I’ve taken to looping hair elastics through the buttonholes of my pants, an extra inch of waistband. I’m wearing the baby low and inward, a secret I cradle.
Ed curves his body against mine when he comes to bed, his bearded mouth against my neck. “It’s going to happen soon, love,” he says. Since the legislature ended, he’s been home a bit earlier—not every night, but a few of them, at least. He’s attentive and tender and quieter than usual.
But he still hasn’t noticed.
It’s a teaching day, and my car is in the shop, so Ed is driving me. Our cigarettes are lit, the radio on, a good excuse not to talk. He likes quiet in the morning.
If we speak at all, we speak of insignificance in its many forms—how ready we are for summer, the camping trips we’ll take, the upcoming dinner with Pete and Bonnie.
Ed kisses me in the parking lot, barely brushing my lips, and tries to rush off. But I grab hold of him. “Walk me to my classroom?”
“Laura, you know how busy I am. Come on.”
“Please,” I say. “I just want a little more time with you.” I can see how much he wants to say no. “Just a few more minutes?”
He recognizes something in his brain, and his face warms—bright eyes and that winning Edmund Malinowski smile that gets him nearly anything he wants. What tool has he found in there? What psychological detail? Small bits of attention can outweigh years of neglect.
He holds my hand as we climb the stairs, and at the door of my classroom, he kisses me the way he does in our bedroom.
“I’m part of this place now,” I whisper against his mouth. “I don’t disappear just because we’re here.”
“Laura.”
I need him to acknowledge me. I need him to hold me and want me—more than he does this place. I pull him inside, close and bolt the door behind us. The glass pane is frosted, the exterior windows high. No one can see us. I will steal his attention back from this institution. I will transcend the lines he’s drawn, muddy his boundaries. He wants me in our shared bed, in our shared home, and I will make him want me here, too. I will cloud out my competition.
I push him against the closest table, hands on his belt, button, then fly. His admonishments are a weak match for his body’s reaction. Always so easy, my Edmund. My mouth quiets him, but he is quick to take control, his hands turning me around, bending my body before him, pausing only briefly and inattentively at the improvised fastener. His fingers are sharp enough to leave red behind, tiny bruises in this new form I’ve taken. One part growing while the rest wastes away. I have no appetite, and the weight keeps going off. Ed presses against me. I can taste paint under my mouth. My belly grazes the table.
I’ve been to the doctor once. He insisted I should eat more and assured me sex was fine. “Comforting to the baby, in fact.”
Ed stays frozen afterward, his stomach against my back. Frozen save for the hand he brings to my belly, a question in its fingers.
“Yes,” I say.
It has taken him fucking me in my classroom in his filthy institution to notice I am pregnant.
Can you see me now, Edmund?
“Love.” He wraps himself against me. “Oh, love.” He turns me around. Our pants are still open. “How long?”
“Four months.”
The compassion in his face shifts to anger. “Why the hell did you keep it from me for so long?”
I’ve practiced this moment, recited it in the mirror, his line nearly identical to the one in the script I’ve written. Sometimes I’m indignant, flashy and bold. Other times I’m timid, shy, sorry. Faced with the real Ed, with words from his own mouth rather than mine, I can only meet his anger. “Why the hell did it take you so long to notice?”
In my imaginings, he stayed angry, and I gave him other lines. You didn’t notice that I’m off food? Or that I’m throwing up in the morning? Or that I’m carrying around this fucking belly?
In my imaginings, I stayed angry, too.
But here, Ed is crestfallen. He kneels and presses his cheek against my belly. “I’m so sorry.”
I’d expected injured pride to win over remorse. It has in the past, and if Ed has taught me anything about human behavior, it’s that we repeat what we have previously done. “And if someone changes their behavior,” he told me once, “it’s because they’ve been forced to. Something has happened to make them alter their habits, and whatever it is, it’s big. Great loss, usually, or the threat of great loss.”
Can he feel the threat?
He’s still kneeling, like the little boy in all those photos his mother once showed me. “Here is Edmund—castle-building, is that how you say it? Here is Edmund with sand. Here is Edmund—tree-climbing, you say? And there”—her rough hand pointing to a smiling boy version of Ed, shirtless, a wide smile just about to spill into laughter, hands raised over his head in triumph—“how do you say, race-winning? Against his cousins. Always fast, my boy.” I can imagine her chiding him now: Slow boy. How could you not—what is the word—perceive?
The Ed at my feet has only the troubles he’s sought out, a career helping broken people and broken places—broken things that do not include him. He has always been on the outside of suffering. He has surrounded himself with it, but he hasn’t internalized it.
The Ed at my feet doesn’t know what to do with grief that’s his own.
I run my hands through his thick hair. He is a child, and I will comfort him. We have played these roles before. Ed’s shoulders shake just the slightest bit, and I feel damp against the skin of my stomach. Tears. I am more delighted than sad.
I pull him to standing and button his pants, then my own. I tuck in his shirt, smooth out the wrinkles. I straighten his collar.
He wipes his eyes. “I’m just so happy, Laura,” he says, and then I’m angry again. My wife has been pregnant for four months and didn’t tell me? Hooray! My wife has been pregnant for four months and I didn’t notice? How about that!
“So happy,” he says.
It’s all I’ll get now, this elated version of Ed. Where has the weeping boy gone? Elated Ed is still talking, filling the room with his chatter, and I look over his shoulder to my students’ artwork on the wall. Chip’s sketch of Griffin Hall, Karen’s horse in full gallop, George’s grasses. It’s wonderful to see George at the grocery store, but I miss him in class.
Ed is still talking: “. . . can’t wait to tell my parents. And Pete and Bonnie! They’ll be so thrilled!”
I interrupt him. “I need to get ready for class.”
“Right, of course.” Ed cups my belly again, smiles grandly, a king proudly claiming his domain. No, not that bad A proud father? Maybe that’s all. “Oh, Laura, it’s just so—”
“Exciting, I know.”
He pauses. “You okay?”
“Really, Ed? You’re asking that? It’s been four months—we’re nearly halfway through.”
He looks devastated again, and I nearly want to take it back. But I don’t.
“Just go, all right? I need to get set up. My students will be here soon.” I kiss him so he’ll stop looking so damn wounded. “We’ll talk about it on the ride home.”
“We’ll celebrate tonight.” He kisses me back, and I want it to be enough to heal us, to make these last few years go away and leave only the future before us, wide as these godforsaken meadows Ed so desperately wants me to love.
He heads toward the door. He is Dr. Malinowski again, ready to lead, nothing broken but his institution. No more tears. Of course not. What is there to be sad about? All that matters is the baby. A baby is coming—his baby! Hurrah!
He turns at the door and waves. “I’m so happy, Laura.”
“Me, too.”
Protection is an innate behavior as well. If lies will protect us, we won’t hesitate to use them.
He’s gone. But his scent lingers, that aftershave rubbed into my skin. The hint of sex, too, and I’m worried for a moment about my students. But they won’t know. Penelope might, but I’d welcome that. Smell that, you little bitch? That’s sex I just had with my husband. If the others sense anything, they won’t know to ask, and if they do, I can easily lie. That? That’s just the smell of our new paints.
I prepare each student’s place. They’ll paint a stormy ocean scene today, inspired by Gustave Courbet’s The Wave. I’ll show them the print I’ve brought from home, talking them through the textures of the great storm clouds, gray and plump and—of course—foreboding.