Chapter 34
It’s been more than a decade since Troy has had a migraine.
In fact, he’s only ever had one in his entire life, and it began the second day of the bar exam.
He sat in that room in the convention center for eight hours, typing his answers to the essay questions, feeling like someone was beating his skull with a hammer. He was certain he’d failed the exam.
When he got home that night, he vomited sticky and curdled white bread, the only thing he’d managed to eat.
The next day, the pounding had dulled to a persistent but far less powerful knock, and the day after that, the pain was gone, just a slight tenderness in his brain, an instinct to flinch at bright lights and loud sounds.
It was the stress, he assumed, from the most important test of his life, that had caused the migraine, and he’d not experienced the same intensity of pain since.
As it turned out, he managed to pass the bar anyway.
It’s back now—the unfamiliar but recognizable sensation, a thundering ache at the base of his skull, a twisting nausea in his gut. Brought about by stress again. This time, stress over his wife.
He wonders whether there’s any feeling more unpleasant than nausea. He despises it. It’s almost worse than pain. And he wonders whether this is how Klara feels all the time.
His car lurches forward with irritatingly periodic progress. All he wants to do is get home, press his forehead into his pillow, and sleep until the pain abates. According to the GPS app on his phone, he won’t be home for another forty minutes.
“Call Klara,” he tells his car. Then adds, “Call my wife,” although the phone is already ringing, just because he likes to say the word, because it’s still novel.
Klara doesn’t seem to share his delight over their still-new roles as husband and wife.
Something decidedly is wrong. There’s been no sex for several weeks.
At night, Klara curves away from him in their enormous bed, swallowed by the softness.
He places a hand on her side, slides it down to her thigh.
He listens to her breathing, slow and even and fake.
In the morning, he asks her how she slept.
“Not good,” she says. “The bed is so soft. My back, it hurts already. I’m not even big yet.”
It’s a warning. Things will only get worse, is what she means. Things will get harder, an excuse for her to pull away from him further.
The bed is so soft. The twenty-thousand-dollar bed and mattress and bedding. She’d sung its praises, this same bed, on their honeymoon. Now it’s not right for her. She hates the bed. She hates the house. He can see it on her face.
Sometimes he thinks she hates him.
“What’s wrong?” he asks her every morning and every night when he gets home from work.
“Nothing,” she says, turning sharply as though he’s startled her. “I’m just feeling awful.”
She throws up every day. The nausea never subsides, she tells him.
And her mind races. She has insomnia during the night.
He’ll awaken at one or two in the morning and reach for her before realizing she’s not there, that her side of the bed is cool.
He’ll find her downstairs, pacing the hall in the dark, reading a baby book on her phone.
“Stomach cramps,” she says. “Walking helps.”
There’s an accident ahead, three cars pulled onto the right shoulder of the highway. Traffic has slowed to a complete stop so that everyone can observe the smashed bumpers, the middle car with its airbags deployed. The three vehicles are bookended by police cars, their lights spinning blue and red.
Troy sighs. He’s made no headway. In fact, his phone now tells him he won’t be home for forty-four minutes. Like he’s traveling backward.
He can’t quite figure out where or how things have gone so wrong.
The pregnancy has happened, just as he planned—the antibiotics he’d poured into the coffees he’d brought her for weeks had interfered with the effectiveness of her pill—and it was supposed to bring them closer.
Klara was supposed to be so relieved that he was excited, that he’d already bought her a ring.
She said yes, and she’s gone through with everything.
And yet she makes him feel like she’s his prisoner.
Like he’s dragging her, forcing her into a life that everyone else would want.
It doesn’t make sense.
Troy eases past the accident, then picks up speed to an almost reasonable pace. Until another snag builds and the taillights ahead of him flash red again.
But perhaps it’s something chemical with Klara, Troy thinks. Something hormonal that she can’t control. It’s like postpartum depression, but it’s hit her early. That could happen—he’s not sure, but it sounds plausible. He should do some research. He should ask her new doctor.
She’s hurting, his wife. This can’t be his fault.
He’s suddenly desperate to tell her this—to say all the right things.
That he forgives her for being so cold, so ungrateful.
That he will help her get through this. He’s desperate to hear her voice, to know that she is okay, to tell her that if she’s not, she will be. He’ll make sure of that.
He calls Klara again; it must be the fifth time today he’s tried her. The phone rings and rings and rings, and Troy frowns, his nausea turning even more sour, the thunder in his head growing more deafening. She doesn’t answer. She never answers.
Troy usually drives with a single wrist slung over the top of the wheel, guiding it deftly with the gentlest touch. But now his fingers curl tightly around it, knuckles whitening. After everything. How could she? How dare she?