2. Dulcie
DULCIE
The box sits on our hall table while Magnus takes a call.
He carries his phone into the study without removing his coat. I hear him ask somebody for a number, reject it, and ask again. By the time I hang up my coat and put my work bag on the bench, he has settled whatever was wrong.
I stand looking at the ribbon.
There are rooms in this Beacon Hill house I still enter as if I might be interrupting.
The sitting room with the pale chairs. The formal dining room we seldom use.
His study, even when the door is open. I put my books on the sitting-room shelves after we married, finding spaces between things that were already there.
I have been trying not to take up too much room.
He comes out loosening his tie. “Have you eaten?”
“No.”
“We’ll order something.”
“Why did you let her do it?”
He stops with one hand at his collar. “We’ve had this conversation.”
“No. You told me to stop having it.”
His eyes narrow. I can still feel the cold in my feet. I should sit down, put them up, drink water. Instead, I stay by the table because if I go and make myself comfortable, he will think we have finished.
“Cressida made a thoughtful gesture.”
“She chose our baby’s name.”
“She suggested a name. I approved it.”
“Then why didn’t you suggest it to me?”
“Would you have considered it?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t get the chance.”
He walks past me into the sitting room. I follow him, angry at how easily my body accepts that small direction. He has not asked me to follow. He simply moves, and I go where the conversation might continue.
His tie lands across the arm of a chair. He removes his watch and sets it on the side table. These are the ordinary movements of a husband coming home, and I resent the way I notice his wrists. The rolled edge of his cuff. The dark stubble beginning along his jaw.
I wish wanting him required him to be kinder to me.
“Benedict was her father,” I say.
“He was a man I respected.”
“We could have talked about that.”
“You made it impossible to talk about anything in that shop.”
“I asked a question.”
“You contradicted me in front of people.”
The answer is so bald that I take a moment to understand it. “Am I only allowed to disagree where nobody can hear?”
“You’re allowed to exercise some judgment.”
I sit because my legs have begun to hurt. It feels like losing ground. He remains standing, looking down at me with the patience he uses when someone has failed to grasp a simple instruction.
“I thought we were going to choose things together.”
“We do.”
“Name one.”
“The house is full of things you’ve chosen.”
“Books? Cushions?”
“Don’t dismiss them because they don’t suit your argument.”
“Our child isn’t a cushion.”
He exhales through his nose and looks toward the window. I know that movement too. It comes before he tells me I am tired, or making something larger than it needs to be, or refusing a solution because I prefer the fight.
“You have a good life, Dulcie.”
“I know what this house costs.”
“Then perhaps you could remember it before behaving as though my family has done you an injury.”
For a moment I see the small restaurant where he asked me to marry him.
No audience, no photographer. His hand around mine on the table, his voice certain when he said he wanted a family with me.
I had laughed because I was frightened by how much I wanted to say yes.
He had waited until I stopped laughing and asked again.
I remember thinking a man who knew exactly what he wanted could never leave me wondering where I stood.
I press my fingers against my eyelids. “I didn’t marry you for a good life.”
“Then stop looking for reasons to be unhappy in one.”
He comes closer. The cushion dips beside me, and the familiar scent of him reaches me before he touches me. Clean wool, his soap, the faint warmth of his skin. He takes my hand away from my face.
“Look at me.”
I do, because I still want him to have an answer I haven’t thought of. Something that makes this afternoon survivable without changing what I believe about us.
His gaze drops to my mouth.
“Magnus.”
“You’ve worked yourself up.”
“I’m trying to talk to you.”
“I’m here.”
He kisses me.
I ought to turn my face away. I know it even as my fingers close around the front of his shirt. The first kiss is familiar enough to hurt; the second makes the breath leave me in a way anger did not.
He knows the angle I like. He knows how to wait until I lean toward him, how to make me feel pursued even while I am the one holding on.
For a little while, I stop trying to shape the next question.
He draws me nearer, careful of my belly, and I turn toward him on the sofa. My palm flattens against his chest. Under the fine cotton, his heartbeat is solid and quick. I am suddenly close to tears from the relief of feeling wanted.
I have missed this all day. Perhaps longer.
He kisses the side of my face, and I close my eyes.
The tension leaves my shoulders before I decide to let it.
I can already feel the shape of the evening he expects: his hand in mine, the stairs, the question left downstairs beside the wrapped gift.
Tomorrow we will be tender with each other over breakfast, and neither of us will mention what tenderness has cost.
His hand closes around the back of my neck. His thumb moves along my jaw, tipping my face up to his.
“There,” he murmurs. “That’s better.”
I go still.
His mouth brushes mine again. I pull back.
“What?”
I look at his hand, then at him. “The name.”
“Dulcie.”
“No. You haven’t answered.”
He lets go of my neck. I move away from him, clumsy on the deep sofa, and he does not try to keep me there. That should not feel like something I need to be grateful for.
My mouth is warm. I can feel the exact place his thumb rested.
“We aren’t doing this again,” he says.
“We never stopped doing it.”
He stands. The space beside me rises, and I am left with my hands in my lap, ashamed of how readily I reached for him.
I don’t want to be ashamed. He is my husband. I should be able to want my husband without wondering what I have agreed to by kissing him.
“Cressida is part of my life,” he says. “She was before you. I won’t have every contact with her turned into an accusation.”
“She isn’t having your baby.”
His expression hardens. “No one suggested she was.”
“Then stop letting her make my decisions.”
“The name stands.”
He picks up his watch.
I watch him fasten it. Something about that ordinary motion undoes me more than shouting would have. We have reached the end of the time he intends to give this. He is putting himself back together while I am still sitting here with his kiss on my mouth.
“I’m sleeping in the guest room tonight.”
He looks up. “Don’t be theatrical.”
“I need to be alone.”
He says nothing as I get to my feet. I take the stairs slowly, one hand on the rail, refusing to look back to see whether he follows.
In our bedroom, I collect my pajamas and toothbrush. I leave my slippers because he bought them for me, then return for them because I am cold and angry and cannot begin separating every useful thing from him tonight.
The guest bed is neatly made. Nobody has turned down a corner. I do it myself.
I wait until I have closed the door to touch my mouth.