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“I trapped myself. I was careless about something I’d spent my whole life afraid of.”
“What getting pregnant?”
“No of being a cliché: young, single, pregnant. But, I don’t regret my daughter. I just wish I hadn’t married her father. It bound me to him in a way that made it very hard to extricate myself. I’m not sure I’d ever want to get married again.”
Surprise forces me to sitting. “Huh?”
“No, I mean, really. Our divorce was traumatic. We had a horrendous custody battle that I’m still paying off.” I can hear how weary she is just talking about it. I hadn’t really thought about marriage, but only because, for me, it’s a given.
“Why did you marry him, then?”
“Because I didn’t want to end up like my mother. Back then, single motherhood was akin to death.”
Her laugh is humorless.
“Being a stay at home mom felt like a small sacrifice to make for peace at home. When she started school and was gone all day, I started putting feelers out about jobs at the publishing houses.”
“Did you find something?”
“Yes, Paul, made such a stink. I turned it down.”
“Even with her in school? What did he expect you to do all day?”
“Things other media tycoons wives do, I guess. Go to lunches, fundraisers, cut ribbons at the openings of new hospital wings. Look pretty. Hair straight. Makeup flawless. That’s what he cared about. Don’t stand out. Be a picture-perfect wife. Suddenly my clothes were too revealing, too risqué. My hair looked unprofessional. I changed all of those things to try to make him happy.”
“I see,” is all I say. But now, I understand the slightly “Stepford Wives” vibe Kal gives off.
“Last year, my old boss called me up and asked me to come back. Said he’d bring me back in at the same level and title and everything. Bianca was almost eight. And I said yes. Paul said he was onboard. I was traveling a lot again.”
I pull away a little and eye her with surprise. “Did you like being on the road?”
“There’s no position in the field of investigative journalism that doesn’t require travel. I can’t exactly do an online search for the questions I’m trying to answer.” She huffs.
“Of course.”
“But while I was gone, he met someone and fell in love, filed for divorce and now he’s married to her.” She says it with admirable equilibrium.
I’m fucking glad that shit is out of the way but fuck him for throwing away such a treasure.
“He’s a spineless shit.”
“He is. He fought me for custody. I won, but it was brutal financially. Then, as soon as his new wife discovered that Bianca wasn’t going to call her Mommy, her weekends with him became few and far in between. I had to beg him to take her while I was here.”
Fuck him again.
“What about your mom?”
She sighs deeply, her absent stare is wistful. “I spent my whole life following her from disaster to disaster. From apartment to apartment. Her endless stream of boyfriends, the parties, even the arrest and foster care. I even forgave her for hiding my father’s identity.”
“I thought he was dead.” I ask about her last sentence.
“Nope. He’s alive and kicking. It’s David Lister.”
If she had touched me with just the tip of her finger right now, I would fall over.
“You’re kidding? Lister is your father?”
“No. He’s just the man who got my mother pregnant. I don’t even think about him, honestly. And I don’t want to talk about him now.” She says firmly, so I let it go because I don’t know what to make of it anyway.
