She wanted to weep. She felt her body turn green with envy. It turned into anger towards her close friends. Why did they get so lucky when she hadn’t? Why them and not her? What kind of practical joke had the good Lord played on her? Her marriage wasn’t based on love like her friends’ marriage but instead built on passion, respect and devotion, yet she couldn’t get her husband to fulfill on those last two promises toward their child?
It wasn’t fair.
She’d felt the prickle of tears come to her without warning and wiped them away surreptitiously. But Naisha wasn’t fooled. Her friend had reached out and laid her hand upon Shaundra’s and whispered gently, “He’ll come around Shaun.”
After going through an entire pregnancy almost completely on her own, and agonizing through the last six months of constantly hoping that things would change, she wasn’t so sure.
“Shaundra?”
Nathanael’s voice broke into her reverie, and she was dragged back to the present, like a bad jump-cut in a movie. She discovered that he’d turned from the window and was facing her, waiting for a response. She’d forgotten the question. “Huh?”
“How was the picnic?” he repeated patiently, his eyes upon her face, curious.
She wondered if the streaks of her tears were somehow still visible. She shook her head, trying and failing to chase away the morning’s memory. “Fine. Great.”
“Fine?” he echoed, doubtful. “I thought you loved being with your friends. Why was it just ‘fine’?”
Now or never,she thought. “Oh, you know. It was just a little hard on me watching your buddies interact with their children as if they treasured them. As if they were actual flesh and blood, rather than their wives’ fever dream.” She heard the sarcasm in her voice and regretted it. She’d wanted to be more direct, act more mature, but the accumulated hurt was beginning to drive her insane.
He flinched, clearly recognizing that he was the target of her words. He inhaled, took one step toward her. Now, the enormous mahogany desk, strewn with documents and dominated by a large, high-powered laptop, filled the space between them.
A fitting metaphor for their marriage, Shaundra thought.
“Shaundra, mon cœur,”he began.
“Don’t‘mon cœur’me! I don’t want to hear it. How can I be your heart if our son is not? When are you going to stop hiding? When are you going to stop fooling yourself with this lie you keep in your head, that just because you pay the bills around here, pay for nurse, baby clothes and a pretty little nursery, that you’re doing your full job as a father? Where the hell did you learn that this was okay?”
He stared down at the desktop, as if struggling to gather his thoughts. And when he spoke, his voice was frighteningly clinical, as if he was negotiating a contract for one of his hotels. “When you married me, you knew I did not want children, correct?”
“Neither did I.”
“And when you told me you were pregnant, did I try to force you to have an abortion?”
“No,” she admitted.
“Because your body is your own, and I respect that. I left that decision to you.”
“But Benjamin is a part ofyourbody, too,” she countered. “An extension of you!”
“And I do my duty!” His voice was rising, his tone growing as icy as an arctic wind. “I pay my dues as a man, and ensure the boy is safe and well!”
It was her turn to raise her voice. “‘The boy’? This is not a puppy! He is your son! He has a name! I demand that you acknowledge him. I demand that you step up. Hold him, Nathanael. Learn to change a diaper and play with him.”
She stepped around the desk and walked over to where he was standing, hands clenched at her sides, more furious than she had ever been. “And you know what? I challenge you. I dare you to come with me now, to the nursery, and look into the face of our sleeping child. I dare you to kiss his forehead, count his fingers and toes like every decent father has done since time immemorial. I dare you to speak words of blessing upon his head, and pledge to be there for him—”
“You’re being ridiculous!” A deep, mottled red was rising up from under the collar of his crisp white shirt. She knew she was pushing him beyond his limits.
“I’mridiculous? How ridiculous is it to treat your own baby like an unwanted bastard?” She felt her eyes prickle, and was afraid that for the second time today, she would begin to cry. If that happened, she’d hate herself forever.
The effort he took into mastering himself physically was so great that he began to shake, as if he was calling upon the gods to help him control himself, not to combust in a pillar of flame. “Those things you want me to do for the child—for… Benjamin… are not important—”
“Not important? Am I going insane right now? Or did I just hear you say—”
“I have said what I have said, and this is not the first time. You will simply have to accept these facts. I am your husband, I married you because I wanted to be with you. I will continue to be your husband, to be loyal to you. I will protect my household and all who reside within it, to my dying breath, but I will not be the father you want me to be. I will not comply with your definitions of what that relationship should be. I will not hold or kiss the child. I will not touch him or have any such intimacy with him. Learn to live with it, or…” He stopped mid-sentence, as if what he could have gone on to say was so terrible that the words themselves refused to leave his mouth. Even his lips moved convulsively, as if he was chewing his words and swallowing them, rather than spew them into the world, and not be able to take them back.
Shaundra felt her entire being chill, as if she’d stepped onto an icy street without a coat. She wanted to launch herself at him, claw at his eyes. She’d read of the concept of the Tiger Mother, that protective instinct buried deep inside every woman that blossoms into being the moment she gives birth, empowering her with a ferocity so great that any threat to her child was met with savage rebuttal.
She wanted to slug him, tear at that goddamn expensive tailor-made shirt, grab him by the silk tie and yank on it, cut off his air just as she had done that night in the pool. Only this time, it wasn’t fun and games. She wanted to make him suffer until she bent him to her will.