Because of my excuses, Nicholas thinks I have a sensitive stomach and my PMS lasts three weeks. We frequently discuss my gluten intake and I pretend to consider cutting sugar out of my diet. This is what happens when you date a guy for eleven months, then get engaged six hours before finally moving in together and learning who the other person truly is on a day-to-day basis. Signing up for Boyfriend Nicholas and inheriting Fiancé Nicholas later on was some legitimate bait-and-switch business, let me tell you. I thought I’d won big-time when I landed him, but after sliding a ring onto my finger he relegated me to Eternal Second Place.
When I’m alone or when I might as well be because he’s ignoring me in favor of spending quality time with his computer, I at least have the reprieve of letting my smile fall. I don’t have to waste energy pretending I’m fine. I don’t let myself indulge the dark, intrusive thoughts for too long, even though I want to, because I’m afraid once I start going full Morrissey, fixing the wall with a thousand-yard stare and reflecting on what exactlymakes me unhappy, it will become impossible to fold those thoughts up and put them neatly in a drawer to reexamine another day.
I tune in to Nicholas’s tangent long enough to grasp a few keywords:Stacy, khaki ban, gas gauge.He has found a way to combine his three favorite gripes into one blustery rant. He hates the new uniform policy his coworker Dr. Stacy Mootispaw is trying to implement, which is black slacks only and forbids his darling khakis. He hates Stacy. He hates his fancy car’s gas gauge, which has been wrongfully blamed for not warning him when he ran out of gas last week while driving out of town.
I make a sympathetic expression and assure him Stacy is the scum of the earth and the khaki ban is discrimination. I’m a loyal fiancée, indignant on his behalf, ready to go into battle against his every grievance.
I think about howactressis another way of sayingprofessionalliar.
I’m lying to both of us all the time now, and I don’t know how to stop. Our wedding is in three months and if I spill my guts to Nicholas about these mini bursts of panic he’ll attribute them to cold feet, which is said to be normal. He’ll write off everything I’m feeling with those two words. I haven’t been excited about this wedding since it was taken away from me, all the decisions yanked from my hands, and knowing I’m not excited makes me anxious. If I’m not excited to get married, then what the hell am I doing?
But my problem is bigger than his interfering mother now; more than the age-old argument about where to go on our honeymoon and the size of the cake, which I no longer care about because I didn’t get my way with lemon.No one likes lemon,Naomi.I’ve been stewing in all the ways I’ve been wronged for so long now that my simmering resentment has outgrown itself to taint everything about him, even the innocent parts. In spite of everything, I’m such a caring person that I bottle up my negative feelings and don’t share them with him. He’d never understand, anyway.
If he asks me what’s wrong and my issue isn’t one he can make go away with a few reassuring words, Nicholas gets frustrated. It reminds me of my mother once saying that you can’t tell men about your unfixable problems, because they’ll want to fix them and not being able to do so fries their wiring.
Is my problem unfixable? I don’t know what my problem is. I’m the problem, probably. There are a lot of good things about Nicholas, which I have typed up in a password-protected document on my computer. I read it whenever I need to be reminded that Everything Is Okay.
I want to swallow a magic pill that makes me feel perfectly content. I want to gaze lovingly at Nicholas while he haplessly searches the bowels of our kitchen cabinets. We’ve cohabited for ten months and he still doesn’t know where we keep anything.
Our names look so romantic together on paper. Nicholas and Naomi Rose. Have you ever heard anything lovelier? We’d give our children romanticNnames, too, and make it a theme. A son named Nathaniel. His grandparents will call him Nat, which I’ll hate. A daughter named Noelle. Her middle name will have to be Deborah after Mrs. Rose, because apparently it’s a tradition going back exactly one generation. Nicholas’s sister has been told the same thing, so if we all fall in line there’s going to be a dynasty of small Deborahs someday.
I close my eyes and try to imagine growing up as that woman’s biological daughter, and the picture is so horrific that I have to bleach it with happy thoughts of another contender for my heart—Rupert Everett in character as Dr. Claw from the 1999Inspector Gadgetmovie—bursting through the doors of St. Mary’s and fighting Jake Pavelka to decide who gets to marry me. One of them has a robotic claw, so it isn’t a fair fight. “Not so fast!” shouts another voice. I look up to see Cal Hockley,Titanic’s misunderstood hero, rappelling down from the ceiling with the Heart of the Ocean clamped between his teeth. “This is for you, Naomi! The only woman worthy of it!” Nicholas shouts in protest, turning away from the altar, and promptly falls through a trapdoor.
With conscious effort, I look at Nicholas and try to make myself feel butterflies. He’s responsible. We like the same movies. He’s a good cook. I love these things about the man.
“Naomi,” he’s saying now, banging cupboards. “Where do we keep the Tupperware? I’m going to run to the store and get some cookies to drop off at the office tomorrow. How nice is that? I’m not even working. Nobody else swings by just to drop off snacks.” Rise and Smile is usually closed on weekends, but once a month on a designated Saturday a few of them have to come in. To take out the sting of working on their day off, they all bring in snacks. “I want to make it look like I baked them myself,” he continues, “or I’ll never hear the end of it. Stacy says I never go the extra mile. I’ll show her an extra fucking mile.”
I do an unforgivable thing here and privately agree with Stacy. Nicholas does not go the extra mile, especially when it comes to me. He didn’t get me flowers this past Valentine’s Day, and that’s okay because flowers are stupid, I guess. He remindedme that they’re just going to die. On Valentine’s Day we sat in separate rooms and tagged each other in gushing Facebook posts. We don’t need to say sweet words in person because we know what Real Love is.
We have smarter things to spend our money on than overpriced jewelry (if the jewelry’s for me) and plants that will slowly wilt for a week before turning to sludge (again: if they’re for me). We could be putting that money toward something better, like a tennis bracelet and an entire garden for his mother.
He didn’t get me flowers for our anniversary, either, and that’s okay because we know what Real Love is and we don’t have to prove ourselves to each other. He buys flowers for his mother while she recovers from a facelift because she expects it, but I’m reasonable. I understand. I know I don’t need them, whereas Mrs. Rosedoesneed them. He’s so glad we’ll never be like his parents.
On our anniversary, we don’t even have to go out on a real date or take the day off work to be together, not marking the occasion in any way. We’re relaxed and laid-back, nothing like his parents. Our love is so Real that we can sit on the couch and watch football like the day is no big deal, like it’s just any other day. Every day is the same. Every day is like our anniversary.
Words are bubbling up in my throat. I push them down, struggle to find different ones. “Cabinet over the microwave.”
“Thanks. Actually, do you have time to make cookies tonight? Stacy’ll be able to tell if I haven’t made them. I don’t want to hear her bitch.”
I give him a contemptuous look he doesn’t see. “No. I’m going to Brandy’s.”
“So am I, but we’ve got plenty of time until then, don’t we? And I need to jump in the shower, while you’re not doinganything but sitting on the couch. Can you just whip up some cookies real quick?”
“Can’t you just do it yourself tomorrow? Why do you need them right this minute, anyway?”
He’s preheating the oven. He doesn’t even know if we have all the right ingredients. He assumes I’ll cobble it together from scratch like Cinderella’s mice. “I’m not getting up at the crack of dawn to make three dozen cookies. It’s easier to do it tonight.” His voice lowers to a grumble. “Stacy’s lucky I’m even doing this much, since I’m not even scheduled for tomorrow... we’ll see how she likes taking her Saturday turn, foronce.”
I stare at Nicholas and my intestines boil because he thinks I don’t know what he’s doing. The only reason he’s choosing to showerright nowis so that he has an excuse to ask me to do this for him. It’s like whenever we get home from a trip to the grocery store and he pretends he’s getting an important phone call so that he doesn’t have to help put groceries away.
He’s pulling out mixing bowls, and that man is even more deluded than I am if he thinks I’m filling a sink up with mixing bowls I’ll have to wash in order to feed someone he despises, while he takes the credit. Stacy can choke on store-bought sugar cookies like the rest of us. Why’s he even bringing them? They’re dentists. They should be eating celery.
I consider trying to persuade him to stay home tonight, but it occurs to me that I need him to drive me to Brandy’s. I won’t be able to take a crack at changing my tire until he leaves the house for a considerable period of time. I’m miffed with him for being such an I-told-you-so kind of person, which prevents me from coming clean. I’m forced to be just as stubborn as he is irritating.
“I bet if you told your mom you needed cookies, she’d have them ready for you in twenty minutes,” I reply lazily. “In the shape of big red hearts, with your initials written in the icing.”
“Speaking of Mom,” he says, clearing his throat. “She was telling me how she talked to the seamstress about the flower girl’s dress, making sure the measurements were right. And we were both so glad, we were just so glad, that they’re able to help us out.” I feel my soul shrivel up like dust and gopoof. “Everyone knows it’s usually the bride’s parents who pay for everything, so we’re lucky Mom and Dad have been so helpful.”
Yes, so helpful. An image of my wedding dress pops into my head, one size too small because my future mother-in-law wants me to be ambitious, A-line and starchy, whiter than her husband’s new veneers. I wanted cream and rose with an empire waist, which she said made me look four months pregnant. Nicholas told her we’re saving ourselves for marriage because she’s ridiculously old-fashioned and has to be coddled and lied to, and when she told me I looked pregnant I was sorely tempted to say it was twins.
