Bex
After a long period of silence, Baby Makes Three is mentioning us again. Kylie says she’s still gathering details but her “source” informs her that Theo is with someone else, and that they’ve been together for a very long time.
“When this story blows, it’s gonna be huge,” she says.
I imagine this is about the complication, and maybe someone is feeding her a bunch of bullshit that was true last fall but no longer is. I know Theo wouldn’t see someone behind my back, yet this tiny seed of fear remains firmly planted in my chest anyway.
If I wasn’t such a mess, would I ask him? I’m not sure. I suspect that if I wasn’t such a mess, I’d have no need to ask him because the whole thing would seem laughable.
I resolve to keep the questions to myself, which might be a sign of my maturity or perhaps my cowardice, but by the time his taxi pulls up to my father’s house after six long days without him, I’m glad I left it alone.
“Rebecca,” he says, his eyes raking over me as the cab driver backs out.
“Theo,” I reply, fighting a smile.
He pushes me inside the door and tucks a finger into the waistband of my shorts to pull me against him. “What exactly are you wearing?”
I smile. “Just a T-shirt and shorts.”
“They qualify as neither,” he says against my mouth.
His hand slides down to my bare thigh…then beneath the seam of the shorts. Air hisses through my teeth as his fingers slip over my clit, then push inside me. “Filthy little girl,” he says against my ear. “You’re drenched.”
A glance between us reveals his erection is pushing at his suit pants. I tug his belt free and slide my hand inside his boxers to grasp him.
“Bend over,” he growls, turning me toward the couch and wordlessly yanking my shorts to the floor.
“More,” he says, pressing his palm to the center of my back. “Bend over more.”
I do as he says, and he falls to his knees, his tongue sweeping between my legs, from one end to the other.
I suck in air as he does it again, as he adds his fingers.
The noises he’s making are…
I thought I’d be weirded out by having sex in this house but…
Oh my god, it’s so obscene what he’s doing and his mouth is so hot and…fuck.
“Theo,” I whimper because I’m so close.
He stands, pushes his own pants down, and thrusts inside me. This time he doesn’t wait to let me adjust but fucks me fast and hard. I brace myself on the couch, squeezing him tight, and he’s barely begun before I cry out. He pulls my hair and releases inside me only a second later.
“Fuck,” I whisper, and then I start to laugh.
He’s still breathing fast behind me. “Rebecca, I thought we discussed you laughing after intercourse.”
“It’s just that it was so fast.”
“Oddly enough, that explanation isn’t an improvement.”
I twist to press my mouth to his arm. “I came. It wasn’t a complaint. I just had no idea how these next few days would unfold with you in work mode.”
He pulls me up and turns me toward him. “I’m here to check on the office,” he begins, and my heart drops.
“I—”
“I’m here to check on the office for as little time as I can get away with, and I plan to spend the rest of the hours I’m here doing exactly this.”
My face presses to his chest. I can’t believe I was ever worried about a word out of Kylie’s lying mouth.
· · ·
I get up when he does the next day and we go for a run before he heads into the office.
I never thought I’d be someone who’d consider six miles a “small” run and suddenly…
I am. There’s something restless inside me when I haven’t gone out and when I catch a glimpse of myself in the bathroom mirror, I’m seeing muscle for the first time.
Obviously, I’ve always had muscle—otherwise I’d be dead—but now it’s visible muscle.
I actually look like an athlete, and I sort of like it.
In another house, in another family, this is who I might have been: the athlete, the honor student, the highly motivated kid. Every time Theo insists that I’m not lazy, not useless, not bad…a part of me still wants to argue, but more and more, I’m thinking he’s right.
I spend the hours he’s gone packing the kitchen.
So far, there are eight boxes of old Tupperware and pots and pans and trivets and weird appliances I know I’ll never use, but there’s an ache in my chest at each one because I remember these things, these pieces of my childhood.
I remember the hours Jessie spent cooking in this kitchen, and the custard she’d serve in those glasses, and the special trifle she’d offer in this one translucent bowl.
She did try hard to make this a home, to make us a family. But she did it by sacrificing me.
The kitchen is mostly done by the time Theo gets home, though he’d offered to help with it. Instead, I’ve saved a much harder room for him to assist with: my dad’s office.
Most of it is incredibly boring. Theo’s working on Jessie’s “decorative” bookcases, which hold more artificial plants and macramé than books, while I go through twenty years of bank statements and tax returns.
“Box up the macramé for Jessie’s sisters,” I tell him, flinging a file into the trash. They’ll tear into it hoping for Jessie’s designer bags and hate me more than they already do.
Theo groans. “Bex, I saw that.”
“What?” I ask, blinking up at him with all the innocence I can muster.
“You need to actually open the files before you put them in the trash.”
“It was labeled tax forms! If the IRS wants to audit him now, I wish them luck.”
His mouth curves as he shakes his head. “Why don’t we switch?”
“Gladly,” I reply, rising. He presses a kiss to the top of my head as he passes, his hand briefly on my hip.
Whatever it is we are doing—this thing between us with all its casual affection—is second nature for him and entirely new to me.
Is he like this with everyone? The idea stabs me as I start packing up Jessie’s endless collection of artificial plants.
I wish he’d just…say something. About how he feels, about what happens when the show ends.
We’ve only got two shoots left—Madeira and the marathon.
Shouldn’t one of us at least allude to what we’ll do after that?
I guess I could be the brave one. I’m just not sure how I’d survive four days in Madeira and a twenty-six-mile run by his side if he’s given me some vague answer like “I’m sure we’ll stay in touch” or “Let’s cross that bridge when we get to it. ”
“We only have two shoots left,” I venture, my heart beating fast. “It’ll be weird to have it over.”
“Hmmm,” Theo says.
I’m disappointed that my gambit hasn’t worked, but he’s so focused on the papers in front of him that I don’t think he even heard me.
“Bex,” he says, holding out the file. The expression on his face makes my stomach clench.
I take it from his hand. “What is it?” I ask, but I’m already flipping through the pages.
I already know.
It’s the IQ test, the one I was told I hadn’t performed well on, except…over a hundred and forty is considered genius, and the number I’m looking at is well above that.
An incredibly rare intellect, writes the psychologist. The simplest option is to place her in a more appropriate grade. She is reading at a sixth-grade level and could easily perform sixth-grade math with initial assistance. I’m sure it sounds unnerving, but I’m confident she’ll catch up quickly.
I have to read the letter twice to grasp it. My father told me my scores were “average,” that the school had suggested I remain where I was and “keep up the good work.”
When the psychologist was suggesting I skip four grades.
Four.
“This makes no sense,” I say to Theo, flipping through the file. “Why did my dad tell me I hadn’t done that well?”
Theo comes around the desk and stands behind me as he turns to the file’s final page. A closing letter from the psychologist to my dad.
Your desire to facilitate a close relationship between Rebecca and her stepsister is commendable, but this can happen whether or not they’re in different classes or even different schools.
I understand that it might be hard on Bronwyn, initially, but that’s no reason to deny Rebecca a vital opportunity to grow. I do hope you’ll reconsider.
I let the file drop on the desk. I wish Theo hadn’t shown it to me.
“He was just trying to keep the peace with Jessie,” I whisper. He wanted it so much that he thought I was better off…floundering, going nowhere.
Theo pulls me against his chest, quiet as I absorb the blow.
I’m not sure if I’m angry or grateful. Because he refused, Bronwyn remained my closest friend, my favorite person, for nearly two decades. But he knew he’d be keeping me small.
And apparently that’s what he wanted.
· · ·
I’m still processing the revelations about the testing the next morning, vacillating between anger at the choices my dad made on my behalf and gratitude. Being a little kid among hormonal sixth graders would probably have sucked. But who might I have been if he’d chosen another way?
“I agree,” says Theo after I voice all this. “But that isn’t a valid reason to skip our run.”
Ugh. Eighteen miles. On our last day together for well over a week.
I sigh heavily as I walk to the closet for my running shoes. “This is why I prefer men who are easy to manipulate,” I grouse. “And you aren’t being very sensitive. This has all been very traumatic.”
He raises a brow. “Compared to events of the past year, the trauma of this barely registers. And I doubt it’s my sensitivity you find attractive.”
I change tack. “I’m finding very little about you attractive at the moment. And you realize that this is our last chance to spend the morning in bed? Lars could very well put us in separate houses again.”
Theo narrows one eye at me and continues tying his own shoes. “Yes, Rebecca, I’m well aware of what I’m sacrificing. But you’ve got to get your mileage up, and Lars will not put us in separate houses. I’ll make sure of it.”
We could just admit we’re together. I consider suggesting it but silence myself. If this goes badly—if Theo eventually decides I’m not what he wants—I don’t need the whole crew pitying me.
Besides, he’s not suggesting it either. I’m trying not to let it bother me.
Today we run our previous long route but add a loop around Maplewood, where I was born and where we’ll be running our marathon three and a half weeks from now.
Jogging is still no fun but it’s a little shocking that I’m running eighteen miles today.
Was it only four months ago that a couple of miles had me winded?
We finally hit Maplewood Avenue, passing all the athleisure and cupcake shops, and then we run past a church just to the south. “That’s unexpected,” he says. “I’m surprised it hasn’t been turned into a smoothie bar.”
I laugh, ignoring the small twist in my gut at the sight.
“My mother is buried there,” I admit after a moment.
His brows raise and he comes to a sudden stop. “Do you want to pay her a visit?”
“She’s not especially talkative these days.”
“Bex.”
I haven’t been to her grave in years, probably not since middle school, when I discovered she’d been interviewing for jobs in California when she died, and that her plans didn’t include me.
Jessie let that one slip during an argument—You can resent me all you want, but at least I’ve continued putting up with you, which is more than your mother planned to do.
I was never sure, after that, if I was supposed to miss her or hate her. I’m still not sure.
I weigh out my reticence against my desire to stop running and then lead him down a gravel path behind the church. “I’ve never brought anyone here.”
He slides his fingers through mine. “You don’t have to bring me either, if it bothers you.”
I give the tiniest shake of my head. “It doesn’t. This thing…it’s different with you. I don’t normally do, like, relationships.”
I wait for him to tell me it’s different for him too or to give me a tiny hint how he feels, but he does not. I guess I should simply be grateful he didn’t balk at me calling it a relationship. I count four up and twenty over until we stand at her grave.
Nadia Daniels
Beloved wife and mother
He reads the snippet at the bottom aloud: “ ‘Awake for ever in a sweet unrest, / Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath.’ ” He glances at me. “What’s that from?”
I rub at my chest, at something simultaneously sweet and painful just beneath my skin.
“It’s from ‘Bright Star,’ this love poem Keats wrote for Fanny Brawne. My dad said that poem always made him think of my mother, even before she died. That she was a little mysterious and removed and splendid, and even if he couldn’t understand her, it was enough just to be in her orbit.”
I have only the vaguest memories of her.
A walk through the park. Being read to at bedtime.
I’ve seen the home videos taken before she died, of course, but they’re unsettling.
Maybe because she looks so much like me, and gives the impression of being a doting mom, but she was doing really shitty things to my father at the same time.
I’m sure I missed her deeply when it happened, but you adapt to things as a kid.
I bet I wasn’t still looking for her to walk in the door six months after she died, the way I’m still picking up my phone to text Bronwyn.
I shrug. “I think it was his way of coming to terms with loving her still after discovering all the lies she’d been telling him.
She’d been hiding money and cheating on him too and it looked like she was planning to leave my dad for this other guy, and their mutual friends knew.
Like it’s not bad enough to find out your wife did horrible things, but to also discover everyone was in on it? ”
Theo is suddenly stiff and silent when I’d expected banal reassurance from him. And there’s something wary in his face that wasn’t there a moment ago.
As if in telling him this secret about my mother, I’ve accidentally trod on a secret of his own.