All the rest of it, the expectations of a suburban life that Austin never seemed to appreciate, the sighs of disappointment that Austin never joined in with the neighborhood husbands in betting on football games, the slightly lackadaisical way Austin tended to the grass of their expansive front lawn—in short, the never-ending stream of criticism, Austin could have shrugged off. Just like he’d shrugged off the shudder of disgust she’d make when, after he’d pointed out that going down on each other should be mutual, she’d give him a blow job, then spit everything out, then make the face she’d make because, as she told him many times, when he came, he was icky.
He’d go down on her, he loved pleasuring her, loved making her feel good. He thought her body was beautiful, if on the skinny side, and he applauded her attention to self care, and paid the credit card bills for her endless waxing, mud treatments, and massages.
She was constantly fraught with anxiety over pubic hair, and got a Brazilian wax every other month, if not more often. Legs waxed. Underarms. Upper lip. Every little hair that wasn’t on her well-coiffed head went under the strip to be ripped off.
The effect was smooth-skinned Mona. The side effect was her disgust that he simply would not shave down there, would not get his balls waxed. He told her no a hundred times and never gave in. He groomed himself, sure, but it was his body, and he would do with it what he liked.
It didn’t matter to her he kept fit by working out at the gym, went to the fancy Cherry Creek hairdresser for his haircuts, like she liked for him to do, wore the bespoke suits she picked out for him. She might have designed him to be the perfect accountant husband, but his body was his own. He’d even resisted her suggestions that he get the freckles on his shoulders bleached. No, no, and no.
It was only in retrospect, perhaps even while standing there as the taxi pulled up, that he realized it wasn’t just his pubic hair that disgusted her, but all of him. From the top of his dark, ginger hair to the tops of his ginger-hair flecked toes, all of him elicited a sneer from Mona. Unless she had to, she never touched him.
Sure, when there were people around, he got hugs and tender pats, but even those had been in neutral places, his waist, his shoulders. In bed, when it was just the two of them, Mona would welcome sex, but then she wanted another child so she could have a matched set.
Sex was the way Mona wanted it, missionary style, with a few variations. She did not want anything weird, and she most certainly did not want histhingin her face every other minute. She did not want anything to do with nasty butt sex, either, and though she would, from time to time, use her well-manicured hand to jerk him off during her period, to avoid blood on the sheets, those fingers never strayed, never lingered, never caressed.
She’d never once touched his ass except by accident. When he found out via a credit card bill that she’d bleached her anus, it was a mystery to him who that bleaching was for, since she never wanted him straying from her lady parts, which was what she called them.
Except for regular, straight up missionary style marital relations, he might as well have been a virgin. And, as he watched the driver load his suitcases into the trunk of the taxi, he felt very much like he’d been kicked out of his own life.
He did not know what that new life would look like. Other than the Motel Six, he did not know where he would lay his head. Who he would talk to as he ate. With his degree, CPA certificate, and all of his experience, he was sure to get a job almost right away. But a job wasn’t life. A family was life, only his family was now in tatters.
“I’d like to hug her goodbye,” said Austin. “I’d like to say goodbye properly. Please?”
Austin would have bet a million dollars that the only reason Mona nodded permission and released Bea was because the taxi driver was there. He was a witness to the kind of mom Mona was, the kind of divorcee she was. In Mona’s mind, the grapevine was a lusty conduit of gossip and talk and reports, and what you were seen to do was very, very important. Mona’s reputation was important to her, thus she allowed Bea to leave her side.
Bea raced down the steps and into Austin’s arms like she had a hundred times, no, a billion times before. She loved to dash, loved to hurry, her long strawberry blond braids flying, cheeks flushed, arms wide open.
“Dad, dad, dad.” Bea’s voice was muffled against Austin’s shirt, her arms going around him as far as they could reach. He bent down and hugged her to him, kissed the top of her head, calmed her fair hair with his palm.
He had about two minutes before Mona called a halt to this outrageous show of affection between father and daughter. He had that long to make sure Bea knew he loved her with all of his heart.
Before Bea had been born, he’d been terrified at the prospect of being a dad, of being responsible for a tiny human being. The moment Bea had been placed in his arms at the hospital, he turned away, holding her, completely forgetting Mona’s mom was there, fussing over Mona, bringing her lipstick and something to color her cheeks for the photographs Mona’s dad was taking.
Instead of all that, all the chatter and the heightened emotion, he bent and kissed Bea’s tiny forehead and vowed to love her for all eternity. She smelled like a baby, a bit like sweetness so newly born there had never been another smell like it. Her eyes, when she blinked up at him, were a dark moss green, just like his own. And at the top of her head, a sprout of strawberry blond hair. She had all her fingers and toes and was perfect in his eyes.
“Mom says I have to take ballet lessons,” said Bea, wiping strands of hair stuck to her face with tears. “I don’t want to, Dad.”
“Maybe give it a try, honeybee,” he said, soft. “Those little ballet outfits look awfully pink and cute. You like pink, right?”
“Sometimes,” said Bea with a little huff, uncertain, it seemed, whether she wanted to go along with him distracting her from the fact he was leaving for good and she didn’t know when she’d see him again. “Not all the shades of pink, though.”
Bea loved color and however hard Mona had tried to restrain her daughter in her choices of outfits, of paint for her bedroom, of notebooks and shoes, that love could never be quashed.
Where Bea had gotten her sense of style, Austin could not be sure, but he loved it on her, loved that she was brave enough to wear what she wanted to wear. Which, currently, was purple corduroy pants and a paisley patterned multi-colored shirt that might as well have come out of the hippy section of an ARC Thrift Store rather than a highbrow children’s boutique in Cherry Creek.
In a very short span of time, once Austin’s taxi was out of sight, Mona would likely go through Bea’s closet to re-do the whole wardrobe to something more fitting for the child of a newly divorced woman who might or might not already have a new boyfriend.
“Think of the little tutu,” he said, kissing her forehead. “Think of the cute little pink ballet shoes.”
She made a face, as if thinking this over. He clasped her face in his hands and gently kissed her nose.
“I love yousomuch,” he said, looking straight at her so she’d know he meant it with all of his heart. “I’ll visit as often as I can.”
“That’ll be forever from now,” she said, wailing, her moss green eyes filling with more tears. “I want to see you every day.Everyday.”
“Yes, I know.”
“The taxi’s waiting, Austin,” said Mona, somewhat crisply. “And Beatrice and I have an appointment downtown.”
