I checked my teeth for lipstick smudges in the mirror. “And you let me.” He looked at me. His nose was sweaty. “Does the why really matter?” I asked.
I found Elsa in the den watching a documentary about India. She smiled and I blew her a kiss. I ran upstairs to brush my teeth. I looked at myself long and hard in the mirror. I have few regrets when it comes to doing what needs to be done. When I came back downstairs, she looked up, said, “You know, he’s not very nice to you.”
The worry in her voice panicked me. “Who?”
She rolled her eyes. “Don’t treat me like a child.”
I wrapped my arm around her, and held her against my ribs like a vital organ. I said, “You actually are a child.”
Elsa swung her legs over mine. It is always a marvel how she fits into my body, always has. She tapped my red wrist and I cringed at how much she could see. “He’s not very nice to you,” she repeated.
I patted my hand over my heart and held her tighter, closer. “Without him, I wouldn’t get to see you.”
She nodded. For once she was satisfied with my answer. She pressed the palm of her hand against mine, said, “Thank you.”
My husband came home hours later, knocking over the umbrella stand near the front door as he let himself in. The drinking, I gathered, had gone well. It always does. I was watching an apocalyptic movie about the end of the world involving weather formations. Elsa slept with her head on my lap. I held two fingers against her pulse. My chest ached so sharply it was nearly impossible to breathe. I looked up when he stood in the doorway. He shook his head and then gave me the look he gives when he wants me, a cross between a leer and a toothy smile.
I sighed, sad that our private world had been cracked open once again. “Can you carry the kid upstairs?”
He muttered something under his breath but picked her up, gently. He carried Elsa to her room and lay her down like a precious thing. He knows what lines not to cross. He knows he would not win a matter of choice. He would have made a good father but my husband doesn’t know himself well enough to realize that.
After I tucked Elsa in I found him in bed, completely naked, grinning widely. Porn was playing on the television, a fairly tame video involving three girls and pink plastic dildos and a hairy guy masturbating while he watched the girls fake fuck each other. “I’m so hot for you, baby,” he said. I pretended the term of endearment meant something, allowed myself for a brief moment to imagine what we had was mad, mad love. I straddled his lap and he grabbed my breasts, squeezing them, and talked dirty. I thought about the patterns of call and response. As I rode him, he looked past me at the three blondes, oblivious to their vacant expressions.
After he fell asleep, I went to check on Elsa. She was sleeping on her side, facing the wall, her fingers curled into fists, her legs pulled to her chest, her hair covering her face. She sleeps just like me. I lay behind her and covered her hand with mine. I wanted to cover her skin with mine, make us whole again.
♦◊♦
When I was pregnant with Elsa, my husband took to frequenting strip clubs. He doesn’t like children and had a vasectomy when he was 23, years before we met. He apologized on our third date but he wasn’t really sorry. He considered going to strip clubs a small but acceptable rebellion. I told him it could only be a rebellion if he were doing something he was not allowed to do. The distinction was lost on him. I have no problem with strippers or the men who frequent them. He’s a decade and a half older than me so his sensibilities are different, I suppose. Sometimes I went with him to the strip clubs and we’d sit in a dark booth and a woman with a two-syllable name like Bubbles or Candy or Misty would dance for us. The drunker my husband got, the louder he would crow, “She’s my wife and I love her but it’s not my baby. I am not the father!”
This is a fabulous story. I think there’s more to it—more possible. Perhaps it could be a novel. Very compelling, beautifully done.
Wanted to print out your Weekend Fiction, but there is NO easy way to do that – like a simple Pdf. Can you arrange that in the future?