Still Life with Husband

by Lauren Fox

  “That’s a good idea,” I say, and it is a good idea, although I feel a prickle of frustration, too: the irony is not lost on me that for months I tried to convince Kevin to stay in the city, and only after I’ve wrecked our lives does he decide that I may have been right. “Yeah,” I say. “That sounds like a good plan.” The floor is cold beneath my feet. I squeeze my eyes shut for a second. Kevin is moving on—slowly, sanely, peeling himself from me. Even though I’m entirely to blame for the sodden, stinking mess of us, and even though I can’t honestly say I wish for things to be the way they were two months ago, and even though I have no right to be, I am, at this moment, the saddest I have ever been. Right here, right now, in the foyer of my parents’ house, with the smell of pumpkin pie wafting over us, I have never felt more bereft.

  “Well,” Kevin says, after a long moment. “I should probably be going.”

  All of the “I’m pregnant but” speeches I’ve been practicing suddenly clamor in my head. Now is the time. I owe it to Kevin to supply him with this knowledge. This child I’m carrying may be his. And if it’s not, well, he needs to know that, too. He stands before me now, on the brink of leaving, his face and his posture still, remarkably, open to me. Kevin is standing here, close, and I can smell his shampoo, I can see the tiniest speck of dried blood on his chin from where he nicked himself shaving. Probably not even thirty minutes ago, he was standing naked in the shower in the bathroom that used to be ours. Now he’s on his way to a Thanksgiving dinner where he won’t quite belong, making the best of things. I suppose there is a fine line between cowardice and kindness, a small distinction between respecting Kevin enough to arm him with important knowledge and suffering this burden alone for just a little while longer. I shift my weight from one freezing foot to the other. “Happy Thanksgiving,” I say.

  Kevin turns and reaches for the doorknob. “Same to you,” he says over his shoulder, opening the door, and another icy breeze blows in as he is about to step outside.

  “Wait!” I say suddenly. Is it my own latent sense of decency that spurs me forward, the deep and sudden understanding that sometimes it is profoundly uncomfortable to do the right thing? Is it my irritation that Kevin has decided to look for a house in the city? Is it the same impulse that compels a person to rip a Band-Aid off a scab? Whatever it is, I clench my fists at my sides and force myself to look him in the eye. “No, Kev, there is something else.” He stands, half in and half out of my parents’ house, looking very old and tired. Kevin’s papery skin has never responded well to stress. “So, I’m, um, I’m, um,” I stutter. Kevin nods. My fingernails bite into my palms. “Pregnant. I am pregnant.”

  For one second, for just the briefest flash, a flicker of joy moves across his face. And then he realizes what I’m saying, everything I’m saying, and that is the moment that I know I have stabbed him in the heart. He turns quickly away from me and stares out at the front lawn, but not before I see humiliation and despair sink into him. Then he looks back at me, Kevin again—poker faced, impenetrable. He’s still clutching the doorknob. A breath like a hiss escapes from his mouth. “Do you even…? Am I…?” He twists the doorknob back and forth, back and forth; it makes a squeaking noise beneath his fist.

  “I don’t know,” I say, swallowing hard. Wind chimes tinkle in the distance. I can feel myself starting to shake a little. I wrap my arms tightly around my body. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t,” he says, the word like the low, fearful growl of a wounded dog. “Don’t tell me you’re sorry.” Kevin is a Tupperware container of rage and pain. His emotions are sealed, locked in so tightly they’ll probably stay there, preserved, forever. “Emily,” he whispers, so softly I can barely hear him; I’m really shaking now, squeezing myself hard to still the trembling, and I hear my own breath coming fast and sharp. “Emily,” Kevin says again, moving away from me and onto the front step. His face is contorted now, barely recognizable as the face of the man who was my husband, my best friend, my beloved. He begins to back away. A dry rustle of leaves rattles across my parents’ front yard, and I have to strain to make out his last words to me. “I wish I’d never met you.”

  Sometime later, maybe ten minutes, maybe an hour, my father pads past me, whistling, on his way to the bathroom. I’m sitting, huddled against the wall next to the front door.

  “Emily!” he says with a start. “What are you…?” and then he sees my face and stops. He bends toward me and unwraps my arms from my sides, takes my hands in his, pulls me up. “Come on, honey,” he says, and leads me to my old bedroom, offering me the sweet and timeless Ross family cure for whatever ails a person: “Why don’t you lie down and take a little nap?”

  So I climb obediently into my childhood bed. My dad tucks in the covers, kisses me on the forehead, and shuts the door. I hunker down low, pulling the heavy blankets up to my eyes the way I used to, only now my toes hang off the edge of the bed. The bulky digital clock radio that I got for my twelfth birthday casts a gentle green glow in the room. I close my eyes and lie there in the dark, trying to remember what it felt like when I was little, safe in this house, in this bed, when my biggest mistakes were on math tests and science quizzes, and everything ahead of me was brilliant and bright.

  THERE’S A HUSHED ATMOSPHERE IN THE HOUSE I GREW UP IN on the morning after Thanksgiving. There’s a feeling, almost a smell, of stillness. Everyone but me is still asleep, and the house is warm and quiet. Snow started falling early last night, just after Rolf arrived and before we sat down to dinner, and apparently it snowed all night, because this morning there must be seven inches on the ground, all soft and bright and puffy. I’m standing at the picture window in my parents’ living room, staring out at the rolling white landscape of their big backyard. It’s as if the world is covered in marshmallow fluff. Which makes me hungry. For marshmallows. In an instant I’m as hungry as I’ve ever been, so I move away from the window and set about finding myself some leftovers. I would have thought that my confrontation with Kevin might have killed my appetite, but it didn’t, not last night and not now. Our grocery-store Thanksgiving dinner, it turned out, was surprisingly tasty, or maybe my newly insatiable appetite just trumped my old, persnickety taste buds. In any case, I have no post-Thanksgiving food hangover this morning, none of the usual groggy, overstuffed bloat, and I try not to make any noise as I carefully assemble a huge plate of turkey, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, and sweet potatoes (topped, fortuitously, with marshmallows) for my breakfast.

  The quiet in the house this morning, though, may be as much a result of the blanket of snow outside as a consequence of the fact that pretty much no one inside is talking to me. Well, I suppose Heather is talking to me, if shriekingly accusing me of ruining her special day counts as talking; yesterday, apparently, was supposed to be her shining moment, the big introduction of Rolf Larsen, fiancé.

  “I didn’t ruin it,” I told her, immediately wondering if in fact I did. We were in the bathroom again. We had left my father, Meg, Steve, and Rolf sitting around the dining room table, awkwardly staring at their dessert plates. Just after my announcement, my mother had quietly retreated into her bedroom, murmuring something about a headache. Heather had waited a few moments, the steam practically pouring out of her ears, before she slammed down her fork and stormed off. In the bathroom she faced me, her hands on her hips. I saw her in front of me, and I saw our reflection in the mirror behind her. I wanted to point this out to her and say, “Look! You’re an Emily sandwich!” Instead I repeated, “I didn’t ruin anything,” the fervor of the moment making up for my lack of conviction. “I had to tell everyone. I’m sorry if my life is happening at the same time yours is. I’m sorry if the timing of my pregnancy inconveniences you.”

  “God, Emily,” she said. “You can never just let me have a moment. You always have to take everything from me.” We had slipped right back into our familiar adolescent skins. In a weird way, it felt kind of good. “You could have waited to tell everybody until tomorrow, until after Mom an
d Dad had had a proper chance to meet Rolf,” she continued. “Now whenever they think of the day they met my husband”—she drew the word out as if it were the name of some kind of exotic tropical fish—“they’ll think of the day their other daughter announced that she screwed up her marriage and got pregnant by some guy she was fucking around with!” Her face was red. Heather blushes when she’s angry, just like I do. “Rolf thinks you’re a jerk!” she said, then looked at the floor.

  “No, he doesn’t.” I didn’t think Rolf thought I was a jerk. And how would Heather know?

  “God, Emily!” Heather snorted again.

  “You know,” I said, heat rising to my own face, “you don’t have to be happy for me, but you don’t have to be such a spoiled brat.” I felt protective of the fetus. I wanted to cover his ears; luckily, I was pretty sure he didn’t have them yet. He didn’t need an aunt who couldn’t even acknowledge, even a little bit, the good fortune of his presence. Ever since my conversation with Meg earlier in the day, I’d been feeling less and less ambivalent about the pregnancy, more and more like this kid was nothing but good luck, whoever his father was. I wanted someone in my family to be happy for me.

  “God, Emily,” Heather said, for the third time. Then she whirled around and stomped out of the bathroom. I heard her bedroom door slam, a comforting echo of the late 1980s, when I could turn Heather into a tiny ball of tongue-tied fury just by looking at her.

  I made my way back into the dining room to the uneasy silence at the table. I slumped into my chair next to Barbara’s empty place. She was still in her room. She was going to be next on my list, but I needed to regroup. Meg, Steve, and Rolf were nibbling on my pumpkin pie, which had turned out perfectly. My dad was scratching his bald head. I helped myself to a large slice of pie. “This crust is light and flaky, if I do say so myself,” I said, shoving a forkful into my mouth.

  “Mmmm,” Steve agreed. A lump of pie fell onto his shirt collar. He genuinely seemed to be enjoying the dessert, for which I felt a surge of gratitude.

  Rolf Larsen folded his napkin, then neatly set it and his fork down and looked around the table. He was a nice, nondescript kind of Minnesotan, or at least that was the way he seemed. It was true; I hadn’t had much of a chance to talk to him. I thought I would probably like him, once I got to know him. He was pale and thin, and he wore his hair so short it was almost a crew cut. I suspected it felt soft to the touch, like a pony. He seemed a little overwhelmed, but who could blame him? He hadn’t said much, but he had eaten his dinner with gusto and, in between bites, had frequently reached over to Heather and touched her neck or her back. He reminded me of Kevin. Someday I would mention this to Heather; someday it would give us both a good laugh. “I should go see to Heather,” he said formally, sheepishly. “Will you all please excuse me?”

  After Rolf left the table, we ate our pie in silence. I really was very hungry, in spite of everything. The pumpkin filling was dense and sweet, a perfect complement to the delicate crust. I could just make out the ginger. As I was considering a second piece, Len, who hadn’t said a word since I’d made my fateful announcement, placed his hand just above my elbow. “Emily,” he said. “We love you and we’re here to support you, sweetheart.” He squeezed my arm gently. “We’ll support you, whatever you do.” Did he think I was going to have an abortion? Give the child up for adoption?

  “Dad,” I said defensively, pulling my arm away, “I’m going to have this baby.” I felt tawdry saying it; I felt like he could picture me having sex.

  “I know, sweetheart. That’s not what I meant.” And I realized my dad gave me more credit than I gave myself. “I’m going to go talk to your mother,” he said, and I nodded gratefully.

  And then it was just me and Meg and Steve, and we could all finally make eye contact. Meg stuck her tongue out at me and waggled her eyebrows. Steve smiled. As usual, bits of food were stuck in his teeth. How, I wondered for the millionth time, could a dentist not notice this? Sweetly, he extended his arm across the table to pat my hand but missed, softly banging on the table instead. My parents were in their bedroom, Heather and Rolf were in Heather’s old room. Through the thin walls of the house, I could hear deep tones and higher, louder, more urgent exclamations, followed again by reassuring low voices: two reasonable men comforting their distraught women. Not that I had looked too far beyond the first part of my plan, the making of the actual announcement, but this wasn’t how I had wanted things to go. Somehow, I’d thought that my family might all come together, heroically—that, yes, naturally they would be upset at first, but they would be upset for me, not with me, and then they would quickly acknowledge my situation, recognize the flaws and the drama, and then understand that there would be beauty in the outcome. Maybe someone would even make a toast! To life! To grandchildren! To incredibly irresponsible behavior! I had thought that I would ultimately find myself floating in a sea of their acceptance, their love, and that because I was coming to terms with things, they would intuitively, deeply, and quickly understand what Meg herself had articulated earlier: everything was going to be okay. Instead, and I saw now that there really had been no other possibility, just as I’d decided to grow up and make things right, all this strife erupted, all this chaos, all these terrible feelings, all because of me. I sighed and slumped even lower in my chair. Another few slumps and I’d be under the table entirely.

  “So, that went well, huh?” Meg said, pointing her fork at me for emphasis. Steve elbowed her.

  All I had now was a sense, deep down and intermittent, that there had been a shift, that I was on the other side of all of my stupid choices. All I had now was the knowledge that I had sunk to the bottom of my life—this was it, right here, the bottom; there had to be some small comfort in that—and if I could hold my breath long enough, I would eventually emerge on the surface, probably gasping for breath, but alive.

  “Who’s for more pie?” I asked, and Meg and Steve lifted their plates.

  I’m scooping the last bit of reconstituted cranberry sauce onto my spoon. Cranberry sauce is just jam, really, and Thanksgiving just happens to be the only occasion on which it’s okay to eat jam like this, straight up, or spread over turkey. It occurs to me that I might want to implement this combination more often. Who says it’s not acceptable to spread jam—strawberry, I think, but even grape jelly would do—on your run-of-the-mill baked chicken in the middle of February? It sounds incredibly appealing to me right now.

  My family is stirring. I can hear my parents laughing—are they laughing?—in their room, and I heard Rolf click the bathroom door shut a few minutes ago. I’m acutely aware that these are my last moments of peace before things get messy again. This warm, satiated feeling I have now, this slow calm, just me, here, at the kitchen table at my parents’ house, it will all be broken in an unseemly collision of personalities and emotions, in just a few minutes. I can’t imagine what the crash site will look like. Will Heather still be furious? Will she start in on me, stomping her feet and flailing her arms about, before she’s even poured her cereal? Will my mother talk to me at all? Will she sulk disapprovingly, glare at me from behind her sequined reading glasses, as if I’ve deliberately sullied her carefully honed reputation? Will my dad defend me? Or will he give me a wink, grab a bagel, and retreat into the safety of his den? Fleetingly, I wish Kevin were here. He’s always run interference in my family; he’s mediated every Ross conflict with unflappable courtesy. (“Barbara, I think that when Emily compares you to a charging rhino trying to take over her wedding plans, what she’s trying to say is that she loves and respects you, but that she doesn’t think that releasing one hundred doves into the air at the conclusion of the ceremony is entirely necessary.”) Then I wish David were here. Go to hell, you judgmental jerks! My lover and I are going into my room to have steamy, unpredictable sex.

  I hear Heather, still in her room, calling for Rolf, asking him if he would bring her a cup of water from the bathroom. I hear my dad grumbling about never being able to
find his slippers—his house slippers, he calls them—my mom telling him that they’re where they always are, under the bed. Hey, kid. Hey, little friend. I pat my belly. Hello. Here we are. “No, nope, they’re not under the bed, Barbara!” Len calls. “Oh, yes, sorry, here they are!” There’s more indeterminate thumping from that end of the house. I should sneak back into my bedroom or, better yet, out the side door. Head for the hills, my brain is urging, but I feel petrified, rooted to my chair by some faulty electrical impulse in my flight-or-fight mechanism. Whatever is about to unfold, I guess I’ll be seeing it through to the end.

  I turn my gaze to the kitchen window, to the transformed face of my parents’ front lawn. The snow outside, it strikes me, is really a lie. It’s just a half foot of cold deception. It may look innocent, like a soft blanket, but it’s hiding its own dark secrets, all the muck and trash of autumn buried beneath it; stinking, decomposing leaves and gum wrappers and cigarette butts, everything that will reappear; it’s all there, on the placid streets and the sidewalks and in the parks and backyards, just waiting. The snow is not just gently concealing the sleeping buds and shoots of spring: it’s covering up all the world’s crap, too. When Len and Barbara and Heather and Rolf finally emerge from their bedrooms, all sleepy and smug, their morning rituals completed, they’ll say, Oh, look, look at the snow; it’s so pretty! And they won’t even think about shoveling the driveway or brushing off their cars or the leaky garage roof, or about how, in a few days, the snow on the curb will turn filthy with soot and dog piss; not at first: they’ll just gasp at the beauty of the world draped in white.

  “Hello there.” Rolf’s appearance jolts me out of my reverie. His resemblance to Kevin is disorienting; for a second, I forget where I am.