Own Me

by Lexi Scott

  It doesn’t work.

  “What does it say?” I ask, smoothing the delicate Spanish lace tablecloth, a wedding gift from Lydia. At first, I thought it was an impersonal gift, typical from my ice princess sister. But now that I think about it, it couldn’t be more personal. It’s a gorgeous covering for the place that Adam and I will share our meals. It’s here that we’ll talk about our days, good and bad. And it’s here that Adam appears to be having a mental breakdown over whatever is in that letter.

  He clears his throat and flips the paper out of his fingers. We both watch it flutter onto the table. “It says we have to meet with someone in the Immigration Investigations department, Gen. Tomorrow. This letter must have been sitting here since the day after I got the damn marriage license.”

  “Since when is the government that on the ball?” I snort.

  “This isn’t a joke, Genevieve.” He’s looking at me with that same expression he always had when I’d show up late to class. The look that says I’m letting him down.

  I hate that look so damn much and will do anything to get it off his face.

  “I understand that, but we can’t change it,” I say, my words calm. Not because I feel calm, but because I hope to trick him into following my lead and calming down. “We have to go to the meeting whether we sit here and pout about it or not. We’ll go, they’ll ask some questions, we’ll answer them, go have lunch, and find out we’re fine. Done deal.” I scoop some more food onto his plate and toss a fortune cookie toward him. “Now, can we eat?”

  “I’m not hungry.” He pushes his plate away, leans across to the counter, and pulls his laptop down.

  “Are you seriously going to work at the table?” I ask, my heart sinking as hard and fast as an anchor dropped into the churning waves.

  Adam’s rough voice makes my spine stiffen. “I’m not working,” he snaps. “I’m researching.”

  “Eso es lo que dije. Es lo mismo, culo inteligente.” I mutter quickly under my breath.

  He barely glances up then looks back down at his computer screen. I catch the slightest sign of a smile that he’s fighting, because I know it turns him on when I speak Spanish, even if what I said wasn’t all that nice.

  “I’m trying to get some information on what we might expect tomorrow. See, right here, it says that we get to be interviewed together,” he says, his shoulders falling with obvious relief.

  “That’s a good thing.” I put my hands on his shoulders and rest my chin on the top of his head, dipping my mouth to kiss his hair. I draw in a relieved breath. Crisis averted. “How can we screw up if we’re in the same room. All we have to do is not overlap each other talking. We need like a sign, if I’m going to answer, or if I think you should take that one.”

  “Genevieve, I’m pretty sure they’re going to ask us each questions directly. It isn’t a pick-and-choose type of situation.” He shakes his head and goes back to scrolling through the endless pages of information.

  I back up, taking my hands off his shoulders and crossing them tight over my chest. “Oh, really? How many of these have you done?” I ask. I feel like he’s talking down to me, and I hate it.

  “That’s not what I meant, Gen. I just meant that common sense would— ” He pinches the bridge of his nose, unrecognizable compared to the Adam of just hours ago. He lets out a long sigh. “Never mind.”

  “So we don’t need any secret sign. We’ll interview together, right in the same room? That’s good.” I lean a hip on the counter, looking right on him. He never glances up from the screen.

  “Right, but on this message board, it says that sometimes, if they’re suspicious, they’ll separate you. Then they’ll ask you the same questions. It’ll be less about gathering information and seeing how we interact together, and more like a quiz show.” He puts his elbows on the table and drops his head into his hands. “Fantastic.”

  I shake my head. “Okay, I get that it’s important, Adam. I really do. But I just don’t think it’s productive to stress about this tonight. What time is the appointment?”

  “Eleven.”

  “Okay, so we have all night to spend…de-stressing.” I want to wink at him, but he won’t look up. “Come on, you’re not even going to let me try to seduce you?”

  His eyes dart up. Finally. His face is a mask of disappointment and maybe…disgust? I can’t be sure because I’ve never seen him look like this. What I do know is that I don’t like it at all.

  “I feel like you aren’t taking this seriously at all, Genevieve. You could get in a lot of trouble for what we did. What we’re doing. We’re breaking the law! I could get sent back to Israel, and this would all be for nothing.”

  I shake my head. It’s an involuntary movement. My eyes tear, and I just can’t believe the words that he’s saying. I can’t believe he’s making it sound like he regrets marrying me. I can’t believe he said that this entire thing may have been pointless.

  “Do you…do you regret what we did? Do you regret marrying me?” I ask, biting back hard to stop the tears before they fall.

  Adam looks up, and his eyes soften. “No, Gen, I’m just nervous. I don’t want you to get into trouble. I don’t want to screw anything up.”

  I nod, relieved for a second. “But you won’t. It’s going to be fine. We know each other, we learned so much about each other this weekend, even!” I want him to tell me that we do know all that we need to know, because we aren’t faking this. This is real, and nothing will prove it otherwise.

  Adam doesn’t say that. “I don’t think your unreasonable fear of stuffed animals will help us tomorrow, Gen.”

  I shrug, still desperate for him to see that there honestly isn’t anything worth getting worked up over. “Maybe, maybe not. But stressing about it and going on a hunger strike right now helps nothing.”

  Adam stretches his arms above his head. I watch the muscles flex as he runs his hand through his hair, and I swallow hard. “You’re right, we have tonight to relax together. Tomorrow will be what it’s going to be.”

  I sigh, relieved. He’s finally relented.

  “So we can eat?”

  Adam cracks a small smile and nods.

  “Oh, thank God. I’m starving.” I reach over and crack open my fortune cookie, like a kid. It’s always been my favorite part of Chinese takeout. I know it’s silly to believe in the power of a preprinted piece of paper, but I can’t help but feel like if this one says something really good, it’ll be like a sign. A sign that everything will go off perfectly tomorrow. It has to.

  I lay the small strip of paper out on the table and cringe.

  All Roads Lead to Chaos in the End.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Adam

  “It’s going to be fine. More than fine. We know each other. This will be okay.” I say the words, but there’s a knife stab of fear deep in my throat, and I don’t know what the fuck I’m promising.

  Genevieve is staring down at her phone, scrolling through yet another online article about green card marriage questions. I glance around the room, nervous for someone to see what she’s doing and call us out as frauds.

  There are so many things she still doesn’t know about me—things I’ve been too scared to share, topics I didn’t know how to broach. Because she’s right about the flashcards and the rote memorization—it only tells you so much about a person. We’ve memorized so many facts, but I don’t know if that was enough.

  “She sounded nice enough on the phone,” I say, wrapping my arm around Gen to comfort her, but also to hide the screen from anyone who might be snooping.

  “Anisha Jeffries.” She says the name of our agent in a whisper. “I couldn’t find anything about her. I mean, I found a few people with that name, but none of them had her job or were from this area.” She throws her phone in her purse and smooths the skirt she borrowed from Lydia, navy blue and sensible. Too sensible.

  As glad as I am that Gen is finally stepping away from the binding, flashy clothes she picked when we met
, this isn’t her either. She looks meek and prim in her white cotton blouse, buttoned too high.

  It’s just clothing, but seeing her in what looks like a costume makes me wonder just how much I know about her. It makes me wonder if there are secrets she hid from me. Of course there must be, and I was an idiot for thinking I could ferret them out using cold, demanding logic.

  You share secrets with the person you love. The person you trust. The person you’re so afraid you might lose, you’d risk anything for her.

  A woman with masses of tiny braids piled in a bun and a no-nonsense expression on her pretty face pokes her head out the door. “Adam Abramowitz.”

  I jump to my feet and Genevieve fumbles with her purse.

  “No, ma’am.” She shakes her head at Genevieve, her sensible gold hoops glinting in the dull fluorescent light. “You’ll see Mrs. Jeffries when she calls for you. Your husband needs to come with me.”

  “Wait.” Genevieve stands up and clutches at my hand.

  My mind clicks through too many things all at once. Was there any particular emphasis on the way the agent said “your husband”? Like she doubts that’s what I am to Genevieve? Will Genevieve be able to make her temper match this whole docile image she’s wearing like a disguise? And if they find out why we did this—if they brand me a liar and a law-breaker—what does that mean for her?

  “Sit down and wait for Mrs. Jeffries.” It sounds like an order, and Gen’s chin juts out.

  “I have questions to ask.” She looks at the agent with the braids and gets two very annoyed raised eyebrows.

  Sweat breaks out on my neck, and I breathe slowly, in and out. “Genevieve, listen to me. Do what the woman asked, and sit back down now and wait for Mrs. Jeffries.”

  I’ve never spoken to her in this tone, and there are a few long seconds where all I can do is watch her face, nervous for her to fly off the handle in this cramped waiting room and scream things that will expose our whole marriage as a sham.

  But she does something worse. She glares at me and sits down, silent and furious. The agent clears her throat and I follow her, not daring to look back at my wife. I wonder if I just made an already bad situation worse.

  “So, is this, um, protocol?” I ask, feeling like a crappy extra in an espionage movie. “To separate a couple for the interrogation?”

  The word is in the air between us before I realize what I said. Damn it.

  The agent chuckles and shakes her head. None of the braids move.

  “Please don’t be so dramatic, Mr. Abramowitz.” She swings open the door of her office and gestures to a black plastic chair. I sit and watch her perch on her own chair, flip open a folder, and gesture with her hands. “Just a regular old manila folder with some questions. No bright light shining in your face, no waterboarding.”

  I attempt a subtler tactic. “I wish my wife could be here for this.”

  “Mrs. Jeffries doesn’t waterboard either, I promise,” she deadpans. “Mr. Abramowitz, my name is Carlita Johnson. I’m your case review agent, and I’d like to ask you a few questions about your marriage to Genevieve…Rodriguez.” She flicks her eyes down the page to double check.

  “Genevieve Rodriguez-Abramowitz,” I correct. She taps her pen on her folder, and I ramble like a fool. “Technically, I’m Adam Rodriguez-Abramowitz now. I know. It’s a mouthful.” I give her a wishy-washy smile, but she’s all business and is already taking notes.

  Probably notes that read something like, Husband is clearly a lying asshole.

  “Can I assume you get along well with your parents-in-law, Mr. Rodriguez-Abramowitz?” Her pen is poised to write what I say, which makes the words stick on my tongue.

  “I…admire them.” I clear my throat and tug on my collar, wondering if it would make me look guilty to ask for some water. Isn’t it always the guilty guys who get dry mouth? “Genevieve’s family is nothing like mine. Her parents are kind of like these clan leaders who have all these clan members to take care of. Very old school.”

  “How often do you see her parents?” I try to peek at Carlita Johnson’s notes, but she keeps the page tilted out of my view.

  “Sunday dinners, mostly. But we’re trying to do that on alternate Sundays. We want to do our own thing sometimes, too. I mean—I want to. Maybe more than she does. But we agreed to work that out.”

  I don’t mention that it was a fight last week when I needed to get things done in the lab, and Genevieve told me I had no choice except to go with her because it was Enzo’s birthday. When I told her that I thought it was ridiculous to have to go and eat cake and sing to her adult brother on his birthday, she barely talked to me the entire ride over.

  “So you do Sunday dinners with the in-laws now, but you’re planning on doing them less?” she double-checks, and I wonder if she’ll compare my answer to Genevieve’s. Fuck.

  “Yes,” I finally say, because I’m afraid to go backtracking and sound like a bigger idiot. Or—worse—a liar.

  “And your family? I understand you’re from Israel. Are they in Israel?” She says the name of my country with a strange semi-Hebrew flourish that doesn’t quite work.

  “My dad, yes, he’s there. A few aunts, too, and then my cousins and uncles by marriage. I haven’t talked to them much lately.” I’m damn glad I’m wearing a dark jacket, because the sweat is dripping off of me, soaking me under the arms. How the hell do I admit that I didn’t mention I was married to them?

  Especially because Gen thinks I did. So I should lie, obviously, and say I did tell my family like a normal person would have.

  Only I put my father’s contact information down on the paperwork the agency asked us to fill out, so they could call and verify with him. It isn’t likely, but if they do? I’m screwed. Gen is screwed.

  My throat closes so tight it feels like the sides are stuck together. What the hell have I gotten us—her—into? I’ll have to call as soon as we’re done here. Just call and tell everything, and accept up front that all my aunts will wail and beat their chests like martyrs because they missed the wedding. And my father…it makes my stomach cramp with nausea because my father will figure it out. He’ll guess why we did this. And he might even think it’s a good idea.

  That I hate more than anything else.

  “Has Genevieve been able to speak to them? Maybe on the phone? Maybe an online correspondence, or even letters?” She uses her thumb to slide the cap on and off the pen, and her casual action makes me feel even more flustered.

  “Not…um, not yet.” I fumble. “I’m not all that close. To them. My family. My aunts…they’re great. But they talk about my mother all the time, every time I see them. She died. Long time ago. I was ten. You know, it gets morbid after a while, always rehashing the past, always pointing out what she’s missing and how much she would have loved to be part of things. I miss her too, trust me. I do, miss her more than I can handle some days, but there’s a limit on how much I can deal with. And my father, he and I just don’t see eye to eye.”

  My words slip and slide out, too much information, information that isn’t relevant, information I know Carlita Johnson is going to gather and somehow manage to use against me.

  “Not all families get along.” The words are cool, almost careless, and she doesn’t mark the paper enough to possibly document all I said. Then it occurs to me: what if they already contacted my family? What if I just dug my own hole of lies, and I’m about to break my neck falling into it?

  I keep my mouth clamped shut, because that wasn’t even a question, and I don’t need to implicate myself any further than I already have.

  “So your wedding was on the smaller side, I’m guessing?” She makes a note before I answer, which irritates me.

  Let me answer the question, Carlita.

  “Gen is from a family of five siblings. Her mother is one of seven, and her father is one of four. Every one of her aunts and uncles came, plus their spouses and children and their children’s spouses and children. We also had friends from
the university and family friends. It was pretty huge for a small wedding.”

  I grin as I watch her mark a few things in her file, and then my grin fades because I wonder if what I said is entirely accurate. I remember Genevieve’s never ending bridal magazines, which always had charts with clearly delineated headings and explanations. A small wedding was a definable thing, and I know there was a headcount average that coded it, though I don’t know specifics. If Carlita and Anisha Jeffries sit down and compare notes, will my answers be completely different from Genevieve’s?

  “Who stood as your groomsmen, Mr. Rodriguez-Abramowitz?” She says my name like it’s a tongue twister.

  I sigh. “Call me Adam, okay?”

  “Okay, Adam. Who were your groomsmen?”

  “Genevieve’s brothers, Enzo and Cohen.” I grit my teeth and hope that’s the end of that train of thought.

  “Are you close with them?” Carlita flips her page, filling her sheets up with the briar patch of my half-lies, sort-of truths, and twisted admissions.

  “No.” When I say the word, she looks up, eyes bright.

  “No?” Her pen makes a deliberate mark on the sheet that I can’t see, no matter how I twist my neck.

  “Enzo and Cohen are different from me, I guess. I’m a little more academic. They’re cool and all, but we just don’t have the same interests. Also, they’re kind of possessive about Genevieve, and they love showing it.” Especially when showing it causes me physical harm or gut-wrenching embarrassment.

  “You had no one stand with you who was your choice? No friend, no colleague?” Her pen is practically leaping out of her hand, overeager to show what shambles my life is in, how I could easily have barnacled onto someone who had what I needed.

  “I stood with Genevieve,” I answer, and this time the truth is undeniable. “She’s the only one who matters.”

  Carlita’s face is placid as she makes hieroglyphic squiggles next to my answer sheet. “What size bed do you share with your wife?”