Chapter 29
With every day that passes, I hate the house more. Yet I almost never leave it.
The Monday I returned to work after our wedding and honeymoon, I gave my two weeks’ notice. Health reasons, I said, which wasn’t exactly a lie but wasn’t precisely true.
The drive to my office took more than an hour, traffic lurching and halting, which only cemented my decision.
I am crushed by fatigue. Sometimes I feel like a slug, melded to cement, sneaking forward millimeter by millimeter.
And yet I suspect this is nothing compared to the fatigue I’ll feel once the baby is born.
Besides, you want to take care of me. You pleaded, Let me take care of you.
Fine, I thought as I left Grant Wilpers’s office, his judgmental gaze on my back. Take care of me. Give me health insurance and pay my expenses. Sell my home. Level my life—you’ve already done so much. Finish the job.
It’s as though you could hear me. You pay for a service to pack up my condo.
My furniture is delivered to the new house—your new house—and arranged here.
My bed, nightstands, and dresser are set up in the guest bedroom.
I go in there sometimes. I lie on the bed and close my eyes, and I pretend I’m back in my condo.
But soon my condo will no longer be mine. I didn’t own it for long, and I’ll be lucky to get back what I paid. The market has dipped. I suggested that I hold on to it for a while, to see if things improved, but your Realtor didn’t think that was a good idea.
“Things may only get worse,” she said, tapping her red nails along my countertops.
“She’s not exactly impartial, is she?” I told you later. “Of course she wants me to sell it. She gets a commission whether I lose money or not.”
“She has a point,” you said. “I’m sure you’ll get more than your mortgage. And we could use that money. We could remodel the powder room. We could put in a pool.”
I don’t care about the powder room, and I don’t want a pool. It feels like a safety nightmare for the child growing inside me. But it’s easier not to argue. I don’t have the energy to disagree. I don’t have the energy to try to analyze or understand why I want to.
My last two weeks at the firm, I mostly work from home. The unrelenting nausea, the exhaustion—the drive is too much. I’m sure the partners are irritated with me, but I can’t figure out why I should care. Soon, I’ll be gone.
I’m not feeling well, I write in email after email. I’ll be working remotely today.
On a blistering-hot Friday, I do head into the office, but only because I have plans to meet Zoe for lunch in Georgetown, at a restaurant midway between our offices. Inside, the air is too warm, the volume and laughter of the diners too loud, the tables and chairs on the sidewalks going unused.
It’s much farther than I’d usually go for lunch, and it will be a much longer break than I usually take, but I have to tell her. I have to explain.
“I can’t wait to see your new house,” she says, unfurling her napkin and draping it across her lap. “It’s all so exciting.”
“It’s far,” I say, reaching for my water glass, taking the tiniest sip. Somehow, water remains one of the most nauseating things I can ingest. I look up, searching for our waiter.
“From what?” Zoe flips her menu open, gaze skimming the pages.
“My office,” I tell her. “But I guess that won’t matter soon.”
Her brows furrow, but before I can say more, our server is beside our table.
“Are we ready?” she asks brightly, and we both nod and order our meals.
“And could I have a lemon?” I ask, gesturing toward my water.
“Of course,” she says before taking our menus and ducking away.
I look at Zoe.
“You never get lemon for your water,” she says, nose wrinkling.
“Um…” I smooth a wrinkle from the tablecloth, adjust my fork.
A second later, Zoe lifts her hands, cupping her mouth.
“Are you?” she asks, somehow both a whisper and a shout, and I nod.
“Klara,” she says, and then she’s squealing, reaching across the table for my hands.
I feel myself smiling, the warmth of her fingers gripping mine, her joy contagious like a yawn. I’m smiling, yet I’m also, somehow, trying not to cry.
“But I thought—you and Adam.” She releases my hands, rests her forearms on the table, leans toward me.
“It wasn’t exactly planned,” I admit.
“So that’s why,” she says, nodding. “The quick wedding. The move…” Her voice trails off.
How can I explain to her that it’s not? How can I articulate the tornado of you? The way you’ve swept me in so completely, making everything seem so obvious and clear?
“Well,” I tell her.
The server is back, a wedge of lemon on a tiny plate. I pick it up and squeeze it over my water.
“Things change. I gave notice at work,” I add, and her eyes widen. “Maybe I’ll find something closer to the new house after the baby comes and I’m feeling more settled,” I add hurriedly.
“That makes sense,” she says, even though I know that Zoe, who is already thinking about when she’ll try to give baby Daphne a sibling, would never dream of leaving her successful career as a business-management consultant.
“I probably didn’t take enough time off after Daphne.
And God, I could’ve used some more rest while I was pregnant with her. ”
I nod, staring at the lemon juice descending through my water.
“I just—” Zoe swallows. She scratches at her wrist beneath the band of her watch.
“A few months ago, I was helping you move out of the place you shared with Adam. All of a sudden, you’re married, living in the suburbs, and expecting a baby.
And you’ve left your job? It’s all so wonderful, I think…
But, Klara…” Her voice is tentative, eyes searching. “I guess I’m just a little shocked.”
My smile is feeble, forced. But there. “I know,” I tell her. “I am, too.”
“But if you’re happy, then I’m happy for you,” she continues hopefully.
The words are right there. I’m not.
“I get it,” she adds, as though reassuring herself. “We’re in our mid-thirties now. It’s normal.”
“Right,” I say, and the moment has passed. “Right,” I say again, as though I have any idea what she means.
During my remaining working days, I pass off my active cases to other associates, delegate discovery responses to my paralegals, and let my clients know that I’ll soon be stepping away from the practice of law but that they’ll be in highly competent hands.
I quickly discover that if I share my excuse—because of my health—people are far more sympathetic and less irritable about being passed off to a new lawyer.
Two days before my last day of work, I have a settlement conference at the courthouse. I have to wear a suit and style my hair.
“Good luck,” you say cheerfully, kissing me on top of the head.
You’re perfectly content to undertake your hour-long commute to DC each day.
You work nine or ten hours, and with the drive, you’re out of the house for eleven or twelve hours a day.
You’re a partner now, and you never complain.
You’re a martyr, giving your pregnant wife the peaceful suburban life she never asked for or wanted.
You’re an insult, your success, your achieving my goal when I’d failed to achieve it for myself, like a slap to my cheek.
I stand in our walk-in closet and try on every one of my suits.
But I can’t button a single pair of pants, and the zipper of every skirt gets stuck.
My belly feels swollen and soft, not the pert or firm beginnings of a baby bump, but more like I’ve just returned from a vacation during which I overindulged in fried food and dessert.
Which is true, actually. I did, eating fries and ice cream, slurping frozen virgin daiquiris, the only things I could stomach on our honeymoon.
I finally pull on a navy wrap dress I usually wouldn’t wear to court and a gray-plaid blazer that’s always been a little big but now fits snugly across my chest. Even my flats feel tight and uncomfortable.
I’m dizzy and unfocused during the conference and can’t settle the case.
We set a trial date, and I choose something that works for my colleague’s schedule.
For the first time, I feel a sense of relief, and as I push through the courthouse doors for the final time, I wonder whether this is for the best.
It’s over. I should cut and run before complete incompetence sets in, before I become so tired that I commit malpractice and cost my firm millions.
I wave to the deputy sheriffs lingering near the doorway. “See you later, Klara,” they tell me. I don’t correct them. I step outside.
But on my first jobless Monday, I feel dazed and hollow. I’ve no email to check, no laptop to open. I drink ginger ale and wander aimlessly from room to room, looking out the windows, until the doorbell rings.
Zoe has taken the day off work to come see the house. She arrives late morning, ten minutes later than she said she’d be here.
“Sorry,” she says, reaching for me, pulling me in for a one-armed hug. “Traffic was brutal, even this late.”
“No worries,” I tell her. “I get it.” Somehow this house, which is nearly midway between Baltimore and Washington, DC, only forty-five minutes away from my old condo, feels like a foreign land.