Simon hunches over the steering wheel, his knuckles white, jaw clenched. A dinner at my mother’s, ruined. All because Oscar Wilde had anal sex.
“I can’t believe you talked to her about keeping Bethany.” I slump against the seat. A family should be a fortress. We should stand together, fight together, protect each other. Instead they’ve been scheming—comparing notes on my parenting, bringing up all my little mistakes, and making their own decisions about what’s best for my daughter.
“I can’t believe you talked to Bethany about that.”
THAT. As if it was unspeakable. “The trials were a major part of his life. It’s an important lesson to teach her. You expected me to teach her about Oscar Wilde and not—“
“She’s a CHILD!” He screams the word loud enough that I stop. “She shouldn’t know the details of anal sex!”
“I didn’t go into great detail,” I point out. “I simply answered her questions.” Of which she had had a lot. I don’t blame her, the appeal of the act confuses me too.
“I don’t want to talk about any of it now.” Liar. He doesn’t want to talk about it in front of Bethany. “We can discuss her care closer to school starting.”
“No. I feel like Bethany should be included in this.” I twist in the seat, and look back at her.
“Included in what?” Bethany pipes in, setting down her block with interest.
“Nothing.” Simon reaches over and grabs my hand, squeezing it tightly in warning.
I yank it away, my wrist twisting painfully in the action. “We’re discussing you staying with JayJay during the day when Daddy starts teaching this fall.” Teaching. A strong word for the fluffy crap of fourth-grade curriculum.
“Why?” Her favorite word.
“Yes, why Simon?” I raise my eyebrows at him and the car shakes as he passes a car unnecessarily closely, the jerk back into our lane done with spite. “Why do you think Bethany would be better with Janice than with me?” In another scenario, I might not have cared if Bethany spent her days with my mother. Mother should have approached me from the stance of offering to help. Instead, she and Simon had come at me offensively, citing Bethany’s well-being as the reason she shouldn’t stay with me.
“You’re busy with writing and we aren’t discussing this now.” He looks up, into the rearview mirror. “Bethany, go back to your toy.”
“I’m not busy with writing, I’ll be fine.” I clap my hands and smile at my daughter. “Good! Glad we settled that.”
She smiles at me, an automatic movement, but I see the look in her eyes. The hesitation. I think, in that moment, she sees my fear.
Simon doesn’t. He only sees an escalation of The Problem.
Me.
“I feel like we’re jumping a bit.” Mark flips over a fresh page and draws a line, his pen sketching out a familiar shape. An outline. A year ago, it would have filled my heart with joy. Now, I close my eyes. “You and Simon meet.” He adds the items to the page. “You marry. You get pregnant. You have Bethany. You go away for treatment. You come back. You have two seemingly happy years that we buzz through—with the obvious exception being the letter you found.” He looks up at me. “And now you’re focusing on her at four years old.”
“That was when my mother and Simon started to really team up against me.”
“Was this the beginning? Her not wanting Bethany to stay with you during the day?” He looks up at me, and I hate the calm way he asks the question. It is textbook psychology, the way my mother used to broach subjects, the way the postpartum shrink spoke when he asked if I ever thought about harming my child.
“No.” I scratch a dry spot on my forearm. “That wasn’t the beginning.” The beginning… I can’t even pinpoint it. It was always them against me. I believed in full disclosure when parenting my child. They believed in half-truths and sheltering. I believed that they were out to get me. They believed I was unfit, a terrible mother. Careless. Incompetent. My chest tightens. In some ways, they were right. I think of her, of her stiff posture and carefully chosen words, beside me on the couch. She still sides with him. He is dead, he was the cause of it all, and she still sides with him. Maybe I should have told her the truth, and let her sink her psychological teeth into that. Your son-in-law is a liar. I killed him.
“Helena?” Mark leans forward and I stand quickly, my hip colliding with the edge of the desk, my eyes flooding with tears. I barely make it to the office door before a sob wheezes out.
MARK
She is keeping something from him. It’s like reading one of her books. The clues are there. He just, for the life of him, can’t figure them out.
It’s maddening. He can deal with it in her books. The pages can turn faster, life can be put on hold as he furiously burns through the novel. At most, it takes a day, a day to find out everything. But, it’s been five weeks now. Five weeks where he has written as quickly as he can. Five weeks where he has wanted nothing more than to tie her in place and force her to tell him everything. He doesn’t know how much longer he can stand it.
He pushes to his feet and steps out into the hall. Following the sounds of her sobs, he stops at a closed door, the one at the end of the hall. Putting his hands against the wood, he lowers his ear to it and listens.
HELENA
I take short breaths, my nose running, the sleeve of my sweatshirt now smeared in yellow mucus, the sobs not stopping, not easing, each hiccupping inhale only pushing my hysteria further. I press my fingers to my eyes and fight to hold out the memories. I did it. I killed. I destroyed. I am the reason they are both gone and I’m alone. I did all of that. Not Simon, and his mountain of sins. Not my Mother, and her fucking judgments and opinions. I did. I should be in jail. I shouldn’t be in this house, in this bedroom, breathing in the scents and colors of my child. I sag, my arms buckling, my chest colliding with the door, and turn, sinking against the wood, and slowly sliding down its surface, my ankle painfully turning before I make it to the floor.
Had I been a terrible mother? I think I had been. I think I had been, and I think I’d known it, and I think I was almost happy that day. I think, when my arms were pumping, and I was sprinting through those neighborhoods, and thinking of Simon dying—I think I was fucking happy. Because yes, I would be the hero of this story. And yes, she would love me. And yes, they would all say that I was wonderful, and he was crazy, and we would live happily ever after.
I choke on a sob and lean back my head and scream.