“That all sounds fine.”
Fine. Fine was always her mother’s answer. Fine, like the excellent marks she got in high school. Fine, like the scholarship she won to her first-choice college. Fine, like the first studio apartment she rented in the city that she was so proud to afford on her own. Her mother had so few expectations as time went on, so little interest, but Blair tried to remind herself it wasn’t about her. There was nothing she could say that would enliven a better response from her mother. Her dial was stuck at neutral. As far as Blair could tell, her mother couldn’t feel anything anymore.
She had been different when Blair was younger, lively and fun. She worked three days a week as a secretary for her father’s insurance business until Blair was eight years old. She’d bring her and her younger brother to their office in the summer where they’d make forts under the desks and spin in the office chairs until all three were too dizzy to stand. She’d loved how her mother’s lipstick smelled like the tempera paint from school. She’d loved touching her long strings of layered pearls, hearing the clacking sound of the beads. They would blast the radio in the car on the way home, and from the back seat, she would mimic the way her mother’s shoulders moved in front of her.
But somewhere along the way her mother had seemed to reduce herself, quietly and slowly. She left her job, and she spoke less to them. She stiffened in her father’s hands.
Blair hadn’t understood the burden of her mother’s deadening until she moved to college and felt how easy it was to breathe. She found excuses not to go home when her friends would. The tension in the house had grown too much for her. By then, her parents only spoke to each other through Blair, like they could no longer register the sound of each other’s voices.
Blair wonders, now, sitting behind the cash desk of Itsy Bitsy, if she and Aiden are really any different than her parents were. If that’s what awaits. Misery served every night for dinner.
She’s staring at the six-foot-tall stuffed giraffe they have priced at $249 when the door chimes for the first time this morning. She’s about to force something resembling a smile, but it’s Aiden who walks in.
He never stops by to see her.
“What are you doing here?”
“Nice to see you too. I finished a breakfast meeting nearby, thought I’d pop in.”
He wanders to the shelf of wooden race cars. From behind, he reminds her of the Aiden from ten years ago, the thick flow of his hair at the back. His broad shoulders. They used to have so much fun together. Long road trips and scuba lessons in the pool. Lip-synching in the car. They used to crave being soaked in each other. Where had that feeling gone? Was it more than parenthood? Had she slipped too far away from who she used to be?
He lifts a car in her direction. “These sell well?”
“Not really.”
He chuckles.
“You left for work early this morning,” she says.
“I usually do, don’t I?”
She lifts her eyebrows. She neatens the pile of courier papers on the desk. She is used to being on edge in his presence. This is how things feel between them now. Rote. And blunt. They don’t talk about anything real anymore. Their conversations are an exchange of logistics and information. “Did you eat at the Egg and Bean?”
He nods. “I should have brought you a coffee. You want me to get you one?”
She shakes her head, but she does want one. His pleasantness irritates her. The ease of his days irritates her too. She would feel better, she thinks, if he worked harder for them. If he worked as hard as she works in her role, the thinking, the accommodating, the planning, the doing, the thinking again. She wants his head to spin at night with the things he must do the next day so that their lives are smooth, so that they float.
Has Aiden ever noticed that? The way they all just seem to float? That they are fed and cared for and have shampoo in their shower, and salt in their shaker, and gifts on the morning of their birthdays? That they have antinausea tablets placed in the palms of their hands the second the motion sickness hits? That is her doing. Her unseen value. That is worth more than the sixteen-fucking-fifty an hour Jane pays her.
Aiden sells software security systems to financial institutions, and although she can regurgitate that line when someone asks, she knows very little about what this entails. He is mostly on commission, and this means some years he makes really good money, and some years he makes an amount he can’t possibly be proud of.
So they have to be careful. He complains about the credit card bills on a bimonthly basis, and when he does, she feels instantaneous fury. She says things like, Do you want her to go to school with holes in her pants? Can you even tell me how much a loaf of bread costs? What did you spend on your fancy lunch today at the office? Do you think I wanted to fork out $134.36 to have the dishwasher looked at? Should I decline all the birthday party invites, then? Tell them we can’t afford the gifts?
Why are you always so angry? he will say, in a voice that is infuriatingly calm.
* * *
? ? ?
He’s checking his email now.
“Did you come to spend time with me, or your phone?” She hates herself as soon as the words come out the way they do.
He apologizes, puts the phone on the counter. She senses the good intention he’s come with is fading. This feels familiar, the chance he offers her to reciprocate his good mood, to have a moment of connection, and how hard it is for her to accept. She wonders when he will stop trying to offer the good mood in the first place.
“The store looks great.” He looks around, maybe to remove himself from her stare. Maybe she’s making him nervous. The foil wrapper, it’s back in her mind. Never gone for long. Does he ever wonder if he’s been careful enough? Does he wonder when she’ll find out?
“I’ll pass that along to Jane.” But Blair won’t. The store only looks great because of her. She wishes the moment felt different. She had a chance at finding comfort with him and now it’s gone. The door chimes and a woman about the same age as Blair scans the store and makes her way to the bookshelves. Blair clears her throat to get Aiden’s attention back, but she can’t let go of the thoughts that consumed her that morning. Her heart races.
“Can I ask you something?”
He nods as he checks his watch. His patience is gone.
“Did you come home last night?”
He looks stunned. But not caught. This gives her a split second of relief.
“Of course. I slept in the spare room. I didn’t want to wake you up.”
She faces the wall and refills the stapler. There is never the satisfaction she thinks there will be in saying the things that eat away at her. She always feels worse.
She wonders if he might leave the store without saying good-bye to her. But she turns back toward him, and he’s watching her with his arms crossed. His phone is back in his pocket.
“You know, Blair, sometimes it feels like you want me to disappoint you. Like you’re hoping to find a reason to hate me as much as you do.”
Blair shushes him to lower his voice, and she feels her face redden. She can tell him it isn’t true. She can defend herself.
But there’s truth to what he’s saying. She wants to like him more than she does, but something makes that feel impossible. And now, she’s got a piece of garbage she stares at every morning forcing her to face how weak she really is.
She wants to say she is sorry. She wants to tell him she feels unseen. And unimportant. And that she doesn’t know what being loved by him feels like anymore, or if being loved is even enough. That she doesn’t know how to fix any of this, and so she copes the best way she knows how.
There is no relief when he turns his back to her, only an aching sadness. He faces the door when he speaks. “I’ll be home at six for dinner, all right?”
Is this what the end is like? Did she owe him more just now? Why has she done this again? One of these times, she might go too far. And the choice to stay in this marriage will no longer be hers.
Through the window of the store, she watches him walk away, hands in his pockets, eyes on the sidewalk. Sometimes his very presence makes her hate herself.
When Jane arrives twenty minutes later, Blair tells her she doesn’t feel well.
And she doesn’t. She feels very, very unwell.
She’s halfway along Harlow Street, eyeing Whitney’s lifeless house catty-corner to hers, when she decides she needs something to cheer her up. It’s the one thing she’s promised herself she wouldn’t do anymore. But it’s her only vice. And she feels owed at least one.
She digs in her bag for the keys.
8
Mara