Bring Me Back

by Karen Booth

Chris seemed on edge all morning, drumming his fingers on the table while he did the crossword, and downing cups of coffee. I tried to help him relax, massaged his shoulders, but nothing seemed to help. The doorbell rang around lunchtime and he was off to the door in a flash. From my office, I heard muffled voices approaching. My throat closed when I turned and saw who was there.

  “Jeremy.” I coughed. “I take it you met Chris.” I blinked and shook my head, trying to gauge Chris’s reaction.

  “We’ve met,” Chris said.

  “Sorry for dropping in. Sam left this at our house the last time she stayed over. I wanted to return it.” Jeremy handed me a spiral bound notebook. “I didn’t know if it was important, for school or something.”

  It’d been years since Sam had had a sleepover with Bailey and I was positive it’d been at our house. I opened the notebook and the pages were blank. I glanced at Jeremy, he winked and I felt sick. “Okay, well, great. Thanks for bringing this by.”

  “So, Chris, how long are you in town?” he asked.

  My shoulders felt as though they’d been lashed together.

  Chris stepped closer and wrapped his arm around me. “I’m not sure. I believe I have an open invitation.” His lips grazed my temple. He and Jeremy were now having a staring contest, and I couldn’t help but feel that I was the prize.

  “Yep, uh huh. Okay.” I clapped my hands. “Thanks for coming.” I wriggled out of Chris’s iron grip to lunge for the front door in an attempt to get Jeremy the hell out of the house. “Thanks again.”

  Jeremy took one last look at Chris before setting his hand on my shoulder and squeezing. “No problem, Claire. Anything for you.” He kissed me on the cheek. “Don’t forget we need to plan our coffee date.”

  I groaned inside while I held on to the door. “We’ll see.”

  He winked at me again before strolling down the front walk to his BMW, just as the Fed Ex guy pulled up to the curb and our photographer friend opted for a few shots of everything transpiring in the front yard. My shoulders rolled and I slumped forward. Today had already been exhausting and it wasn’t even one o’clock.

  Chris’s reaction was swift once he’d signed for the Fed Ex delivery. “What the hell was that? Is Jeremy another one of your old boyfriends?”

  I kneaded my forehead and followed him into the kitchen. “You’ve only been around one of my ex-boyfriends so don’t make it sound like there are a lot of them. He’s not an old boyfriend.”

  “You should’ve seen the way he was looking at you. I know that look. It only means one thing. He couldn’t have cared less that I was here.” He tore open the padded mailer.

  I desperately wanted to calm him down. Our day was only going to get worse. “Honey, it’s okay.” I rubbed his arm. “I couldn’t care less about Jeremy. He’s an idiot.”

  Chris pulled the books from the envelope and our heads dropped to the sight of the cover—colored in a scheme of yellow and black like crime scene caution tape, the jarring image of Elise and Chris in their infamous fight outside the restaurant. All life drained from his face. The title, Love, Destroyed: What It’s Really Like to Be a Rock ‘n’ Roll Wife, was nothing more than a knife in Chris’s back.

  ****

  It was too painful and awkward to remain in the same room, so Chris and I read our copies apart. The book was a load of innuendo, artfully crammed into scant one hundred-fifty pages. Even I had to admit that Kevin had done an excellent job capturing the voice of a strung-out and jilted ex-wife.

  The laundry list of Chris’s supposed transgressions while married to Elise read as this: he was controlling and jealous, verbally abusive, and openly flirted with other women. She said his mood swings were extreme and unpredictable and that he once refused to come out of his music room for a week. He sometimes insisted the house be kept in total darkness.

  Then came the gut-wrenching allegations. She said her addiction and her numerous infidelities were all due to Chris. Drugs were her only escape from the pain of being married to him. Because she’d felt so lonely and afraid, he drove her to cheat on him. There were three different men she was involved with over the course of their marriage: one of them a Banks Forest roadie, the second an old friend of Chris’s and the third was Chris’s guitar tech of eleven years.

  The most painful of her stories, certainly for Chris, was saved for the final chapter. Elise claimed that she’d always wanted a baby, not him, and that when she got pregnant, he told her to have an abortion. She said she’d refused because in her heart she was sure of one thing. The baby did not belong to Chris.

  When I finished reading, I had no earthly idea what I was supposed to do with the avalanche of information. How much of this is true? How do I ask him without it sounding like an interrogation?

  Some things she’d said were plausible; I could understand why she found him controlling and jealous. I could see him flirting with other women because I’d witnessed it myself. I didn’t want to believe the rest of it, but it cast doubt in my head.

  I had very little time to think about it. Chris came to my room minutes after I finished, the fury visible in his eyes. His shoulders were rigid. He sat next to me on the bed, and I pulled my knees under my chin.

  Ultimately, the silence became too much for me. “Say something, please.”

  He cleared his throat and crossed his arms. Closing his eyes for a moment, I saw the translucent skin of his lids, reminding me of every time I’d watched him in peaceful slumber. “I’m not surprised that she would sink so low for money. It’s smart if you think about it. Nearly everything in the book is unverifiable. It’s all stuff that happened between the two of us, so now it’s about whom people want to believe.” He stared straight ahead, almost as if I wasn’t there, holding his lips in a thin line. “Are you going to ask me anything? You must have a lot of questions.”

  I swallowed. “Uh, I guess, but I know that most of it is a lie and that’s all that matters.”

  His eyes darkened. “She’s such a bitch. I knew she was cheating on me, but I didn’t know it was with three guys and that I knew all of them. And I don’t understand how she could say that the baby wasn’t mine, because she had no way of knowing that. And the idea that she was the one who wanted a child in the first place, that’s the bloody worst.” He became deathly quiet and the blood rose in his cheeks, his skin shifting to scarlet.

  I wondered if he would tell me anything else. Instead, he did the last thing I expected—he leaned over and pinned my arms against the bed. He kissed me roughly, forcing his mouth against mine. He weighed me down and pulled up my shirt, his hands aggressive, as if they weren’t his own.

  I pursed my lips and jerked my face from his. “Don’t, Chris. Don’t do this.”

  He tore into my neck, his stubble scratching at my skin. “Come on, Claire. You like it when I’m a little rough.”

  “Not like this. Stop it.” I pushed against his chest with both hands, but he was an unmovable weight. “Get off of me.” He groaned and relented and I rolled out from under him. I scrambled off the bed, into the bathroom, and locked the door while I gasped for breath.

  There were only seconds before he was there pounding. “Don’t be so fucking dramatic. Open the door.”

  I stood paralyzed, but my eyes darted back and forth as I became frantic to make sense of what had just happened. “No way. Not until you calm down.”

  He made a frustrated grumble. “Please come out of there. I need you.” The agony in his voice was palpable. I could feel it through the door.

  “Not until you swear that you’re never going to touch me like that again.”

  “I’ve touched you like that tons of times. What’s your problem?”

  “It’s not the same. You’re angry with Elise, and you’re taking it out on me.” I felt like I might cry, but I couldn’t. “You’re scaring me.”

  That garnered no response. I put my ear to the door after a few minutes but heard nothing. With my courage gathered, I clicked the lock and cracke
d the door. He was on the bed.

  “Can we talk now?” I asked. “Are you okay?”

  His face was blank, in utter defeat, but he pleaded with his eyes. “Claire, I’m so sorry. I don’t know what happened.” His tears came in a silent stream. “You’re right. I’m angry. All I could think about was how much I need you. I want things to be the way they were before this happened.”

  The flood of adrenaline had made its way through my system. My fear was gone. I put my arms around his head, holding the side of his face to my chest as I stroked his hair. “It’s okay. I understand. At least I think I understand. She said awful things.”

  He wrapped his arms around my waist. “It’s not just the book. That guy Jeremy, I was ready to pound him after seeing him look at you like that.”

  “Don’t think twice about Jeremy. I only want you.”

  “I don’t want you to think that this is what it’s like to be with me,” he said, his voice cracking.

  “I don’t think that. I don’t care about the book or the photographer or any of that stuff. It’ll get back to normal soon.”

  He pulled his head back and peered up at me. “But none of this is going away soon. The Rolling Stone issue comes out in less than a month, but I can’t say a thing in the meantime.”

  My heart stopped. “Right. The exclusive.” The thing I’d hoped for after the interview, a guarantee that he’d be on the cover, required his complete and utter silence.

  “Even if the story dies down, that’ll bring it back into the headlines and it’ll start all over again.”

  “What now?”

  “I have to let people call me a monster and try to ignore it.”

  I thought about his predicament, our predicament. “Don’t go home. Stay here. I know there are people watching you here too, but it’s better than if you were at home.” I combed my fingers through his hair. “Just stay. At least until things blow over.”

  He gazed at me, a tinge of hope in his eyes. “Claire, I would never, ever, hurt you.” His voice became shaky again. “I don’t want you to doubt how much I care about you.”

  I couldn’t sleep for a minute that night, unable to shake the idea that some things in the book could be true. I didn’t want to imagine the version of Chris that was in the book—verbally abusive, moody, volatile and dark. The stories worked their way through my head and my stomach lurched every time I doubted him.

  How would I have felt if the roles had been reversed? If someone had written a book about me, I wouldn’t want to sit down with Chris and explain myself point by point. I would expect unwavering trust and faith from him and if I was sure about anything, it was that he would need that from me.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  I counted the days on my fingers, but quickly grew frustrated with the numbers. The day Elise’s book had come out was Tuesday, that was three days, which meant that today, Friday, was six. Six days. I’d been four. I’d even been five, but never six. I steadied my hands on the white porcelain pedestal sink noticing the rust stain from the drip my dad must’ve missed.

  I glanced in the mirror of my old medicine cabinet with the silver turning black at the edges. The wrinkles that didn’t seem so bad last year were deeper. I was less than two months away from forty. The entire concept was crazy, the idea of being—having a—I couldn’t bring myself to think the words. Pregnant. Baby.

  Chris was working on a song in the living room. Now that he was staying for a while, we’d settled into a comfortable routine at home. I’d cleared out some drawers for him that morning.

  I told him I needed to run a few errands and luckily, he didn’t invite himself along. That would’ve meant telling him what was going on and dealing with the photographer. Standing in line at the drug store, my brain took on thoughts like a leaky rowboat takes water. I bailed and bailed, but the boat continued to fill from the hole at the bottom until eventually, it gave in to the weight and dipped beneath the surface.

  As soon as I got home, I hurried upstairs, closed my bathroom door and tore open the packages. I’d bought three different tests, passing on the one with the smiley face. After a cursory scan of the directions, I did what I needed to do and placed the white plastic sticks on the edge of the sink.

  The memory of the same moment seventeen years before was far off and fuzzy. I’d been so numb when I got the news the first time that I ignored it for days.

  Knowing I was needlessly drawing out the drama, I glanced at the tests, as if I was picking out polish at the nail salon. The first had a pair of pink lines, the second had a steadily darkening blue plus sign, and the third one, the newfangled digital one, presumed to speak for the other tests: Pregnant, with a capital “P” no less. Fuck.

  Sam would be home from school in an hour and the news wasn’t going to get better. I felt queasy. I had no idea what it would do to us. I tiptoed downstairs to tell him, but part of me hoped he wouldn’t even hear me.

  “There’s my baby,” he said, when I found him in the living room.

  Seriously? He’d never called me baby, one of my most hated pet names, right behind lover. “Hi, honey. What’s going on?”

  “Not much. Working on a song.”

  “That’s great. I’m glad you’re writing. I know it makes you happy.” My words came with a choppy mix of inflections.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “What?”

  “Something’s wrong.”

  “Well, um, I need to tell you something.” I focused on my hands as they clenched each other and my bracelet dangled back and forth. “It’s surprising, and, uh, maybe it’s more unexpected than surprising.”

  “Claire. What is it?” His eyes narrowed and he stood, setting his guitar on the couch.

  I took a breath, as much air as could fit in my lungs, and then some more. “I’m pregnant.”

  There was silence, without question the sound of nothing. He wrinkled his brow. “You’re what?”

  “Pregnant. I took three tests and they’re all positive.”

  “Oh, wow.” He stared, the smile creeping across his face. “This is…wow. Pregnant? A baby? This is, wow.” His enthusiasm gained momentum with every word and his eyes grew wider. “I mean, it’s a little out of nowhere, but it’s fantastic. It’s bloody brilliant is what it is.” Every elated word was a new blow. He bounded over and scooped me up in his arms and then held me out at arm’s length. “Is that what you were doing when you ran your errands? You should’ve said something. I could’ve been with you.” He brushed my cheek with the back of his hand. “Are you okay? How do you feel?”

  “I realized I was six days late this morning, but I didn’t want you to worry.”

  “Can I see the tests?” He grinned like I’d never seen him grin. “Claire, really, this is so exciting.”

  He made it sound like a fanciful adventure. “They’re upstairs in my bathroom. I’m going to stay down here. I need some time to think.”

  “I don’t understand. I know this is a surprise, but isn’t it a happy surprise?”

  “It’s not that I’m not happy. It’s just that…”

  “It’s just that what?”

  “This isn’t what I planned on doing for the next twenty years. This changes everything, our whole lives. How are we even going to make this work? You live on the other side of the country, for God’s sake.”

  “You sound upset.” He directed me to the couch and sat me down next to him. “We’re going to have a baby. A baby. That’s an amazing, miraculous thing. Don’t over-think it like you do everything else.” He pushed my hair back behind my ear and dragged my hand into his lap. “Claire, I love you.”

  His words had me stuck, immobile. I hung my head, feeling dizzy. “Please don’t say you love me because of this. That’s not what I want.”

  “I’m not saying it because of the baby.” He broke into me with his gorgeous green, a look of all sincerity. “I really love you.”

  “I love you too,” I replied, and he smiled. “But this is a
lousy time to tell me. What took you so long?”

  “I don’t know. I guess it felt too soon, before. But that doesn’t mean the feelings weren’t there, just because I didn’t say it.” He twisted his lips. “And you could have said it too, you know.”

  “What, are we ten years old? Are we playing chicken with ‘I love you’? If you think it’s too soon, then we have no business having a baby.”

  “Claire, come on. I know you’re freaked out, but this is great news. We’ll make it work.”

  My frustration was getting the best of me. He didn’t understand the ramifications of what was happening; he’d never had to function for days at a time on minutes of sleep. He’d never had magic boobs that transform into rock-hard squirting footballs. He’d never played Barbie for so many hours that he began to have unforgivable thoughts about a certain doe-eyed doll and her closeted boyfriend, Ken.

  “I just need some time.”

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Less than twelve hours into Operation Baby, Chris was already enjoying the hell out of it. By the time I came to bed, he was waiting for me with the goofiest look on his face, deliriously happy.

  “Come here. Let me see you.”

  I blushed. Even in my shell-shocked state, that was always my reaction when he extended an invitation to come to bed. “What? There’s nothing to see.” I climbed in and scooted closer to him while he put his arm around me, parking his other hand on my stomach. “I’m serious,” I pleaded. “There’s nothing to see.”

  Pushing up on his elbow, he gazed into my eyes. “I know. I just want you close.”

  This scenario was never part of my original teenage fantasy. Birth control was unnecessary when we went on our endless sex benders. I simply didn’t get pregnant. He swallowed me whole with the look on his face, his hold on me exponentially stronger now.

  “I’m tired.”

  “Of course you are,” he answered, his voice turning buttery.

  I folded into a ball and turned my back to him—freezing, as usual. He bundled me up with his arms, curling his long body around mine and I sank into the heat radiating from his bare chest.