The back of my neck began to heat up and I felt an odd scratchiness in my throat.
“But Roger, I have no one but you,” my voice cracked. “You go out with your colleagues all the time, and I have no one. I barely have any friends, none that I ever see, anyway. I’m not allowed to go out with you anywhere…”
“Alex, don’t be ridiculous,” he grunted, raking his long fingers through his hair. “It isn’t that you’re not allowed to. I go out to doctor’s benefits and things like that. They’re completely boring for someone like you.”
I gasped as if I’d been slapped in the face. “Someone like me? What does that even mean?”
A sneaking insecurity crept into my brain, one that I was always struggling to smother.
He’s ashamed of me.
Of course I know how it looks. I’m a twenty-two-year-old artist with tattoos and piercings. Sure, I know how to dress up as well as the next girl, but if we’re being stereotypical, I don’t look like a doctor’s wife.
I’ve always found it strange that he goes stag to all his charity things and benefits. I can count on one hand how many times I’ve accompanied him to an event, and they’re always small, low-key ones. He’s a successful, well-known doctor in Manhattan. He gets invited to a lot of stuff, and normally I never cared if I was invited or not, because I know what we mean to each other. But deep down, I’m hurt that he never even asks…
“I just mean that you’re real and honest and special,” he tried using the patronizing, sugar-coated voice, which was only pissing me off more. “You don’t belong with all those phonies. You belong here with me.”
“I want to be with you, Roger. Don’t you get that?” I barked. “I want to be with you everywhere. I don’t care where it is. But you keep your work life and your home life completely separate. Do you know how that makes me feel?”
He stared down at me, his bright eyes giving away the wheels turning in his mind as he concocted plans to diffuse the bomb that was his young wife.
“Alex, you’re my wife, and you mean the whole world to me,” he rasped, taking my chin in his fingers. “I just don’t feel it necessary to involve you in work stuff. We have the perfect thing going on here, darling. Don’t ruin it.”
And with a kiss on the nose, he was affectively shutting down the conversation.
“So you don’t want to have a baby with me?” I wasn’t done. Not yet. Not until I heard him say the words.
“Never say never,” he grumbled, and turned back to the movie. His tone was firm and definitive.
It was a warning without the warning. His tone was telling me to drop it now, so his words didn’t have to.
That was three months ago.
We haven’t spoken a word about the baby thing since, and I’m anything but pacified.
It’s not that I necessarily want kids right now. But I need something.
When Roger isn’t home, which is all the time, even more, it seems, since we had that mind-fuck of a conversation, all I have is my art. But I’ve been finding it increasingly difficult to paint anything decent when I’m this unsettled.
I spend most of my time wondering where he is, and what he’s doing. He’s just so vague all the time. He rarely talks to me about anything going on in his life.
The things we talk about are superficial, surface topics. Movies, TV, books, my art, the fucking weather. We’re like coworkers or acquaintances. And the less we talk about anything real, the less I feel like I actually know him at all.
I talk to him about everything. I tell him details about my life all the time, because I’m always itching to get him to open up. So I share things in hopes that he’ll reciprocate, but he never does. It’s next-level frustrating.
I recently tried to reconnect with some old friends via social media, thinking that maybe if I had a girlfriend to talk to, it would make me feel less hopeless.
I went out to lunch yesterday with my best friend from high school, Lindsay. It was a mediocre visit. We didn’t mesh as well as we used to, but it felt good to talk to someone who wasn’t Roger, or the people I see every day, like our doorman or the barista at the coffee shop next door.
And then later when I told Roger about it, he had the nerve to act upset. As if he really didn’t want me seeing anyone who wasn’t him.
As if he doesn’t want me to have friends.
As if he wants me all alone.
The confusion and anxiety were building inside me, bubbling to the surface. All these negative emotions are what prompted tonight’s disaster.
Roger came home later than usual. I had dinner ready and waiting for him, so I was already annoyed that it was cold and I had to heat it up.
I was on edge. Not the best time to have serious conversations.
But I threw caution to the wind and said, “Roger, I really want to try for a baby.”
His eyebrows pushed together in a way I’d never really seen on him before, and his bright blue eyes turned dark.
He took a step toward me, and I instinctively backed up.
“Alexandra, where is this coming from?” His voice was so eerily quiet, goosebumps sheeted across my skin.
I gulped down a knot of heightened tension in my throat. “N-nowhere, I just want -”
“Who is telling you that we need to have a baby?” He asked, creeping even closer to me. “Who has been planting these ideas in your head? Was it that bitch you were with yesterday?”
I froze. Completely still, like a statue.
I had never heard him use that tone before, much less call anyone - especially my friend - a bitch. My mind rushed to convince myself it was nothing, but my body was still so terrified it wouldn’t move, my mouth clamped shut so hard my jaw grew sore.
“Answer me!” He snapped, and I jumped, his voice echoing loud throughout the kitchen.
“No one! No one, I promise,” I answered him quickly, meek and fearful, trying desperately to pacify him. “It was me. I wanted to talk to you about it. I just thought -”
“Alex, when I told you it’s not the time, I was very fucking serious,” he moved in closer, trapping me between his large body and the wall. His eyes bore down into me and I wanted to look away so badly, but I physically couldn’t. I still couldn’t move. “We’re not having a baby right now, do you understand? Have a made myself clear?”
He was towering over me. My heart was slamming against my chest so hard he could probably feel it on his ribs. All the hairs on my body were standing straight up as fear held onto my breath and my voice.
But I was terrified he would yell at me again, so I knew I had to answer him. My body finally reacted and allowed me to nod.
I kept on nodding, my shivering lips finally parting enough for me to squeak, “Yes.”
He narrowed his gaze at me, and I saw his jaw clench. I began to cower.
I wasn’t sure why, and even thinking back on it now, I don’t understand it. But my body seemed to understand it was in danger and was bracing itself for something my mind still couldn’t comprehend. Something my heart refused to believe.
After another few silent moments of tension where nothing could be heard other than my pulse rapping and my blood rushing in my ears, Roger backed up and left me glued to the wall in our kitchen.