9. Willow
— ? —
Willow
“I’m pregnant, Corey. We’re going to be parents.”
The words come out bright and hopeful, exactly the way I practiced them in the mirror, and for one suspended second the whole kitchen holds its breath.
His face freezes. The coffee cup stops halfway to his mouth. I watch the words sink in, and I wait for the joy.
It doesn’t come.
“You’re fucking pregnant?”
The venom in it staggers me. That’s not shock, not surprise, not fear of fatherhood. That’s disgust, and it’s aimed straight at me.
“I… yes. I took the test last night. I wanted to tell you, but you were…”
“Whose is it?”
The kitchen goes very quiet. Somewhere the refrigerator hums. I hear the question, and I understand every individual word, and together they make no sense at all.
“What?”
“You heard me.” He sets the cup down with exaggerated care, like he doesn’t trust his own hands. “Whose is it?”
“It’s yours. Corey, what… it’s YOURS. Who else’s would it be?”
His fist comes down on the table. The sugar bowl jumps. I jump.
“Don’t lie to me! Is the baby your boss’s?”
The floor drops out of the morning. I stand there in my own kitchen, one hand drifting to my stomach like I can cover the ears of a person the size of a grain of rice, and I stare at my husband while the words rearrange themselves into meaning.
Glenn. He thinks I’m sleeping with Glenn.
“You think…” A laugh comes out of me, high and wrong, nothing like laughter. “You think I’m having an affair. With Glenn. You think I’d… Twelve years, and you think I’d do that?”
“I know about the dinners with him. All of them. The late nights, the way you light up when you say his name. I’m not blind, Willow, and I’m not stupid.”
“He’s my BOSS. He’s my FRIEND. He’s going through the worst…
” I stop myself with my teeth. The truth sits right there, one sentence away, and it isn’t mine to hand over.
Not even now. Not even to save myself. “There is nothing going on between me and Glenn. There has never been anything going on. I have never so much as looked at another man since I was sixteen years old, and you KNOW that.”
“Do I?” His voice is quiet now, which is worse. “Was any of it real? Or were you laughing at me the whole time, you and him, over all those dinners?”
“Real? REAL? I gave up my family for you. I gave up everything for you, and I have spent five years eating dinner alone in this house waiting for you to remember I exist, and you’re asking me if it was REAL?”
“Then why the sudden warmth, Willow? Weeks of candles and home cooking and ‘I love you’ every five minutes, out of nowhere, after years of nothing. People don’t change like that without a reason. What are you covering for?”
“I was FIGHTING FOR US, you paranoid son of a bitch!” The scream tears out of me before I can stop it. “That’s what the dinners were. That’s what the candles were. I watched someone lose the love of his life and I decided I wasn’t going to lose mine without a fight, and THIS is what you…”
“You’d pass another man’s child off as a Knightley?” He talks straight over me, and his voice cracks down the middle. “I built that name from nothing.”
The sentence hits me in the chest like a physical thing. I actually step back from it.
And just like that, I’m done crying. Everything in me goes cold and still and very, very clear.
“Get a paternity test, Corey.” My voice comes out level. “Oh, wait. You’d need to be around for that.”
“Don’t you dare turn this on me.”
“Twelve years, Corey. You didn’t lose me today. You’ve been losing me for years. You just never once looked up from your desk to notice.”
“So it’s my fault. I work myself to death for this family and that makes it MY fault you ran to him.”
“There is no HIM!” My hands are shaking. “You know what the saddest part is? I was happy this morning. I stood in that bathroom last night and cried because I was so happy. I thought this baby might save us. I thought you’d hear the news and remember you love me.”
“I do love you.” He says it like an accusation. “That’s what makes this…”
“No.” I hold up my hand. “You don’t get to say that word right now. You just accused me of carrying another man’s child. You don’t love me, Corey. You love the idea that someday you’ll be proven right about not deserving me. Congratulations. You finally forced it.”
Silence. His chest is heaving. Mine is too.
“I want a divorce,” I say.
Something flickers across his face, there and gone, and then the wall comes down and he shrugs, actually shrugs, like I’ve told him the dry cleaning is ready.
“Fine. Let’s get divorced then.”
I don’t remember deciding to move. I’m just suddenly on the stairs, then in our closet, pulling the suitcase down from the shelf, and my hands are folding clothes with a calm that belongs to someone else.
He appears in the doorway and leans against the frame, watching me pack with his arms crossed, and the sneer on his face belongs to a stranger.
“You don’t have to take everything,” I say without looking at him. “I’ll send for the rest.”
“Going to your lover’s place?”
I zip the suitcase. I pick it up. I walk past him close enough to smell last night’s whiskey still coming through his skin, and I stop at the top of the stairs.
“Don’t show your face in front of me again!” he shouts after me.
“Don’t worry! I won’t!”
His voice follows me down the stairs. “That’s right, run to him! Tell him I said hello!”
The front door. The porch. The morning is obscene with sunshine, birds singing like the world didn’t just end. I stand on the curb of the house I decorated room by room, the house I thought we’d fill with children, and I call a taxi with hands that won’t stop shaking.
It pulls up four minutes later. I load my own suitcase. I sit in the back seat, and my hand finds my stomach, and I hold it there like a promise.
“Where to?” the driver asks.
I give him Glenn’s address. And then I call Glenn, and when he answers I finally let myself break.