10. Margot
Margot
The next morning I turn my phone on and find thirty-one missed calls, twelve messages and a message about the motion alerts from the kitchen camera the day before.
I had forgotten about the camera. For one hopeful second I think it might have caught Becca near my bag or the drawer in my study. Instead it gives me the kitchen from above. Milo in the highchair. Becca at the island. Me coming through the mudroom with my shoes in my hand.
I watch the whole thing once. Her crying face disappears when Anders is not in the room. She tells me my husband keeps choosing her. She comes at me. Her hand connects. My body folds around Nora before I have made a sound.
Then Anders comes through the door.
From the corner of the ceiling, there is no confusion. He sees my face. He sees my arms around my stomach. He crosses the kitchen, passes within a foot of me and puts both arms around Becca.
I stop the video there. I save it. I send a copy to Carol and another to an account Anders cannot access. I do not watch it again.
He comes to the house every day for a week.
My mother doesn't let him past the porch.
On day four he stops trying to come in and just sits on the steps for an hour and leaves.
On day six he leaves a bag on the porch with the prenatal tea I like and the compression socks I forgot and a note that says no pressure, just want you to have your things, and I stand in the hallway and look at the bag for a long time before I bring it in.
Day seven he's on the steps again. My mother's at the store. I watch him from the upstairs window for twenty minutes. He doesn't look at his phone. He doesn't look at the house. He sits with his forearms on his knees and looks at the street and after a while he puts his head down.
The bruise is yellow now. I can cover it with makeup and I've stopped doing that because the only person who sees me is my mother.
He's not a bad man. I stand at the window and think it, deliberately, like a test, to see if it's still true. He's not. He’s been so loving and kind to me, attentive and caring. He is that man.
And he was the man who walked past me in the kitchen. He is that man too.
I don't know how to hold both. I've never had to. I stand at the window with my hand on Nora and try, and he gets up, and drives away, and I still don't know.
On day eight I unblock him.
I write: One conversation. Public. Thursday, 10 a.m., the Corner Cup on Bridge.
He responds: Thank you. I'll be there. Anything you need.
I don't answer that.
I get there first. I take the booth by the window so my mother can see me from the car. She wanted to come in. I told her if she came in I'd never say a word of it, and she knows me, so she's out there with a crossword and the engine running.
He comes in just before ten. He's wearing the gray shirt I bought him, which I know is deliberate, and he's shaved, which I also know is deliberate, and he looks like he's slept maybe four hours in eight days.
He sees my face first. The bruise is gone.
There's a faint yellow at the edge of the cheekbone if you know where to look, and he knows where to look, and his eyes go straight there and stay.
He sits.
"Thank you for seeing me, I need to tell you?—”
"Don’t. You need to listen to me.”
He stops.
I have everything I need to say written out on a piece of paper I working on at my mother’s table at 2AM. It’s inside my coat, deep in an inner pocket. I don’t need to read it, just knowing it’s there helps me focus.
“I need you to be quiet until I’m done. Let me get through this before you reply. Can you do that?”
“Yes,” he says and nods, looking at me with something akin to a dog watching its owner eating a burger. Eager, willing, needy.
“First of all, I was willing to let Milo be a part of our lives, but you know I wanted a DNA test from the get go.”
He opens his mouth to speak, I hold up my finger and he closes it again, remembering his reply from moments earlier.
“So after that, Becca seemed to block the DNA test every chance she got. Then the four thousand dollars you didn’t ask me about before you gave it away.
From our joint account, so you gave her my money too.
Then the slow creep of all Milo’s stuff into our house, it’s like you replaced the idea of Nora with a baby who is already here. One that might not even be yours.”
He looked like he was dying to say something, as if it was taking every ounce of his concentration to not speak out. I mentally thanked him for that and kept going.
“And then Becca started using my stuff, the food I was making and stocking in the freezer for Nora. My yoghurt, the expensive stuff, I need it for this last month of pregnancy. She used it on Milo.”
He furrowed his brow and I knew he didn’t think it was a big deal. But it was, to me it was and so it should be to him as well.
“And then that social media post, that was absolutely disrespectful to me, our family, our marriage and Nora.”
I reflexively put my hand on my stomach as if to protect our baby from her father’s bad decisions.
“And finally we have the bracelet and six hundred dollars go missing, and when I asked her about it. And let me make it clear, I was simply asking her about it…what did she do? She slapped me! And what did you do? You walked right past me with my bruised cheek and nose bleeding, and you comforted her. Over your own wife! You told me to give you a minute, but that minute was long enough for me to pack up and leave our home. That’s how long it was before you noticed I was missing. ”
I stop talking at last, deflated as I realize what this all means, that he literally chose her over me. The coffee shop is loud with other people and I can hear every one of them, my nerves are so on edge.
I fold my hands on the table and take a deep breath before I sigh.
“I guess that's all I wanted to say."
He also looks deflated, he’s looked this way since I mentioned the bracelet. He puts both hands flat on the table like he needs it to hold still.
“Yes, every one of the things you mentioned,” he says. "Every single one. You're right. I'm not going to argue a single bit of it."
“Okay.”
"I was wrong about the money. I was wrong about bringing him into the home so fast. I should never have called you jealous. I should have made her take the paternity test.” His voice cracks and he pushes through it.
"And the kitchen. God, Mar. I should have come to you.
I don't know why I didn't. I've replayed it a hundred times and I still don't know why I rushed to her side.”
"I know why."
He waits.
"Because that's where you want to go now."
He absorbs that, and for a moment I think he’s going to say something to fix it and I’ll have my husband back. Our marriage will return to the bedrock of stability it so needs.
But then he opens his mouth and destroys the illusion.
"What do you want me to do? Abandon my son?"
The window is cold against my shoulder. I can see my mother in the car, pretending to look at her crossword.
He still thinks it's about Milo.
I've just laid out eight weeks of his choices, dollar by dollar and word by word, and not one of them was a choice about Milo, and he sat across from me and heard all of it and filed it under she doesn't want the baby.
"I never asked you to choose between your children," I say.
"Then what are you asking?"
"I was asking you to choose between your wife and Becca."
He opens his mouth.
"And you did," I say. "Every time. Every single time it came up, you chose her.
You chose her comfort over my boundaries.
Her rent over my input. Her feelings over my injury.
I stood in that kitchen and I watched you choose, and I've never asked you to leave Milo. Not once. Ask me what I asked you for."
He doesn't. He can't.
"I want a divorce."
His hand comes off the table like he's been burned.
"No."
"That's not how it works."
"Margot. No. I'm not. We can fix this. I'll do anything, I'll do whatever you say, I'll?—“
"You'll what? Finally force the DNA test? Stop giving her money? Take Milo’s toys out?"
I stand up. It takes me a second, because everything takes me a second now, and I hate that he watches me do it with his hands half raised like he wants to help.
"You should have done all of that weeks ago. You're going to do it now because you're scared. That's not the same thing, and I'm not going to pretend it is."
I put a twenty on the table for the coffee I didn't drink.
"I'll have my lawyer send the paperwork."
"I won't sign it."
"Then it'll take longer," I say. "That's all that'll change."
I walk out. My mother has the passenger door open before I reach the car.
In the side mirror, as we pull out, I see him still in the booth. He hasn't moved. He's looking at the twenty.