Things We Didn't Say

Chapter 17

Mallory, 1995



Not until I heard Angel squeal “Daddy!” did I even notice Michael was in the house. I’d been concentrating so hard on Dylan’s little forehead. He’d been staring at me as he sucked away on his bottle like he was trying to figure me out and I was thinking, Join the club, kid, and my stitches hurt and Angel was jostling me as she pretended to read me Goodnight Moon and said good night to all the things in our living room.

I wondered how long he’d been standing there, staring at us. I imagined how we looked sitting there, how very domestic, and found myself amazed again at how normal things were.

He swung Angel up and nuzzled her neck, then as Angel wrapped her arms and legs around him to hold on like a barnacle told me, “Guess what I found out today?”

“Yeah?”

“I got the job!”

I hadn’t meant to startle Dylan, but I couldn’t help but shout with joy. He’d been slaving at that internship for too long, with a little money but no benefits, while his dad had been paying all our hospital bills.

Dylan shrieked fit to make my ears bleed, ignoring the plastic nipple. I teased his lips with it, and a shivery panic started to creep up my spine. But Michael untangled from Angel and scooped up his baby in his big hands, and I swear Dylan took one look at those clear blue eyes and settled right down.

“You’re amazing,” I told him, ignoring the whispering thought in my head, He loves his daddy better than you. “Professional reporter and father of the year, too.”

I rose gingerly, wincing at the stitches pulling, and gave him a peck on the cheek. “How are you today?” he asked me.

“Fine,” I answered breezily.

He didn’t answer, and when I met his eyes, he was staring hard at me. “Better,” I answered. “Pretty good.” And it was true.

Michael interrupted my thoughts by suggesting we go out and celebrate. I told him yes please, as long as I could shower.


I should have known dinner wouldn’t go well. Angel had missed her nap and Dylan was fussy, but I didn’t mind taking off early with doggie bags, since it made Michael so happy to take his family out at all. He was celebrating being a provider for us, with a steady income and everything.

On the way home now, with our still-warm food in Styrofoam containers in our laps and the kids dozing in their car seats, I stole a glance at Michael, the early autumn sun glowing in the car. I found myself stunned nearly every day that he loved me, was still with me, even knowing my sordid past, how I’d buried myself in sex with half strangers as a way to forget, maybe punish myself.

He always insisted it didn’t matter. He also insisted—the ever-practical doctor’s son—that we both get tested.

For this I bit down my impulse to be insulted and hurt, and made myself think differently and so far I’d been rewarded with a loving, attentive husband, if a bit stuffy at times, with a tendency to be critical.

Forcing myself to think differently was exhausting, though, and that’s how I thought of those dark periods. I needed to hibernate sometimes, to recover from that effort. When I felt the darkness creeping up—like in that old horror movie, The Blob, it would rise from the ground and gradually swallow me—I would call Michael to tell him I needed rest and crawl into bed for a few days.

That was better than the alternative, because if I ignored the Blob, it would go the other way, and soon I’d be throwing things, screaming, and this would make Angel cry.

It was easier to be different when pregnant, so that’s why I convinced Michael to have another baby, even before graduation. For one thing, he was different when I was carrying a child: even more careful and solicitous, treating me like blown glass.

Maybe now, I thought, tipping my head back on the headrest, the warm pasta heating my thighs, NPR softly on the radio, maybe now it will stick better, the even-keel feeling, because I’ll have so much to do. Two children, and a whole house to clean and maintain.

The Blob was so much more common when I was bored. Like it wanted to fill the emptiness.

Michael had been talking about his new job at the Herald, so I tuned back in.

I squeezed his thigh. “I’m so proud of you.”

He blushed a little, and shifted uncomfortably in his seat. He always reacted that way to praise, having gotten so little from that stuffed-shirt father of his.

In the house, after we slurped down our leftover meals, I gratefully let Michael take over with the kids. I stretched out on the couch, on my side, the only way I could rest that didn’t seem to hurt somewhere. I flipped channels and listened to him read to Angel, taking breaks to coo at Dylan in his bouncy seat . . .

The next thing I knew the house was quiet, and Michael was nudging me to make room on the couch. Dylan was dozing in his car seat at our feet, sucking on a pacifier.

I shifted slightly to make room for him, and then rested my head in his lap, facing the television. He stroked my hair back from my face.

He reported to me about all he’d done for the bedtime routine, as if I were going to grade his report card. I just murmured, still in the fog of dinner and my doze.

The telephone shrilling made me jump. Michael leaned forward to answer the cordless, sighing, both of us hoping it wasn’t the newspaper.

“Oh, hi Kate,” he said.

I felt my body go stiff. I pulled myself up, away from him, and listened to his side of the conversation.

“I can’t now,” he said. “I’m with my wife and kids.”

Oh yes, he’s twenty-two years old and already tied down with me, the fat, bloated cow, and the babies. Little Katie—I’d met her, she had round perky boobs and wore the shortest skirts I’d ever seen in an office—was practically shouting, so I could hear her just fine as she said, Oh, come on, he was allowed to go out and celebrate a new job, wasn’t he? The wife could watch the kids?

Michael flicked his eyes over at me. Was that guilt? It sure wasn’t a loving gaze.

“I should go,” he said. “I’ll see you at work.” He hung up and turned to me, and I could see him searching for explanations.

“Go then,” I spat. “Go have a drink with your little slut.”

“She’s not a slut, she just—”

“Oh, it’s perfectly normal for a single girl to call up a married man while his wife’s stitches are still healing from labor to ask him out for a drink? Go then, don’t let the ball and chain stop you.”

“She just doesn’t know how it works, she’s practically a kid.”

“She wouldn’t have called here if she didn’t think you might go. So is that who you have lunch with every day? And a drink? Is that why when I call you at the office I can’t reach you?”

“No! I’m not interested in her, okay? Not in the least.”

“Bullshit, you’re not. You’d have to be blind or gay not to be.”

He scooted closer to me. “I don’t want you to be upset. I will tell her not to call here ever again. I love you, Mal.”

“No matter what?” I asked, feeling the tears spill over then, my fear of his answer loud like drumbeats in my head.

“No matter what,” he said, pulling me back to him, tucking me in the crook of his arm.

He let me cry on his shirt, and he kissed the top of my head.

Then he said quietly, almost murmuring, as if he thought I wouldn’t hear, “I wish I knew how to make you believe me.”

I wish I did, too.