20. Dulcie
DULCIE
Magnus puts his phone on the table between us, screen down.
Kit is upstairs with Mom, and I have fed him, changed him, and kissed the soft place above his ear until Mom told me she could manage the next half hour.
I don’t know whether half an hour will be enough.
“Start before you met me,” I say.
Magnus sits across the little table. There is no coat between us this time, no baby to look at when one of us wants to look away.
“Cressida didn’t want to be pregnant. I wanted a child. We talked about a future in which I already had one.”
“Someone else’s child.”
“Mine. With another woman.”
“And what did you imagine that woman would be doing?”
He takes a breath. “Living nearby. Remaining his mother. Accepting an arrangement once the marriage ended.”
“Did she get to know about it before the marriage began?”
“No.”
“Why me?”
He looks at my hands. I take them off the table.
“I knew you wanted children. You were good with them. You wanted a home and a family.”
“So did a great many women.”
“I thought you would be grateful for what I could give you.”
The refrigerator starts in the next room. I listen to it until I can speak.
“When you asked whether I wanted more than one child,” I say, “were you imagining having them with me?”
“I wanted one child. I asked about more because I wanted to know how much you wanted a family.”
“I answered as though we were talking about our whole lives.”
“I knew you were.”
My hands are cold. I rub one thumb over the other, then stop because I am trying to distract myself from an answer I asked to hear.
“Did you ever intend to tell me before I was pregnant?”
“No.”
“Because I might say no.”
“Yes.”
There is no clever arrangement hidden beneath it. He knew there was a choice I could make that would stop him getting what he wanted, and he kept the part I needed to make it.
“Finish.”
“You didn’t have the money I had. I thought a house and security would make the future I offered acceptable. And when I knew you loved me, I thought that would make you willing to stay close.”
There it is without Dorothea’s table around it. No guests to distract me. No ring to remove so that I can do something with my hands.
“You expected me to keep loving you after you told me what I’d been for.”
“Yes.”
“And if I didn’t like living beside your new wife?”
“I thought I could make the arrangements attractive enough that you would agree.”
“Attractive.”
“That’s what I thought. It was wrong.”
I don’t help him find a less ugly word.
“What did you promise her?”
“That once I had a child, we’d set a date to marry.”
“Had you set one?”
“No. She had been asking for something definite for about a year. I kept putting it off. The birth was the point I’d promised to stop postponing it.”
“And the cup?”
“A way to give her something while I delayed.”
“The book.”
“The same.”
I look at the phone.
“Show me.”
He turns it over and unlocks it. His thumb moves over the screen, then stops.
“There are two messages I need you to read. The second is worse. They’re my words. I won’t try to explain them while you’re reading.”
He sets the phone in front of me with the thread open.
The first message is dated before our wedding. I can see enough of the conversation around it to know what question he is answering. Cressida wants to know what happens after he has the child he says he wants.
“I’m marrying her because I want a child and she’ll be a good mother. Once I have my heir, we set the date. Then it’s you.”
I read it without moving my face. That seems important for some reason, though there is nobody here I need to perform for.
Then it’s you.
I remember choosing flowers. Not wanting too many, because I didn’t know which things were supposed to matter in a wedding like ours. He told me to choose whatever I liked. I thought he meant that my happiness was enough reason.
I scroll.
Cressida has written about the pregnancy she doesn’t want, about the things a baby will demand. His answer sits beneath it.
“You never have to do any of it. That’s what she’s for.”
I read it again.
“You never have to do any of it. That’s what she’s for.”
My mouth fills with water. I swallow, then put the phone down carefully because I am afraid that if I drop it, he will reach for me.
He stays where he is.
I reach for the water and miss the glass with my first attempt. He sees. His hand moves against his knee, but he does not take over the small task I am still capable of doing. I get the glass and drink.
The message remains visible between us. I want to cover it. I want to leave it there until he cannot bear to look at it either. Both impulses feel childish, and then I am angry that I am judging my own reaction while his words sit on the table.
I have loved being pregnant even when it hurt. I have wanted this child through every room they tried to put me in. They do not get to make that love foolish.
I set the glass down. The sound is louder than I intend.
Upstairs, Mom walks across the room. I hear one floorboard, then nothing.
That’s what she’s for.
My son is above my head in the arms of someone who loves both of us. I hold on to that. I do not let those words climb the stairs and become something about him.
“Did you think that when you slept with me?” I ask.
Magnus closes his eyes for a moment. When he opens them, he looks at me.
“I knew why I had married you.”
“Every time?”
“I didn’t stop knowing.”
I press my palm flat against the table. There is a small dent in the wood beneath my thumb. Dad offered to sand it, and I said I liked it. I concentrate on finding its edge.
“When I told you I loved you?”
“I let you believe the marriage was something I wasn’t giving you.”
“You liked hearing it.”
“Yes.”
“You liked coming home to me.”
“Yes.”
“But you didn’t tell her it was over.”
“No.”
I want to ask about every night separately. The evening he came home early because I sounded tired. The morning he brought me something to eat before I got out of bed. If I name each one, perhaps he can return a few unbroken pieces.
I know how eagerly I would take them.
“I can’t sit here sorting our marriage into moments you enjoyed enough to count,” I say.
“No.”
“Did you sleep with her while you were married to me?”
“No.”
He stops there. The answer doesn’t make the room easier to sit in.
“When you wrote to my director, whose idea was it?”
“Mine.”
“Not your mother’s.”
“No. I decided your work would end. I wrote without asking you.”
“She showed me the message. She never accepted it as a resignation.”
“I’m glad.”
“I wasn’t asking whether you’re glad now.”
He nods. “I know.”
“And my address.”
“I gave it to my mother because I wanted her to support me about moving you. She gave it to Cressida. I made that possible.”
“Did you tell her to come here?”
“No. I also hadn’t told either of them clearly that their plans for you were over.”
I pull the phone closer again. The thread is still open. He hasn’t tried to take it back.
“Send me these.”
“Both?”
I look at him.
“Yes,” he says. “Of course.”
He sends the two messages with the surrounding exchange visible. My phone lights beside my elbow. I check that they are there before I return his.
“When did you love me?”
The question comes out smaller than the others. I hate that he can hear the difference.
“After you left. You were thirty-seven weeks pregnant. I recognized it the day I asked to come here. Not before you left.”
I stare at him. Even now I am waiting for the sentence that will save our marriage.
He doesn’t give it to me.
“You wanted me before that.”
“Yes.”
“You wanted me to love you.”
“Yes.”
I wipe my face with the heel of my hand. I haven’t noticed starting to cry.
“Is there anything else that changes what I was agreeing to when I married you? Another promise. Another arrangement you haven’t told me.”
“No. There isn’t another part of the plan I’m keeping from you.”
“If Cressida tells me these things, you won’t say she’s making them up.”
“I wrote them. I promised them. I’ll say that to anyone who asks.”
I sit back. Upstairs, Kit begins to fuss. Mom speaks softly to him, giving me a few seconds to decide whether I am finished.
“You can keep seeing your son,” I say. “The visits we agreed to. That isn’t a promise about us.”
Magnus’s face changes, and I know he has been afraid I would take that away. I won’t let his relief become the ending of this conversation.
“When you say something kind to me now, I hear these too,” I tell him. “I can’t promise you a time when I’ll stop.”
“I know I gave you reason to hear them.”
“I’m not telling you so you can find better words.”
He looks down, then back at me. “All right.”
I am tired enough to feel it in my teeth. Part of me wants to ask him to stay until the worst of this passes. He is the person I used to go to when something hurt, and that habit has survived every answer he has given me.
I let the wanting pass through without turning it into an invitation.
“I need you to leave now.”
He stands. His hand moves toward the back of my chair, then drops to his side before it reaches me.
“I’m sorry, Dulcie.”
I nod because I have heard him. I don’t say anything that makes it smaller.
At the door he puts on his coat. I remain at the table until I hear the latch settle, then Mom appears on the stairs with Kit.
“Do you want him?”
I get up and go to them.
Mom passes him into my arms. He is warm, cross, entirely occupied with his own immediate requirements. I kiss his forehead and feel my own tears against his skin.
“You weren’t an arrangement to me,” I whisper.
He turns toward my voice.
Mom puts her arm around my shoulders, and we go into the living room together.