by Megan Walker
Felix laughs. “Yeah, okay.”
“But even if I wasn’t, there would definitely be an emotional component to sex with my wife.”
“I’ve always felt that way,” Felix says. “Before I met Jenna, I thought I was somehow this failure, because I didn’t think sex was as great as people said. But when the feelings were there?” Felix shakes his head. “Damn.”
“I totally understand. I won’t say I didn’t enjoy casual sex, but there’s a difference when you’re in love.”
“What about you guys?” Felix asks. “Talking didn’t help?”
I sigh. Felix has just shared all this stuff with me, and not only do I feel obligated to share in return, I kind of want to. “We didn’t so much talk as have a huge fight about spousal privilege and what we’re obligated to tell each other and then I had an emotional breakdown and ran away.”
“Seriously?” Felix says. “Josh Rios had a breakdown?”
“Unfortunately. We got into this really deep shit about how I always have to make things better, and if I don’t, I’m afraid she’ll leave me.”
Felix gives me a sympathetic grimace. “I’m afraid my wife is going to retreat into her misery and never let me back in, so I get it.”
“That’s it, though,” I say. “I was the one retreating. And I don’t know why I did that.”
“Because you were upset? I’m guessing Anna-Marie heard the news from Ben first and was pissed you didn’t tell her?”
“No,” I say. “Actually, I did tell her, and that conversation went really well.”
Felix looks justifiably confused. “It did?”
“Yeah, it did. But then I said something about not knowing what I should tell her and what I shouldn’t, concerning the things I heard from you about Gabby and Jenna—”
“You should tell her everything,” Felix says, like this isn’t a question. “I assumed you would. She’s your wife.”
I groan. “But I think that stuff between her and her friends, she should hear from them! It would be better for her relationship with Gabby if Gabby told her this stuff.”
“Probably,” Felix concedes. “But Gabby’s an avoider, so chances are she wouldn’t.”
“So I’m the only one who thinks getting involved in that is a bad idea.”
“No, I understand not wanting to be involved,” Felix says.
I nod. “So the only solution is for me not to be friends with people who also have relationships with people who have relationships with my wife.”
Felix cracks a smile, only I’m not sure what’s funny. “Okay, first, are you talking about me? And second, are you listening to yourself?”
I throw my hands in the air. “You tell me what else I’m supposed to do.”
“Um, tell your wife what you know? Or else don’t tell her, but don’t tell her you’re not telling her?”
“I suggested that,” I say. “Then she told me I was saying everything wrong, and I realized that if I can’t make it right—”
“You think she’ll leave you. Over that?”
“Not over that,” I say. “Like, in general. Like my job is to make her life better, and that’s why I get to be with her, and if I can’t do my job—”
Felix looks skeptical.
“It’s not like I actually blame you,” I say. “I know these are my issues.”
“Yeah, no, dude,” Felix say. “I’m not taking responsibility for this. But you know that’s messed up, right? Anna-Marie loves you. You don’t serve, like, some function to her. You’re not just there to make her life easier. You’re there so she can share it with you.”
I shrug. “There’s more.”
“Yeah?” Felix says. “Because not that I mind listening to this, but probably you need to go to a therapist yourself.”
“Maybe I do,” I say, slumping back in my chair. “But I’m afraid of what they’ll say.”
“Hearing the truth is a bitch. I’m with you there.”
“I think—” I say, finally putting words to the thoughts that have been haunting me since that fight yesterday. “Anna-Marie pointed out that I always want her to talk to me about what’s going on in her head, which is true. And she rightly pointed out that I’m not willing to do the same. I think it’s because I don’t want her to know that I’m messed up. I’m supposed to be the healthy one. I’m supposed to be the strong one in our marriage, and I want to keep it that way.”
“Because you’re afraid if she doesn’t need you to be strong for her, she won’t need you at all?”
I wish that was all of it. What I’m going to say next makes me feel ill. “Because if Anna-Marie feels like the one with all the problems in the relationship, she’ll stay dependent on me. She’ll want to stay.”
Felix considers this—surprisingly without any judgment in his expression, considering what I’ve just admitted, to him and myself. “Yeah, okay. I can see that.”
“Can you? Because it sounds really douchey in my head.”
“Oh, yeah. That’s complete douchery.” Felix nods.
“So I’m an asshole.”
He holds up a finger, and not the one I deserve. “No. You’re someone who has some messed-up thinking deep down that when examined, you realize is kind of dickish. In other words, you’re a person.”
I stare at him. “A person.”
“Sure. I mean, when you’re interacting with Anna-Marie, do you really think, ‘Gee, if I make her feel like she’s the one with all the problems, then I can manipulate her into staying with me. I think I’ll make that my priority today.’”
“Of course I don’t.”
“Right. You’re not being abusive. You’re just protecting yourself subconsciously.”
“But it’s still a dick thing to do.”
“Yeah,” Felix says. “So now that you know, you can tell her about it, and you can work on it, and you can stop.”
He looks at me expectantly, like he thinks this solves all my problems.
And it probably would, if I wasn’t so damn scared.
My throat feels too tight. “And if she doesn’t want me anymore?”
“Josh,” Felix says, like I’m totally dense. “She loves you.”
“I know,” I say. “I know she does.”
But I can’t help but feel like I’m about to upend our marriage in a way that will never be fixed.
Nine
Jenna
I’m sitting on the exam table, waiting for my OB/GYN. I’ve got one of those exam gowns wrapped around me as much as possible to keep something between my now-bare ass and that crinkly paper on the table. I’m a little cold, and since my phone isn’t getting internet here, I’m stuck reading the posters surrounding me, some about the female reproductive system and others about the many inconvenient symptoms of STDs—burning urination being a common theme.
And yet despite all this, I’ve got this sense of profound calm, like part of me is happy the doctor is taking her time and leaving me this wonderful—if sterile and overly educational—oasis, and I hate myself for it. Because I know the reason I feel that way:
Rachel’s not here with me. My mom’s watching her, and part of me wants to never leave.
The guilt that accompanies that knowledge is near overwhelming. I have a beautiful, healthy baby girl. A baby girl I am desperate to protect, who I have nightmares about failing to keep safe. And yet more and more, I can’t bear to be around her.
Felix keeps wanting me to bring in my parents to help, or Gabby, or anyone, and even though I know it’s a mistake to keep things from him, I just can’t bring myself to tell him why I can’t. That if I let that happen, if I give over care of my daughter to someone else, I may never take it back. Like I did with Ty, back when he was born, when I was a mom in name only for four years.
It was supposed to be different this time
. I was so happy throughout the pregnancy, thinking I’d finally get to be the mom I wish I could have been when Ty was a baby. When I first held Rachel in the hospital, when I stared at this perfect little person Felix and I made, I thought it would be different. I was different. A mother, a wife, with a good career, a solid life. A better person than the messed-up girl who couldn’t be what her son needed.
But what if I’m not? What if I can’t be what my daughter needs, either?
What does that make me?
Worthless bitch.
I wince, glad the office is empty. There’s no one to see me react to the voice. It’s Grant’s, back again in my head, even though it’s been nearly two years since he cropped back up in our lives and stabbed my husband. I’d thought I’d finally excised that voice, but it’s back now. Not always just him, though. Sometimes it’s someone else’s voice, some other guy I was with for a night, who didn’t know my name and didn’t care. Sometimes they call me other things, even worse things. Sometimes the voices aren’t there, but that old same emptiness is. That old shame, threaded by fear I tried so desperately to mask.
All the old feelings, all the old memories. All of it, over and over, and I hate it so much. I pinch the bridge of my nose, as if that will make it all go away.
“Have you been experiencing headaches?”
I startle; I hadn’t heard Dr. Cass enter.
“No.” I give her a weak smile. “Just tired.”
“Well, that’s pretty common for parents of newborns, I hear.” She barely looks at me, her eyes flicking over the chart. Dr. Cass isn’t the most openly friendly of doctors, but she’s got a dry wit I appreciate.
“Sorry to have kept you waiting,” she says briskly. “I’m running behind today. I had an unexpected delivery earlier this morning.”
“It’s fine. I really didn’t mind waiting.”
Another stab of guilt.
“Good,” she says. She uses that antiseptic soap on her hands and then proceeds to do a routine physical—checking my eyes, my ears, my breathing—all while asking me questions like whether I’m nursing (no, not after my nipples became so cracked I thought they’d shear off completely), and whether I’m experiencing any bleeding or abnormal discomfort (not aside from the aforementioned and now-back-to-normal nipple situation).
“So you’re feeling okay, then?” She loops the stethoscope back around her neck and eyes me over her thin rectangular glasses.
I feel like I don’t want to be anywhere near my baby.
I feel like I’m failing my family, all of them.
I feel like even my husband knows I can’t handle being a mom to our child.
“I’m feeling great,” I lie, because the truth is too painful to say out loud. “Tired, like I said. But that’s normal.”
“It sure is,” Dr. Cass says. “Have you felt up to your normal activities?”
“Yes.” Another lie. I don’t feel up to anything but hiding in bed and never emerging, but I’ve been forcing myself through it anyway. I even managed to get back to church last week, at least for the first service, though I spent the entire time staring at all the other moms around me and wondering how they could look so happy.
I know I looked that way too, back when we started attending. I’d truly felt that way. I was newly married and Felix and I were checking out the church. And then later, when we decided to get baptized, I felt so good, so peaceful—back when I thought that being washed clean might make the darkness go away.
It had, for a long while. But not, apparently, for good.
“Now to the main event,” Dr. Cass says. “Let’s check how you’re healing down there.”
The main event. The six week check-up, of course, is the one where you get the doctor’s go-ahead to have sex again. Dr. Cass calls in a nurse to observe, and I put my feet into the stirrups and lie back, while she examines me and praises herself on her fine stitch work. I haven’t exactly been holding a mirror up there, so I can only hope she’s right. Not that I needed many stitches—I only tore a little. Doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt like a bitch once all the pain meds wore off.
But it’s been fine for a while now, so I’m guessing she’s going to clear me to start getting it on again.
I wish even that didn’t come with its own weight, its own fears.
I knew our sex life would change when Felix started scaling back on the Suboxone. We talked about it a lot, about all the likely side effects. About how he would probably feel self-conscious, and because of that, would want to do things more just for me and how I shouldn’t feel guilty with that imbalance.
Talking and doing, it turns out, are two different things. Especially when the doing starts happening less and less, when I can tell how embarrassed he is, and when I know nothing I say about how much I still love being with him really helps. The truth is, I don’t care if he doesn’t have the stamina he used to. I mean, yeah, in the strictly physical sense that was pretty great. But what makes sex with Felix so incredible isn’t the number of times he can get me to come.
It’s him and me, together in the most literal of sense, sharing this powerful connection, and that’s something I don’t need super-human stamina for, or even the regular kind. I just need him. I just need us. I feel so loved, so safe and complete, when we’re together like that. It’s not like sex is the only way I feel loved by him, of course. But it’s the strongest, the most intense way—and I know he feels that too.
But no matter how much we talked about the side effects, when it started to happen in reality, I couldn’t help but feel guilty, being the only one really enjoying myself. I can feel that reservation from him, that distance that I know rationally comes from his own self-consciousness. But being the one who almost always initiates it stings anyway. It feels selfish, to ask him over and over again for something that so clearly makes him uncomfortable.
And deep down, it feels like maybe he doesn’t really want or need me in that way anymore. And maybe he never will again, even when the side effects have long passed.
I can feel the corners of my eyes burn, and I blink quickly to clear them.
“Looks like you’re good to resume normal sexual activity,” Dr. Cass says, scooting the chair away and stripping off her latex gloves to put them in the trash. She glances at my chart again. “Do you need to discuss birth control options, or do you want to go back on the pill?”
“The pill,” I say, sitting up.
“I’ll enter your prescription.” She jots down some notes. “Is there anything else you want to discuss?”
Sometimes I wish I could talk to someone about everything, all the old pain and the new fears, like Felix wants me to. But I’m so, so tired of it all. I can’t focus on that or I’ll fall apart, and I can’t do that. I have a new baby and a ten-year-old and a husband and a career and a million things I need to do and be. I can’t let the past mess me or my family up any more than it already has.
Felix said it was like watching someone push on a door that was meant to be pulled. But maybe it’s just a door that’s really meant to be kept closed entirely.
“No, thanks,” I say.
Dr. Cass nods and leaves the room to get to her other patients. Other moms and soon-to-be moms, who can just love their babies instinctively the way mothers should, and don’t need four years to get their shit together, only to lose it again with the next kid.
I don’t either. Not this time. This time, I’m going to do better.
I strip off the gown and pull on my clothes. I managed jeans today, and a shirt I’m fairly sure is clean. I go out to my car and grip the steering wheel. I remember Felix telling me he did this a couple times to keep from going to get high. He’d just sit in the car and hold on to the steering wheel until he knew he wouldn’t go get drugs.
I don’t have to sit here until I know what I won’t do. But I do sit here, fingers wrapped arou
nd that wheel, continuing a prayer that doesn’t really begin or end, until I know what I will do.
I’m going to go to my mom’s and pick up Rachel. Then I’m going to go home and be there for Ty when he gets back from school and help him with his homework and get dinner started and a load of laundry in and I’m going to finally call our manager Phil back after the hundredth message he’s left about some royalties issue, all of it. I’m going to do this better.
I’m going to be better, because my family deserves no less.
Ten
Anna-Marie
It’s only nine-thirty PM, but I’m already in bed. Not sleeping, though—sitting up and leafing through an issue of Cosmopolitan I’m not really reading. Wishing Josh was here with me. Nervous about how it’s going to go between us when he is.
I pull at a loose thread on my nightie, then decide to stop before I unravel the damn thing. It’s my favorite, though I haven’t worn it in a while—a short satin slip-dress with eight-bit pixelated video game hearts all over it. It’s comfortable to sleep in, and Josh thinks it’s crazy sexy, even though it’s not as revealing as some of my other sleepwear.
Not that I’m going to hang out in anything too revealing with Ben in the house, even if he has been holed up in the guest room with the TV blaring since he got home from work this evening. I feel bad for not offering him company, but Josh and I clearly need some time to ourselves tonight.
I’m not exactly intending to seduce Josh into forgiving me for being a bitch to him during our fight yesterday—the amount of baggage our sex life is already carrying might rival a small commuter plane, and the last thing I want is to add any more. But I don’t think reminding him of my ability to rock a geek-themed nightie will hurt my cause.
I glance over at the clock again. 9:36. Josh had dinner with a client tonight, but he’ll probably be home soon, even if it ran late. I chew the inside of my lip, turn the page of the magazine to an article on “10 Ways to Make Your Man Moan in Delight.” A quick glance reveals none of these involve a Princess Leia gold bikini—clearly this magazine doesn’t know my man.