by Liz Fenton
“What did you think I was going to say?” Her voice was light, but her eyes told the real story: I’d rocked the boat. And that she didn’t like. “I’ve never even met this man.” She started to pace the room.
“I know. And you will. Tonight.” My voice came out sounding needy, desperate. James and I had planned for him to come over, to bring her roses and my dad a bottle of his favorite whiskey. I knew once they met him, he’d charm the shit out of them. Because that’s what he did.
My mom started to lap the kitchen island. I knew what she was thinking. How could I go off script? This wasn’t how we did things in the Conner family.
“I need to process this.” She stopped and pressed her palms into the counter.
“I know it’s fast. We’ve only been dating a few months, but he’s—” I had planned to list my favorite things about him. He was smart, he was a gentleman, he was close with his own mom. But she cut me off.
“Are you pregnant?”
“What? No!” Our eyes locked. “Don’t you think I would have led with that?” I finally said, then started to pick at a hangnail on my thumb. My mom began walking again. I could be five, fifteen, or my current age, twenty-five. It didn’t matter. This was how conflict between us looked. I presented my case weakly. My mom wouldn’t listen, her disappointment dripping from her, so palpable I could almost reach out and touch it. I’d usually start to backpedal, my mom’s approval suddenly meaning more to me than what I’d wanted her to approve of. But something had shifted in me this time. I wanted James more than my mom’s blessing.
“How can you know someone well enough to agree to marry them after just three months?”
She was right, of course. It was probably intellectually impossible to know someone that well in ninety days. But I didn’t care. Because I knew how James made me feel. Like the most beautiful woman in the room. Like he loved me more than anything. He made me feel desired.
I recounted to my mother the story of how I met James in the wine aisle at the supermarket, and she wasn’t nearly as charmed by it. What I didn’t tell her was what had happened next.
He’d taken me out for sushi at a little hole-in-the-wall that didn’t even have a menu—the chef just whipped up whatever was fresh. The salmon sashimi had melted in my mouth, and the wine had slid smoothly down my throat. James had this way of putting me at ease—unlike on other first dates, I didn’t feel awkward or grapple with words.
That’s probably why I’d let him take me to back to his apartment and fuck me in a very ungentlemanlike way on the floor as soon as his front door closed. I’d woken the next morning as the sun streamed in through the brown-and-orange plaid sheets he was using as curtains in his bedroom. I’d propped myself up on one elbow on his futon. (Yes, futon.)
“What is that thing men say to each other?” I’d laughed as I pulled the blanket over my chest for warmth, not discretion. James had allowed me an instant comfort about my body I’d never felt before. Not with words, but with his eyes, the way they drank me in. Suddenly the smallish breasts I’d always despised were perfect. The ass I constantly tried to cover up was juicy. And my face, the same one I’d dissected from every angle, was beautiful. That was James’s superpower—he could make you addicted to the way he saw you. Probably because it was so much more flattering than how you viewed yourself.
“Don’t they say that there are the girls you fuck on the first night and there are girls you marry?” I hadn’t waited for him to answer. “I guess I’m in the former category, so the pressure’s off!”
Despite the fact I’d given myself to him so easily that first night, we’d fallen fast and hard for each other. I’d finish up in my classroom, then count the hours until he was off work. I blew off my other friends. I forgot to call my mom back. Every breath began and ended with him. Every thought was laced with his scent. The real world became distant. The only thing that mattered was the time I spent with James. Beth thought I was obsessed. I was scared she might be right.
I hadn’t planned on hoarding our relationship forever. But before I could introduce him to my family, he’d proposed. He’d taken me back to that sushi place and knelt down on the dusty floor and asked if I’d take a leap of faith with him. Would I be his wife? There was no question in my mind. There was no way I could ever be without him.
I said yes.
I realize this may have not have been the best decision—marrying someone whose middle name I’d learned the day before he proposed. (It’s Julian.) That it may have led me here, chasing his cheating ghost along the Maui coast. But if he’d asked me a million more times, the answer would always have been yes for me.
A picture of my mom holding her fourteen-year-old cocker spaniel pops up on my phone. Her third call. But I don’t answer. Because I’m nowhere near normal. She’ll hear it in my voice. She’ll question me. And the thing is, I’m so tired of lies. But the truth is just too much work. I send her to voice mail, kick off my sandals, and dip my toes into the sand. It’s soft and warm, and I let it soothe me. Nick shoots me a questioning look.
“I’m not ready to talk to her yet,” I say, and look around for our server.
“Want to start with the coconut calamari and the crab-and-macadamia-nut wontons?” Nick asks, looking up from the Hula Grill menu.
“Yes, and can we get some fries too?”
“Anything else, hungry girl?” Nick laughs.
“What can I say? I’m eating my feelings.” I smile.
I watch the band getting ready to perform on a small stage. Our table is literally sitting on a floor of sand, and in front of us is an amazing view of the beach that’s so picturesque it makes you say touristy things you never thought you’d say, like, We’re in paradise. Or, This looks like a movie set. (I’ll admit, I said that one to Nick a few minutes ago.)
“I’m so happy we didn’t have to go on another tour today.” I roll my eyes at Nick. But I don’t say the next part: that it was nice to hang out with him and not think about them. To not have them infiltrate every thought.
“Oh, please! You know you were bummed we didn’t go rock climbing or skydiving.”
“Actually, I was hoping for some deep-sea fishing.” I laugh and snort, covering my nose with my hand. “Whoops.”
“A snort, huh?” Nick says, and leans back. “I guess you’re finally getting comfortable with me.”
I feel my cheeks heat up. “I hate when I do that. It’s so embarrassing.”
“I think it’s cute.”
“Really?”
“Sure. I’ve always thought it’s the quirks that make a person interesting.”
I take a drink of my water, thinking of how my snort bugged James. Not at first. When we’d met, he thought it was cute too. Even used to playfully mimic me when he heard it. But later, when things changed, it began to irritate him. I remember being at a party once, and he glanced my way when he heard it. He knew how to work a room and expected me to do the same. Snorting was not an option.
“You know it’s not something I can control!” I said on the way home that night, trying to hide how stupid I felt, how sad I was that we’d ended up here—in a place that made it okay for my husband to chastise me for simply being myself.
“Oh, come on, Jacks.” He kept his eyes on the road as he spoke, and I was thankful because he couldn’t see how much his criticism hurt. Then he delivered the blow. “Sure you can.”
And after that I did learn to control it. Except for when I drink. When I drink, I forget. My smooth edges become rough again.
I look up from my thoughts and notice Nick watching me.
“What were you just thinking about?” he says. “Your face got all dark.”
“Nothing,” I say. “It doesn’t matter anymore.” I shake off the memory of James and force a smile. “What about you? What are the quirks that make you interesting?”
“Oh, I’m wildly boring. Supremely uninteresting.” Nick laughs.
“Is that your way of saying you don’t have any
idiosyncrasies?”
“Saved by the bell.” Nick points to my phone, which is ringing again. “Is that your mom again?”
“And Poochie Poo.”
Nick presses his lips together to stifle a laugh. “Poochie Poo?”
“Yep!”
“She keeps calling. Aren’t you concerned something might be wrong?”
“No, she’s just worried about me.”
“So then why not answer? ‘Unworry’ her?”
I give him a look.
“She doesn’t know you’re here, does she?”
“Nope. At least I don’t think so.”
“Does she know about James and Dylan?”
I shake my head and chew the inside of my lower lip. She eventually got over the shock of my whirlwind romance, and as predicted, James eventually charmed her and grudgingly earned her acceptance. But she never let me forget that I hadn’t properly vetted him. She actually used that term. Like he was running for Congress, not becoming a member of her family.
“Are you serious, Mom?” I was holding a card he’d given me for our one-year wedding anniversary. A ridiculously sappy one that he’d bought me as a joke. The idea that someone else had to explain your deep romantic emotions had made us laugh. “You’re really going to use that word?”
“Your father could have run a background check!”
“Mom, he doesn’t have a criminal record, okay? And I’ve known him for two years—don’t you think he would’ve murdered me by now if that were his goal?”
My mom took a deep breath.
“People don’t always do things by the book, Mom. You need to get over your obsession with coloring inside the lines.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“That you always need everything and everyone so orderly. Sometimes life is unpredictable. Messy even. Sometimes you just have to trust your gut. If you spend your whole life scared to make the wrong choice, how is that really living?’
“You can be so naive, Jacks,” my mom said, like she felt sorry for me.
Back then, her skepticism made me angry. It even drove an invisible wedge between us that we never acknowledged. But when the police told me James had been in Maui, the first person I thought of was my mom. And how she was right. I had been naive. But not anymore. Now I finally know the man I married. Or I’m getting to know him, anyway.
“It’s complicated why I don’t want to talk to my mom,” I finally say to Nick. “Have you ever had a Blue Hawaiian drink?” I ask, and point to one on the table next to us, trying to change the subject.
“Why don’t you tell me about it?” he says.
“The Blue Hawaiian?” I ask, and smile. Then I snort. Again. The floodgates have been opened.
“No, silly.” He laughs, and his eyes soften. “Tell me about your mom.”
I start to explain that I’d rather not, but there’s something about how he’s looking at me. Those eyes again. He wants to know. Not just to pass time. He wants to understand more about me. About what makes me tick. And he doesn’t mind if I snort while telling him. I blurt out everything—our quick engagement, my mom’s obsession with normalcy, my fear that she was right. That I’m not sure I can ever trust my gut again. How much that scares me. “I can’t believe I just told you all that,” I say when I finish.
“I’m glad you did.”
“Me too. I feel better.” I think about how easy it is to talk to Nick, how I never feel judged by him. James had an arrogance about him. It was subtle. But I picked up on it a lot. Like how he sounded so condescending when he’d say something like, Oh, is that what you decided to do, like he was thinking he would have made a better choice—the right choice. During one of our particularly bad fights, I told him he had a superiority complex. He laughed and told me I was delusional.
Nick and I listen to the band, eat our food, and sip our cocktails, a comfortable silence between us. “Let’s get a drink at the bar,” Nick suggests when we’ve finished our dinner.
“I’m going to buy their CD first.” I start for the stage.
“That’s those Blue Hawaiians talking,” he calls after me. “You’ll never listen to it.”
“Maybe not.” I think of the CD James and Dylan purchased for their road to Hana drive as I hand the singer a ten-dollar bill. Then again, maybe I will listen to it.
Nick orders two POGs, this time with vodka, and I think about our day. We drove to Lahaina and had giant cinnamon rolls at Longhi’s. We shopped for silly souvenirs, and we got ice cream cones while walking around Whalers Village. We mused at the number of pay phones we’d spotted around the island. We even took a selfie with one, laughing about how we were old enough to remember them. For several hours, I pretended to be a real tourist on vacation, forcing any thoughts of why I was actually here from my mind.
“Hello? You’re awfully quiet over there.”
“I think I’m drunk.”
“That means we’re doing our job right,” the bartender says as he sets our drinks down, the skin around his green eyes crinkling, his stubble-covered chin reminding me of James’s. I look away, and Nick clinks his glass against mine.
“To finding out more about Dylan and James.”
“Did you just say Dylan and James?”
“Yes,” we say in unison.
“That’s weird. Because I met a Dylan and James a couple months ago. I’m sure they aren’t the same people, but Dylan is just one of those names that stands out to me because I’m a huge Bob Dylan fan.”
“Was she in her twenties? Blonde? Big blue eyes?”
The bartender nods. “And he was a good-looking guy. Dark hair, in sales?”
We nod.
“How is she?” the bartender asks with what seems to be a genuine concern.
I keep quiet because obviously I can’t say dead. And I realize the news of their accident must not have caught the attention of many people. That saddens me for a moment. I wonder what the first bartender we talked to saw in the paper. A paragraph? A couple of sentences? A few words? Was that all they got? All they deserved?
“Why do you ask?” Nick says.
Nick told me that we should always deflect when asked a question we can’t answer, but I’m not quick enough on my feet to do that.
“She was feeling pretty sick when she was here. Did she find out yet?” Our matching blank stares must trigger something with the bartender. “Oh, shit. You didn’t know?”
My head gets heavy, and I instinctively grip the edge of my stool for support, hoping that I’ve misunderstood him.
I watch a waitress deliver a hamburger with bright-orange melted cheese slipping out of the bun to a man sitting across the bar; I feel the vibration of a buzzer, then see its lights shining bright red as a young couple giddily jumps up to claim their table. Then two women laugh and proclaim their luck as they slide into the stools that were just abandoned.
“What are you saying? Did she tell you she was—” Nick stops, and out of the corner of my eye, I see his shoulders slump.
Please, God, don’t let the bartender say the word.
I can’t look at Nick. I’m afraid he’ll confirm my fears.
The bartender leans in, oblivious. “Pregnant,” he says easily, oblivious to the impact of his words.
Nick’s head moves slowly up and down, and my insides are twisting so tight I can barely breathe.
“You didn’t hear this from me, okay? But when her husband got up to use the bathroom, she told me the smell of the shrimp he ordered was making her sick. So of course, I asked what was up with that. Like were they bad? Because we make an amazing shrimp cocktail here!” He waves his arm covered in hemp bracelets behind him, where the kitchen presumably is.
I nod to encourage him to keep going, because I have to hear every word of what he has to say. If I don’t, I know I’ll talk myself out of believing it. And as much as it hurts—as in, feels like someone is punching me in the stomach over and over again—these are things I need to hear. I came here
for the truth, no matter how much it might tear me apart.
“She tells me she’d been feeling sick to her stomach and had already made up enough excuses for why she’d been so nauseated. I remember thinking that was weird. That she couldn’t tell her husband what was up, but I didn’t say that. You know, a bartender’s job is to listen. So I quickly pulled the shrimp cocktail away, offering to replace it with something else. Her big eyes filled with tears when I did that, which totally tripped me out. I was like, what is going on with this chick? Then she asked me where the nearest drugstore was, and I was like, whoa, now I know.”
“You think she wanted to get some Tums?” I ask, although I’m quite sure that’s not what Dylan wanted.
“Nah, dude. You can buy those next door at the gift shop. Which is what I told her. That’s when she told me she was worried she might be pregnant. But then her dude came back, and she acted like nothing had happened. It was a trip.”
“My God,” Nick says.
I watch the man across the bar eat a bite of his cheeseburger, lick his fingertips, and take a long drink of his beer. I hear the bleached-blonde woman with the worn face snarkily remark from the stool beside me that there are cuter men at Duke’s. I look up, and our bartender has moved on to take someone’s order. As if he hasn’t just wrecked me.
But really, how could he know that I couldn’t give my husband a child, so he found someone who could? That the wound inside of me has never had a chance to heal because it has been ripped open again and again with each negative pregnancy test, with every fight between James and me, and now with the words, she might be pregnant? On the outside, I give nothing away. But inside I scream and I cry and I pound my fists. Like the baby I could never give him.
The bartender walks back over to us and picks up right where he left off. “So crazy, right? But we hear it all, man,” he says, then turns to make a drink, still having no idea of the bomb he’s just dropped on us.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
JACKS—AFTER