Page 10 of His Daughter

Caleb saw me coming. His face changed.

“I’ll call you back,” he said into the phone. He dropped the call and set it on the couch.

“Don’t stop on my account. I see you like making decisions behind my back.”

His face fell. “Thea, it’s not — ”

“Is this why you came home? I don’t see you for three days, and you come back to pressure me?”

“No. I…my parents thought — ”

I scoffed. “What? Mommy made you come home?”

“Thea…that’s just mean.”

“You’re not exactly a saint yourself. You keep pushing. You won’t give me time. You won’t let me breathe.” I was moving toward him, my voice rising, and I couldn’t stop either one. “Let’s get a baby, Thea. Let’s talk to this agency, Thea. Let’s try again, Thea. What about what I’m feeling? What about the fact that I’m — that I — ”

My throat closed. I swallowed past it. “I’m sorry I’m so defective that we have to beg for a baby.”

Caleb flinched. “Don’t say that.”

“Three rounds of IVF, Caleb. Three rounds. I sat in that clinic every time, and they put — they put those things in my body, and I waited and prayed, and it didn’t work. Then the adoption fell through — not once, not twice, three times before this one. And when we finally — when I thought we finally — ”

I pressed my fist against my mouth. My eyes stung. I blinked it back. “I’m tired. My body is tired. My heart is tired. I can’t keep doing this.”

Caleb stepped toward me. His eyes were red. “I don’t think you’re defective. I love you. We’re in this together.”

“Then go ahead and say it.”

“Say what?”

“Whatever you’re not saying to my face. Maybe you’ll call my sister and tell her.” I stepped back and put space between us. “You can just leave. You don’t need me to have a baby. You’re fine. I’m the one with the problem.”

He stared at me. Eyes bloodshot, hands shaking at his sides, mouth opening and closing. The clock on the wall ticked. The fridge hummed.

“You don’t mean that.” His voice cracked. “Thea, you…you can’t…”

“I mean it. Go.”

“I won’t come back. Because I can’t — I don’t know how to be with you like this. If I walk out that door, I won’t be back.”

I didn’t look at him. “Go.”

He stood there for another second. Two. I could feel him looking at me, waiting for me to take it back, to turn, to say something — anything — that would give him permission to stay.

I didn’t.

He turned, walked to the door, and opened it. The night air came in, cool and smelling of rain. Then the door closed behind him.

The sound it made was the loudest thing I’d ever heard.

FOUR

THEA

Divorced at twenty-nine.

I turned the word over in my mouth on the walk from the subway to the nonprofit. Divorced. It didn't sound like me. It sounded like something that happened to other people — people who married wrong, married fast, or married the kind of man who leaves.