by Holly Brown
So we read, and I’m as happy as I’ve ever been, and he’s as content as I’ve ever seen him. Eventually, I ask if he wants to sit on the toilet. He says no, no, he wants to go back to bed. “With you,” he says.
He’s never wanted that before, and I’ve never even thought to suggest it. But I curl myself around him in his bed, and he stares into my face with the sort of love and wonder I’ve been dreaming about not just his whole life but my whole life, too.
“Try to close your eyes,” I tell him, but neither of us does.
As soon as his eyelids droop, they open again, and he’s smiling at me.
“Keep them closed,” I say gently, “that’s how sleep works.”
He tries, he really does, and I do, too, but we can’t sleep. I’m thinking what to do when Thad says, “I want a hug from Daddy. Then I can sleep.”
I’m not sure Larry would want to be woken up; in fact, I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t. But maybe he’d get to experience the kind of moment I just had, the connection with Thad that is so hard to attain, and I don’t want to rob Larry or Thad of that, though a part of me doesn’t want to share it either.
“Do you want to sleep in Mommy and Daddy’s bed?” I ask Thad. He says yes.
We go into my room, and into bed. “Larry, Thad’s here,” I say. “He wanted to be with us.” Larry grunts in some sort of acknowledgment but without approval or engagement. I worry that Thad will feel rejected, but he’s resilient. He climbs all over Larry, and eventually, Larry not only hugs him but wants to take care of him. He’s vulnerable, this Thad, in a way that he isn’t during daylight hours, and Larry responds to it, just as I did. We all try to sleep, snuggled up together, though none of us do. Larry tries to teach Thad how to slow his breathing and count in his head. We’re all awake, and we’ll pay for it tomorrow, but that’s okay. More than okay.
Then I see that Thad has his eyes wide open, and he’s staring right at me, differently than earlier. It’s not love or wonder I see now. Just wide eyes, and a hand moving across his little thing, inside his pajama bottoms. He knows I don’t like to see that. It disturbs me because he’s so young; I’ve been too ashamed to even tell the pediatrician about my oversexed boy. I’ve told Thad not to do it around me, ever, and here he is, in my bed, staring right at me, and I’m sure that he’s smirking.
I suddenly know that he’s engineered this whole thing, lulled me into a false sense of security—no, worse, into a sense of love—so that he can mock me. So that he can defile my bed. So that he can humiliate me.
I’m filled with a fury I’ve never felt before. I haul him out of the bed, with him kicking and screaming as if at an injustice, and I throw him back into his own bed, not even caring if that thump is his head against the wall, I’m that angry. I don’t give him one word of explanation, because he knows.
I slam the door behind me. I’m breathing heavily, leaning outside his door, and he’s screaming bloody murder. I start to cry, because that’s the Thad I’ve always known.
Was that the fork in the road, the irrevocable moment when Thad could have become one kind of person rather than the other? If I’d accepted him fully, if I’d loved him properly? He made it so hard, but that’s no excuse. I should have found a way.
Was it then?
43
Dawn
I’m so lucky to have a mother-in-law like you!
Happy Mother’s Day!
Love,
Dawn
I have to admit, Thad is on my mind. There were his revelations about Miranda, and about himself, and how could I forget that orgasm the other night? Still, I turned my phone off hours ago. I have, effectively, blocked him. For the night, I need to focus on Rob.
We walk, hand in hand, along Telegraph Avenue. Our apartment building is on a street that’s safe but less than chichi, near the many Ethiopian restaurants. We head toward the gastropubs, tapas bar, and organic ice cream shop. Tonight, it’s artisanal pizza and cocktails at one of our favorite spots.
The walls are brick, and the lighting is low, which I appreciate since my skin is horrific.
Rob looks good tonight. He’s better looking than Thad, I remind myself. Just because he talked a little shit about me to his parents, that doesn’t have to mean anything. He’s a kind person, and he wants me to be kind to my mother, that’s all. A life partner is supposed to improve you.
He reaches over and touches my cheek lightly, and what I’m thinking is, Germs. Oil. Now I’m going to break out even more.
“You look pretty,” he says.
“Thanks.”
“My mom had a really good time at brunch.”
That makes one of us. Well, three of them. I faked my way through, saying as little as I thought I could get away with. At one point, “Mom” talked about how sorry she felt for my mother, being completely alone on Mother’s Day, and we all had a little moment of silence. Then I said, “I texted her, she’s doing okay,” and there was another moment of silence, this one laced with Thiebold judgment. “I sent flowers,” I added, which was a lie, but it did the trick. Everyone relaxed again.
Tonight, Rob and I are drinking gin with house-made tonic and eating fat green marinated olives. I find myself eavesdropping on the couple next to us. They’re having one of those pseudo-fights, where you keep your voice light as you say something you mean heavily. She says gaily, “Next time, text me if you’re going to be late!” and he responds, “It was only ten minutes, but sure,” and she says, “Let’s split the squid pizza,” and he says, “Squid pizza?” and so on. There’s an underlying tension between them, no doubt, but it occurs to me that they’re actually talking, unlike Rob and me.
Rob must realize it, too, because he starts telling a story about some demanding customer from the shop. I try to get interested. I’ve always wanted to find Rob funnier than I do. It’s not that he’s humorless; he can appreciate a joke. We laugh together, sometimes. Ours is not a grim marriage.
But we’re in a sexy restaurant, with sexy cocktails and sexy lighting, and I don’t want to talk about engraving.
What does that leave? My job interview tomorrow, which has me terrified. Miranda’s manipulative refund. My father. My mother. Thad.
I don’t know what Rob would do if he found out about Thad. Most likely, he’d decide it’s another indication of my abnormal character.
I so wish I’d never overheard that conversation. All I want is for Rob and me to get back to normal, together.
So I let him talk, and I fill in the blanks with smiles and laughter, and I drink.
We split the squid pizza. I notice that the couple beside us is splitting it, too. They’re whispering. Their laughter is low, guttural, and intimate. Whatever was between them earlier has evaporated now. Maybe their bickering is a sort of foreplay. They’re going to have sex tonight, no question.
Rob and I walk home, hand in hand once again. As the pedestrians thin, I stumble into him in what I hope is a come-hither manner. Glancing at his face, at the set of his jaw, he doesn’t look like a man who’s about to get lucky. He looks like he’s feeling anything but.
That’s when it occurs to me: This is just as forced and effortful for him as it is for me. The storytelling, the hand-holding, the favorite bar.
Somehow, that makes me feel closer to him. We’re in this together.
I squeeze his hand, and he looks down at me. His eyes shimmer, with moonlight or tears. “I love you,” I say.
“I’ve always loved you,” he answers, with great feeling. It’s a strange sentiment, like a form of good-bye. But I could be misinterpreting him.
I reach up and hug him. In the middle of the sidewalk, he’s clutching, I’m clinging, and we’re both crying. Whatever illness exists between us, there’s an antidote, and we’ll find it, together.
When we start walking again, Rob’s arm is tight around me. Once inside the apartment, I light upon him immediately, not so much seized by passion as determined to seal the deal.
Rob seems surpris
ed but enthusiastic. We haven’t done it outside of the bedroom in I don’t know how long. We kiss up against the living room wall, his hands in my hair, my fingers clawing at the button of his jeans.
I turn around. “From behind,” I grunt. Without even seeing his face, I can feel that he’s surprised again. He normally looks into my eyes for much of the time. But this isn’t making love; it’s making a pact. Whatever it takes. For better or for worse.
He starts touching my clit, delicately. I’m already wet, and that kind of tentative touch is going to dry me out. “Inside,” I tell him. “Now.”
He thrusts, and I moan. I’ve always liked his girth. He’s the perfect size for me. See, we fit. Different worlds, but this is what matters.
I can feel that he’s caught up, too, and he has to still himself for a second so that he won’t come. I reach around, toward his ass. “What the . . . ,” he says, but I continue. He’ll get into it. They always do.
“Stop,” he commands, and with a wet reverse suction, he withdraws.
I spin around to face him. He’s calling me a whore, with his eyes.
“Let’s go to the bed,” he says, like it’s some sort of consolation prize.
Thad would have liked it. He would never have pulled out, not in a million years.
Rob takes my hand, and I let myself be led. I imagine what he must be thinking—This woman can’t be the mother of my child—and while I’ve imagined it before, with fear and dread, this is the first time I think, Good.
44
Miranda
Dear Dawn,
You are a terrible young woman. To accept a refund but not an apology? That speaks to your profound lack of character. I will post on all the websites I can find and smear your name as you’ve smeared mine.
Yours,
Miranda
Delete.
She’ll know I’m bluffing. I don’t know websites where I can smear her name. I don’t have a degree in advanced Internet harassment like she does.
Could I hire someone to do it for me? If so, it wouldn’t have to be just in the virtual world. Someone could leave a dead animal in her apartment, a skunk, maybe? I just want to scare her, that’s all. Scare her off for good. Make her feel what she’s made me feel.
I like indulging in these kinds of angry thoughts. Fantasies, I suppose they are. I don’t feel so frightened and lost when I do. I don’t think about the fallout in my marriage now that I’ve overpowered Larry for the first time.
He went away to a last-minute conference in Palm Springs. Usually, he goes to conferences three to four times a year. It’s a time for him to let loose with his fellow docs and learn a little something, too. Since he’s already been to two and it’s only May, I’d asked him to pass on this particular one. I suggested we could take a vacation together instead, wouldn’t that be nice? He declined. I was hurt. What does he get out of those conferences that he can’t get from time away with me? I fear that I know.
Now he’s headed to Palm Springs anyway. “We could both use some space, and some time to think,” he said. Time for me to change my mind, that’s what he really means.
I’m sure he’s arrived by now, but he hasn’t texted to tell me. Normally, he’d let me know that he’d checked in, with a little aside about the accommodations or his colleagues. So he’s freezing me out. It’s a threat, or the promise of what’s to come if I don’t see things his way.
Dawn,
Delete the posts or I’ll sue you for character defamation. Even if I lose, I’ll drag it out for years. I have two multimillion-dollar houses. My funds are limitless. Meanwhile, you’ll go bankrupt from the legal fees. How much do you think communications majors earn? I’ll take every cent from you one way or another. I’ll take your husband’s store. Try me.
Miranda
P.S. If anything else shows up broken, dead, or dirty at either of my homes, it’ll be worse for you. I guarantee it.
It makes me smile a little, thinking of Dawn reading it, of her quaking with fear, forced to realize that ultimately money is more powerful than beauty.
“What do you think of that one, Mom?” I ask her after I’ve read it from my phone.
The smile leaves my face as I look at my mother, staring off into the garden as if I haven’t spoken. See no evil, hear no evil. For a second, I envy her.
“Do you think it’s too much? She started it.” No response. “Remember when George and I were little and we used to point to each other and say that, and you’d tell us, ‘Well, go finish it yourselves’?” I have an impulse to reach for her hand, though we never did that, not even when I was little. She was an excellent mother, but not a touchy-feely type. “Do you remember George and me as children?”
She glances over, and I think she’s going to answer, but then her eyes go away. Back to nothing. She prefers nothing to me.
I don’t know what I was thinking, telling her my problem. Maybe I hoped that some maternal instinct from days gone by would reassert itself. She’d see how much I still need my mommy, and she wouldn’t be able to help herself. She would have to take care of me, so much so that it would override whatever’s misfiring in her brain.
But it doesn’t work that way, of course not, and I was foolish for ever thinking that it could. For thinking I wasn’t alone.
“Bye, Mom,” I tell her, and with anyone else, the suddenness would seem rude. But she just lifts a hand in a vague wavelike gesture, the remnant of social conventions from long ago.
As I get in my car, I tell myself that it’s not so bad, having the house to myself for a few days, eating for one instead of cooking for two. Normally, it’s like I cook for one, for Larry, since it’s all about his preferences and tastes. That’s become automatic, unquestioned. What he wants is what goes. Until now.
I don’t know if I can stay strong and hold the line with Larry. But better not to think about it. Better to drive to Whole Foods where I can buy for one, and talk back to Dawn in my head. The gall of that girl, telling me about consequences. She’s going to be the one looking over her shoulder soon. I just have to figure out how to make that happen. Proactive, rather than reactive. Offense instead of defense.
At Whole Foods, I get a basket instead of a cart, which feels freeing in and of itself, and I actually start to have fun, browsing the refrigerated case and considering my true desires. Do I want the roasted golden beets and kale salad or do I just think that’s what a woman of my age and midsection should eat? How about salmon cake? Or meat loaf? Green beans almondine or herb-roasted new potatoes? I imagine each bite passing my lips and hitting my palate. I can have anything I want. I am limitless, just like I tell the Dawn in my head.
If I get fat, what’s Larry going to do, divorce me? If he does, I get half his money. Of course, he could battle me for the Santa Monica house. It is a marital asset, in a divorce proceeding. But until that time, if I stand firm, it’s all mine. The decision to sell or not rests with me.
Larry’s not going to divorce me. I arrange his life. I make things hum. This was the first trip he ever went on where I didn’t pack for him. He’s the one who’s bluffing.
I have power. Over Dawn, over Larry. I. Have. Power.
I’m about to place the meat loaf in my basket when I hear my name. My good feeling evaporates instantly. I don’t want to interact with anyone, to have to say how I’m doing, or worse, to answer any questions about my resignation from the board. For a few minutes, I’d managed to forget that my reputation’s in shambles. Now I remember, like a splash of cold water to the face.
I force myself to smile. It’s a woman from Nar-Anon, the one I recognized at the recent meeting, from the ones I attended years before. I can’t recall her name, which is embarrassing since she remembered mine.
“Hello!” I say, with a cheer that sounds cringingly false and perhaps inappropriate, given our association.
“Gail,” she says, pointing at her chest. She’s dressed strangely for the warm spring weather—in a heavy gray sweater-coat that
reaches her knees over black leggings and high black boots. Her hair is pulled back in a tight bun, and her face is makeupless, revealing large brown swaths of sun damage. “I wouldn’t expect you to remember my name. It’s overwhelming, coming back to meetings.”
“No, I remembered. You have a daughter about my son’s age.”
She shakes her head. I can’t even get that right? “Not anymore.”
“Oh.” I look down, absurdly, at the transparent plastic cube in my hand, as I realize what she’s just said. “I’m so sorry.”
“It was last year. The group helps.”
I didn’t know that anyone continued to attend the group once their primary reason for attending had ceased to exist, once the fight had been lost. The drugs won. How do the others feel about her presence? She’s a walking reminder of the worst-case scenario.
“Yvonne went to rehab for the third time,” Gail says, “and for the first time, it seemed to be working. She was finally taking it in, all the lessons they were trying to teach her. She moved into a sober living house and was working the program. She called me every day. I thought I had my daughter back—the sweet one, the honest one. And then she relapsed. She didn’t know how to gauge her tolerance anymore, it had been so long. She overdosed.”
“I’m so sorry,” I say again. It’s as useless and as good as anything else. It adheres to the Hippocratic oath, and does no harm.
She nods, accepting my condolence. There are no tears, I notice. It makes me wonder if what I’ve suspected, in my darkest heart, is true: That some part of you is relieved that the whole bloody thing is over, and you’re no longer imprisoned by love, hope, and fear. Now it’s just loss, and humans are wired to handle that. What we’re not equipped for is years and years of helpless uncertainty and baseless hope. Evolution didn’t properly prepare us. Fight or flight is worthless in the face of a child’s self-destruction.