A Beautiful, Terrible Thing

by Jen Waite

  “It’s so nice to meet you,” I said, settling into a booth across from Marco and Sebastian. “What were you holding?” I asked with a smile.

  “Oh.” Seb looked at me seriously through thick glasses. “That was a shell I found on the beach at Coney Island. It belonged to some sort of crustacean, though I’m not positive which exactly.”

  “Ah, how cool,” I replied with a side-glance at Marco. “Crustacean?” I mouthed. Marco smiled back and ruffled his hand through Sebastian’s thick, wavy black head of hair. “Seb’s in top class at his school.”

  “Top class? Is that like honors?” I asked.

  “They basically take the smartest kids from the entire second grade and shove them into one class together,” Seb explained. “I’m learning things that even some third graders don’t know.”

  “Wow, that’s awesome.” I smiled.

  “The only downside is that sometimes I get a whole hour of homework. My mom says it’s criminal,” Seb said with a sigh, and nibbled on a tortilla chip.

  “I agree with your mom,” I replied, trying to hide my amusement.

  At the end of lunch, Seb turned to me and asked, “Do you want to come play checkers at my dad’s apartment?”

  “Sure, I would love to.” My eyes flicked to Marco. “As long as your dad says it’s OK.”

  “Oh, it’s fine,” Seb replied quickly. “We don’t have any plans, right, Dad?”

  “No, we do not,” Marco said with a grin. “Except for daddy-son video-game bonding time.”

  “Oh dear, right, I forgot.” Seb drummed his fingers on the table. “We play video games together on the weekends. It’s the only time I get to play. My mom doesn’t have a PS4 at her house, unfortunately,” he told me.

  “Ah, I see,” I said with a smile. “Well, those sound like very important plans indeed.”

  “I’m really torn,” Seb continued seriously. “Because seventy-five percent of me wants to play checkers with you, but twenty-five percent of me wants to play video games, and I know I’ll have regrets if I don’t spend as much time as possible gaming this weekend.”

  “I completely get it. Maybe I can come over another time,” I said as we slid out of the booth.

  When I hugged Marco good-bye, he whispered into my ear, “He really likes you.”

  “I really like him,” I whispered back, and then wrapped Seb in a hug.

  “You should definitely hang out with us again,” Seb said. “That was surprisingly fun.”

  “Well, thank you. I will definitely take you up on that,” I said as Marco squeezed my hand behind my back.

  A few weeks later, I was invited to Sebastian’s eighth birthday party at his mother’s apartment. I held on to Marco’s hand tightly as we made our way up two flights of stairs to Natalia’s apartment. After hearing how she broke Marco’s heart, I had prepared myself for a strained first meeting. Instead, I was introduced to a smiling, pretty, petite Polish woman.

  “Hi! I’m Natalia, or Nat is what most people call me,” she said, giving me a warm kiss on the cheek. “Thank you for spending so much time with my child over the past couple of weeks. Honestly, I don’t know how people spend time with other people’s children. I can barely stand my own,” she said with a laugh. I liked her immediately. After cake and ice cream, she ushered me into her bedroom. “Look, I just wanted to tell you really quickly, thank you. I know it may be soon to say this, but you’ve really changed our lives.”

  “What?” I asked. “What do you mean?”

  Nat dropped her voice to a whisper. “Marco’s ex-girlfriend was a nightmare. Or I should say, they were a nightmare together. All they did was fight. Marco was always in a terrible mood. Never smiled. Smoked all the time because she smoked. Selfishly”—she paused and ran her hands through long, dark hair—“I’m so, so glad they broke up. Now everything is different. Seb actually wants to hang out with his dad.”

  I blushed. “It means so much to me that you said that. Sebastian is . . . well, you know. He’s incredibly special.”

  “He is, isn’t he?”

  —

  THE first time I brought Seb home to meet my family, my best friend, Holly, rode with him in the back of my green Subaru. Holly and I grew up next door to each other and both moved to New York after college. In high school, she was chubby and too tall with a curly blonde perm, and she was voted Class Clown our senior year. In college, though, she slimmed down and suddenly her five-feet-ten-inch stature and startling large eyes landed her in a top modeling office in New York City. After her perm was straightened and razored into a chic bob by her agency, her physical transformation was complete. But the girl who won Class Clown still lived in a supermodel’s body. “Oh, fuck, I mean, shoot! I’m sorry, buddy,” Holly said to Seb as she shook her hand and winced in pain. “The seat-belt thingy broke my nail. Fuck, that hurt. I mean, crap, that hurt. Ugh. Sorry, guys.” Seb giggled behind his hand, delighted at this outpouring of cursing from an adult. We were coming home for another close friend’s wedding.

  Sebastian was eight going on forty-eight, and Holly had dubbed him a “non-Jewish child Woody Allen” after he explained to her exactly why he had no interest in going on roller coasters or Ferris wheels. (“My idea of fun is not hurtling through the air, feeling like I might throw up, and risking death.”) Seb and I had become fast friends after that first lunch. I became enamored of this whip-smart, wiser-than-his-years little adult with a mop of wavy black hair and pale winter skin that turned a gleaming nut brown in the summer. He preferred checkers and computer games to playing sports, reading nonfiction history books to watching TV, and he spoke more eloquently than most adults.

  Marco had met my parents several times by then. My parents’ opinions mattered to me. If my partner didn’t pass the twin tests of my mom’s magical intuition and my dad’s practical mind, the relationship usually didn’t last long. Before meeting Marco, my parents had heard only tidbits about him (six years older, bartender, has a kid), and their hackles were raised. My mom flew to New York City a few months after Marco and I became serious, under the pretense of wanting to have a fun girls’ weekend in New York City, but we both knew she was there to vet this choice of partner. In a tiny, cozy bar near Gramercy Park, over a bottle of prosecco and delicious bite-size hors d’oeuvres, Marco and my mom shared stories of completely different but happy childhoods.

  “When I was very young, maybe five or six years old, my parents sent me away for the summer to my grandfather’s farm in the countryside, a few hours outside of Buenos Aires. My job was to look after the bunnies that my grandfather kept on the farm.” Marco paused to fill my mom’s glass. “Your glass is only halfway full. That will not do, Maggie.”

  My mom smiled and lifted her glass. “So did you have a favorite bunny?”

  “It was a lot of fun and they were adorable, but I didn’t get too attached. They weren’t exactly pets, if you know what I mean.” Marco popped a Brie-covered crostini into his mouth with a crunch.

  My mom’s eyes widened. “You mean you ate the bunnies?!”

  “Bunny tastes very similar to chicken,” Marco responded seriously, and then broke into a huge smile. “I was on a farm in the middle of nowhere in the Argentinian countryside. I did what my grandfather told me.”

  “That actually reminds me of my childhood summers in Maine,” my mom said with a warm smile. “I was a bit older and lobsters aren’t quite as cute as bunnies, but I was a lobsterman when I was sixteen.”

  My mom finished telling Marco about her summer as a lobster fisherman that earned her enough money for an exchange program to Sweden; her first time out of the state of Maine. Whatever reservations my mom came into that bar with trickled away as we drained the bottle of prosecco and laughed and talked, until I looked at my phone and saw that my mom and I were late for our dinner reservation downtown.

  “He’s very charming,” my mom sa
id later that night over dinner. “But be careful. He comes with a lot of baggage.”

  “But, Mom,” I exclaimed with the passion of a girl desperately in love, “don’t you want me to be with someone who has potential?”

  My mom looked at me and said, “You really believe in this guy, huh?”

  “I do. I know it sounds crazy, but I just have this feeling. I’ve never felt this way, Mom.” I ran through the ex-boyfriend file quickly in my head: There was my college boyfriend, Pete, who smoked a lot of pot and was so sweet, so incredibly eager to please that I once waited fifteen minutes for him to decide between bringing me hot cocoa or tea. There was my boyfriend right out of college, the first boyfriend I lived with, Matt, who was smart and nice and had a good job and who I recoiled from every time he kissed me. And then there was Jeff, the Greek god, who was funny and sexy and told me that if I didn’t book a big acting job within six months, I should give up and have babies with him. I had never talked excitedly about any boyfriend, preferring to take the opposite approach—the “I’m not so sure” shrug of my shoulders when asked if this guy was “The One” and changing the topic quickly. I always thought he—The One—was out there; I just didn’t know what it was supposed to feel like when I found him. Now I knew. This time, instead of desperately diverting the conversation elsewhere, I had the distinct sensation of being part of a romantic comedy and not being able to control the sappy sound bites pouring out of my mouth.

  “Ah. L’amour.” My mom sighed with a smile and pushed wavy brown hair behind her ear.

  “OK, Mom,” I said, in a singsong voice, feigning embarrassment, but in my head I was thinking, Yes! Yes, this is what real, sing-it-from-the-rooftops, heart-melting love feels like. I found myself turning the conversation back to Marco again and again.

  “And he wants to open a restaurant, and I think he would be amazingly successful because he’s worked in the restaurant industry for more than ten years and he’s so driven.”

  “That does sound very exciting. How does he feel about your acting career?” my mom asked while trying to fish a dumpling from the bowl in front of us, first with chopsticks and then with her fingers.

  “Oh, he’s completely supportive. He always says he knows I am going to be successful. We’re really supportive of each other. I kind of feel like we can do anything together,” I said in a rush of excitement. “I feel like this is how you and Dad must have felt when you were starting out. I’ve never known what it feels like to be truly part of a team.”

  “We have always been each other’s biggest fan,” my mom said. “That’s so important in a relationship and a marriage. Dad and I have always had a vision of what we were trying to do and worked together to accomplish it. Big or small, you hunker down and work toward it together. Respect and teamwork. Because if you’re not on the same team, what’s the point?”

  “I have such enormous respect for Marco,” I said, my eyes gleaming. For the rest of the night, I asked my mom questions about her and my dad’s marriage and listened in a way that I never had before.

  My dad met Marco for the first time a few months later at a hole-in-the-wall Venezuelan restaurant a few blocks from my apartment. I was worried about this encounter for so many different reasons. The yin to my mom’s warm and effusive yang, my dad is an extreme type A personality, with an intensity and single-mindedness that served him remarkably well as a provider and executive but could be extremely intimidating, especially for new boyfriends. What I didn’t count on was that having spent a portion of his childhood living in Honduras, my dad was fascinated with all things South American. He fired off question after question at Marco, from how to pronounce an entrée on the menu to what he thought about the current political climate in Argentina. By the end of lunch, Marco was sweating profusely and my dad was thrilled. Over the next year my dad and Marco developed a tight bond, texting back and forth nearly every day, switching between English and Spanish, about everything from Latin foods to Tom Brady’s ridiculous fifty-yard passes.

  If my parents had any lingering reservations about Marco, they were completely eliminated after meeting Seb. When he hopped out of my green Subaru onto Haven Road, my parents were already almost to the car.

  “Sebastian!” my mom cried. “We’ve heard so much about you!”

  “Hi there, how are you, young man?” my dad asked, giving Seb’s miniature hand a strong shake.

  “Well, it’s funny,” Seb replied very seriously, adjusting his black-rimmed glasses higher on the bridge of his nose. “I feel nervous but also really happy. Two kind of opposite emotions, which is interesting.”

  That afternoon my mom took Seb into the woods behind our house to pick blackberries, their two heads bobbing above green-and-brown shrubs, immersed in conversation. The next morning, Seb woke up and said, “I’m going to go explore the woods. Bye,” as Marco and I each opened one eye from my childhood bed and smiled.

  “He’s never been out of the city. He’s acting like a real kid,” Marco said.

  The next day, my dad and Seb played game upon game of checkers while Marco and I slept in. By the end of the week, my dad took me aside: “That boy is very, very special. Marco has done a good job.” Finally, my two worlds had merged completely.

  AFTER

  WHEN Marco walks in the door, I am waiting on the couch. Louisa, mercifully, is sleeping in the bedroom, and I pray she gives me a few minutes of quiet so that we can figure this out and make it go away. I expect Marco to start talking and apologizing right away, but he is quiet and sinks into the chair at the foot of the couch without saying a word.

  “Marco . . . ?” I begin, and wait for him to start talking. Still nothing. He looks at the floor. “Marco, what the fuck?” Now I am mad.

  “Jen, I told you, the e-mail was nothing, a stupid mistake. I barely even know that person. Seriously, how fucking sick do you think I am? That I would be looking at apartments with some random girl when I’ve been working so much I haven’t even seen Seb in two months?” He holds my gaze.

  “OK . . . but still.” I begin my rehearsed speech about how that e-mail, no matter what his intentions, was completely inappropriate.

  “Wait,” he says, cutting me off, “I need to talk to you about something.” He speaks slowly and rubs his temple with one hand. “For around a year now, I haven’t been happy. I lost all my feelings. I think there’s something physically wrong with me. Or . . . I don’t know. Like right now, I’m looking at you, and I feel nothing. I feel numb.”

  I taste salt in my mouth. Tears are running down my face. I feel nothing? What is happening? I can’t wrap my head around the words that are coming out of my husband’s mouth. In the back of my mind, I can still see that e-mail faintly, but it is fading, fading into the distance as I hear my husband say once again, “Jen, I have no feelings.”

  “What . . . what are you talking about?” I feel like I’m trapped in a bad acid trip. Nothing makes sense. There is something very, very wrong with my husband. He is sitting across from me, it is his body, but he is not my husband. “Marco . . . please.” I am pleading now, but I don’t know what I am pleading for or why.

  “You’re telling me you haven’t noticed anything over the past year?” His usual sweet, chipper voice is replaced by a monotone, and his eyes are . . . dead.

  “We just had a baby. Maybe you’re overwhelmed and stressed?” I feel a rush of worry. Is he really hurting? I rack my brain, trying to push past the sludge of hormones and panic and really think about the past year. We finally celebrated our civil ceremony that took place two years ago with a huge reception in Maine, we went to Argentina to visit Marco’s family, and we went to France on vacation with my family and Seb. All of these are happy memories—in fact, some of the happiest of my life.

  “What are you unhappy about? I don’t understand.”

  “Babe, we barely see each other anymore. I’m always working. We never do fun co
uple things anymore. You used to really put effort into your appearance, you know? I mean I would look at you before an audition and think, Goddamn.”

  “But . . .” How do I say this without sounding obvious? “I just had a baby.” It comes out in a whisper.

  “Oh, I know, I know, that’s not what I meant. I just mean, maybe what everyone always says is true, that getting married ruins relationships.”

  “I don’t understand,” I say slowly, trying to bide myself time. Maybe if I speak slowly enough and think very, very hard, I will grasp what my husband is saying. “What do you mean, ‘getting married ruins relationships’? We’re happy. We’re so happy.” My voice comes out high. I am happily married. I am happily married and in love. I am so in love, and I just had a baby with my husband.

  My husband keeps his eyes on the floor and says, “You know men don’t like hair down there, right?”

  I pull my legs together instinctively and then flinch as the gauzy pad rubs against my swollen flesh. My cheeks burn. “But I couldn’t reach during the last few months and now I have stitches.” I stumble and stop, unable to form any more words.

  “I know,” he says quickly. “I’m just saying. . . .” His voice trails off.

  The buzzing in my ears grows louder and louder.

  By now it is close to 2:00 A.M., and Marco says, “I need to get some sleep. Baby, don’t worry, we’ll figure this out.” I am so exhausted and Louisa will be awake soon, but I will never be able to sleep again because my husband has just told me he looks at me and feels nothing. I lie awake, my eyes burning. At 4:00 A.M., Louisa starts to stir with muffled sounds that quickly turn into a full-fledged crying shriek. I pick her up and walk back and forth across the soft carpet of our bedroom. “Shhhhh, shhhhh, shhhhhh,” I say, bouncing her in my arms. “Shhhhhh, shhhhhhh, shhhhhhh.” But the shushing gets stuck in my throat and my head feels light and heavy at the same time. There is a black tidal wave creeping toward my eyes, and suddenly I am on the carpet, on my knees, holding Louisa straight out in front of me, just above the floor.