16. Dulcie
DULCIE
Iput two mugs on the counter, then put one away.
Magnus is coming to talk. I don’t have to make it a visit.
The bell rings at the time we agreed. Through the glass beside the blue door, I can see his dark coat and the shape of his shoulders. My body recognizes him before I have decided what to do with my face.
“Come in.”
He follows me into the living room. Dad has put the little table by the window, and my green book lies on it beside a glass of water. Magnus looks at the book, then at me.
“How are you feeling?”
“Large.”
His mouth almost moves into a smile. “You look beautiful.”
I sit in the chair. He takes the sofa, leaving the space beside him empty.
“What did you want to say?”
He leans forward, elbows on his knees. I know that posture. It usually means he has finished listening and is about to explain what happens next.
“I love you.”
For a moment I hear nothing else. The refrigerator stops humming in the kitchen, or perhaps it has been quiet all along.
There were nights I used to wait for those words. I would tell him first, trying to make it easy. Sometimes he kissed my forehead. Sometimes he drew me closer. Once he told me I was tired and should go to sleep, and I lay awake making an answer out of the arm around my waist.
Now he sits in the house I rented to get away from him and says it plainly.
“Dulcie.”
“I heard you.”
“I want you home. I want us to have our son together.”
My hands lie on my belly. The baby pushes slowly beneath one palm.
“What have you told Cressida?”
“That she had no right to come here.”
“About marrying her.”
“I haven’t agreed to anything further.”
“You already agreed to marry her. Have you told her that’s over?”
He pauses. “There are things I need to settle.”
The little hope that moved inside me has nowhere to go.
“But you’ve come to settle me first.”
“That’s not what I’m doing.”
“What did you expect me to say?”
He looks at the empty part of the sofa. I wish he hadn’t. I can almost feel myself there, his arm around me, the relief of being allowed to believe him.
“I thought you would want to hear it.”
“I wanted it to be true when you married me.”
He reaches toward my knee. I move my leg, and his hand stops between us.
“You must know what we had wasn’t all false.”
“Which part should I keep?”
His hand returns to his own knee.
“The night we argued about the cup, you kissed me. I thought you wanted me. Then you put your hand behind my neck and tipped my face up, and you were pleased because I was getting easier to deal with.”
“I did want you.”
“I know. That doesn’t answer me.”
I press my fingers together. “Every time you came to bed. Every time I told you I loved you. I have to wonder what you thought you were getting. How much of me being happy made your plan easier.”
He looks down.
“I can’t undo what I intended.”
“No.”
“But I can tell you what I want now.”
“You keep telling me.”
The words hurt him. I see it, and the old impulse to soften them rises so fast that I nearly apologize.
Instead I take a drink of water. My hand shakes against the glass.
“I still love you,” I say. “Do you understand how awful that is? I didn’t leave because there was nothing left to hurt.”
He gets to his feet. “Then let me?—”
“Sit down.”
He stops. After a moment, he sits.
“You don’t get to turn that into a reason I should come back. It’s the reason you thought I would let you do this to me.”
Outside, a car door closes. Someone calls to someone farther down the street. An ordinary afternoon keeps happening while I try to explain that loving him is not permission.
“What do you want me to do?” he asks.
“Decide how to behave without making me promise you something first.”
He looks at me for a long time. I can’t tell whether he understands or is searching for a more useful answer.
When he leaves, he asks if he can call tomorrow. I say he can ask how I am. At the door he turns as though he expects a kiss, catches himself, and steps outside.
I close the door gently. Then I sit on the stairs and cry because he said it, and because I can’t have what I wanted those words to mean.
After a while, the baby moves. I shift my hand to him and wipe my face with my sleeve. Upstairs, his crib stands where Dad and I put it. I fetch the green book from the living-room table and carry it upstairs, using the banister. I sit beside the crib and open it on my lap.
I read him the first two pages. The duck has chosen boots too big to walk in properly and refuses every sensible alternative. I make the voice I use at school, low and certain, and feel a small push beneath my hand.
“Exactly,” I tell him. “A very questionable decision.”
By the last page my voice has stopped breaking. I leave the book open on my lap and sit there with him until I am ready to go downstairs.
Five days later, I am trying to fold a small shirt that has somehow acquired four corners too many.
The bell rings. I carry the shirt downstairs, expecting Mom with the things we bought for my hospital bag.
Magnus stands outside with Dorothea.
I keep one hand on the door.
“We need to speak about the delivery,” he says.
“You could have called.”
“We were passing,” Dorothea says.
“Both of you?”
Her eyes move over my shoulder. “May we come in? It isn’t a conversation for the doorstep.”
I step back far enough to let them into the hall. Dorothea takes off one glove, then looks for somewhere to put it. I don’t offer to take her coat.
“You’re very close now,” she says. “There needs to be a sensible plan for bringing the baby home.”
“There is.”
“Magnus tells me you intend to recover here.”
“Yes.”
She looks at the stairs. “With everything on different floors.”
“My parents live two streets away.”
“Your mother cannot do everything.”
“She’s helping me. She isn’t being hired.”
Magnus moves closer. “The nursery is ready. There is no reason for you to manage this without the help available at home.”
I look at him. “The nursery Cressida arranged.”
“Furniture can be changed.”
“And the room where I was going to be put while she decided when I could see my son?”
Dorothea lifts her chin. “That is an extraordinary description of people trying to spare you exhaustion.”
“You said my mother could visit.”
“Of course she could.”
“In my own home. You said that as though it was yours to allow.”
Magnus says my name. I hear the warning in it before he speaks again.
“Stop being difficult. We are talking about what happens when the baby comes.”
The shirt is still in my hand. I have twisted one sleeve around my finger.
“I know what we’re talking about.”
He looks at the shirt, then back at me. “You can’t keep treating every practical suggestion as an attack.”
“You brought your mother here to tell me where to recover from giving birth.”
“He is trying to take responsibility,” Dorothea says.
“Then he can be responsible for taking you home.”
Neither moves.
I open the door. Cold air touches the bare skin at my ankles.
“Leave. Both of you.”
Magnus’s expression hardens, then changes when he looks at my face. I don’t know what he sees. I am too tired to arrange it for him.
“We’ll talk when you’re calmer.”
“You can read what I send you.”
Dorothea pulls on her glove. He follows her out. I close the door and turn the lock, then lay the little shirt flat on the table so I can untwist its sleeve.
Mom answers on the second ring.
“Are you all right?”
“Yes. Nothing’s happening with the baby. Can you come over?”
“I’m putting my shoes on.”
While I wait, I write to Magnus.
Mom will be with me when I give birth. You will not attend. I will send you news afterward. Don’t come to the hospital unless I invite you.
I read it twice. There is no sentence about making him understand. No condition he can meet this evening to get the invitation back.
I send it.
His first reply says we need to discuss it. I put the phone facedown.
Upstairs, Mom finds me with the hospital bag open on the bed. I explain, and she listens without suggesting another chance to talk.
“Then I’ll be there,” she says.
I take Magnus’s old soft T-shirt out of the bag. I packed it without thinking, remembering how I used to sleep in it when he was away.
Mom doesn’t comment. She hands me one of my own.
We fold it together, and I put it in the space.