12. Magnus
MAGNUS
My mother has left the rings on the dining table.
The cup is back in its box. Someone has cleared the flowers, polished the table, and removed every other trace of yesterday’s lunch. The rings lie together on a folded napkin, small enough to be overlooked by someone who does not know what they cost.
I put them in my pocket.
“She’ll calm down,” my mother says.
I look at her. “Have you spoken to her?”
“Of course not. After what her mother said to me?”
“Then don’t tell me what she’ll do.”
My mother draws herself up. “There’s no need to speak to me that way. I didn’t make your wife walk out.”
Neither did I. I gave her an explanation of arrangements that would have provided for her and our son for the rest of their lives. She left before there was any possibility of discussing the details.
Her message is still on my phone.
I will arrange to collect my belongings. I will not return as your wife.
I called twice after receiving it, then once more later in the evening. She did not answer. I sent a message asking her to tell me she was safely at her parents’ house. She replied to that.
I’m here. We’re both all right. Don’t come tonight.
I stayed away because arriving in the dark while she was crying would have accomplished nothing. I will not allow that restraint to be mistaken for acceptance.
“She’s thirty-five weeks pregnant,” I say. “She needs to be at home.”
“She needs to discover what leaving costs,” my mother replies. “A night in that little house won’t have improved her temper, but a few practical difficulties may improve her judgment.”
I remember Eunice reaching for Dulcie’s bag. The ease of it, as if they had already discussed how she would leave. Perhaps they had. The thought makes my anger settle into something colder.
“I’m going to get her.”
My mother looks satisfied until I add, “Alone.”
Giles opens the door before I have taken my hand away from the bell.
He wears an old sweater and stands squarely in the narrow opening. Behind him, I can smell toast.
“Where’s Dulcie?”
“Here.”
“I need to speak to her.”
He doesn’t move aside.
“This is my house, Magnus, and my daughter decides whether you’re welcome in it.”
I look past him. There is nowhere to see except a short hallway, a coat hanging from a hook, a pair of shoes set against the wall. Dulcie’s shoes. The flat ones she wears to school.
“I didn’t come to argue with you.”
“Good.”
He turns his head. “Dulcie. Magnus is at the door.”
Then he steps back far enough for her to approach, without opening a path for me to walk inside.
She comes slowly, one hand moving along the wall for balance. Her hair is tied back. She is wearing a loose shirt I don’t recognize and soft gray pants. Her face is pale and puffy around the eyes.
I dislike seeing what the night has done to her.
“You should have answered my calls.”
“I answered your message.”
“I needed to talk to you.”
“I didn’t want to talk.”
Giles withdraws into the kitchen. I can still see part of his shoulder through the open doorway. Dulcie has placed herself just inside the threshold, leaving me on the porch.
“Get your things,” I say. “We’ll go home.”
“No.”
It is the same word she used yesterday. I had expected sleep, distance, perhaps her parents’ advice, to soften it.
“We can’t resolve this here.”
“I’m not trying to resolve it.”
“You’re my wife.”
“I told you I was leaving.”
“You told a room full of people you were leaving while you were upset.”
“And now I’m telling you here.”
Her left hand rests against the doorframe. The absence of the rings is more disturbing than their presence in my pocket. There is nothing on her hand to tell anyone she belongs with me.
“We need privacy,” I say.
“No.”
“Dulcie.”
“I want my father close enough to hear me. If that stops you saying something, perhaps you shouldn’t say it.”
My jaw tightens.
She has never spoken to me like this. Angrily, yes. Tearfully. With the stubbornness she mistakes for standing up for herself. But always with a question underneath, some opening through which I could give her enough to continue.
This morning she seems to have prepared her answers before I arrived.
“The name can change,” I say.
She blinks.
For the first time, something in her expression moves.
“I’m not going to lose my family over an engraving. If you want a different name, we’ll choose one.”
“What do you think I left over?”
“The name started this.”
“The name let me see it.”
I glance toward the kitchen. Giles has not moved into view, but I know he is listening.
“This is exactly why we should talk at home.”
“Would changing the name change why you married me?”
The question is so flat that for a moment I cannot answer it.
“We have a child coming.”
“I know. I’m the one having him.”
“Then consider what he needs.”
“I am.”
“You can’t live out of a bag in your parents’ house.”
“I’m moving into a rental.”
“What rental?”
“One near here.”
“When did you arrange that?”
“Before the lunch.”
The information lands with the force of an insult. She was standing in our kitchen making me repeat a promise while she already had another house waiting.
“You planned this.”
“I planned somewhere to go if you wouldn’t listen.”
“You might have told me.”
Her face changes again. This time it is not hope or even anger. She looks exhausted by me.
“I’m collecting my things the day after tomorrow,” she says. “Dad will come with me. I’ll message you a time.”
“I can have everything brought here.”
“I’ll collect it.”
“You don’t need to carry boxes.”
“I won’t be carrying boxes. Dad will help.”
Every offer comes back smaller, stripped of the part where I decide what happens next.
I move one foot toward the threshold.
She doesn’t retreat.
“Don’t come in.”
I stop because Giles is within hearing, because she is heavily pregnant, because forcing my way past her would turn an already unreasonable situation into something I could not easily undo.
I need her to come willingly.
“I’m trying to take care of you.”
“I need you to leave.”
Her voice breaks on the last word. For a second, I see the woman who reached for my shirt when I kissed her, who waited for me to come home, who used to tell me the least significant details of her day because she thought I would want them.
I expect her to reconsider.
Instead, she puts her hand on the door.
“I’ll send the time.”
Then she closes it.
I remain on the porch long enough to hear the lock turn.
In the car, I take the rings out of my pocket. Her band rests against the raised setting of the engagement ring. I close my hand around both until their edges press into my palm.
A rental near her parents. A place chosen while she was angry, with no thought for the arrangements a newborn requires. I can find something better before she signs herself into a life she has mistaken for freedom.
At the brownstone, I put the rings in the private drawer beside my bed.
Then I open my phone and begin looking for an apartment.