June, this year #3
Chris washes my dish in the kitchen as I rise, slowly, from my seat. A bath is a pretty great idea about now. It will calm me, soothe my nerves, help me think. Not that I can think my way out of this impossible situation.
I turn to the wall of shelving behind my chair. Me and Chris in sunny locations, and one of us in New York. And the biggest framed print of all . . . a wedding photo.
Me, in a white dress, elegant and strapless. Chris looking handsome in a black tux, his dark skin contrasting with my ivory paleness. We’re in a garden somewhere I don’t recognize.
We’re married?
I check my left hand for a wedding or engagement ring that I might not yet have noticed. Nothing. And I’d have seen them, anyways, while I was driving.
“Hey,” I call out to Chris, feigning nonchalance. “Do you remember where I left my rings?”
He emerges from the kitchen, wiping his hands on a towel.
“You really have hit your head. We put them back in the box for safekeeping — you said you’d get them resized tomorrow, remember?
Now you can stop pretending they aren’t too big.
” He grins at me. “The box is on the dresser. But if you don’t feel like going to the jewelry store tomorrow, I can do it. ”
“Oh,” I reply. “Right. Yeah, of course. Thanks. That would be great.”
He throws the towel through the kitchen pass-through, and gives me a kiss on my cheek. “I’ll run that bath. Lots of bubbles.”
“Perfect.”
As he goes upstairs, I stare back at myself, smiling uncertainly in my wedding dress, Chris beaming beside me.
How in the world did we get from my version of events, in which I was always half-in and half-out of my relationship with Chris, to a world where we are married? It seems impossible.
I examine it closer. Do my eyes look kind of dead in that photo, like I’m going through the motions, but not really there? Or am I imagining it?
I study the rest of the collection of memories.
They’re all cheerful images of vacations and festive holidays, but they have this weird look of royalty-free stock photography.
“Image search: happy, interracial young married couple.” Like everything is posed for effect.
But maybe it just feels that way because this isn’t my life.
“Hey, honey, your bath is ready!” Chris calls from upstairs.
I’m pulled out of my musings and make my way up the narrow staircase.
A small landing leads to a main bedroom with a large dormer window and in-built closets, and another open door reveals a small second bedroom with a skylight and an office desk.
The third door is a bathroom, also with a sloping roof, and a clawfoot tub full of aromatic bubbles.
Chris squeezes past me on the landing, planting a gentle kiss on my temple, just beside my bruise, before heading back down the stairs. I undress in the bathroom — after locking the door behind me — and slide into the steaming bath.
I’m grateful for the comfort of the warm water and lavender foam, but my mind is reeling.
What is happening to me?
Like a weird version of grief, I’m getting hit by waves of overwhelm that crash over me and then recede.
In moments, everything feels surprisingly normal, given that I’ve been catapulted into the wrong version of my life.
Maybe like some kind of muscle memory of existing in this world — this body is accustomed to being here, after all, even if my own mind isn’t.
But at other moments, like now, I’m suddenly nauseous with fear about being ripped from my world, my home, the people I love and who love me. And the terror that I’ll never be able to go back. That there is no going back.
I close my eyes, and sink further into the water, my nose just above the bubbles.
Maybe everything will be fine. Even if I can’t figure out how to get home, maybe I’ll be okay here.
After all, this seems to be a good life, right?
At least it’s safe, and warm. Cute home, adoring husband.
Like I told Stephen the other night, things could always be so much worse.
But this isn’t my life, so it’s impossible to imagine being fully happy here. I can’t even imagine ever truly falling in love with Chris, given my experience of our relationship.
How had our relationship changed so much that I ended up marrying him? He’d mentioned earlier we’d been “off and on” through Northwestern, and that I’d gone traveling for a long time. And that I didn’t really have anybody but him.
That I needed him.
Is that why I married him? For some reason, I’m not close to Bonnie or Ben in this weird timeline, so maybe he really was all I had.
Maybe I was just forced to settle because I had nobody else in my life.
Then again, it’s possible that those circumstances changed everything for me, and I grew to really love him, and we’re happy together.
Or, at least, the Millie who married him is happy.
But I’m not her. And I’m not sure I could ever be happy, living out my days with Chris — no matter how great he is.
The question is, am I stuck here forever, or is there a way home?