11. Dulcie
DULCIE
“Yes.”
Magnus says it quietly, as though lowering his voice might change the word.
Then he adds, “That doesn’t mean you wouldn’t have been looked after.”
I can’t take in the second sentence. I’m still on the first.
Yes.
My husband is sitting beside the chair I have just left, one hand resting near his glass. He has the same face he had this morning when he asked whether I was ready. The same mouth that kissed me in our sitting room. I look at him until his features seem both familiar and impossible.
“Looked after when?”
“Dulcie, this should be a private conversation.”
“When?”
He glances around the table. Not frightened. Irritated that everyone is hearing a discussion he meant to control.
“When we decided what came next.”
“After I had the baby.”
“There would have been time to make arrangements.”
“For me to leave.”
“For us to separate properly. With everything you needed.”
Something scrapes against my chest when I breathe. I put a hand on the back of my chair because the room has begun to feel unsteady.
“And then you’d marry Cressida.”
She answers before he does.
“That was always the understanding.”
I look at her. She is still seated, her shoulders straight, her expression almost relieved. The terrible thing being exposed has a different meaning for her. She is finally getting to say she belongs.
“My understanding,” I say, “was that I was marrying the man I loved.”
“You did,” Magnus says.
I turn back to him so sharply that he stops speaking.
“Don’t.”
“Your feelings weren’t a problem.”
“No. I imagine they were very useful.”
He gets to his feet.
“We are not doing this in front of everyone.”
“You did this in front of everyone. I’m asking you what it means.”
Mom is moving around the end of the table. Dorothea looks up at her, but Mom doesn’t stop. She comes to stand a little behind my shoulder, close enough that I know where she is without having to turn.
Magnus looks at her.
“Please give us a moment.”
“I want her here,” I say.
His attention returns to me. “You’re making this harder than it needs to be.”
I almost believe I have misheard him.
There is a faint mark near his cuff where he must have brushed against something on his plate. I keep looking at it. My mind can understand a stain on a shirt. It can imagine rubbing it with cold water, laying it over the edge of the sink, reminding him to change before work.
I don’t know what to do with the rest.
“When you asked me to marry you,” I say, “you already knew.”
“I knew I wanted a family.”
“With me until I’d made one.”
“It wasn’t intended to be cruel.”
“Then tell me what you thought would happen.”
He looks at the people around the table again. Nobody helps him. The aunt has one hand closed around her necklace. A cousin stares at his untouched glass.
Magnus turns back to me.
“You would have had a house. Close by, so our son could be with both of us. A generous settlement. You wouldn’t have needed to worry about money or employment.”
“You’d decide where he lived.”
“I would take responsibility for his future.”
“And I’d be there when he needed his mother.”
“You would always be his mother.”
Cressida shifts in her chair, as though this is the reassurance I ought to have understood from the beginning.
I think of the nursery upstairs in our house. The chair by the window. The other room where I was supposed to recover. I had believed they were ignoring what I wanted. They had been arranging where they intended me to fit.
“Did you think I would agree?”
“I thought we could be reasonable.”
“Because of the money?”
“It would have given you options you’ve never had.”
“And because I loved you.”
He says nothing.
I wait.
“Was that part of it, Magnus? Did you think I would take whatever place you left me because I loved you?”
He looks directly at me. “I thought you would want to stay close.”
The answer goes through me with almost no sensation at first.
Then my stomach turns.
I remember telling him I was pregnant. How carefully I put the test in a little bag because I wanted to see his face before he knew why I was smiling. I remember him drawing me against him, his hand at the back of my head. I had held that moment through every difficult conversation afterward.
He wanted this too, I told myself. He wants us.
I can no longer touch the memory without feeling sick.
My son rolls beneath my hand, a slow, insistent movement. I press back gently. He knows nothing about this room. He is warm and held, and I want him so fiercely that for a second it is the only feeling I can understand.
I wanted him before there was a name on a cup.
Before there was a list of rooms or an arrangement I had never agreed to.
Whatever his father thought he was getting, I am going to meet my baby and love him.
I have to get out of here before these people teach me to confuse that joy with what they have done.
“I told my mother you made me feel safe,” I say.
Mom’s hand settles against my back.
Magnus looks at her hand, then at me. “You are safe. Nothing is being taken from you.”
“My marriage.”
“We’re still married.”
“Until you’ve finished with it.”
“Until we decide what’s best.”
“We?”
I look at Cressida.
She lifts her chin. “I didn’t make these promises to myself.”
“No,” I say. “You didn’t.”
I want to hate only her. It would be so much easier to believe she had invented a future and talked his mother into helping her steal it. I could turn to my husband then. I could make him the person who should have noticed sooner instead of the person who began it.
He is standing in front of me, telling me how comfortable I would have been.
Dorothea sighs.
“There are children to consider now. This sort of display won’t help anyone.”
“One child,” I say. “Mine.”
“And Magnus’s.”
“He should have remembered that before using me to get him.”
“You’re being vulgar.”
Mom steps closer.
“You don’t get to call her grief vulgar because it inconveniences you.”
Dorothea’s face tightens. Mom doesn’t wait for her answer. She looks at me.
“Your bag is by the door. Mine too.”
A place to go. A next thing to do.
I look down at my left hand.
The engagement ring has turned slightly toward my little finger. Magnus chose it. He knew my size, knew the setting he wanted, knew how it should look on my hand before I had ever seen it. I cried when he opened the box.
I slide it off.
“Dulcie.”
I put it beside the cup.
The diamond touches the silver tray with a small, hard sound.
The wedding band is tighter. My fingers have swollen. I have to work it over the knuckle, turning it slowly, and the delay is unbearable because everyone can see what I am trying to do.
Magnus reaches toward me.
I pull my hand against my chest.
“Don’t.”
He stops, his hand still lifted between us.
I turn the band once more. It comes free.
There is a pale groove where it has been.
I lay it beside the engagement ring.
“My marriage is over,” I say. “I’m moving out.”
“You’re upset.”
“Yes.”
“You’re not making a decision like that here.”
“I just did.”
He looks toward the doorway, where Mom has gone to collect the bags, and takes a step closer.
“We’ll go home. You and I will talk.”
“I’m not going home with you.”
“Lower your voice.”
I realize I have been speaking quite quietly.
That knowledge steadies me more than anything else has.
“No.”
Cressida looks at the rings. There is something bright and expectant in her face that I cannot bear to watch. I turn away from her before I give her one more thing to keep.
Mom holds out my bag.
I take it. The strap catches on my elbow, and I move it with awkward care, as though I am dressing a child who needs patience.
Magnus says my name again.
I walk past him.
Nobody blocks the doorway. Nobody steps in front of Mom. The hall is full of coats belonging to people who will stay and finish lunch after I have gone.
Outside, the air is cool against my hot face. Mom unlocks the car before we reach it. I lower myself into the passenger seat, fasten the belt beneath my belly, and keep my eyes on her front door key lying in my open bag.
She starts the engine.
Only when the house has disappeared behind us do I make a sound.
It is ugly. I try to stop it, and that makes it worse. Mom pulls over where she can, turns off the engine, and reaches across the space between us.
I fold toward her as far as the belt and my belly allow.
“He knew,” I say. “Mom, he knew when he asked me.”
“I’m here.”
“I thought he loved me.”
Her hand moves over my hair. She doesn’t tell me he must have, in some way. She doesn’t give me a smaller version to survive on.
I cry until I can draw a whole breath again.
Then I wipe my face with the tissues she finds in the console.
“I need the rental,” I say.
“We’ll get you there.”
My phone has been vibrating inside my bag. I take it out without opening his calls.
I write one message.
I will arrange to collect my belongings. I will not return as your wife.
I send it before I can begin imagining the answer I still want from him.