Baby weight without a baby.
I went upstairs to do a workout video. I had Jane Fonda’s on VHS. In it, she wore a chevron leotard, purple tights, and leg warmers. Behind her, in the background, was a shirtless man slicked with baby oil. I watched from my floor. I lay on my back, my legs extended up over my head, reaching back for the floor behind me. “Oh, that feels so good,” Jane Fonda was saying on the screen, but I didn’t think so. Not good at all. Since I’d lost the baby, nothing felt right inside me. I heard the hum of the dishwasher from the kitchen beneath me. I stretched back. “Oh, that feels so good,” Jane Fonda was saying again.
After my workout, I went to the kitchen for a drink. Wyatt had cleared the table of the plates and utensils, and, yes, the dishwasher was running. But he hadn’t put the spices back in the rack, and all the pots and pans were still dirty on the stovetop. The counter was a battlefield of crumbs. Napkins were twisted like dead soldiers.
“You said you’d do the dishes!” I yelled into the family room.
“I did.”
“But—” A dirty spoon was on the countertop, the colander was in the sink. A few dry noodles that missed the pot insulted me further. Something in me shifted, a gear I didn’t know existed. Anger, still contained. “You did the dishes weateon. The plates. You didn’t even put the leftovers away.” I still wonder who Johnny Marzetti is; probably the husband of the woman who’d made the meal.
“Oh,” he said.
“Oh? Oh?” I said.
“Okay, okay. Who cares? Calm down.”
I growled. I’m sure I growled. “Don’t turn me into a nag, Wyatt. You won’t like it.”
“Too late,” he said.
Plinkplinkplinkplink. My resentment jar overfloweth.
For so long, we had tried for a family—would that have saved us, a tiny human tether? But I gave birth to astillbaby, not a moving one. Why not use the real word for the thing: dead.
My milk came in after that. Nobody had told me I’d have full boobs that sagged and ached. Boobs, Wyatt. Breasts sounds so clinical and tits too crude. Just say boobs. It’s not that difficult. And couldn’t he at least do the dishes?Allof them? Including the pots and pans? Including the casserole dish that I assembled from ingredients I procured from the store that I loaded into my car and drove home and put away? My time matters, too. Do you think I want nothing else but to serve you? I am not your mother—notanyone’smother. That’s what I was thinking. Couldn’t he, at the very least, do the damn dishes?
Obviously, this wasn’t just about the dishes.
Wyatt’s ice cream bowl sat in the sink, filled with water and dairy flotsam. He claimed he was “soaking” it. A warmth overtook me. I removed my sweatband, and I spun slowly in a circle, trying to see the world through Wyatt’s eyes. The reserves of Wyatt’s mind were never occupied with grocery lists and almost-empty detergent bottles, with dirty baseboards or dusty lampshades, or weight loss, or basal temperatures and monthly cycles and breast pads and guilt. I was an actress, nota cleaning lady, not like my mother. I refused to live a small life. I was the Earthshine Girl. I was Stella. I had spent four years at the conservatory. I could put myself in the mindset of another character. I could be anyone I wanted.
I heard Wyatt laughing in the family room. He was watchingNight Court. The theme song played.It’s a hostile work environment.I put the dirty pot in the sink, filled it with sudsy water.My marriagewas a hostile work environment.My marriagehad made me small. That’s how I felt in that moment as I scrubbed the dried noodles off the stovetop with a sponge, and when they wouldn’t give, I used my fingernail to pry them free. My fingernail chipped. I had just gotten a manicure because the next day I was hosting the Christmas in July Fund Drive at Action 13 News. Sure, not art, exactly, but it paid well. I examined my chipped nail, the sharp edges. Something wild unleashed inside me. That’s the moment I decided on it, the affair. I didn’t know with whom yet. I didn’t know how. But I knew it was necessary. I believed it was the only way.
So, yes, I cheated on Wyatt. Sleeping with someone else did not make me bigger or more worthy of my anger. That second time, when John Dale sat up and pulled on his pants, then slapped my thigh, sayingatta girl, all I wanted was Wyatt. Wyatt unwrapping Klondike Bars, Wyatt cutting his entire plate of food for efficiency, Wyatt pressing a bag of frozen peas to my butt after those fertility shots, Wyatt warming my side of the bed with his body before I slipped under the covers. Because that’s what marriage is, an accumulation of minor details that resemble something like love.
But now in the basement, I unplugged the fax machine. I turned off the basement lights, then the kitchen lights, and then my bedroom lights. I crawled into bed, and it was cold there by myself. I wished I could talk to Halley about this. I wondered what she’d say. I remember when I confessed the affair to her. I’d taken down Sal and had the doll mouth the words:I cheated on Wyatt. She didn’t judge me or console me. She told me I’d been conditioned to believe sex was freedom, andit is, and it isn’t. I tried to think of who could have sent that note. Who could have known? I thought of the Jane Doe who’d said her life had been ruined by coming forward.Does your husband know?I turned my pillow vertically, and I clung to it like a body. I never wanted Wyatt more than I did in that moment when the threat of losing him forever became clear.
1910
Opal’s front door wouldn’t budge. Shehadbeen three days late with her rent, and on top of that the neighbors now twice complained of the unpleasant odors wafting up from her kitchen whenever she’d made a batch of pills. The landlord had given her a second warning, but hadn’t he promised three?
Opal gave another hipped push, and finally the door relented. It hadn’t been locked, only jammed by the thick envelope dropped through the mail slot that somehow managed to wedge itself underneath.
The envelope was square. Heavy. Wax sealed and stamped. High-quality card stock. Neat penmanship—not Madame de Fleur’s. She tore it open.
The writing was upright and small, as though the writer was intent on conserving paper and ink. A gold embossing bordered the edges. Opal read by the waning light of the window.
I’m writing for the sake of business and in such cases, I think it’s best to speak plainly. I understand you have been prescribing and dispensing, through your own means, medicines that have proven surprisingly effectual. Comet Pills. Come see me again. I have a business proposition. I believe we could form a lucrative and mutually beneficial partnership.
—Clara Dowd
Opal set down the letter and, finally, her handbag and lunch. The audacity of the woman, after turning her away with nothing more than a sample of Mourning Spray. But, still, something inside Opal stirred at the very idea that someone had come toherwith a business proposition. Imagine that, when just months ago she was wringing out Jagr’s underdrawers. A business partnership. Who was she to believe herself capable of such a thing? How dare she even think it possible?
But then there was the baby, growing inside her despite the impossibility of it, the miracle of it. She waited for a quickening, a tick, a sign. Everything lost returns, Madame de Fleur had told her, like the comet that now traced its path toward Earth, like Oren, like the baby, like the woman herself.
THE BELL DINGED WHEN OPALclosed the pharmacy door behind her. She silenced it with her fingers. Her handbag was heavy with the weight of the formulary, with the samples she’d brought with her. Clara Dowd led her to the back office, a windowless room with chairs and a desk, papers stacked to leaning.
Clara spoke first. “I’ll tell you up front, I don’t believe spiritualism. Or any ism for that matter. Give me something specific. Give me something useful. A body doesn’t care for isms either. Give it results. Changes. Relief of symptoms.” The woman sat behind her desk. Her sleeves were rolled like a washwoman’s.
