Chapter 12
The gallery opening was a dazzling success.
A huge number of people came, art lovers, critics, a good portion of their mailing list, many of Felicity’s friends, professors, and other artists she’d taken classes with.
The Whitfields never showed up and she didn’t care, and Taylor had fun meeting people and chatting with them.
He appeared to be very knowledgeable about art, and acted like Felicity’s staunchest supporter and biggest fan.
The owners of the gallery were very pleased with the turnout, and they sold more than half the paintings in the show, an excellent result for an unknown artist, and they offered her a contract to represent her, which was a huge victory.
The art critics who had come to see the show had all made favorable comments.
She looked as though a thousand-pound weight had been lifted from her shoulders.
When it became clear that the evening was a success, and people were buying her paintings, Taylor had leaned close to her and whispered, “You see, I told you I would bring you luck,” he said, leering at her, and brushed one of her breasts with his hand drifting past it seemingly by accident.
She hadn’t felt lucky when he was slamming into her and bit her nipple when it was over.
It still hurt at the party and would leave a mark.
“Sex before an important event is a must,” he added.
What disturbed her was that what passed between them now was always sex and not love, and it was too aggressive and he hurt her.
It was always just over the line, and made her feel diminished and disrespected afterward, and it was only consenting because she didn’t try to stop him when he was on a tear.
When he wanted to take her, he did, without apology later.
He felt he had a right to her now, even more so once he knew she was pregnant.
She was his property, an object he could do whatever he wanted with, and she didn’t know how to get their relationship back to what it had been when he was gentle and seductive with her.
Now she was a possession he could treat however he wanted, and gently trying to get him back over the line wasn’t working.
He didn’t care what she said. The more she tried to object, the better he liked it.
It made him feel powerful. She could see it in his eyes when he hammered into her, he loved that he was taking what she didn’t want to give.
Her body was some kind of prize now, or a toy for him to play with.
It was dehumanizing, which he didn’t seem to understand and didn’t want to.
He suddenly had a thirst for violence and wanted to hurt her.
There was no one she could talk to about it.
She didn’t feel comfortable telling her sister, and she didn’t want to upset her mother.
So it remained their secret, and he knew she wouldn’t tell anyone, it was too embarrassing.
But she was sure that it was abuse of some kind, or a power game he needed to play with her to remind her that he owned her and the deciding voice was always his as to when they had sex, how and where.
His old tenderness had disappeared and had been replaced by violent, aggressive sex that almost always left her injured.
She didn’t even dare ask her doctor if it was bad for the baby.
She couldn’t imagine that it was good, and a few times now she had had cramps afterward.
* * *
After the gallery show, she had to turn her attention to the wedding, to help her mother.
They worked out the seating for three hundred and forty-seven guests, more than half of them attributed to the Whitfields.
They had invited nearly every member of Phillip’s club, all of the friends Elizabeth played bridge with, whom Felicity had never met.
In fact, she realized when reading the guest list that she knew less than a hundred of the people on it, barely a quarter of the guests.
The rest were all Whitfield invites. Dominique had also invited very few people.
She wanted to leave room for Taylor and Felicity’s friends, and he had invited his friends from work, his colleagues, the people he played squash with, old friends from college.
There were very few people that Felicity was close to or even knew.
She had invited her favorite art professors and many fellow artists.
She didn’t want to cause some of her artist friends embarrassment since they didn’t own a tux and couldn’t afford to rent one, so she left them off the list.
She hadn’t seen Taylor’s parents since the night they had accused her of being pregnant by someone other than Taylor, and she had avoided them intentionally.
There were three showers for her in the two weeks before the wedding, and Taylor’s mother had given a tea for her, which Felicity didn’t dare refuse, but they hadn’t spoken to each other.
She had used the family silver tea service and the best china.
It was a boring event and the guests gave her embroidered handkerchiefs and napkins and items she knew she’d never use.
Her own friends were more generous and more practical, and many of her artist friends had given them pieces of their work, which meant a lot to her, and which Taylor didn’t particularly like.
Felicity was engaged in something to do with the wedding every day now.
She could no longer avoid it, but Taylor was in a good mood, and had a ball at his bachelor party, which was a three-day affair in Miami, and she heard a rumor that it had included Cuban hookers and didn’t try to find out more about it.
She didn’t want to know, but it didn’t surprise her.
For all his appearance of tradition and propriety, sex in all its forms, even violent, was one of his favorite activities, almost like a sport.
He liked hookers and sex toys, although he had never used them with her, and she had told him early on that she didn’t like them.
But Taylor was a lot racier than she had first thought.
He came back from Miami delighted after whatever had gone on there.
Felicity had been to her doctor by then and had another sonogram.
The fetus looked even more distinctly like a baby now, and had been sucking its thumb, with a strong heartbeat, and the genetic blood tests had indicated no anomalies and determined that it was a boy.
She asked Taylor to go to the appointment with her, but he was busy so she went alone.
Looking at the screen, she tried to feel some kind of bond with the baby, but she didn’t yet.
She just lay on the exam table and cried when she saw it, sad that there was so little joy to celebrate its existence, but maybe that would come later, as her mother said.
She had told no one about it yet, not even her sister.
It seemed like such an adult subject, having a baby, being a parent, she wasn’t ready to be that much of an adult, and was planning to tell Violet after the wedding.
She had a small smooth round bump about the size of her palm that she could feel to the touch when she lay down.
But it didn’t show when she was dressed.
There was no visible hint of a pregnancy, and it wouldn’t show in her wedding dress.
Taylor had noticed the bump when she lay naked, but he didn’t seem to have any particular attachment to it either.
As an only child, there had been no babies or children in his life.
The baby was only an abstract concept to him and not a reality, although he had fought hard for its life and then lost interest in it once it was too late to abort it.
Although the heartbeat was strong on the sonogram, Felicity felt no sign of life yet.
She wasn’t ready for that anyway, and wasn’t eager to feel it.
She was tolerating its presence for the moment, which was the best she could do, and it hadn’t inconvenienced her so far, although the very idea of it was still terrifying, and she ignored it as much as possible or she’d have been scared out of her wits.
She thought about the wedding instead, which was scary enough.
All the details were taken care of, and Dominique had attended to everything, so Felicity didn’t have to.
Her assistants helped her. Felicity had been too busy with her show to pay attention to the wedding until the final days leading up to it.
* * *
Eileen had been trapped at home, a prisoner in bed, for a month by the time Felicity had her art show.
And Bill was still her willing hostage. It was becoming obvious that there was no end in sight.
She would recover, but it was going to be a long haul.
Very long. They had hired one more nurse, but they needed twenty-one shifts a week, and no one wanted to work full-time over the summer.
And someone had to cook for Eileen and her nurses.
And with no chef, Bill was either cooking or helping to move Eileen at all hours of the day and night.
She didn’t trust the nurses and only wanted him.
Both his boys were going away for the summer, one to the West Coast to a logging camp in Oregon for a summer job, the other to a startup in London, by people who were friends of Bill’s.
With the boys away, there was even less chance that he’d find an excuse to come to the city.
Working from home seemed to be adequate for him.
He hadn’t been to the city in five weeks, nor seen Dominique in six weeks, and the life was slowly being squeezed out of her and the relationship.
It was even worse than her mother had predicted and there was no hiding from it anymore.
Bill had a furnished studio he rented in the city, as a cover for his nights with Dominique. He hadn’t seen it in months.