A Beautiful, Terrible Thing

by Jen Waite

  I look at the time. I now have fifty minutes to get to JFK. I hear the front door of the building clatter open and Spanish whispers drift up the stairs. I grab Louisa and my suitcase and meet them on the stairs.

  “Lo siento,” I say over and over. Rosa takes me in her arms. She is crying.

  “Mi amor, mi amor, come with me,” she says in Spanish.

  “Calm, calm,” Oscar says. His face is creased in worry, and he puts a hand on my shoulder. “Please go with Rosa to our apartment, and let me speak with Marco. Please.”

  I am trapped. I walk with Rosa to the Subaru parked right outside the building, click Louisa’s car seat into place, and throw my suitcase into the trunk, and we drive the block to my parents’ sublet. I lug Louisa up the stairs and into their apartment as she sleeps peacefully. Rosa immediately pulls out her cell phone and FaceTimes Sofia. When Sofia’s face fills the screen, I tell her about the e-mail, the burnout, and the text conversation, and she listens silently. She speaks slowly in Spanish to her mother, translating everything I’ve said. I watch Rosa’s eyes grow wider and wider, and then she covers her face with her hands and cries. Sofia says in Spanish, “Mama, she has to go home. If it were me in this situation, wouldn’t you want me to be somewhere I felt safe? She doesn’t feel safe with Marco right now. I don’t know what’s going on with him, but there’s something wrong. It’s not healthy for her and the baby to be around him right now.” Rosa nods with tears streaming down her face and rocks back and forth, uttering, “Dios míos, Dios míos.” We say good-bye to Sofia, and Rosa turns to me.

  “Show me the girl,” she says in Spanish. I bring up a picture and hand my phone to Rosa. “No. Ay, no, no, no.” Rosa moans. My stomach twists. I don’t have time to ask her what she thinks, and I’m not sure I want to know.

  “Rosa, lo siento, I have to go,” I say, and pick up the car seat. She hugs me and tells me that Marco must be sick and we will figure this out and everything will be OK. I nod. “No sé, no sé,” I say. “No comprendo nada.” I get Louisa back into the car and pull away, glancing at the time. I have thirty minutes now before my flight boards. My phone lights up.

  I pick up. “What?”

  “My dad says I can’t let you go.” Marco’s voice is dead calm now. “At least let me drive you guys to the airport. We can talk on the way there. Please.”

  I pause. My foot presses on the brake. “OK, I’m at the end of our street. I’ll wait here.”

  By the time Marco gets in the car I know that I will not make my flight. He drives us halfway there, and then we turn around.

  “Baby, when I had that conversation with Nat I was drunk and messed up in the head. Obviously I didn’t mean that. I love you more than anything in the world. Please believe me; there is something very wrong with me. I think I have what you said . . . burnout? It’s not that I don’t love you; it’s that I don’t feel anything. You don’t understand. I lost all my feelings. You are the most important thing in my life. Do you know how terrifying it is to look at the person I married, the person I chose to be with for the rest of my life, and feel nothing? I need your help.”

  My hands are clenched at my sides as we pull back onto our street. “I’m so confused,” I say. “I don’t feel well.” How can I put into words that the person beside me is a stranger? That the person who felt like home now feels like a threat?

  “We’ll figure it out,” Marco says. He parks and jumps out of the car, reaches into the backseat, and grabs the car seat. I sit, staring out the windshield.

  “Jen. Come on,” he says. He tries to hide his irritation, but I feel it, and the hair on the back of my neck stands up. I slowly unbuckle the seat belt and follow him back into our building as a feeling of dread spreads throughout my body.

  BEFORE

  A FEW months after we were married, Marco came home from a new bartending job and collapsed onto the couch.

  “I can’t do this anymore. I hate working for people who don’t know what they’re doing. I thought by now I would have my own place. I’m a thirty-four-year-old bartender.”

  “Well, then, let’s start a business. Make a plan. Or at least start thinking about what you would need to do to get the ball rolling,” I said, stroking his hair.

  “Babe, if I owned my own place, I would make a killing. I’ve worked in so many different places, and I’ve seen what some owners do right and some do wrong. I know so much more than the asshole I’m working for now. It’s killing me.”

  “I know you would be successful. I know you will be successful. I’ve always known that, Marco. You’re such a hard worker. That’s why I hitched myself to your wagon,” I said with a smile.

  “We will be successful, baby.” He motioned for me to come closer and buried his head in my shoulder. “Thank you for believing in me. I won’t let you down.”

  “I know you won’t,” I said, and pressed my nose into his nose for the thousandth time. “Is my nose less pointy now?”

  “Your nose is perfect.”

  “No, it’s too pointy, but good answer, as always,” I said, and pressed play on the newest episode of The Walking Dead.

  —

  THE next afternoon, Marco called me on his way home from working brunch.

  “Hi, babe, so I’ve been thinking about our conversation last night, and I’ve decided I’m going to make it happen. I’m meeting this old customer of mine, Steve, who always talked about opening up his own place as well. I’m going to see if he wants to partner up. He has a ton of experience in the restaurant business, and I think he’d be a good person to work with.”

  “Wow, that’s exciting! That’s great. Are you coming home after? I want to hear everything!”

  At home, Marco told me that the meeting had gone better than he expected.

  “Steve has been in talks with this guy Tommy, who owns Nosh and that new Italian restaurant down the street.”

  “Wait, do you mean the really formal fine-dining place that’s always empty?” I asked, throwing frozen strawberries and almond milk in the blender.

  “Yes, exactly. That’s the whole thing, see. Tommy is desperate to sell his new place because he’s already taking a huge loss on it. It’s just not the right concept for the neighborhood. So he’s been telling Steve, if he can get him a down payment of, like, twenty-five grand or so, the restaurant is his.”

  “Wait, he only wants twenty-five grand?” I didn’t know much about buying a restaurant, but I knew restaurants in New York City sold for well over a hundred grand.

  “Well, then Steve and I would apply for a small-business loan. Steve and his wife, Michelle, have already been thinking about it and since Michelle is Asian, she could get a minority small-business loan pretty easily. And we have a name: the Thirsty Owl,” he said peering into the blender. “Can you make me one of those smoothies, too?”

  “Sure. Wow, OK, wait, so this actually sounds really exciting. It kind of sounds like you chose the perfect moment to talk to Steve. I mean, babe, I could invest some of my savings account for the deposit,” I said excitedly.

  “I don’t know, babe. Do you really think that’s a good idea?”

  “Well, I mean, if you guys have a sound business plan and concept, then yes, I do. I think that money is just sitting there, and I would rather invest it in my husband than do nothing with it.”

  I had a chunk of money saved up from working at the hedge fund and a couple of modeling jobs, so a few weeks later, I wrote Marco a check for twenty-five thousand dollars, and Marco, Steve, and I celebrated at Doyle’s. “To our first restaurant, the Thirsty Owl,” Steve said as we hit our glasses together. “Fuck yeah!” Marco said.

  —

  OPENING a restaurant proved to be a lot more stressful and difficult than any of us had imagined, and we ran into roadblock after roadblock during the next few months. Starting with the fact that getting a minority-based small-business lo
an was not going to be as easy as Steve and Michelle originally thought. They had gone full steam ahead renovating the restaurant after Tommy had handed over the keys, and now Steve and Marco were running out of money. The small-business loan was nowhere in sight, and I had written another check to pay for renovations and supplies. Steve, Michelle, and Marco were working in the space whenever they could, and they had decided that since the small-business loan was being secured by Michelle, the partnership would be split evenly between the three of them.

  “This isn’t going the way I expected at all,” Marco said one night after painting the interior of the restaurant all day with Steve and Michelle. “We’re out of money. The small-business loan people are fucking us. We should have closed on the loan weeks ago, and they keep stalling. And it seems Steve and Michelle are trying to push me out.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked nervously. “Why would they be trying to push you out?”

  “They just never want me around. Michelle hates me because we have different ideas about how things should be done. It just seems like they both want to get rid of me.”

  “OK . . . ,” I said slowly. “We just need to get everything out on the table. Let’s sit down the four of us tomorrow and figure things out.”

  The next day, the four of us sat tensely around a wooden table in the empty restaurant, surrounded by ladders, tools, and dust. Marco started in on not feeling like they were a team anymore, and Steve and Michelle expressed that they didn’t feel Marco was putting in as much effort as they were.

  “We’re here every fucking day, Marco,” Michelle said. “You waltz in once in a while, help out for an hour, and then you’re gone.”

  I squeezed Marco’s hand under the table. “Don’t engage,” I communicated to him telepathically. Steve and I found ourselves in the position of acting as mediators between Marco and Michelle.

  “Look,” I said, “everyone is under a lot of stress. A huge factor is that we’re running out of money and the small-business loan is a huge mess. Marco doesn’t want to lose what he’s already put in, and you guys have Tommy breathing down your necks wanting more money. Everyone is obviously under extreme pressure.”

  “She’s right,” Steve agreed. “Tommy has been saying lately that he’s going to take back the keys to the restaurant and sue us for damages. We’ve basically torn apart his restaurant and haven’t delivered the additional one-hundred-and-twenty-five K that we promised him would be here weeks ago. We’re kind of screwed right now because of the small-business loan people.”

  “If I can scrounge up, let’s say, another fifty K, would that appease Tommy for now?” I said, my mind working quickly.

  “It would definitely get him off our backs for another few months. And by then the small-business loan will be here, and we can pay you back immediately and get Tommy the rest of his money and have some working capital,” Steve said, and Michelle and Marco nodded.

  “OK, let me talk to my parents and see what I can do,” I said, my foot tapping fast under the table. As much as I hated to do it, I thought I might be able to approach my parents for a loan.

  I talked to my parents that night, and my mom said, “I think it sounds like a good investment,” and my dad said, “We will invest under one condition. You must be made an equal partner of the LLC. If you’re putting up this much money, you need to be written into the LLC agreement and the four of you need to sign it before you hand over the money.”

  Two weeks later, the four of us sat around the same wooden table in the empty restaurant and signed the LLC agreement. Two weeks after that, the small-business loan closed and suddenly we owned a restaurant.

  “Oh my God, you did it,” I said after Marco got off the phone with Steve. “Not that I didn’t have complete faith in you, but I was terrified for a while there that this was all going to fall through. Oh my God, babe! You did it!”

  “We did it, baby. We own a restaurant. Holy shit.”

  “Holy shit.”

  AFTER

  “I’LL get to the bottom of this,” Oscar says calmly in Spanish. “If there is another woman, I will find out. Marco does not lie to me. Trust me, mi amor, I will get to the bottom of it.”

  I’m sitting cross-legged on the couch in my parents’ sublet, where Rosa and Oscar are staying for the next two weeks. I understand enough Spanish to get the gist of what Rosa and Oscar are saying, but not enough to respond back correctly.

  “No comprendo. No comprendo nada,” I mumble. I’ve been repeating this phrase because I don’t know what else to say. Rosa and Oscar have been asking me questions for the past couple of days, trying to understand the events leading up to my almost fleeing New York with Louisa. I tell them again about the e-mail and the change in Marco’s personality the best that I can in Spanish, but none of it makes sense and we all feel it in the silence that follows my “No comprendo nada.” I am clinging to Oscar’s promise. He will get to the bottom of it. If anyone can get through to Marco, it is Oscar, the man Marco has looked up to and respected all his life. I want to tell them I’m so scared. I want to tell them on January 20, the man I thought of as my protector, the man I thought of as my home, turned to me with dead eyes and said, “I’m looking at you and feel nothing.” I almost want to reveal something, anything, that would make it make sense. That we’ve been secretly miserable for years. That we scream and fight every night and haven’t been intimate in months. But I love my husband. I am terrified to be a new mother; I am full of hormones that caused me incredible unfocused anxiety the first few weeks home from the hospital, but I know that I love my husband in a way that I don’t love anyone or anything else. My voice catches in my throat as I say one more time, “No comprendo nada.”

  Rosa and Oscar leave to go talk to Marco at our apartment. I have been spending my mornings with them in the bright two-bedroom sublet with a view of the Empire State Building. Marco has been waking up even later than usual, and I can’t stand tiptoeing around our dark, stuffy apartment. Rosa and Oscar and I can’t communicate much when we’re together, but it feels oddly comforting to spend time with Marco’s parents. The three of us are bonded by our determination to get the old Marco back.

  This morning, I bundled Louisa up in her gray fleece snowsuit with bunny ears and hauled her down the creaky stairs of our grimy building and out into the fierce winter air. The sun cut into my eyes and the wind whipped my face, sharp as ice. I pushed her in the bright red stroller to the coffee shop a few blocks away, where I ordered a small latte. The cashier peered into the stroller and asked, “How old?” I told her she’s five weeks today, and I heard the two women at the table nearby whisper, “My God, she looks fantastic.” I almost turned around and told them that in the past seven days I’ve lost sixteen pounds, that I had plateaued a few weeks after giving birth but then discovered my husband is potentially having an affair and the pounds have melted off. Instead I plastered a smile on my face, pushed a blonde strand back under my hat, and rolled out the door toward Rosa and Oscar’s.

  Now I am waiting at their apartment with Louisa. They have been talking to Marco for more than an hour. I wait and bite my thumbnail. Finally, I hear keys jangling outside the door, and I stand up. They walk in the door, and Oscar says triumphantly, “No hay otra mujer!” I FaceTime Sofia to translate because I want to make sure I understand everything that took place. Sofia translates the conversation for me sentence by sentence. Oscar questioned Marco over and over again about the e-mail and the girl, and he is absolutely certain that Marco is telling the truth. There is no other woman. This girl is an acquaintance and employee, barely a friend, that he was trying to help. Oscar and Rosa are, however, extremely concerned about Marco’s mental and physical state. Rosa’s voice gets louder and louder, and her face twists up in worry as she explains that Marco isn’t sleeping, isn’t eating right, is working too many hours, and all of this has resulted in his loss of feelings and his change in personality. “En
fermo,” she tells Sofia and me, “very, very sick.”

  I let out a deep breath and suddenly realize I can’t remember the last time I took a shower. Rosa watches Louisa while I stand under steaming-hot water and lather soap all over my body. I can hear Lulu’s cries through the pounding water and bathroom walls, and I barely finish rinsing my hair before I twist the water off and towel myself dry.

  “Gracias,” I say, scooping Louisa from Rosa and bouncing her up and down.

  “Tiene hambre,” Rosa clucks. “Babies don’t cry if they’re happy. She must be hungry.” I pretend I don’t understand what she is saying because I don’t know how to say in Spanish that I nursed her twenty minutes ago, that my nipples feel like they have been caught in a meat grinder, and that no matter what I do, Louisa cries for no reason other than that she is a colicky newborn.

  “Gracias,” I say instead. “Yo voy hablar con Marco.” Rosa puts a hand on my shoulder and says in very slow Spanish that it’s important right now to do small things for my husband: bring him a cup of coffee in the morning, give him a kiss before he leaves for work, rub his shoulders at night. “Sí,” I say, “sí, sí, yo sé.” When I walk into our apartment, Marco is stepping out of the shower. I force a cheery “Hi, babe!” and ignore the dread in my stomach. “How was talking to your parents?”

  “Well, my dad asked me if I’m having an affair a hundred times and I told him ‘no’ a hundred times. So it was really productive and helpful,” he says sarcastically.

  “They’re worried,” I say carefully. “They just want to make sure they know exactly what’s going on so we can all start to figure out a solution.” Marco walks toward Louisa and me in his towel. I lift my face for a kiss. He passes us without stopping, and I hear him yell from the bedroom, “No one seems to give a shit about what’s actually wrong with me. All anyone cares about is that stupid e-mail. I’m going to drop dead, and you’ll all still be worried about the e-mail.”