Chapter 36
“Walk?” says Troy. He’s standing beside the sofa in their family room, where Klara is reclining, a book propped on her chest. Her eyes lift ever so briefly before returning to the words on the page. But her gaze doesn’t dart side to side. She stares blankly, merely pretending to read.
“I don’t know,” she murmurs. “It’s so hot.”
“It isn’t that bad yet,” he insists. “It’ll make you feel better.”
She has told him this, that walking helps the pains in her stomach, relieves the restlessness of her legs, stills her racing thoughts.
“Come on, Klara.” Sterner than he’d like to be, but he needs her to do this. He needs to speak to her, and not in the house. In public, so that she can’t escape.
She sighs, teenager-esque.
Klara makes a show of collecting her hair, pulling it taut and off her neck, then slipping a cap onto her head. She bends, ties her sneakers so slowly. He represses an urge to crouch beside her, slap her hands away, and tie them himself.
Finally, she’s ready. They leave through the front door, and Klara sighs again, impatience saturating her breath as Troy pauses to lock the door behind them.
And perhaps he is putting on a bit of a show, turning the dead bolt in place, testing the door.
But he’s noticed that she tends to leave the front door unlocked, and that irritates him.
It’s as though she’s trying to tell him, to tell the world, that nothing inside is valuable or worth protecting, not even her.
He’s ordered the cameras, the video doorbell.
They’ll be here soon, and once they arrive, he’ll call someone to install everything.
He’ll have to figure out a way to get Klara out of the house.
He doesn’t want her to know about the cameras, but they’re for her own good.
They’ll keep her safe. They’ll help him watch her.
They’re silent as they ascend the hill toward the end of their street. Troy turns left just as Klara pulls right. He knows she’s been walking occasionally while he’s at work. He knows there’s a route she typically follows. He knows everything.
He gives her this, corrects his path, goes right with her.
“I need to know, Klara,” he says, shattering the thin glass of their silence. “What’s wrong? If you don’t tell me what’s bothering you, I can’t fix it.”
“You can’t fix it,” she repeats, and he can’t tell if she’s scoffing, mocking, or telling him definitively that he cannot fix it.
He glances at her, face beneath the shadow of the brim of her cap, squinting straight ahead. The wrinkles around her eyes are more pronounced than when he met her.
“You’ve been so distant toward me since we moved in here,” he presses. “I know you don’t feel well, but you act like that’s my fault. You act like you hate me.”
A beat passes, heavy, telling. There is no rush to insist that she doesn’t hate him.
“What did I do?” he asks. His anger is rising, but he doesn’t allow it to breach his tone. This is why he decided to speak to her when they were out for a walk, in their neighborhood, people watching—so that he couldn’t lose his temper, so that she couldn’t run.
“I miss my job, Troy. I miss my condo. I miss the person I used to be. This isn’t what I wanted. None of this.” She sounds so weary, feeble, like she’s already given up.
“I didn’t make you quit your job. And I didn’t realize that having every day to yourself, being able to do whatever you want, would be so awful for you.”
“It’s more than that, Troy. I’ve lost myself. I’m thirty-five and this is my life. Set in stone now. Suburbia, motherhood, exhaustion. I didn’t want a baby. I told you that.”
“Klara, I didn’t make you keep the baby.”
“But you were so happy,” she insists. “You cried and you proposed.”
“I was happy. I am happy. Should I have pretended not to be? Told you it was your problem and disappeared?”
“No, of course not.”
“I mean, listen to yourself,” he tells her. “You have a beautiful house. You have time to do what you want to do, to relax after so many years of working so hard. You have a baby on the way. And you have a husband who loves you more than anything in the world.”
Loves or loved? He tries both on for size in his mind. But he knows. It’s not a thing of the past. He still loves her. He just wants her to behave.
“But I didn’t want this house. You bought it without even consulting with me. It’s farther from my firm than I’d ever want to commute.”
“Then find a job closer. There are law firms in the area.” He’s loath to suggest this. He’d rather she be home. But he doesn’t see how he can get away with not doing so.
“Yeah,” she says. “I’m eleven weeks pregnant. Who would want to hire me and give me maternity leave in six months or so?”
“It’s not like you’d disclose you’re pregnant in the interview. You don’t even look pregnant yet.”
“Well, I feel pregnant. I feel horrible. I feel sick and huge, like my body isn’t mine. I’m not even capable of working competently right now.”
Troy adjusts his own cap, uses the back of his hand to wipe sweat from his forehead. Klara wasn’t wrong—it is too hot to be doing this.
“Then it’s best that you just relax and focus on feeling well, and once you feel better, you can think about going back to work or whatever you want. Maybe in a few weeks the nausea will get better, and the fatigue. The doctor said that.”
“Right.” Clipped, dismissive. Like she wants it to persist. Like its improvement might threaten her martyrdom.
“And it’s not as though you were so happy in your condo,” he says. “You were lonely. We’ve talked about how lonely you were feeling.”
“Because I’d just gotten out of a long-term relationship that ended very suddenly. I hadn’t adjusted yet.”
“So I was your rebound guy?” Troy asks. “Is that what you’re saying? I was just a rebound but you accidentally married me and got pregnant, and I bought you a house, and now you’re stuck with me?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Well, what is the problem, then, Klara? Because I don’t understand.”
He knows she sounds crazy—she knows. That’s the point. Something feels wrong, yet she can’t articulate what. She can’t articulate anything he’s done that’s been truly bad. It’s been all love and grand gestures, and she seems like a shrew for complaining.
He thinks of what she would tell Zoe, if she could contact Zoe. Or what might she tell a lawyer, if it came to that?
When I told him I was pregnant, he immediately proposed to me with a ring he already had. A two-carat stone. Even though we’d only been together for a few months. After our honeymoon, he surprised me with a big house in a nice neighborhood. He told me I could quit my job.
How dare he? What an asshole?
“Do you think you’re depressed?” he continues when she doesn’t answer. “Like it’s something chemical?”
“I’ve told you before, no.”
She has. Shut him down, dismissed him, acted like he knows nothing.
“Well, how do you know?” he presses. “You certainly seem depressed to me. I think you should be evaluated. Maybe your obstetrician can refer you to someone.”
Another silence. The sidewalk ends and they step down, side by side, their bodies moving in tandem, even as Troy feels so far away from her, his wife.
She isn’t acting like the wife he’s always wanted—it’s as though their marriage broke her, a spell shattered when he slid the ring onto her finger—and he’s livid.
After all his careful plans, she isn’t cooperating.
“I’m not depressed,” Klara says at last. “And I don’t want to talk about this anymore. It feels like you’re cross-examining me.”
Troy detects his fists closing, nails slicing into his palms. “Okay, Klara,” he says, tight with anger. Because it’s not. It’s not okay at all.
The day passes stilted and separate. Troy fumes.
Klara doesn’t feel like cooking—she never seems to feel like cooking anymore—so he picks up takeout and they eat in front of the television. She chose a bland noodle dish, grease seeping through the bottom of the cardboard container. He can see it glistening on her thighs.
He wishes she’d eat better. She wasn’t wrong, what she said on their walk. She doesn’t look pregnant yet; she just looks like she’s getting fat.
Her gaze is blank, trained on the screen, avoiding his, avoiding him.
The only time she looked at him was when they stood in the kitchen, sorting out their meals and utensils, and he poured himself a glass of red wine.
She stared at him disdainfully, hand covering her mouth and nose.
He watched her as he took a long, slow sip.
It’s only eight when Klara tells him she’s too tired and wants to go to bed.
She’s in the shower for what feels like an hour.
Troy stays downstairs, hears the water rushing, wondering when she’ll ever welcome him in again.
He misses when they’d shower together, how he’d wash her body with his hands.
He doesn’t understand. He’s been so careful.
He watches the next episode of their current show, which will probably annoy her.
She can add it to her list of absurd transgressions.
Once he suspects she’s fallen asleep—once she should be asleep, considering how tired she claimed to be—he ascends the stairs on whisper-soft feet.
He slips into their bedroom, to Klara’s side of the bed, the folds of white comforter around her, tucked beneath her chin.
He stands there and watches her for a long time, far longer than is necessary to ensure that she isn’t awake.
She’s well practiced at pretending to be asleep, but this time he can tell that it’s real.
Her mouth is gaping open in a way that’s more grotesque than he ever thought her capable of appearing, and she’s snoring faintly.
She’s started snoring in the past few weeks.
He suspects it’s related to her pregnancy, and he hopes it will subside soon.
His side of the bed is still neatly made, his pillow resting on top, and he could pick it up, hold it over her face. He could press it down and count and wait. She probably wouldn’t even put up much of a fight.
He doesn’t want to do that, but he could, and this is a fact that gives him comfort.
Instead, he gently unplugs her phone from her charger, watching her the whole time. The screen lights, and he slides it into his pocket, then creeps away. She doesn’t stir.