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“Sorry it’s not a happy story,” I joked. “But at least it has a happy ending… ish.”
I couldn’t be sure that being knocked up and in an illegitimate marriage could be considered a happily ever after, but compared to what I was used to, I guessed it was.
I felt naked having spilled my guts to Nora. I hadn’t realized how exhausting it had been, holding it all in, until I said it.
“You’ve lived a whole life I didn’t know about,” she whispered, rushing around the counter so she could reach forward to squeeze my hand.
My chest burned with guilt. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I couldn’t tell you. I was running from that life, from who I used to be. I figured if I didn’t tell it to you, the most important person in my life, then it didn’t make it real. I could forget it somehow.”
Nora’s eyes were glistening when she looked at me. “Oh, honey, it’s keeping it locked inside that makes it so you’ll never forget it, never outrun it, and never heal from it.”
My bones suddenly felt brittle, apt to shatter in a million pieces any second now. “Can we stop the deep and meaningful now?” I asked, my voice smaller and more delicate than it had been while telling my whole fucking story. “There’s only so much a gal can handle, especially one with pregnancy hormones coursing through her body and no fucking idea how to handle them.”
Nora regarded me as if she were deciding whether she needed to push me to talk more, then nodded once.
“What are you going to do?” she asked gently.
I drummed my fingers against the counter, wishing for wine, tequila, or ketamine. Anything to numb this feeling of panic and fear.
“I’m going to have it,” I replied immediately. I hadn’t even thought I’d decided that. Not until right now. I was a thirty-five-year-old woman who had no actual career to speak of, no savings, a precarious immigration situation, and was currently involved in a sham marriage with benefits.
Not at all the ideal mother.
I did not want to be a mother.
That’s what I’d told myself for almost the past decade. But now I realized I had been telling myself that in order to take back my agency. It was one thing to be barren and not want kids. It was quite another to be barren and want them.
It made you feel desperate, useless, broken, and helpless.
I did not like feeling any of those things. Therefore, I’d changed my perception. I’d changed who I was at my very core. Or at least I got really good at lying to myself.
But I did want to be a mother. I might not be the kind like Nora, who would bake the kid cookies, make their Halloween costumes, and provide a stable home full of routine. But I’d be a good one. Albeit chaotic.
She was The Chaotic Baker, and that worked well for her. I’d be The Chaotic Mother. But not in the way my mother was. Not with wine-soaked yelling matches or empty cabinets. No, more like dance parties in the middle of the night and a general abhorrence for rules and homework.
“I’m going to have it,” I repeated.
Nora nodded. “Okay. That’s great.” She regarded me soberly. “You have to tell Kip.”
I scowled at her. “Yes, I know I have to tell Kip, myhusbandand thefather,” I said sarcastically.
But if I was honest, I had really tried to think about any way I could go through with thiswithouttelling Kip. Which was absolutely unhinged. He had to know. He’d eventually find out, given we were living together, sleeping together, and married for the foreseeable future.
Fuck.
Our sham marriage was becoming more and more real.
First, he was in it for… whatever reasons he had that I still didn’t quite understand. Then he was in it because he got laid on a regular basis and had spectacular sex.
That was his ceiling, though. That I knew. Kip wasn’t blurring the lines. We weren’t acting like a couple. There was no talking about the future. No soft tenderness. It was all passion and fucking and cohabiting.
He’d be gone once he found this out. Something instinctual told me he’d be gone. Which would’ve been fine. I could be a single mother. It’d be hard as fuck, but I had friends here. A community to support me. I’d figure it out because that’s what women did. That’s what millions of fucking women did when cowardly assholes left them.
But it wasn’t a guarantee that I’d be here forever. When Kip left, that was my chance of a Green Card gone. I didn’t know the process if this baby had an American father who was a deadbeat, but I’d have to bet that I’d be shipped back to Australia in no time.
And there, I did not have a village.
I had a shantytown, abandoned, full of ghosts and benevolent spirits.
