Chapter 2
THE DREAM KILLER
Iam more than confident that no therapist, including my own, would recommend the pressure-cooker solution I’d embraced—in fact, they’d probably have their license revoked—but I’ll be damned if it didn’t work.
As I climbed the steps to get ready, Philippe close behind, I wasn’t nearly as angry.
Maybe a hair annoyed, but I wasn’t engulfed in fury to the point of wanting to poke him with a sewing needle.
Rory often made rude comments, but I couldn’t get hung up on those.
Especially since I was trying to pull him back to me.
I’ll admit: Rory had a difficult job. I had previously thought his occupation as an attorney had taken all he had, but lawyering didn’t even compare to mayoring.
Are those words? The day he’d committed to campaigning for mayor, he began running on overtime.
Night and day. Day and night. Even in his sleep, he talked business and politics.
This past year had been the steepest slope of his career.
I had to support him and be his climbing partner, which meant feeding him some slack.
Until death do us part. In sickness and in health.
And all that. When I’d married him, I’d promised to be his best friend and his partner and his cheerleader.
I refused to let those promises slip away without a good fight.
If being a great mayor and climbing to a US Senate seat would give him an outlet to fulfill his true potential, I wanted to be the partner who helped him achieve his goals.
I knew he’d pay me back down the road. If I had to ignore a few verbal jabs and lonely nights, months, and even years, so be it.
That’s part of what love is about, what marriage is about.
When one of us was down, the other must rise.
But I was getting fed up. While I bettered myself, he worsened, letting his demons of political aspiration drag him deeper into the cave.
Our bedroom boasted fine antique furniture, including a stunning king-size bed made in Paris at the turn of the twentieth century.
Philippe jumped onto the white duvet. Rory didn’t want a dog in the bed, but you guessed it, I did.
Before closing the blinds, I stared out a window overlooking the front yard.
My eyes went right of the driveway, close to the tree line.
That area is where I wanted to put a chicken coop, stage two of my plan to build what I liked to call Margot’s Ark.
Now that I’d persuaded Rory to let me adopt Philippe, it was time for the chickens.
I dreamed about beautiful hens running around our property.
I imagined going out to sing to them while collecting their eggs.
For your information, I’m a vegetarian, not a vegan, so I do eat eggs and dairy.
Anyway, I could almost see the birds out there, pecking in the snow.
I could almost hear the rooster crowing.
He wouldn’t be a mean rooster. He’d be a sweet little rooster that would wake us in the morning with promises of a lovely day ahead.
My chicken-owner dream carried me away. I saw my ark coming alive out there in the snowy clearing.
Sheep, goats, donkeys, alpacas, and even llamas, despite their tendency to spit on people.
Many more dogs. Horses. If I could legally do it, I’d have zebras, lions, tigers, and bears.
I didn’t mind that our grass would be uneven and that we’d have to build fences.
I wanted my ark. Knowing Rory, though, I’d only get so far.
I undressed and looked at myself in the tall mirror inside my walk-in closet.
I still hadn’t gotten used to the woman looking back at me.
For all my life, I’d been curvy and plump.
Not grotesquely overweight but generously paunchy enough that I wasn’t excited about wearing a swimsuit during summer vacation.
This year, however, I’d dropped below my college weight.
I was skinny with a flat stomach, and what I had considered to have been overly large breasts had settled into a gorgeous D-cup. I had it all.
I couldn’t figure out why Rory still hadn’t noticed the new me.
Not enough to come after me, at least. Lord knows, almost all the other males in town turned their heads when they saw me.
I kept telling myself to be patient. You don’t fix a marriage in a few months.
But half of me was always on the verge of screaming, “I did all this for what? Nothing is getting better!”
I hadn’t come to look like this without sacrifices, as in gargantuan sacrifices.
It had been so long since I’d delighted in a refined or starchy carbohydrate that my ribs showed.
I needed to be careful that I didn’t get too skinny!
I missed all the good food in a big way.
As often as we ate out, I missed ordering whatever I wanted, a practice I’d followed most of my life until this year of what felt like my year of starvation.
Honestly, though, I will admit that the feeling of being slender warmed me up inside.
It gave me a kick in my step when I strolled down the street.
I enjoyed being what some guys called a MILF.
If you don’t know what that is, please don’t bother researching the term.
Along with this new killer bod, I’d chopped off my hair.
Occasionally, over our years together, Rory had overtly hinted for me to go short.
I suspected it had to do with his career.
Everything he did had to do with how it affected his political trajectory.
I secretly postulated that he had run a poll with the women at his office, and they’d suggested that, as the mayor’s wife, I might look more dignified with short hair.
Polls, polls, polls. He didn’t make one decision without a poll.
I wouldn’t have put it past him to direct his people to run an actual poll using his constituents.
Even if I asked what he wanted for dinner, he’d consider running a poll.
To his credit, he did notice the day I cut my hair, though, and his compliments spun me into the stratosphere.
He didn’t tear my clothes off, but at least he’d noticed.
To be truthful, he hadn’t torn my clothes off in more than a year.
The last time almost didn’t count. It was around Thanksgiving, and our short stint of making love felt more like work.
Though he would never have admitted to as much, getting undressed, hanging his clothes so they wouldn’t wrinkle, and working his way to getting hard were chores for him.
For me, the chore was trying to believe he wanted me.
Not easy for a gal who has always battled her weight and questioned her worth in the world.
Fasten your seatbelt, because I’m about to overshare. That’s what I do, so you’d better get used to it. The fearlessly unfiltered, oversharing Margot is about to make you blush.
Don’t believe me? Fine, let’s go.
Our first time making love, when he returned to New York, was mesmerizing.
He could do things I only had read about in books.
None of my boyfriends to that point had ever given me such monumental orgasms. We’re talking dirty talk, roll play, blindfolds.
There was a time when he turned me into a human vanilla sundae, painting me with whip cream and chocolate syrup, then licking off every last bit.
Is your face red yet? Knees quivering?
As the years ticked by, we went from three times a week to once a week to once a month.
Then I wasn’t having orgasms. He would often go limp after a few minutes.
I toiled for many years before I started using a vibrator, but once I was introduced to my favorite purple one, that well-endowed silicone member endured plenty of use, and I was sure to keep a ready supply of batteries.
I am not one of those women who doesn’t need orgasms. I need orgasms like rabbits need other rabbits.
I need orgasms like boats need water. If Rory would not give me what I needed, it was up to me to find an alternate method, and I wasn’t interested in being unfaithful and stepping outside my marriage to find a lover.
I had no desire to have a sexual experience with anyone other than my husband.
But I did want a safe, guilt-free outlet that needed no confession or request for forgiveness.
Although it wasn’t an ideal solution, a vibrator gave me the sexual release I needed.
I tell you all this to make my point that Rory wasn’t caving easily, even with all the changes I had made.
He was not coming back to me like I thought he would.
Sure, I knew it would take time, but with a body like mine, why was he not jumping all over me?
I knew women who were overweight but continued to be desired by their husbands and were sexually satisfied, so I realistically knew my new body wasn’t the only reason why Rory should desire me, but I thought it should have helped to pique his interest.
When you’re a mom, you let things slide.
Men hadn’t hit on me for years, but when I dropped the weight, my confidence rose, and men began hitting on me again.
If I had taken off my ring, and if more than half the people in the city hadn’t known who I was, I could’ve found a new man every day.
That wasn’t my goal. My marriage was important to me.
I wouldn’t betray my husband or make a mess of things and risk losing my son’s respect if an affair were to come to light.
In the bathroom, which I’d redone to create a much more elegant feel, I turned the brass knobs on my clawfoot tub, and hot water spilled onto the porcelain.
I don’t know when the following naughty habit started, but it’s a habit in which I still happily indulge.
Maybe it’s not healthy, but life needs to be enjoyed.
I reached for a half-full bottle of merlot from the shelf and poured myself a glass.