The Seven Steps to Closure by Donna Joy Usher

Author:Donna Joy Usher [Usher, Donna Joy]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
ISBN: 9780987320711
Publisher: Lush Publications
Published: 2013-12-31T05:00:00+00:00

* * *

We’d been married for eight months when my period was late. I had no nausea, no tenderness, and no moodiness, so I was not suspecting pregnancy, but I did a test just to rule it out. And there they were, the two pink lines.

After the initial shock had worn off, I was pretty excited. And why shouldn’t I be? I was in love and married, and I was sure that once Jake got used to the idea he too would be excited. I spent the afternoon picturing us shopping for baby stuff; little clothes, bassinets, prams. By the time Jake got home, I had worked myself into a frenzy of excitement. I left the test on the kitchen bench with a note asking him what he thought, and then I sat in the lounge waiting for him.

‘What the hell is this?’ It wasn’t the response I had been hoping for. ‘Tara is this some sort of joke?’ He emerged into the lounge waving the test result around like some sort of weapon.

‘It’s no joke,’ I said.

He stared at me incredulously. ‘How could you let this happen?’

‘Pardon?’

‘You heard me.’ His voice went up a couple of decibels, ‘How could you let this happen?’ He enunciated each word slowly, angrily.

‘I didn’t plan this Jake.’ I felt my fantasies of shopping hand in hand for maternity clothes dissolving.

‘Like hell you didn’t. You’ve been planning this all along haven’t you? Haven’t you?’ He grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me as he said it.

Ripping myself out of his grasp I said, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. It was an accident.’

‘Sure that’s what they all say,’ he snarled. ‘I know your plan. Get the guy, rope him into marriage, get pregnant and then have the easy life.’

I was getting upset. Firstly, he had proposed at the two-month mark. Secondly, I had been planning to go back to work at least three days a week once my maternity leave had finished. And thirdly, I don’t think being a mother is an easy life at all. From what I have seen of my sister and friends that have children, they have it far worse than me. I get to go home and put my feet up. I can skive off to the hairdresser’s or for a massage whenever I want. I can go out to dinner, or the movies with a second’s notice. Fourthly, I think the whole pregnancy emotional hormonal thing had finally caught up with me.

‘Jake, you’re in shock. Everything is going to be okay,’ I said, fighting back tears.

‘No it’s not. We decided we weren’t going to have children and now you’ve gone and gotten pregnant on purpose. I can’t believe you would do something so low and devious. I don’t think I know who you are any more.’ He turned and walked out the front door. He didn’t even shut it.

I think the shock from his outburst was worse than the shock from the pregnancy. I couldn’t ever remember having a conversation that included the words, ‘We won’t have children’.

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