Chapter Five #3
I wish I could exist in whatever world Harold is in right now, holding an entirely different conversation parallel to ours. “Actually,” I say, “our news is that we’re thinking about getting a dog.”
“We are not.” Nicholas’s grip on his fork tightens.
I sip my cranberry juice. It’s revolting. “Something small, that yaps a lot. Maybe a terrier or a chihuahua.”
A muscle in his cheek jumps.
“Maybe we’ll get a cat, too,” he suggests.
Deborah looks at me, frowning. “Isn’t Naomi allergic to cats?”
“Is she?” He smiles at his clean plate. He’s finished all his food, even the bits of creamy mushroom that I know he doesn’t like. What a good little boy. I bet his tail is wagging in anticipation of being petted.
Nicholas pretends to consider. “Two cats, maybe, so the one won’t be lonely.”
“I’ve been thinking,” I interrupt. Our dysfunction is growing increasingly evident. Even Harold is paying attention now. “About keeping my maiden name. It’s what a lot of women are doing now.”
This doesn’t bother Deborah in the least. She’s glad to hear it, I’m sure. Fewer women to share her name with. Unfazed, I change tacks.
“Actually . . .” I tease out the word. “Nowadays, sometimes it’s the man who changes his name. Nicholas Westfield has a certain charm to it.”
“He can’t change his name!” Deborah cries.
“Why not? Women do it all the time. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.”
Nicholas doesn’t dignify this with a retort, shaking his head at me.
“That’s ridiculous,” his mother huffs. “He has a lovely last name. Not that yours isn’t .
. . nice . . . but it’s not quite as special as Rose, now, is it?
Dr. Rose is how he’s known in this community.
He can’t change it now. And I’m sure he’ll want his children to carry on the family name, too. ”
“We’re not having children,” I declare. “I’m barren. I lost my uterus in a Ponzi scheme.”
Nicholas throws his fork down with a clatter and stands. His business of moving around is loud, but not loud enough to disguise his mother’s startled cry. “It’s getting late.” He scowls at me. “Come on, Naomi.”
I wave a hand over my plate, feigning incomprehension. “But I haven’t finished yet.”
He grabs my hand. “Oh, you’re done.”
Nicholas all but throws me over his shoulder to get me out of that house.
I can feel that my face is flushed with triumph and I know my eyes are bright and shining.
A complete basket case. This is how I want to look in the picture we use for invitations.
I wish I could fall down and laugh until my ribs crack, but he drags me out the door. Every muscle in his body is tense.
“Thanks for dinner!” I crow behind me. “Your adult son and I are so grateful!”
“Stop saying that,” he snaps, tugging my arm when I try to dig my heel into one of the flowers in the yard.
“Stop thanking them for dinner? That’s not very nice manners, Nicky.”
He and I suffer each other in silence on the car ride home, preparing our arguments in our heads. As soon as we pull up under the halo of our streetlight we get out and round the car, doors slamming with hurricane force.
“Don’t slam my car door.” As if he didn’t do the same.
He’s in love with his status symbol of a car and would probably marry it if it were socially acceptable.
“Your car isn’t that good-looking and didn’t even win the J.D.
Power award. I hope a bird craps on it every single day for all eternity.
” Right on the windshield in front of his face, a big white splat.
“You’re just mad because you drive a woolly mammoth.”
“There’s nothing wrong with my car.”
“I’m sure it was in top form once. In 1999.”
Listen to this man’s privilege. He’s probably never driven a car that was more than two years old. “I buy what I can afford. Not all of us have rich parents who paid our tuition at swanky New England schools.”
“You want to go to college? Then go to college! Don’t punish me for being successful enough to buy a nice vehicle.”
And we’ve come to the crux of it. Naomi doesn’t have a college degree.
Naomi doesn’t have a fancy car. How do we measure her value without these must-haves?
I think about my parents saying I should have worked harder and applied for scholarships.
I think about Nicholas’s remark at game night that I don’t need a job, and how no one believes in me.
I wish I could go back in time and slam his car door twice.
I let his stride overtake mine so that I enter the house second; this way, I get to shut the door as hard as I want.
The walls vibrate, floorboards shifting like tectonic plates.
The ceiling fractures apart into a road map of jagged black lines.
He and I square off, battle-ready, the room hazing crimson and pulsating with animosity.
“There’s nothing wrong with your gas gauge,” I tell him. It’s one of the meanest things I could ever say. “You can’t admit you didn’t notice your fuel was low.”
His eyes are crazed. At game night, I realized they change colors, and right now his eyes are the color of four horsemen heralding Armageddon, riding forth on beasts whipped from storm clouds.
I can practically see the lightning flash, illuminating a rain of locusts.
He drags a hand through his hair and messes it all up.
A colorful wheel of insults cranks through his head and notches on one I didn’t expect.
“I don’t like your spaghetti. It tastes like nothing.”
Whatever. He’s just giving me an excuse not to cook. “I don’t like your dumb How to Train Your Dragon tie.”
He’s so proud of that tie, because it features Toothless the dragon. A clever pun when you’re in the teeth profession.
Rage burns a red rash across his cheekbones. “You take that back.”
I shrug, smiling inwardly. It’s a malicious smile all for myself, but I think he sees it because of the look he gives me.
“Sometimes I don’t know why I try with you.”
I agree. “Yeah, why do you?”
He combusts. “Giving me shit about my mother constantly, like I don’t already know how difficult she makes our lives.
You harping on me, and throwing me to the wolves all the time, doesn’t make it any better!
You’re not such a peach yourself, Naomi.
You think there aren’t things about you that drive me insane?
You think I don’t feel held back from realizing my true potential? ”
His chest is heaving and he looks like he might run out the door and never come back. To make him even angrier, I let out a pop of laughter. “Please enlighten me, Nicholas, as to how I am holding you back.”
Oh, he’s riled. He’s hands on hips, tie yanked loose, so upset I can see his skin retracting as a shadow of stubble breaks through.
His mouth is a slash of contempt. His eyes dip to the Steelers logo on my hoodie and he clenches his jaw so tight I know there’s a hairline fracture there with my name on it.
An X-ray technician will be astounded to see the word Naomi etched into his bones one day.
“For one, I hate this house.”
My eyebrows arch so high, they nearly touch my bangs. “You picked it.”
After eleven months of dating, we packed up our solo lives and came here to be one unit.
It was the first rental house we looked at.
We were dripping with vitality and butterflies, making grand plans.
We’ll build shelves. Maybe the landlord will let us retile the bathroom.
Doing projects together will be so fun! Recalling happier times is like trying to remember a dream I had a hundred years ago—it’s all a warped blur that no longer makes sense.
When we toured the house, we were so dreamy over our love nest that we didn’t take into consideration that the limited street parking would make it a pain to accommodate two cars.
We didn’t notice the floors weren’t level, which means every time I drop my ChapStick I have to chase it before it rolls under the furniture.
We didn’t think about the fact that there was only one spare room that could be turned into an office.
Which went to him, naturally.
“Sometimes my judgment’s hasty,” he shoots back, making it clear he’s talking about proposing to me. “I don’t like the street we’re on, or this neighborhood. Morris is actually a scenic town if you’re in the right spot, and we moved smack-dab where it’s ugliest. There’s nothing here.”
He can see the question mark on my face. “I’d rather be closer to nature!” he blurts. “All these woods, all this countryside around us, and here we sit with a backyard so small you could spit across it.”
“So, what?” I prompt. “You want to be one of those guys in a Nature Valley ad? Sitting on a mountain with your Labrador retriever, getting a hard-on over the smell of trees?”
“Yeah!” he nearly yells. “I want that. I think that’s how I’d thrive. But you’re not going to let me thrive, Naomi. I can already tell. You’re content right here in your cement prison—”
“Oh god.” I roll my eyes so hard, I see the spirit realm. “Take up hiking.”
“—begging to get seasonal depression by locking yourself in a dark room and never going outside. Going to work doesn’t count because you’re still sitting in a car during transit.
And I see you, Naomi. I see you never looking at the sky or taking the time to stop and smell the—” He sees how excited I am for him to finish that sentence and he kills it abruptly. “You’re barely living, you know.”
“I had no idea you were so thirsty to be one with nature.” I use air quotes around one with nature. He hates it when people use air quotes. “What the hell kind of YouTube videos have you been watching in there on your computer wife? Seriously, where is this coming from?”
“MY HEART,” he roars, and he’s so sincere and agitated that I double over in a fit of laughter. “Shut up! Stop laughing.” He’s pacing now. He’s been putting some deep thought into this. Who is this man in my living room with Armageddon eyes and a yearning desire to skip rocks across a lake?
“I want a helmet with a flashlight on it,” he’s raving. “I want a fireplace. A shotgun in case of coyotes. I want shovels and a shed to put them in. I want a canoe.”
“Don’t let me stop you from getting a canoe,” I say, dead serious. “Nicholas, I’m here to support all your dreams. Please, go get a canoe. I’d love nothing more than to watch you paddle out into the middle of a lake.”
“I need to feel alive!”
“I think what you need is a granola bar and maybe a trial run with the Eagle Scouts.”
“I knew you wouldn’t take me seriously. That’s why I haven’t said anything.
But I’m not keeping it bottled up anymore, Naomi, I swear to god.
I’m going to start living the way I want.
I’m going to have the life I want, everything I want, no matter what it takes.
I don’t have forever; I’m already in my thirties. ”
“You’re right, you’re practically an old man. Your time is now! Start living your best life.”
“I’m serious.” He pinches a nickel that’s sitting on the TV stand. “Heads, we start doing things my way. Tails, we stay the same.”
“You want to plan our lives based on a coin toss? That sounds about right.” I wish he’d flip a coin to decide the fate of our relationship while he’s at it. Heads, we break up. Tails, we flip the coin again. We could quit each other right now and blame it all on the coin.
He flips the nickel. It lands on the back of his hand. Nicholas stares at the glimmer of silver.
“Well?”
“I guess you’ll find out.”
“Fabulous, be sure to keep me in the loop.” I sprawl out on our three-seater, arrowing a lazy smile up at him. “Good night.”
“Good night? If you want me to go to bed, then you’re going to have to move. I’m taking the couch tonight.”
“No, you can have your bed full of Skittles. I’m staying right here.”
He storms back to the bedroom and closes the door with a barely audible snick that’s somehow even worse than if he’d shut it violently. I hear the lock turn, and then it’s just me alone in the silence.
We’ve never yelled at each other before.
We’re usually so wary of rocking the boat that we’re maybe only eighty percent honest with each other.
We’ve both dialed it up to one hundred for once, and logically I know I shouldn’t feel better now but I kind of do.
As the minutes tick by and I listen to his dresser drawers close, our mattress springs compressing as he rolls over them as furiously as he can manage, I have an intriguing revelation.
We’ve been together for almost two years, and this is our first real fight.