vomiting. Please. Please just go. I don't want to make you sick.'

Her lie was delivered so crisply and clearly it scared me.

'Oh sweetie, I was just making sure your mother wasn't keeping you from me,' Carl said.

Elise smiled wanly. 'It's okay Dad. I'll see you next weekend. I just want to lie down and try to go to sleep.'

I couldn't look at Carl, for fear he'd see the secret pride and triumph and relief etched on my face. Mercifully, Carl seemed not to are what I thought. He completely and utterly believed Elise. Hell, maybe I did, too. She'd sounded utterly convincing.

Carl left. After I'd checked to see he'd driven off, I went to Elise's door and knocked.

'Your father's gone,' I told her.

'Cool,' she said. She opened the door and slipped out of her room. 'I'm really sick of him. He asks me for all your personal details, he whines at me, and I know he stole the money you have him for the orthodontist. I know he's my father. I know I have to see him. But he's the reason you lost your last job, Mum, I just know it. He was always making threats. The more I see him, the more he tries to bully me, and I hate it.'

'I'm really sorry.'

'It's not your fault,' she replied. 'I hate him. I'm not going to tell him that. I'm going to pretend that everything is okay. But when I'm an adult, I'm going to run away and I'm not going to tell him where I live.'

~~~~~

Following Carl's departure, Elise and I had a good chat. She'd asked me a lot of questions about Dean and I answered as honestly as I could. I knew why she wanted answers, and I felt she deserved information, given that she'd been the meat of a Carl-Dean-me sandwich.

Then we made a cake. That was her idea. When she'd found out he didn't have any family, her first question had been the same as mine; what happens on your birthday?

'I don't think he does much,' I admitted. 'Before we broke up I was going to go and see him, but...'

'Mum?'

'Yeah sweetie?'

'Why did you break up with him?'

'I, uh...' I fumbled.

'Is it because of Dad?'

I paused. 'Not exactly. Yes and no. Initially, I thought one of his friends was the one responsible for me being fired, and that was part of it, but yes, your father was also part of it.'

'Do you miss him?'

God, I thought. What an adult question. Do you miss him? I did miss Dean. I missed his talks, his kisses, his texts, his company, the sex. I missed having someone stroke my face and kiss me, someone who thought about me and bought me gifts, someone who listened when I talked.

'Yes, sweetie, I do,' I admitted. 'He was a bit rough, but he was a good man.'

'Maybe you should say sorry.'

'I already have.'

'Was he angry?'

'No.'

'Are you going to see him on his birthday?' she asked.

'I don't know. I don't know if I should.'

'I think you should. He paid for my braces, so he should probably at least get a cake.'

I'd decided she was right. I'd picked up my phone and texted Dean to see if he had any plans for his birthday, which if my memory served me correctly was going to take place in two days' time, on Tuesday.

'U know :( Same de pressing shit every year,' he'd replied.

I'd responded with 'Can I come around on Monday to see you?'

Dean's answer had been emphatic. 'NO!! Come Tuesday!!'

So on Monday, Elise and I made a cake. It wasn't anything impressing, just a regular cake with jam and cream in the middle, slathered with chocolate icing and dusted with coconut to hide the lumps in the icing, but it was handmade, and I hoped that counted for something.

On Tuesday I rushed home from work, showered, changed, grabbed the cake and drove to Dean's house.

God I was scared.

~~~~

Dean was already home when I arrived. When I knocked on the door he was sitting at his kitchen table doing his paperwork, but he quickly got up and let me in.

The dogs went absolutely crazy. They didn't know what had transpired, all they knew was that someone who had patted and fed them was back, and this time she was carrying a cake. I told them to get back and remarkably, they actually listened.

'This is yours,' I said to Dean, handing him the cake without looking him in the eye. 'Elise and I made it for you.'

'Hey, thanks for that sweetheart,' he replied, taking it from me. 'It's really good to see you again.'

'You too,' I admitted. 'I missed you.'

'I missed you more than I'd have thought possible,' he replied.

Dean took the cake to the kitchen, cleared the paperwork off the kitchen table, then plonked the cake in the middle.

'Want some cake?' he asked.

'Are you having some?'

'Sure,' he replied. 'It's my birthday, and no one's made me a birthday cake since my ma died.'

'In that case, yes please.'

Dean got a knife and two plates and cut two giant wedges. He handed me mine without a cake fork or spoon. I wondered if he owned a cake fork. He had an excellent, if dated, collection of pots, pans, cutlery and crockery, which I'd figured was probably a moving out gift from his family.

'Do you mind if I get a fork?' I asked him.

'They're in the top drawer.'

I went to the drawer and fished out a spoon. There cutlery drawer insert wasn't sitting nicely, and I tried to fix it. It didn't take me long to figure out what the problem was; there was money under the drawer. I gave up on fixing anything and shoved the drawer shut.

'So what is it you don't like?' I asked him. 'Banks or paying tax?'

'Paperwork,' he corrected. 'I hate doing paperwork. You know why.'

'Yep.'

We ate some cake. It wasn't half bad if I say so myself, but it was hard to enjoy it while I was sitting on tenterhooks, waiting to see if Dean was going to forgive me, tell me to fuck off, or something in between.

Dean was obviously much the same, but rather than sit there timidly and wait for something to happen, he decided to take the bull by the horns.

'Why did you come around?' he asked.

'You know,' I replied, quoting his earlier statement.

'Fair enough,' he said. 'I don't know why I'm asking. I'd let you break my heart a million times, and every time I took you back, I'd reckon it was worth it.'

'Nobody's worth that much pain and suffering, least of all me,' I argued.

'Sweetheart, I couldn't disagree more.' Dean said.

'Well, I'm not here to break your heart. I'm here to talk. I'm here to thank-you, too, not just from me, but from my daughter. She wrote you a letter.' I reached into my purse and retrieved the envelope. 'I told her you're dyslexic. She found a font that's supposed to be easier to read, and typed it out.'

'She sounds like her mother.' Dean took the envelope. 'I'll read it later. Not now. Right now, we need to keep talking. More cake?'

I shook my head. 'No thanks.'

'Sure? I'm having some.'

I handed my plate over. 'You're a terrible influence.'

'You wouldn't be the first to say that.'

'I didn't mean it in a bad way,' I argued.

He grinned. 'I know.'

Dean and I locked eyes. I smiled instinctively and he did exactly the same.

'Fuck, I missed you Rachael,' he said. 'I really, really missed you.'

'I'm sorry I upset you.'

'Oh that,' he said, embarrassed. 'I wanted you. I loved you and I wanted to know if you'd still come around if your daughter's braces were paid for.'

'I did want you. I wanted you badly, but I thought Simmo was the reason for me getting fired, and I was scared of what Carl would do, and everything... everything just seemed overwhelming.'

Dean reached for the knife and cut some more cake. 'What's the current situation with your ex? I heard you rang your new boss, just like you thought he would. Fuck me, girly, that's just insane, y'know that? He ever hit you?'

'Yep.'

Dean paused. He stared at me, his eyes filled with emotion I couldn't read any more easily than he could read the fine print at the bottom of a poster. I squirmed uneasily.

Eventually, he spoke.

'This outside of this house is rigged up with more alarms and cameras than you'd believe possible. Anything worth over two grand has a GPS tracker on it. If anyone comes to this house, stays here, or leaves it, I know about it. You could move here with your daughter. You'd be safe.'

'Dean...'

'What?' he asked. 'If you want to leave at any point, I won't stand in your way. But you can't go living your life in fear, Rach. You can't go letting ring your boss, or hit you, or hassle you, or anything.' Dean dumped a slice of cake on my plate. 'Move in. Use the money you're not spending on rent on a lawyer.'

'I have a daughter.'

'Yeah, I know. And I won't touch her, if that's what you're worried about. Firstly, I just fucking wouldn't, because I just aren't that way, and secondly,' he hacked another slice of cake. 'I love you. Nobody else will ever be one tenth as beautiful as you.'

I tried to make a joke. 'That's a damn lie. That's like telling me other hookers spit.'

'No sweetheart, it's the fucking truth. I love you even though you look like a goddamn camel waiting to spit it's mouthful out on me every time you give me a gobbie. Now,' he said, licking the knife. 'Do we have a deal?'

'Yes. Yes, we have a deal. And thank-you. I really can't thank you enough.'

Dean shrugged. 'I'm a bit sick of celebrating my birthday by myself. I'm sick of no one trying to steal a slice of my pizza. I'm sick of sleeping with prostitutes. You're not the only one getting something out of this arrangement, Rachael, I'm benefitting too.'

~~~~~~~~

The years passed. I stayed with Dean - I married him in fact, only six months after we moved in - and we had two children, two daughters, born just fourteen months apart. Dean would moan and complain that living with four women and two dogs, who also happened to be female, was killing him, but it wasn't a serious whinge. Whenever anyone would challenge him, he'd laugh and say 'I'd fucking kill myself if I ever came home to an empty house, I'd miss 'em all too much to live without them.'

But I suppose you already knew I'd stay with him. I knew it from the moment Elise and I walked in his door to find he'd cleaned out both the spare bedrooms in his house so we could each choose one to have as our own. Not, obviously, that I ever slept in the spare room, but I appreciated him giving me that choice.

Dean and Elise developed an odd little relationship, friendly enough but not overly familiar. He was very good to her, and she rarely, even in her most hormonal phases, did anything that bothered him, but they were two different people and anything more than mutual cordiality evaded them.

I suppose it's Carl that interests you. After all, he has featured so heavily in this story that it would be bad manners for me not to tell you.

For years Carl sucked up more time, money and emotional labour than you'd imagine possible. I did indeed get a lawyer, but it was unfortunately an expensive exercise in achieving absolutely fucking nothing.

Mercifully, his parent died a year or two after I married Dean and he backed off a bit. He still saw Elise, but the vitriol in him seemed to have lessened and Elise even admitted she had fun with him sometimes. He had a new girlfriend and a lot of money and both put him in a good mood.

But nothing is ever perfect, and in the end, he disappeared from our lives.

To tell you about this, I need to tell you about Lenny. I'm not sure if I mentioned Lenny or not, but at the time I met Dean, he was an eighteen year old high school dropout who worked full time for him.

Elise and I met Lenny within days of moving in. He was a good kid who'd had a few tough breaks in life. His Mum had run off with the neighbour when he was just eight, leaving his father to care for him and his sister on his own. Things had been okay for the first seven or eight years, until his father got cancer and couldn't work, and his sister started getting bullied at school.

Lenny's way of sorting out his family's problems was to get a job and threaten his sister's tormentors. Both tactics seemed to work. Dean paid reasonably well and there was a lot of overtime on offer, which Lenny never failed to accept.

When Lenny was twenty-one, he handed in his notice. Dean told me he'd found another job. I didn't think much of it, and Dean found another employee, who quit after a month, and following that a second one, who is still with him to this day.

A month after Elise graduated high school, she told us over dinner that she'd received a Facebook friends request from a man called Lenny.

'Lenny?' I asked, confused. Elise's youngest sister was normally a good sleeper, but she'd been unwell, and had been up several times the night before. My brain was like cotton wool. 'Who's Lenny?'

'Lenny who used to work for me,' Dean guessed.

My husband's confidence surprised me.

'That Lenny?' I asked Elise.

'Yeah, that one,' she replied.

I turned to Dean. 'How did you know it was that Lenny?'

'Because he's always had a thing for Elise. Two years ago I told him he had a month to find a new job or I'd fire him, and that if he ever thought about trying to put his paws on Elise before she'd finished high school, I'd bury him under a slab,' Dean replied, twirling spaghetti around his elder daughter's fork. He handed the utensil over to Sadie, then turned to Elise. 'When did he really send you a Facebook friends request?' he asked her.

Elise coloured slightly and kept her gaze fixed on her plate. 'Three weeks ago,' she admitted.

Dean stared at Elise until she was forced to look up and meet his eye.

'He ever puts a foot out of line, you tell me, okay?' Dean ordered. 'I saw you fawning over him back before I gave him the sack, and I don't want him taking advantage of it.'

'Wait, wait, wait,' I interrupted, feeling like the only person who didn't know what was going on. 'Are you telling me Elise and Lenny were dating back when she was sixteen and he was... gosh, twenty?'

'Twenty-one,' Dean corrected. 'And as far as I know they weren't, and if Elise and Lenny know what's good for him, they'll both tell me they weren't, regardless of what the truth actually is.'

'We weren't,' Elise replied quickly. 'I did kind of have a bit of a thing for him, but I didn't realise he actually liked me. I promise you, Mum.'

'Have you been out with him yet, since he got back in contact?' I asked.

Elise nodded. 'We went to the movies on Thursday.'

I glanced at Dean. He caught me looking and raised an eyebrow.

'Shit,' I mouthed.

'Mum!' Elise interrupted. 'I'm literally eighteen years old. Nobody's forcing me to do anything.'

'So why did you pretend he only just sent you a friend's request?' I asked.

'Because I knew Dean would be cranky.'

'I'm not cranky,' Dean muttered. Sadie handed him back her fork, and he twirled more spaghetti around it. 'I'm worried about you. Don't let him get you pregnant.'

'That isn't going to happen,' Elise assured him. 'Once upon a time, Mum saw a boy look at something that was behind my head, and she got so paranoid she took me to get a contraceptive implant.'

Dean shook his head at her, but I could tell he wasn't thrilled. Later that night I asked him what the problem was, and if I should be concerned and he just said 'no, I just know the way men think and I know what sort of things will be going through his brain'.

Elise continued to see Lenny, and he became a regular fixture at our house. He was exactly as I remembered him, only a bit more grown up, and as much as Dean and I would worry about the age gap, it didn't seem to be a problem. Did I think the relationship would last? I had absolutely no idea. But you need to learn how to have a relationship, and to negotiate, and to stand up for yourself, and Lenny was a much better person for her to do that with than Carl had been for me.

We'd had a pool put in the backyard and one summer afternoon, when Elise had been dating Lenny for three or four months, she, Lenny, her sisters, Dean and I went swimming.

Elise was wearing a string bikini and the back kept coming undone. Lenny tied it up for her, pulling it tight and knotting it, his hands moving her wet hair out of the way to avoid getting it tangled up.

'I reckon that'll stay put,' Lenny said, critically inspecting his work. 'You won't flash anyone, that's for sure.'

'Thanks,' Elise said, tilting her head to give him a quick kiss. She felt the bottom of her bikini top. 'That feels way better. I don't know how I'll get it off, but I'm sure I'll figure it out.'

I didn't turn away in time to avoid seeing Lenny teasingly raise his eyebrows at her.

'As if,' Elise snorted. 'I'd rather keep it on forever.'

Lenny laughed. He was a good-looking kid, and I can't imagine he'd ever experienced much trouble convincing women to get naked for him.

That's when we saw Carl. The dogs, useless gits that they were, hadn't even barked, and my ex-husband had made it all the way to the pool before anyone even noticed his arrival.

'Oh shit,' Elise said, laying eyes on him. 'Dad. Sorry. I totally forgot we were supposed to be going out tonight. Give me ten minutes and I'll be ready.'

She clambered out of the pool and hurriedly wrapped herself in a towel, then charged towards the house at record speed, leaving Carl standing by the pool gate.

Lenny got out of the water and reached for a towel. He wrapped it around his waist and went to follow after Elise, but before he could go, Carl stopped him.

'Who are you?' Carl asked him.

Lenny stopped in his tracks. Until that moment I hadn't realised Elise hadn't mentioned Lenny to Carl, but from the expression on Lenny's face, he knew he was being kept secret.

'Lenny,' Lenny he replied, holding out his hand. 'It's nice to meet you.'

Carl didn't accept the handshake. Instead, he stared at Lenny with disgust until the younger man dropped his hand and turned to us wordlessly seeking advice. Dean and I, having sensed that all was not right, were already getting out of the pool with the younger children.