2. Delphine
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Delphine
It had been a week.
Seven days of Montana seated at the head of the dining table, which was Heath’s rightful place, critiquing my coffee and my posture and the way I held my fork.
Seven days of Kendall materializing wherever Heath happened to be, laughing at things that weren’t remotely funny, touching his arm when she spoke, asking his opinion on everything from wine vintages to the weather as if his every word were gospel.
Seven days of my husband coming to bed late and leaving early, of conversations that started with good morning and ended before they could become anything more, of reaching for him in the darkness and finding only empty sheets still cool to the touch.
They weren’t leaving. I had dropped hints so heavy they should have left dents in the floor.
I had asked pointed questions about renovation timelines and holiday travel plans and when, exactly, Kendall’s contractors expected to finish their work.
Montana had smiled her razor thin smile and changed the subject every single time, as if the very idea of departure had never occurred to her.
I was losing my mind. Slowly, methodically, one perfectly catered dinner at a time.
We were in the formal dining room now, the four of us arranged around the mahogany table that had been in the Fairchild family for six generations.
Crystal chandeliers cast soft light over the proceedings.
The good china gleamed on the damask tablecloth.
Everything was beautiful and elegant and absolutely suffocating.
I had stopped fighting that particular battle on day two, when Montana had looked at me with such withering contempt that I had felt myself shrinking into my own skin.
Kendall was positioned beside Heath, close enough that their shoulders nearly touched every time she leaned in to whisper things meant only for him.
I sat across from them both, watching my husband push food around his plate with his fork, wondering when exactly my life had become a performance I hadn’t auditioned for.
“The pheasant is dry,” Montana announced, setting down her fork with a small, deliberate clink against the china. Her mouth was pursed in the particular expression she reserved for maximum disappointment. “Tell me, Delphine, did you prepare this yourself?”
“The caterer handled dinner, actually.” I kept my voice pleasant, my smile fixed firmly in place. “The same caterer you recommended when you arrived. From that little place on Thames Street you said was the only acceptable option in Newport.”
Montana’s eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly. “Hmm. Well, perhaps you gave them incorrect instructions. I find that people often have difficulty understanding what I want when the message passes through too many hands.”
Under the table, hidden by the heavy fall of the damask cloth, I pressed my foot against Heath’s ankle. Hard. Hard enough to get his attention.
He looked up from his plate, his eyes meeting mine for the first time all evening. I gave him a pointed look, the kind that had once spoken volumes between us, the kind that said step in, please, for the love of God, say one word to your mother.
He returned the look with one of his own. Tired. Frustrated. Helpless. For just a moment, we were united in our shared exhaustion, two people trapped in the same elegant prison.
Neither of us spoke.
Kendall was in the middle of an anecdote from her trip to Milan last spring.
I had stopped listening somewhere around the third mention of her favorite designer, her words washing over me in a meaningless stream of labels and locations and names I didn’t recognize.
She had her hand on Heath’s forearm now, her fingers resting lightly on his sleeve as she gestured to emphasize some point about Italian architecture or fashion or whatever else she thought made her seem worldly and sophisticated.
He still wasn’t pulling away.
I watched her fingers curl against the fabric of his shirt. I watched him nod along to her story as if it were the most fascinating thing he had ever heard. I watched my marriage disappear into the space between their bodies, inch by inch, meal by meal, and I couldn’t bear another moment of it.
“So,” I said, cutting through Kendall’s tale about a countess and a misplaced earring at some charity function. My voice came out sharper than I intended, but I was past caring. “Are you planning to stay a few more days? I want to make sure I have enough prepared for the household.”
I kept my smile carefully in place. Friendly. Curious. The sort of innocent question any gracious hostess might ask without ulterior motive. Certainly not the desperate plea for an end date that it actually was.
Montana set down her wine glass with exaggerated care. The crystal caught the candlelight, throwing small rainbows across the tablecloth. “Didn’t I tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
“We’re staying until New Year.” She picked up her fork again, spearing a piece of pheasant with surgical precision. “I thought I had mentioned it.”
The room went very still. Or perhaps that was just the blood rushing in my ears, drowning out everything except the thundering of my own heartbeat.
“New Year,” I repeated. My voice sounded strange to my own ears, thin and far away. “That’s three weeks from now.”
“Twenty-one days, to be precise.” Montana’s smile was thin and satisfied, the smile of a woman who had won a battle her opponent hadn’t even known was being fought.
“But who’s counting? I thought it would be absolutely lovely to spend the holidays together as a family.
A proper Fairchild Christmas. It’s been far too long since Heath and I have celebrated the season together. Not since his father passed, really.”
I looked at my husband. He had gone pale beneath his tan, his jaw tight, his eyes fixed on his plate as if the pattern on the china might somehow provide an escape route. He hadn’t known. I could see that in the rigid set of his shoulders, the white-knuckle grip on his fork.
Or maybe he had known and simply hadn’t bothered to tell me. Maybe this was just another item on the growing list of things my husband had failed to mention.
“Isn’t this wonderful?” Kendall leaned into Heath’s shoulder, bumping him playfully, her honey blonde hair brushing against his sleeve.
Her voice was bright and warm and so perfectly pleased with itself that I wanted to scream.
“A real family Christmas. I honestly can’t remember the last time I had one of those.
My family is so scattered these days, everyone always traveling, never in the same place twice. ”
I felt the nausea rise without warning, fast and vicious, climbing up my throat before I could stop it. The room tilted. The candlelight blurred. Kendall’s voice seemed to come from very far away, muffled by the rushing sound in my ears.
“Excuse me.” I pushed back from the table, my chair legs scraping against the hardwood floor with an ugly sound that made Montana wince. “I need a moment.”
I didn’t wait for a response. I was already moving, my heels clicking against the floor as I crossed the dining room, passed through the main hall, and made it to the small powder room off the foyer just in time to fall to my knees on the cold marble tile.
Everything I had eaten came up in violent waves.
I gripped the edges of the porcelain bowl, my whole body shaking, my eyes watering, my throat burning with acid.
The nausea didn’t stop. It just kept coming, wave after wave, until there was nothing left and I was just heaving uselessly into the empty bowl.
Three more weeks. Twenty-one days of this. Of Montana’s cruelty dressed up as maternal concern. Of Kendall’s perfectly manicured hands finding reasons to touch my husband. Of Heath’s silence, his distance, the growing chasm between us that I didn’t know how to bridge.
I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t survive three more weeks of watching my marriage crumble while everyone sat around the dinner table and pretended nothing was wrong.
I threw up again, though there was nothing left to give. My body kept trying anyway, my stomach cramping painfully, my fingers white where they gripped the cool porcelain.
When the heaving finally stopped, I sat back on my heels and pressed my forehead against the tile wall.
It was cold against my flushed skin. Grounding.
Real. I focused on the sensation, on the pattern of the marble beneath my knees, on anything except the disaster waiting for me back in the dining room.
My hands were trembling. I held them up in front of my face and watched them shake, these hands that used to draft engineering plans and solve complex equations, reduced now to this. Trembling. Useless.
My eyes were wet. I told myself it was from the vomiting and nothing else.
Five minutes passed. Then ten. I sat on the cold floor of the powder room, listening to the distant murmur of voices from the dining room, waiting for the sound of footsteps in the hall. Waiting for a knock on the door. Waiting for my husband’s voice, concerned, asking if I was okay.
The footsteps never came.
Eventually I pulled myself up from the floor.
My legs felt unsteady beneath me, like I was learning to walk all over again.
I turned on the faucet and splashed cold water on my face, watching the droplets run down my cheeks and disappear into the basin.
I rinsed my mouth three times, trying to get rid of the taste of bile.
I smoothed down my hair, which had escaped its careful arrangement during my episode.
My reflection in the mirror looked terrible. Pale. Drawn. The kind of face that told stories I didn’t want anyone to read.