Chapter Forty-One #3
My heart beats, a beast ready to shatter.
I have entire chapters of my biography to tell him about.
I take a deep inhale and then I start at the part he already knows.
I remind him that I was diagnosed with some pretty serious mental health issues as a teenager and that I stopped taking a lot of my meds during pregnancy.
“I’m calling Weatherstone first thing. It shouldn’t still fucking hurt. It’s going on nine months. She needs to give you pain meds. Or we’ll find a new doctor.”
“No, no, it’s not that.” This is even harder now. Yes, his first instinct was to pick up the remote, but his second had been my pain level.
For years, Roman had brushed his teeth or shoved down a bar, hardly noticing me medicate in the background.
Then I got pregnant. I left the pink line on the pee stick perched on the sink ledge on a Sunday morning.
We celebrated by stuffing our faces with pierogi, washed down with orange juice with too much pulp.
He went with me to those early appointments when Dr. Weatherstone said I needed a material serum screen and amniocentesis, foreign words we googled when we left.
Like any sensible husband, Roman had weathered the subtle ebbs and flows of being married to me.
I see it in his eyes; he is waiting for me to confess something expected.
That I’ve been feeling depressed and sob in the shower and hate my body so much that I threw out all of my clothes.
Or that I’ve been feeling manic and bought a fishing boat on credit, currently docked in the Rockaways.
“Whatever it is, we’ll figure it out, okay? If my job is good for one fucking thing, it’s the benefits. I can ask HR about that mental health plan add-on…”
I shake my head. I am offering to tell him my darkest secrets and he is trying to fix it—like he always tries to fix things—but I am not a discrepancy on a spreadsheet. I don’t want him to fix me. “Please. Can you not talk to me about fucking co-pays and just listen?”
He holds up his hands, like he’s stepping out of a car expecting a DUI. “I’m here.”
I will deliver the facts nonchalantly. I take out the journals and the smutty magazines and I tell him everything, starting with my abusive stepdad and my mom ignoring how he treated me because she didn’t want to lose him.
I tell him about the strip club and the Gold Star Fashion Modeling Agency.
I point out the girl in the triple-X magazine clipping.
“I think I was nineteen in this one. I didn’t know where to put my hands.
I remember the photographer was like this very old woman who toured with Pink Floyd or Def Leppard or Phish.
I dunno, but she made me feel comfortable. ”
Roman is staring at the girl, not seeing it, not wanting to see it. “Okay, babe? You’re taking the role-playing a bit far, don’t ya think?” He slams the magazines closed. “We shouldn’t do this at home.” He looks to the nursery. “Not with Holden…”
Jesus. Do I need to take out a microscope so he can see that beneath the fake boobs and dyed hair and contacts and old nose and crotchless negligee that the girl in the photo is undeniably his wife? I open the magazines again.
“Can you just look? Why can’t you look?”
Finally he looks at the girl kneeling on satin sheets. He narrows his eyes at her, then he looks at me. Then he sees it. He is listening now.
I tell him how stripping and pornography led to lucrative sex work and a condo on Central Park South with a Malaysian billionaire currently on the lam from the FBI. “I love you. I don’t want to keep anything from you anymore.”
Roman leans his head back on the sofa, rubbing a hand through his floppy bangs.
I always thought that part of what Roman loved about me was that I didn’t share things freely like he did.
But this? This is too much mystery for any sane husband, especially a mild-mannered one with a nice family, a job at an accounting firm, and a big penis.
“So when we met, you were—?”
“No, no. I was a freelance writer, or trying to be. I met you after I left Hu. Or after Daisy left. It’s like it didn’t happen to me.
It was a fugue state or something. I would’ve told you.
Or maybe I wouldn’t have. I don’t know. I saved some money.
I was seeing Dr. Horowitz. I went back to being Emily, I guess, but I was also always me.
Sorry. I realize this doesn’t make any sense. ”
He stands and starts to wildly pace. “Well, don’t you think that’s a bit of a fucking understatement, Emily?
! You’re telling me your entire life has been a lie?
Everything I thought I knew about you? About us?
” He lets out a laugh. “How many men did you—” He stops himself.
“You know what? Don’t fucking tell me.” Again, pacing. “Jesus Christ.”
I remember our first fight about Daisy, how he came so close to calling her a whore.
Is that what he thinks of me now? “Hey. You don’t get to judge me.
” My self-righteousness is building. I hold back.
This is a lot. He needs to vent. “It’s not like I planned it.
I didn’t register for postpartum psychosis along with the BabyZen wipe warmer.
” The silence swells. I take a breath. “I was losing it, Rome. She taught me how to be a mother. I know it doesn’t make any sense. But it’s the truth.”
I explain that falling in love with him, feeling safe and happy with him, having sex in the rental car when we drove to Montauk and swam in the Atlantic and couldn’t afford a motel because we spent our budget on lobster rolls and sweet corn, and driving back that night, windows open, my bare feet on the dash, it brought me back, the real me.
Ordinary. Reliable. Able to orgasm without humping the Velveteen Rabbit.
Roman’s face wavers between queasy and relieved.
Can you imagine finally learning who your spouse—your soulmate—really is?
Is he wondering if he still loves me? Is he wondering if his son will be okay with a mother like this?
I scratched an itch finding Daisy, and now I realize it has torn a hole in my skin.
“Rome? You okay?” I look up to him, a golden retriever begging for a bone.
We haven’t talked about Holden. What if, hearing all this, he decides that I am unfit?
“But Dr. Horowitz says I’m going to be okay now, better than okay, actually,” I add, in my most convincing voice.
“She said this had to happen for me to ‘break through,’ or some of that therapist talk.” He doesn’t reply.
“She offered to meet with you, to meet with both of us, to answer all your questions. I know it’s a lot. ” Still no reply. “Rome?”
“So, what? You had this wild life and then you found me when you needed, what? Like, a safety net? A comedown? Is that what the shrink told you? Give the billionaire criminals a break and find a very average bloke?”
I knew men well enough to know that even the kind, bighearted, forgiving ones will eventually find a way to make it about themselves. “No. No. They were all just business transactions…But you, you made me feel like I could be myself.”
“Oh yeah? Because I don’t even know who the fuck you are.”
We sit in silence on the sofa, as if we are just a typical couple settling in for a Netflix comedy on a Friday night.
Then, finally, when I imagine him leaving, taking Holden, my entire universe collapsing, I feel his hand wiggle into mine.
He turns my face toward his and kisses me.
Then he says, “I guess that explains it…”
“The spectacular blow jobs?” I joke.
But he only inhales the hint of sardines from the bedroom and says, “Turtly.”
He doesn’t have to say anything else. I know that Roman never told anyone else about the “unpleasantness” with the priest at the Holy Cross School for Boys and his pet turtle.
But we’d hardly met when he felt like he could tell me.
He knew that I would understand. Even then, when we’d only begun to learn about each other, he sensed that I’d survived something, too.
He didn’t ask, but he felt it. My sad, secret side.
Without ever saying it aloud, we both knew that together, we could block out all of our past trauma and build a nice, ordinary life for ourselves.
Years ago, I’d lifted Roman out of his own undertow with the sort of empathy that made all things seem doable.
And now, he saves me right back.
—
The sirens outside start to settle. I want to fill in all of Roman’s blanks, tell him as much about those years as I can remember.
He is mostly silent, peppering in a couple of questions.
(“What’s with the mason jar?”) I take a deep breath and plug in the URL.
I guess Daisy scrubbed all her old videos from the web, except for that one.
My mind is blank. Is this a mistake? I sit on the sofa, paralyzed.
He scoots even closer to me. “It’s asking for a credit card. ”
“You think a face like mine is free?” I kid, but he’s serious. He stands to look for his wallet. Misplaced again.
Don’t. Don’t watch. Don’t see me like that.
“Don’t,” I say. He can see that I am paralyzed, terrified of what he will think, but instead I give Roman a very Roman excuse. “You don’t want your credit card on these sites. They’re notorious for fraud.”