Chapter 3
Orangeburg, South Carolina
By the time Helena finally got up the energy to go inside, it was nearly seven at night.
Slowly, methodically, she put her groceries away, then poured a can of vegetarian chili into a pan and stirred it till it bubbled and popped.
She sat at the kitchen table, eating and trying to clear her mind.
Today had been a nightmare, but it was over.
She could sit in front of the television and watch whatever movie came to mind.
Something funny, maybe. She couldn’t remember the last time she laughed.
Helena left the pot soaking in the sink and changed into a pair of sweatpants.
In the easy chair, she wrapped herself in blankets and searched through her two streaming platforms till she landed on a show that seemed vaguely romantic and vaguely comedic.
Although romance was out of the question for the rest of her life, she liked living inside other people’s romantic fantasies.
It reminded her of her past, of the life she’d been allowed to have before the diagnosis, before she’d lost so much.
She told herself she couldn’t think about Elliott, not tonight. Maybe she’d deal with the emotional fallout tomorrow, or the next day. Maybe she’d call that therapist she’d seen for a while, the one who’d told her to have more grace for herself.
But within the first ten minutes of the television show, Helena’s phone rang.
It was a strange sound, as Helena wasn’t used to being contacted. A shiver ran down her spine as she knew it could only be from one of two people. She ignored the first try. But when it rang a half-hour after that, she forced herself to walk into the kitchen and retrieve her cell.
The ID read: Husband.
She couldn’t believe she hadn’t changed it.
Helena gaped at the word “husband” for a long time, wondering what good could come of this.
Wasn’t it better to ignore, block, and move on?
Then again, seeing Elliott today had triggered something in her imagination.
It had been ages since they’d spoken to one another.
It had been ages since Helena had spoken to anyone about how she was.
Maybe curiosity led her to answer it. But when she did, she didn’t say anything. She held the phone to her ear and waited. What on earth did Elliott want to say?
“Helena?” He said it after several strangled-sounding breaths. “Helena, are you there?”
“Elliott,” Helena said, then winced. She hated how good it was to hear her name in his voice. She hated how good it was to say his back.
“Hey. Thanks for answering.” Elliott sounded nervous. “How are you?”
Helena staggered back to her easy chair and bundled herself in blankets. She knew he knew how he was, as she knew that Meg had told him what she looked like. He didn’t know about the diagnosis, and she’d never wanted to tell him.
“I’m great,” Helena lied. “How are you doing?”
“Oh, fine. I mean.” Elliott tried to laugh. “You know, I thought you’d skipped town. I figured you’d be somewhere like LA by now, building your art career. Honestly, it’s strange. In a town as small as Orangeburg, you would have thought we’d run into each other.”
It stung, especially given the fact that Helena hadn’t felt strong enough to so much as raise a paintbrush in nearly a year. “Orangeburg has a power over me, I guess,” she said.
“It has a power over all of us,” he said. “Remember how we always said we were going to get out of this town? I guess that was even back in middle school. We had all those dreams about moving to Europe.”
Helena could picture them: preteens, basically, reading Hemingway for the first time, pretending they could have different lives.
She could see them after that, even their first kisses, their first “I love yous,” their first decisions together.
They’d graduated in the same year and gone on to the same university, where she’d majored in art and he’d majored in business with a music minor.
She wondered if he still played the alto saxophone anymore. She guessed he didn’t.
They’d gotten married immediately after college.
There had been talk about moving to LA or New York City, but they’d come back to Orangeburg first, as both Helena’s mother and Elliott’s father were ill, and they wanted to be around to take care of things.
Eventually, they’d bought the house—probably the house from which Elliott spoke right now and dug their roots deeper and deeper.
They’d talked about having kids, and then they’d begun trying to have children, but months had turned into years, and no children had come.
By then, Helena’s mother’s illness had returned, and Elliott’s father was dead. Everything in life had felt grim and purposeless. That wasn’t really the energy you wanted to bring into parenting.
When Helena asked herself, now, why she and Elliott had gotten divorced five years ago, which felt remarkable, she remembered their final full year together.
It had been 2020, the COVID year, and everything in the world had shut down.
At nearly forty years old, their busy lives had suddenly halted, and they’d shut their doors and turned toward one another.
Helena had been so excited to spend more time with Elliott.
His world—working for the sales division at an app she didn’t really understand—was not her world.
But they’d been married for nearly twenty years, at that point, and she was anxious to discover who they were to one another, now.
She was eager to feel at peace in the love they’d been building since they were fourteen years old.
At first, during lockdown, Elliott had been charming and funny.
He’d invented new dinner recipes, and he’d written songs.
They’d worked on a painting together, stretching an enormous canvas in the garage and hurling colors at it.
They’d read plays together, saying the lines aloud and striding through the kitchen.
When faced with what parents of children had to go through during lockdown—full-time parenting alongside full-time schooling—Helena had felt sort of grateful not to be a mother.
It was she and Elliott against the world.
But at some point around September or October, there’d been an emotional shift.
Suddenly, Elliott seemed irritated with Helena.
Nothing she did was good enough: not the way she vacuumed nor the way she styled her hair.
He picked fights about the stupidest things.
Helena wondered if something was wrong at work.
She didn’t think for a second that she and Elliott would break up.
They’d been together for most of their lives.
It was around this time, incidentally, that Helena had first noticed an incredible, all-encompassing fatigue.
She’d thought she had COVID, but her tests were constantly negative, so she chalked it up to a vitamin deficiency and ate salad after salad and plenty of meat.
But her fatigue did little to calm Elliott down.
He used her body’s inability to do all the things he could do as a thing against her.
When Elliott asked for a divorce in February of 2021, Helena was in bed. She’d been in bed for the better part of the week, exhausted and struggling to walk. She couldn’t fight Elliott. She couldn’t tell him that she was beginning to think something was really wrong.
Elliott said, “I think maybe you’re really depressed or something. But I have emotional problems of my own. I have to start thinking about myself and what I want the rest of my life to look like.”
Helena nodded, curled into a ball, and slept the rest of the day.
When she woke up the following morning, there were numerous missed calls from her mother.
Elliott had told her mother that Helena needed to move out and find somewhere to stay for the foreseeable future.
In the voice message that her mother had left, her mother said, “I don’t know what’s gotten into him.
Unless you’re not happy in the marriage anymore? Honey, are you having an affair?”
Helena had been speechless. An affair? Her mother thought she was having an affair?
She’d gotten out of bed and limped through her house, searching for Elliott.
Maybe he’d pop out of the kitchen and say, “Just kidding!” and the nightmare would be over.
But instead, she found a note on the kitchen table from him, explaining that he was going on a business trip and that he wanted her to be gone by the time he got back.
Again, Helena was speechless. But she knew Elliott was the one who paid the majority of the mortgage.
It wasn’t like she could live here on her own, given what she earned as an artist.
She packed two suitcases, put them in her 2004 Chevy, and drove to her mother and father’s place. As soon as she walked through the door, she burst into tears.
But now, on the phone with Elliott for the first time since before they’d signed the divorce papers in 2021, she was floored to feel all these exhilarating, romantic feelings for him. She’d never stopped loving him, not even after he’d kicked her out. Did that make her a fool?
“Listen, I wanted to call because I saw you today,” Elliott said, his voice deepening. “I was in the grocery store parking lot when you came out. Helena, I’m worried about you.”
Helena rolled her eyes into the back of her head.
“What’s going on?” he asked, a note of panic in his voice. “I mean, are you not eating enough?”
Helena was amazed that he’d think that, given how much of a foodie she’d been when they’d been together. She’d been the one begging to try new restaurants. She’d been the one to put together their decadent dinners.
She realized that he thought she was starving herself because she missed him so much, as if that would ever happen.
“I’m really okay,” she told him again. “What’s going on with you?”
Elliott sighed again. Helena was beginning to think they were in an awful, post-divorce game. Previously, they’d told each other everything. Now, they told each other nothing.
But Helena could still remember what he smelled like. What was that about?
“I wanted to confess something to you,” Elliott said finally.
Helena closed her eyes. Panic rolled through her. She wanted to tell him that she wasn’t in the mood for confessions. She wasn’t emotionally ready. But she’d just told him she was fine.
“I know you saw Meg today,” Elliott said. “I’m guessing you saw that she was…”
“That she was what?” Helena asked finally, when the nerves set in.
“She’s pregnant. With my baby,” Elliott said.
Helena felt the weight of the world on her shoulders. She hadn’t realized Meg was pregnant, although her hair had been lush and flowing, and she’d looked like a portrait of vitality.
“I see,” Helena said.
“Yeah. Well. I figured you’d learn it eventually, and I wanted you to learn it from me,” Elliott said. He thought of himself as the good guy, the hero. “But there’s more.”
Of course there was, Helena thought.
“Meg and I got together before you and me split up,” Elliott said. “We were having an affair.”
Helena pressed her hand over her mouth and told herself not to scream. She remembered how Elliott’s mood had shifted, how he’d become someone else. He’d wanted to shove Helena out of his life and replace her with Meg—one of their friends.
She wondered if Meg’s ex-husband knew. She guessed he did, as everyone in Orangeburg knew everything about everyone else.
Well, they didn’t know anything about Helena, at least, not till today.
A jolt of anger went through Helena, surprising her. “Why are you telling me this?”
After all, it didn’t matter if he’d been having an affair, not now that they’d been divorced for five years. They had different lives because they were strangers.
He sighed. “I guess I wanted to clear my conscience. Before the baby comes.”
Helena hung up on him after that. In the silence of her living room afterward, she gasped for air before finally getting up the energy to go to the kitchen and drink a glass of water.
She couldn’t believe she’d ever pledged her life to that man.