“When I was a kid, I ate whatever was put in front of me, or else,” David says, and it sounds conversational, but it isn’t. “You ate what you were given and you were thankful, or you went to bed without supper. I hated green peas, but if I didn’t clean my plate, my dad got out the belt.”
Ella and Brooklyn exchange looks, and Brooklyn shoves a piece of lettuce in her mouth, failing to hide her distaste. He nods; that’s the correct answer. Every time Brooklyn stops eating, he also stops eating and stares at her sternly until she digs in again. Ella is seventeen now, and so well trained at the table that she rarely speaks unless spoken to and always cleans her plate, which is a relief. Chelsea knows her job is to remain silent, although she can practically talk to the girls using just her face. David recently told her that it’s actually giving her these unattractive little frown lines that he’d like to see handled before the company picnic. She has learned to hide so much, but she can’t stop her microexpressions, can’t smooth out those lines to suit him, especially when she knows what’s coming.
He wasn’t like this when they started dating. He was fun and playful and sweet—or maybe, she thinks now, he excelled at hiding his own true self. When she told him she was pregnant, he was angry at first, but then he warmed to the masculine idea of being a father so early, began treating her like she was a golden egg that might crack if mishandled. On the day that Ella was born, he didn’t want to be in the delivery room; he said that if he saw her body doing something that disgusting, he would never look at her the same way again. And when he finally showed up to find her, exhausted and joyful, holding their tiny daughter in the hospital bed, he told her she should put on some makeup for the pictures or he couldn’t show them off to his friends. Those were the first cruel things he said to her, and at the time, she wrote it off as a joke. He hadn’t gotten much sleep, either.
The cruelties were like that: small and excusable, at first, but then building like snow on branches, slowly but surely weighing them down until they became fragile enough to freeze and crack and break and fall.
That’s what Chelsea feels like, sometimes: the Giving Tree, but for a wood chipper instead of a man.
After she’s urged the girls upstairs with a bag of cookies to play their dance game again until bedtime, which Ella will handle for her younger sister because she knows what’s going to happen, Chelsea clears the table before David can complain about it. He follows her over to the sink, waiting until she’s set down the dishes to pin her against the counter with a hand on either side, his beer bottle dangling from two fingers against her hip. She stills like a mouse in a shadow. Knowing something is going to happen doesn’t make it any more bearable.
“You know what you need?” he says, a little breathy, just behind her ear. She goes still, the water running over her hands, boiling hot. “A little spa weekend. Brian’s wife can tell you which one she goes to. A glass of Chardonnay, a couple of shots to tighten things up, a little waxing, some mani-pedi bullshit. Let your mom watch the kids and just focus on you.”
She goes from still to tense, her shoulders rising. Spas cost money. He hasn’t checked his desk. He hasn’t even seen the bank letter yet. If she mentions it now, he’ll blame her for everything.
“I don’t know,” she says, soft and harmless. “I mean, Botox is just botulism. Do I really need to inject myself with poison?”
He pulls back just a little, and she feels hot breath on her scalp, along her part. “Maybe go a little blonder. Highlights or some shit. That thing that sounds French.”
“Balayage.” Her voice is tiny. “That’s what I already do—”
“You’ve got to do some self-care,” he says, sounding like he’s parroting some garbage social media post. “Treat yo self.”
She switches off the faucet, and when she looks down, her hands are the raw, angry pink of an Easter ham. He sees it, too.
“And get a French manicure while you’re at it. That’s what the girls at the office do.”
David steps back, tosses his bottle in the recycling, and fetches a new one, popping it open with a smack on the granite countertops he insisted on when they bought the house. It was extra, and she didn’t think it was necessary, but he’s always been so obsessed with keeping up with the Joneses, with having whatever the guys at the office have. Settling back into the corner of the counter, he watches her, waiting for an answer. She can’t give him what he wants to hear, so she turns her back and cleans. Maybe if the sink is spotless and the counters gleam, he’ll stop focusing on her as the thing that needs fixing.
Even as she works, she knows that’s a lie. Cleaning is quite simply her job, and so is fitting into the impossible mold of Trophy Wife.
“What, I offer you a special weekend and you can’t even look at me?” Heat creeps up the back of her neck and cheeks. The beer is gone in several long swallows, and he slams it on the counter, making Chelsea’s shoulders jump. “You not even going to acknowledge your husband?”
Chelsea turns to him and swallows like she’s trying to get a pill down. She must’ve lost count of his beers, because he’s further along than she thought. She knows full well that her eyes are wide and red, her shoulders up around her ears, her hands red as lobster claws. She’s not pretty just now, and she feels so fragile and small, but the way he looks at her suggests that it only makes him want to break her completely. She is reminded of the time they were at the shore and he found dried-out, slightly broken sea stars on the beach and laughed as he crushed each one underfoot, pulling out the dainty white doves and pulverizing everything else to chalk.
“What the fuck are you looking at?”
It’s a snarl, somehow, and this time, she can’t stop herself from flinching.
It makes him angry, when she flinches. But he likes it, too.
This is how it happens. Bit by bit, even as she does her best to follow the rules and say the right things, she makes him angry and hot, and it feels like being driven farther down a hallway with no escape.
“You said you wanted me to look at you. So I’m doing what you said.”
He breathes out, a long sigh, almost a growl. “Why won’t you take care of yourself, Chel? We promised each other we’d take care of ourselves. Wouldn’t let ourselves go. You think I like going to the gym every fucking morning? You think it was fun getting hair plugs and Lasik, smelling my own fucking eyeballs get roasted? I put in the work. I do that for you. So you need to put in the work, too.”
She nods, blinking swiftly. “Jeanie from next door invited me to her kickboxing class.”