6. Margot
Margot
Itell him at breakfast.
“My bracelet's gone."
He looks up from his eggs. "Gone where?"
"I don't know. That's what gone means. I had it yesterday afternoon. Becca was standing next to me. She touched it. By ten last night it wasn't on my wrist and it isn't in this house."
He puts his fork down slowly.
"You think she took it."
"I think it was on my arm and then it wasn't, and the only person who touched my arm was her."
"You could have taken it off at the office."
"I didn't go to the office yesterday. I was at Harbor Street in the morning and here all afternoon. I've told you that. I'm telling you again."
He gets up. He goes to the bathroom upstairs, and I hear him open the drawer where the jewelry tray is, and I hear him move things around in it. He checks the tray. He checks the tray that I checked six times last night, as if the bracelet might have grown embarrassed and come back.
He comes down.
"It's not in the tray."
"No."
"Maybe it fell off. The clasp on those things can be flimsy.”
"The clasp is fine. I've worn it every day for fourteen months."
"Mar." He sits back down. He uses the voice, the reasonable one. "I know things have been tense. But you're talking about accusing a woman of stealing off your body in your kitchen. You can't say that to somebody without proof."
"I'm not saying it to her. I'm saying it to you."
"And I'm saying maybe wait and see if it turns up."
I look at my husband, who gave me that bracelet on a porch with his voice shaking and told me he wanted me to know he'd never hide from me, and I watch him choose the explanation that means he doesn't have to do anything.
"Okay," I say.
"Okay?"
"Wait and see. Sure."
I finish my toast. He finishes his eggs. I don't tell him I've already called the security company to ask about adding a camera to the kitchen, because I don't want to hear what he'd say about that either.
The security guy comes Wednesday while Anders is at a construction site.
His name is Ray and he's put cameras in four of my buildings and he doesn't ask why a woman would want one pointed at her own kitchen island.
He just mounts it in the corner above the pantry, small and black, and shows me the app.
"Motion or continuous?"
"Motion."
"Anybody else on the account?"
I think about it for longer than I should.
"Just me."
He nods and packs up his drill. At the door he says, "You take care of yourself," in a voice that means he's seen a marriage like this before. I close the door behind him and stand in my hallway feeling like I've done something I can't take back.
The seventh DNA test cancellation comes that afternoon. Becca's text goes to Anders, and Anders forwards it to me, which he's started doing, as if forwarding is the same as discussing.
Lab called, they double-booked, can't fit us till the 30th. So sorry. Milo says hi to Daddy!
The 30th is three weeks away. I look at the date and I look at the calendar on the wall with the OB appointments circled in red and I count, and Nora is due four days after Milo's test.
I don't answer the forward. Anders doesn't ask why.
Becca needs rent money again.
It's been a month. The four thousand covered September and, she says, part of October, but Milo needed a winter coat and the car needed brakes and daycare, even part time, costs more than she clears at the dry cleaner's.
She lays it out on our sofa on a Tuesday with Milo asleep on her shoulder, and she's not asking, exactly.
She's just saying. Just laying it out. Just letting Anders arrive at the conclusion on his own.
He arrives, of course.
I'm upstairs. I hear him say "how much?” and I hear her say a number, and I come down.
"No."
They both look at me.
"Not from the joint account. Not tonight. Not without a conversation that doesn't include her sitting on my sofa while it happens."
"Margot," Anders says.
"I said in your office that we'd support him if he's yours. He hasn't been tested. She's cancelled the test seven fucking times now, Anders, how much more do I have to put up with?”
Becca's eyes fill. "I don't want to cause problems."
"Then do the test!”
"Milo's been sick."
"He's asleep on your shoulder with a full belly and pink cheeks. He looks fine to me."
Anders stands up. "Can we not do this in front of her? Them?”
"She's the one asking for money in front of me. I'm allowed to answer in front of her."
He takes his phone out. I watch him open the app. I watch him type the number she said.
"Don't."
He looks at me. And then he does it. Standing in our living room with Becca watching and Milo asleep, he sends it, and he puts the phone in his pocket, and he says, "It's done. We can talk about it later."
Later is midnight, in our bedroom, with the door closed.
We haven't fought like this before. I've watched him argue with subcontractors and I've watched him argue with his brother, and I've never seen him like this, red in the face, voice low and hard so it won't carry.
"You embarrassed her."
"I stood up for my marriage in my own house."
"You've been against her since the first day."
"I asked for a paternity test on the first day. That's not against her. That's the only fair thing anyone's said."
"Every time she's here you go stiff. You go cold. You talk to her like she's a tenant."
"She's not a tenant. Tenants pay,” I reply wryly.
"Jesus, Margot."
"Fourteen hundred more dollars tonight. Fifty-four hundred in five weeks. From an account I fund. To a woman who's been in my closet and touched my jewelry and asked for my office, and who cries every time I decide to respect my boundaries and say no.”
"She's got a baby and no help."
"She's got you. She's got all of you. And I'm standing here in our bedroom asking you to look at what's in front of you and you won't."
He stops. He stares at me. His mouth does something before the words come out, and I see him decide to say it, and I still don't see it coming.
"He's a baby, Margot. He's not even a year old. What exactly are you jealous of?"
The room goes quiet.
I look down. I don't decide to. My eyes just go there, to the place where my hands are, to the stomach that's carrying his daughter, eight months and one week along, thirty-two weeks of my life and my body and my back and the taste of iron in my mouth every morning.
I look at her.
Then I look at him.
He knows. I see it land on his face like a slap. He goes white and then red and he says, "That's not."
"What isn't."
"I didn't mean it like that."
"How did you mean it?"
"I meant, you keep acting like he's, like Becca's, I meant.
" He stops. He starts again. He explains.
He explains that he only meant I was reacting to a baby, that there's nothing to react to, that Milo's just a kid, that I'm the one making it a competition, and every word makes it worse, and I stand there and let him dig because I want to see how far down he'll go.
He goes pretty far.
Then he runs out and just stands there breathing.
"Okay," I say.
I get into bed. I turn on my side, facing the wall. I hear him undress. The mattress dips.
His hand comes across the sheet and finds my hip, the way it does every night, the way it has for two years, and he says, "Mar," very softly.
I move. Not far. Just to the edge, where his hand can't reach.
He leaves it there in the empty space for a while.
Then he takes it back.