“We’ll talk about this later,” Pete says, as always. He’s still speaking quietly, but Claire is done with being quiet.
She’s been quiet her whole adult life. She’s put on masks, always adding new things to her repertoire, assuring herself that someday, it would get easier. It would become natural. But meeting Jackie changed everything. With Jackie, she didn’t need to perform. Claire got a taste of what a maskless life might be like, and she wants it back.
“I’m tired of talking about it,” Claire says, not bothering to quiet her voice even as Pete fumes. “I’ve been about as perfect a wife as I could these last few months, and it’s still not enough for you, is it? Will it ever be?”
“Claire,” Pete hisses.
“When will it end? When I finally have your children and give you what you really want? When I’m old and tired and used-up and you still get to live your perfect life at my expense?” Claire says. Her voice is getting louder with every word, and Pete is starting to look a little panicked.
“Stop this,” Pete says. “A tantrum at home is one thing, but this is just immature.”
But Claire can’t stop. It’s all bubbling over, everything that’s been building in her since Jackie froze her out—since before, even, since the moment Jackie stepped foot in Acacia Circle and gave Claire a glimpse of what things could be like outside of this. Like a school science project Claire is finally erupting, spilling all over Martha’s pristine carpeting and not bothering to hold it back.
And Pete sees it as a tantrum. The temporary outburst of a spoiled child. No matter how she talks to him, he’ll never understand her discontent. For as long as she stays in this marriage, she’ll be alone.
“I can’t do this,” Claire says, with a clarity that hits her all at once. “I won’t. I’m done.” To have the last straw be something so simple is somehow fitting. She laughs, a quick and quiet thing that builds as a wave of relief hits her all at once. “Oh, I’mdone.”
Claire turns on her heel, tears the cat ears from her head, and marches out the door.
She’s halfway across the lawn when Pete catches up. The air is humid, but she hardly feels it as Pete grabs her arm to turn her back around.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
“I’m not doing this anymore.”
“Doing what?” Pete says, letting go of Claire’s wrist when she wrenches it out of his hand. “What the hell has happened to you lately? I’ve never seen you act the way you have been in the last year. What happened to my wife?”
“Your wife never existed, Pete!” Claire shouts. It feels good to air it all out, not in the stifling hallways of their house but here under the open sky. The people milling about Jackie’s front lawn are watching, and she doesn’t care a bit. “Your wife wasn't a person. She was a paper doll that you plugged into your perfect life and didn't expect to have her own thoughts and feelings. But, I do. And I'm not happy. I've never been happy.”
“Happy?” Pete says, his voice rising to match hers. “Have you ever not had a roof over your head, or food in the fridge? Have I ever not provided for you?”
“Don't you see that I need more than that?”
“What more is there?”
Claire takes a breath. She tilts her head towards the sky, closing her eyes. “There's partnership. Understanding. There’s love.”
Pete scoffs. “Now you sound like one of those hippie freaks next door.”
“Maybe I am one of them. Did you ever think of that?” Claire says, opening her eyes again.
Pete’s coiffed hair is in disarray.
“You are mywife,” Pete says. He says it as if it’s an anchor, a single solid truth in a sea of uncertainty, and perhaps for him it is.
But Claire doesn’t want an anchor. She wants to float away.
“You're not happy, either,” Claire says.
“I'm perfectly content.”
“You married me because I was the first girl who said yes. Do you even like me, Pete? Don’t you want to be married to someone whose company you actually enjoy?”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
It’s never been more obvious that Pete will never understand. He looks more baffled than angry, standing on Martha’s lawn inhis Halloween tie, and in looking at him Claire feels nothing but pity.
“I deserve something more,” Claire says. She takes a step toward him, now, but for a single reason—to twist her wedding and engagement rings off her finger, and press them into his hand. “I deserve to love and be loved properly.”
