An Unforgivable Love Story

by B. L. Berry

  In hindsight, some physical distance would probably do us some good, I just hope he returns home soon. Or, at the very least, stays out of trouble and crashes at his brother’s place.

  I pull the soft ivory quilt up over my belly and try to settle in for the night. It was a wedding gift from his Great Aunt Margot years ago and I’ve washed it so many times the stitching is unraveling in more than a few places. In her card to us, she explained that this was a forgiveness quilt and that whenever we have an argument we were supposed to cuddle up under it and talk things out. The quilt itself is rather small, probably on purpose to bring us closer together. But we’ve never used it as she intended it.

  Until now.

  Twenty-Six

  Numb

  I allow the numbness to take hold of my body as Simon speaks. He’s recounting his recent discovery, my decision to quit taking my birth control pill, to Dr. Bob. He makes quick work of his notepad, documenting my secret for all of eternity or, at the very least, using it as a plot point in the great American novel he stays up writing late at night.

  I don’t hear anything.

  I don’t feel anything.

  I don’t see anything but a pathetic woman sitting on the couch next to a man she once knew.

  I’m simply numb. Void of anything and everything.

  It’s a defense mechanism, shielding me from his rage, and rage is a sordid understatement. I slide down on the couch, close my eyes and rest my head against the cushion waiting for his rant to be over.

  I knew I was doomed the moment we stepped foot in this sterile office. Before Dr. Bob could ever get a word in, Simon was spewing profanities and telling him in grave detail how I’ve ruined his life.

  Two steps forward. Ten steps back.

  Simon is the blood in my veins. For so long I allowed my entire existence is because of him. But these days it feels like we are only capable of poisoning one another. And the venom is overwhelming. It’s killing me slowly from the inside out, suffocating our relationship beyond resuscitation.

  The instant I feel a hand grabbing my knee, my eyes snap open and I come to my senses.

  “Sharna, I’ve asked Simon to step into the waiting room and cool down for a bit. I’d like to talk with you privately if that’s okay?”

  I scoot my body back up the couch and sit properly. Surely that gesture was a violation of some kind of doctor code, right?

  “What did you make of everything Simon said?”

  I look around and Simon is, in fact, no longer in the room. I have no idea when he even left. “I … uh … I didn’t hear anything he said,” I answer truthfully.

  “What do you mean you didn’t hear it?”

  I swallow hard and pinch the bridge of my nose, exhaling all of the air from my lungs. “I mean I didn’t hear him talking. I guess I zoned out. Living it the first time was painful enough. I didn’t need to do it a second time to know just how much my husband hates me.”

  And that’s the truth. Simon hates me with the fire of a thousand suns. He’s told me so over and over the past few days.

  “Sharna …” The way he says my name makes me feel like a child being scolded for a trivial crime. “He doesn’t hate you. He’s angry. He feels betrayed. This kind of visceral reaction to what happened is totally normal.”

  Dr. Bob falls silent, waiting for me to speak. But I don’t. I don’t even know what to say anymore. There’s nothing I can say to make it better, so why even bother?

  He sighs and crosses his right ankle over the opposite knee, balancing his precious notepad on his thigh. I want to lash out and turn those pages documenting all the fucked-up-ness of our marriage into confetti.

  With each passing minute, I find myself crawling closer and closer to the edge of insanity. And right now, I feel like I am clinging to the ledge, deciding if I want to fall over or not. It is genuinely a struggle to hang on most days. And I fear that the only people who know and understand this feeling have snapped, have thrown themselves off that proverbial cliff and are long gone. So I put on a brave face like I always do and pretend everything is perfectly fine.

  “So tell me, is it true? Did you deliberately try to get pregnant?”

  Suddenly I’m not so brave anymore and I can’t look him in the eye. My silence answers his question. He knows it. And I know it.

  “Why?”

  “Why did I do it?” My voice is breakable and I stare up at the water stain on the tiled ceiling. Because I felt myself losing him and the life we created for ourselves long ago. Because I needed to know that things were going to be okay even if I didn’t have him. “Because deep down, I was meant to be a mother. We were so young when we got together and we agreed that we didn’t have time for kids. We wanted to live our lives and see the world. And when we got married, we still agreed that children were not in the cards for us. But people change. My needs changed. I don’t know when, but at some point my need to be a mother and have a baby far outweighed my need for almost anything else.”

  If my response felt rehearsed, that’s because it was. I’ve spent the last few months convincing myself and anyone who will listen of those very words. I know this child is my insurance policy for when my life goes to shit, though it kind of has already. Granted, some part of me always felt empty and wanted kids. But I was mostly okay with not having them.

  Dr. Bob says nothing and I want to crawl inside his mind and see if he actually buys what I’m selling. He presses his lips together and watches me with intent, imploring me to continue using only my eyes.

  After what feels like the longest minute of my life, the silence becomes too awkward and I can’t control my need to fill it. “It doesn’t make me a bad person.”

  “I never said it did.” Dr. Bob lifts his eyebrows, scrutinizing my words. I want to slap those eyebrows off of his face. Or better yet, tweeze them one by one. That would be more treacherous. “Maybe you think it makes you a bad person?”

  Oh, Jesus Christ. “I’m not displacing my negative self-thoughts as your perception of me. I just know you’re sitting there, silently judging me. And I want things to be different, I guess.”

  Dr. Bob flips back through his notes a few pages and then furiously scribbles down what feels like a novel. He is far too engrossed in psychoanalyzing me. Until this point, I never thought a pen would be a weapon. But that stupid blue ballpoint pen in his hands is running a hundred miles per hour and I know that if I were to read the words on the page it would no doubt kill me.

  It probably says things like patient displays bouts of insecurity, potential pathological liar and candidate for bipolar disorder.

  He doesn’t know me.

  “Would you stop that?”

  His eyes snap up from his paper and he tilts his head. “Stop what?”

  “Writing down everything I say. Or rather analyzing everything I’m saying on paper.”

  Dr. Bob mindlessly taps the end of his pen against the notepad. “What would you rather I do?”

  “Jesus! Would you stop making everything a question!” I squint my eyes at him and silently throw daggers. Dr. Bob looks to me then down to his notes and back to me again. Then he sighs and spins around in his office chair. The notepad makes a soft thump as he casually tosses it onto his desk and drops his pen into the metal cup holder on the corner of his desk.

  When he turns back to face me, he crosses his right ankle over his left knee and rests his arms over his stomach. He’s more vulnerable when he’s not hiding behind the pen and paper. More like me.

  “Better?”

  I nod, noting that it’s still a question, but elect to be polite instead of making things worse. “Thank you.”

  Neither of us speak for a few moments and my eyes wander back up to his diploma from The Ohio State University hanging on the wall and maybe I was wrong. Maybe he is a self-righteous little prick after all.

  “So tell me, Sharna. Would you say that you and Simon have become complacent in your marriage?”

  Complacent?
No, I don’t think that’s the right word for us. We’re more lifeless. I’d give anything to have a civil war between us because that means we’d actually be fighting for something.

  “You know, when Simon and I first started dating, one night he asked if my life were a book, would it be one worth reading. And at the time it really wasn’t. I had always done as I was supposed to. People had a certain expectation of me and I fulfilled it. I never strayed too far off the path and lived a somewhat charmed life.

  “But with Simon, I felt this promise of adventure whenever he was around and I knew a life with him would be far beyond my wildest dreams. He meshed well with my family and we got along great for the most part. Simon was able to afford me the life I was worthy of living. Or so I thought.

  “In the beginning we did a lot of traveling.” I smile, thinking about all of the places we visited. We hit every continent except Antarctica and Africa and have dozens of photo albums from our travels. “But after a while we decided to settle down, but not in the traditional sense of moving to the suburbs and starting a family. To him, settling down was more like keeping us chained to one place and throwing himself head first into everything but me. Don’t get me wrong, I’m proud of what he’s accomplished at work. He’s quite notable in his field and he’s done my uncle proud. But Simon has never pressured me to work a traditional nine to five job. And part of me felt guilty that I never contributed to our home. Hell, I feel guilty that I have my Bachelor’s in economics collecting dust. A piece of me has always been missing and I’ve just sat back and pretended to be okay with that.

  “But with that ‘settling down’ his priorities shifted. Things became less about us and more about him and his work and his hobbies and I was left waiting by myself in the wings. So no, I don’t think we became complacent. I think we became abandoned. Or rather, I became abandoned.”

  Dr. Bob leans forward, resting his elbow on his knees. His eyes are apathetic and his words don’t match his body language. “I see. And I understand the sentiment of feeling like you’ve been abandoned. Do you think that is why you subconsciously wanted to become pregnant? So you wouldn’t be abandoned?”

  No, but it’s not like I can come right out and say, Not exactly, Doc. I not-so-subconsciously wanted to become pregnant so I could ensure I would be financially set for the rest of my life. But about that ... I’m not supposed to know about Simon’s insane secret inheritance and all the conditions that come with it. What good would honesty in my motives do at this point in it all? In spite of it all, I’m still in love with the man and don’t want to ruin everything. So instead I lie and try to shift focus off of me and my actions.

  “No … I honestly just wanted a baby with him. I just never imagined he’d be so angry about us having a child together — it scares me. When he flies off the handle like he’s been, I fear for my life. And as much as I wish I could, I can’t control that anger. So I have to ride it out and hope that we can mend the broken pieces and become stronger.”

  I press my lips together and pick at my cuticles.

  “For starters, he’s more angry about the secrecy and lies than he is the baby. And I know it may not seem like it, but anger is a good emotion. I know that some of the things that Simon said no doubt hurt you. But that rage was a release for him. The outburst relieved stress he was harboring within and allowed him to be more open about his negative feelings.”

  This guy is joking, right?

  “Are you trying to justify what he said?”

  “No, I’m only trying to open your eyes to a different way of seeing what has happened with you two. I’m not making a case for his reaction the same way I won’t make a case for the decision you made to get pregnant. I can only try and help you better understand one another. Relationships of any kind are going to have arguments at some point in time. But those arguments aren’t meant to be won. A successful fight, no matter how heated it may be, is only ‘won’ when both individuals have reached a higher understanding and respect of how the other person thinks and feels. But when you fight with the intention of winning said argument, no one really wins in the end.

  “We’re almost out of time for the day. Would you mind if I bring Simon back in for our parting thoughts?”

  Dr. Bob doesn’t wait for my response. Instead, he stands to open the door to call Simon back inside. When my eyes meet his stone, cold gaze, all of the muscles in my back tense. He’s clenching onto a tightly rolled magazine, presumably to avoid strangling me. Clearly not much cooling down was done during the doctor’s prescribed “cool-off” time. Why is he incapable of just pulling me into his arms and reassuring me that everything is going to be okay? I need to know that things will be fine. That we will be fine.

  Dr. Bob sits back down in his chair but Simon stays standing by the other end of the couch.

  “Now, I understand that this week has been running on high tensions for both of you. But I feel that much of this is because of your lack of communication. Obviously you both still care for each other deeply.” I’m not quite sure how that is obvious, but whatever. “So before we leave, I want you each to take a minute to calmly speak directly to the other person. Without getting angry, I want you to explain what you’re feeling in this exact moment and what you hope to feel tomorrow morning when you wake up together.”

  Seriously? What a bullshit exercise.

  “Simon, why don’t you go first?”

  Slowly, Simon rocks up on his toes and then back down to his heels then takes a deep breath. He loosens the rolled magazine in his fist and tosses it on top of a pile on the side table. Magically, he looks more at ease and years younger than his age.

  “Right now I feel—”

  “No,” Dr. Bob interrupts and gestures to the open seat on the couch. “I don’t want you to tell me. I want you to say it to your wife.”

  Simon swallows hard and turns to look at me. His eyes are softer, more concerned. And for the first time in as long as I can remember, he looks at me like I’m his wife and not some woman who ruined his life.

  “Sharna.” He breathes my name and sits down next to me on the couch. He opens his mouth to speak, but hesitates, no doubt trying to pick the right words to convey his emotions. “Right now I feel like you simply don’t care about me or my feelings. What you did was inexcusable and it’s going to take a lot for me to work through it all and forgive you. But know that I want to. And tomorrow morning when I wake up, I want to feel like I am with someone who has my back no matter what. Someone I can depend on. But I know that won’t happen overnight. And you know that, too.”

  Subtly, I nod. Not that I’m agreeing with his emotions, but because I’m actually listening to him and allowing his words to soak in rather than roll off my body in haste. I appreciate him being genuine.

  “Good, Simon. That was good. Now Sharna.”

  “Right now I am so incredibly lonely. We never talk anymore and I feel like I’m shut out of everything. You never ask me how my day is and you only say I love you when I say it first.” I wipe the tears from my cheek, not even aware of the moment I started crying. Sadness has become second nature so intensely that I kind of hate myself for acting so weak, so feeble in front of him. But honesty has always brought out the ugly in me.

  Dr. Bob nods in my direction, encouraging me to keep going.

  “I hate how you can be sitting right next to me and feel a million miles away. I have no idea what happened to make us like this … but I hate it.”

  Simon looks at me and whispers, “Me too.” He cracks his knuckles then wipes his palms on his thighs. I want to believe that he shares the same sentiment, but my instinct forces me to keep my guard up.

  “And what about tomorrow morning?” Dr. Bob prompts.

  “And tomorrow morning when I wake up, I just want to feel you there next to me … really feel you there. Not just as a warm body but as the man I married. Because right now, I need help remembering him.”

  Twenty-Seven

  Eight Years />
  Our home is eerily quiet.

  It’s been silent the past few days. We don’t talk. We don’t even look at each other. Instead, we wake up each morning, mindlessly go through the motions, then go to bed. We’re simply operating on autopilot. But my husband continues to possess my every sober thought.

  Especially today.

  I was hopeful when we left Dr. Bob’s office, but Simon has been working later than normal lately. Probably because he doesn’t want to be here with me.

  But today is different.

  Today should be different.

  Because today is eight years.

  The orchids he sends every single year on this day are nowhere to be found.

  He, no doubt, forgot.

  Or maybe he remembers and is electing to ignore it.

  Either way, I am doing my best to not convince myself that I deserve it.

  When I walk back into the family room — which ironically has no family in it — my heart sinks. My life has never felt so empty and it makes me question my existence here in this marriage, this life, all together. The DVD of our wedding day is still on. I thought watching it earlier this afternoon would make me feel better, help me to remember a time when things between us were good. But the pregnant, overly-emotional side of me is clearly an idiot. I last all of two minutes before I plow through a box of tissues and decide my energy is better spent cleaning up the kitchen.

  The sound of Simon’s laughter coming from the TV catches my attention and I curl up on the couch again. The couple on the screen is mesmerizing. They look so happy. Young. Carefree. In love.

  But I don’t even know who those two people are anymore.

  I laugh softly to myself as I watch Simon lead me to the dance floor. He was so nervous. Simon was never a good dancer. He always refused to dance when we’d go out with friends and the only move in his arsenal was that ridiculous “raise the roof” motion that most white grandpas have perfected.