Time of My Life_ A Novel - Allison Winn Scotch [77]
“I don’t need to figure things out!” I seethed. “And I resent the insinuation that I’m confused or unsettled, that I’m not entirely fucking happy right now, with you and with Katie, and without that woman,” I spat out the words, “in my life.”
I slammed down the pot, shook off my rubber gloves, and retreated to the nursery to check on Katie. I sat in her rocking chair, gliding back and forth and back again, with only the nightlight for illumination, until I heard Henry plod into our bedroom and retire.
Who asked you? I thought. What gave you the fucking right? As if you think you have all the answers! I steamed.
I rocked and I rocked, eventually sliding down onto myself and resting my feet on the ottoman and falling into a fitful slumber. Never once, not even for a moment, did it occur to me that my husband, he who truly loved me, even when he felt so far, so very, very far away, might be right.
Chapter Twenty-one
Jack and I are on the train, tucked in the last passenger car, on our way to his parents’ house for Thanksgiving when my phone rings. The car is clogged with holiday travelers, all rushing to see loved (or not-so-loved) ones for the obligatory turkey feast, and our breaths collectively stifle the air, such that the windows drip with condensation and I nearly suffocate from my maroon wool scarf. My cell keeps buzzing, and I unwrap the scarf from my neck, tossing aside the work memos I was scouring, and scavenge through my overnight bag for my phone. Jack doesn’t glance up; he’s fully enmeshed in rereading the first five chapters of his novel. It’s as far as he’s gotten in the four months that I’ve been back here, but it’s progress, I suppose. He’s showing it to Vivian tonight, and even he admits that he’s more than a little queasy at the thought of doing so.
“So don’t let her read it,” I suggest as we’re packing.
“Of course I’m letting her read it,” he says, throwing five pairs of boxers in his suitcase and leaving me to wonder just how long he plans on staying or why he needs to change his underwear so often.
“But it’s making you crazy. You’re so worried about her opinion that you’re barely concentrating on whether or not you’re happy with it.” I turn to retrieve a sweater from the closet, and I’m startled by how much I see my own self in my words—how I was so busy trying to please Henry that I never stopped to consider my own happiness, or, just as important, whether or not he wanted to be pleased in such a way in the first place. I glance at myself in the closet mirror and see the surprise of the realization wash across me.
Jack sighs. “Jill, look, this is just how it is. Please don’t get up in my face about it.”
“Okay,” I say and drop my navy cable-knit into the bag. “Consider it dropped.” What’s the point in changing him? I tell myself, though a wiser part of me whispers that change is the point entirely.
As my cell rings and rings and as a couple behind us debates the ethics of hanging chads, Jack chews on the cap of his pen, then makes a note in the manuscript, muttering to himself.
“Yello,” I say over the din of the train’s engine, loudly enough to break Jack from his trance. He shoots me an annoyed glare, and I shrug.
“I’m pregnant!” Meg screams on the other end of the line. “I’m pregnant, I’m pregnant, I’m pregnant!!”
I press my finger into my free ear and turn into the window to afford a little privacy.
“Sweetie, that’s amazing!” I hear myself say, though I feel as if I’m saying so from inside a tunnel, so far removed from the actual words. I’m frantically spinning backward, confirming that no—I shake my head slightly—she wasn’t pregnant at Thanksgiving last time around. I would have remembered that. Surely, I would have paid attention to that. My mind flips back and forth, like a children’s picture book, as I search for any sign that this is new news, not new old news.
No, I think firmly. Last time around, Henry and I drove to D.C.,