Things We Didn't Say_ A Novel - Kristina Riggle [47]
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?