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Melanie
Three months later
Be careful about the forbidden. It’ll get you every time. Maybe I could get used to this place, I think, as I look out the window at the front of the house, across the street, where someone is mowing a lawn. A service person. Few people around here know much about manual labor.
In that way, it’s not so different than where I came from. Somehow, although I haven’t completely put my finger on exactly how, things are very different. The facades are tasteful, the lawns tidy and expansive. Here, one-or two-acre lots frame smaller, neat houses, a quaint mix of modern and old-fashioned. Sophisticated, built to look like old money, even if that’s not what occupies them. To my right, there are children playing in the street. There’s no absence of people. Not like back home where people have second, and even third places of residence. Often, more. That’s how smart people hide money. Here, I’m the only one hiding anything. In fact, our street is particularly idyllic, an air of sleepiness, a veneer of safety. Tree-lined and shady, it reminds me of a model town constructed for no other reason than to show the way people used to live. So, I guess some things remain the same.
I watch as a mother calls her child in from the yard. Crouching so she’s at eye level, she points her finger, scolding him for playing in the street. If I have children, I think, my hand instinctively going for my belly, or rather when I have children, I will make nothing off limits. I will let them drink their selves silly, eat themselves sick, smoke themselves into oblivion, fuck their way to heartache. And when they are at the height of their hangovers—at their worst, hurt, lonely, full of regret—I will drag them to a recovery center where we will gaze at addicts, true addicts in the throws of withdraw. I will drag them to wings of hospitals to see patients that are relatives who aren’t ours just to say look, that is what you will become. It will be like a visit to the
zoo, only animals of a different kind, and yet, no less trapped.
And if ever I want to show them what a person looks like who is dead inside, I can skip the strangers and the field trips. I only have to introduce them to their maternal grandmother. What is wrong with her, they might ask? They will want to know the point I am trying to make because unlike the writhing addicts and the half-dead hospital patients, she will look fine on the outside. Look closer, I will tell them. You see her eyes, notice how they are vacant? And when she wraps her arms around you, like any good grandma would, you will feel the void. That’s because she is empty— a hollow shell of a woman who long ago gave all her worth to a man. Set it up like a bank account, and after years of withdrawals, one day she woke up and realized there was nothing left.
There are many kinds of love, I will teach them. And someday, when they are old enough to understand, I will tell them the truth. I did not marry for any of them. I used to see my father with his mistresses, his admirers. Don't worry, he said to me once. I do not love them. Not like I love you.
Maybe he never thought I, his own flesh, would grow up to be that. Little did he know.
I am not so different from his lovers, really. I, too, chose my partner for utility. For what he can offer me. It may not be love, but it is sufficient enough.
I do not want to end up like my mother.
I learned a few things over the years by watching her. I learned more from my father. I learned you can get away with pretty much anything so long as you’re judicious about it and go about it with a smile. He started out easy with his women, matters of convenience, mostly. Secretaries— babysitters—basically the low-hanging fruit. Kind of like one might start out drinking two-buck chuck before gradually growing bored and moving on to the good, high-dollar stuff. And still, he is a kind man, well liked. That's what people who think they know him would say. You wouldn’t have to twist their arm either. But appearances can be deceiving. Just ask my mother.
If one were to mention the backroom dealings or the affairs, the waves of heartbreak left in his wake, the women, so many women, those same well meaning people would mostly blame her. Well, she stays, they'd tell you, lips and palms pressed together. I guess it can't be that bad. Or more likely they’d point out a flaw. Something's missing, they’d say. She must be a prude or surely she’s too controlling, too demanding. Rarely would they blame my father for being the taker, the addict that he is.
But then, nobody has a perfect heart.
That’s how I landed here. In my new life, on my new lane, shiny and bright. It was simple enough in the beginning. But nothing ever stays that way, does it?
Maybe that’s why short love affairs have always been my favorite kind. Abrupt, beautiful. Technicolor and surround-sound. Like a warm summer morning, when there’s still so much promise to be had for the day. Before things get real. Before you see into the depths of a person. Before they see into the depths of you.
That’s why I chose a starter husband. Nothing’s permanent, plenty of room to move up.
Easily enough, I bumped into Tom on the street. When people ask how we met, that’s how the story goes. At least that’s the simple version. A drink or two for me. Zero for him. A one-night stand and, well, the truth is a little more complicated. But isn’t it always? In any case, I won’t bore you with the details.
Fast forward to now. He’s cooking dinner. I’m cooking his kid. Or so he thinks. We’ve been man and wife for two weeks. Supposedly, I’ll be fourteen weeks along, tomorrow. Give or take. My darling husband has been a widower for all of six weeks. It doesn’t take a genius to work out the math. Simple, and yet, anything but.
“So, did you get around to reading the agreement today?” Tom asks, peering up at me once I’ve made my way into the kitchen. I think he must have called me three times before I could tear myself away from the front window and force myself to face him. I lean against the counter and cross my arms. Pretend I haven’t heard. Maybe I haven’t. I’m too focused on the butcher knife he’s holding. I watch him slowly and methodically chop a head of lettuce.
“Melanie?” I realize he’s going to spell it out. “The agreement. Did you read it?”
“No,” I say and because I’m too lazy to come up with an excuse three weeks running, I fall back on the tried and true. My eyes meet his. “I wasn’t feeling well.” I sigh then long and heavy. I want him to feel my pain. “I thought they called it morning sickness…but it’s all day, every day. ”
He cocks an eyebrow. “That should pass soon.”
“Let’s hope.”
He mixes the lettuce with his hands and tosses it in a bowl. “When June was pregnant—”
I suck a breath in sharply. I hold it and bend at the waist. A searing pain tears at my side. Heat rushes through me. It’s fire, and it’s burning me all the way down. Ligaments stretching, the internet said when I researched what I’m supposed to feel at this point. Must be the placebo effect. Or Munchausen syndrome. Who knows? It’s better than the norm. At least I feel something.
When I recover, Tom says, “Maybe you should lie down.”
“No,” I tell him, my voice strained. My stomach flip-flops. I might be sick and not for the reason he thinks. That name—his dead wife’s—it’s the first four letter word, not counting work, that I actually dislike.
“Suit yourself,” he says. I rise slowly, steadying myself. I fill my lungs with air and then blow out my cheeks, breathing fast in and out. Just like they do in the movies. Lamaze or whatever it’s called.
The other night when I couldn’t sleep, which is most nights really, I made the grave mistake of googling childbirth videos. Whoever said childbirth is a beautiful experience is a liar. All I saw was blood and gore and pain. No way am I going through that. Ever. I saw enough to know that Lamaze is something I’ll never need. I’m smarter than that. I’d make a beeline for the drugs at the first twinge of pain. What’s the point of suffering anyway? I’d said that to Tom once when it came up.
