2. LOOK AT ME

LOOK AT ME

I t was early morning. The golden hue of sunrise peeked through the blinds, gently warming the breakfast nook where I sat with my family eating. Cupping a mug I'd bought from an artist friend that said, "The Tears of the Patriarchy" in inky black letters, I inhaled the coffee's chocolate and caramel notes and took a sip. Heaven. Olivia copied me with her mug, a small blue enamel cup filled with orange juice.

"Eat your waffles, Liv," I urged, smiling.

"Yeah, eat your waffles, Liv!" Victoria parroted, proudly, forever thrilled that she was the oldest and, therefore, the one with all of the life experience and authority.

"And you too, Ria." I winked at her. Try to enjoy being a kid and leave parenting to me, yeah? Victoria scrunched up her face. "Okay, mamma," she said flatly.

I noted the personalized acrylic family calendar on the wall and scanned over my last name, the hyphen, and his. If I leave him, do I buy a new one? Change the name? How many other things will I need to change? What will this house look like with half of everything gone? I glanced at the clock and set my coffee down a little too hard.

"We've got to get going, girls. You both have soccer this morning, then we'll get lunch, then the grocery store, and we can go for a walk before dinner."

"Okay!" Victoria and Olivia chimed together.

"Are you coming to soccer practice?" I asked Steven.

He had a mouth full of waffles and an iPhone glued to his face.

"Steven?"

"WHAT?" he snapped.

He broke focus from his phone just long enough to glare at me. The muscles in his jaw flexed and tightened.

I had to refrain from rolling my eyes. "I asked you if you're coming to their soccer practice?"

His chestnut brown eyes fixated on me coldly and it made the hair on my arms stand up.

"I don't know, " he said, low and clipped, not even trying to hide the contempt. "I'm bu-sy," he enunciated each syllable for emphasis. As if he needed to be as clear as possible so I'd finally understand that he didn't have time for me, them, or anyone. He dragged his eyes to our daughters and his chilly expression softened a little. "I'll try to come, okay, girls? I just need to get ready for my flight tonight."

He turned his attention back to the screen.

"Steven," I began.

He huffed and, without looking at me again, mumbled, "one of us has to have a real job."

His words landed in my gut like a fist. The air left my lungs, and the whole world shifted under me. Ouch. That son of a bitch. How could he?

"Excuse me?" I demanded, barely a whisper, already regretting the decision to snap back in front of the children. "I take care of our children twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. And I do commissions at night, Steven ." I said his name slowly, like a curse. "How is that not work?"

His eyes shot to me and then back to his phone in a silent dismissal. I wanted to throttle him, to throw my coffee in his face, to scream and cry and pull my hair out in wild frustration. We'd agreed I'd only work part-time so I could be there for the girls because he traveled so much and he wanted me to be with the girls as much as possible like Steven's mother had been home with him, unlike my "terrible" mother, who'd hired a nanny. So even though we'd both agreed that being a stay-at-home mom made sense, he liked to use my "not working" as a way to put me in my place from time to time. I hated to admit that it worked more often than not because the truth was that I felt ashamed for not earning more money. Under the table, I bawled up my fists until my nails bit into my palms.

Resentment swelled in my belly like an ulcer. Don't react, it's not worth it. I shoved the hurt down, down, down, into the vast emptiness inside, feeling myself die little by little. If I kept making myself small, eventually I'd just disappear or maybe I already had. I barely recognized myself. Before I became a mom, I had plenty of insecurities but overall I think I liked myself. I didn't anymore. You can't like someone you don't know. The cost of keeping the peace is high. A small piece of us withers each time we resist the urge to fight back.

My younger self would roll in her grave. Folks had labeled me a weirdo, a witch, "that rich girl who found her father in ribbons," but never agreeable or passive. Once, in high school, I'd noticed a young man take a barely conscious girl into a back room at a house party, and I'd stormed after them in a rage and planted myself between the tall, gangly man-boy and the glossy-eyed girl as though I weren't a full foot shorter than him. With death in my veins, I'd barked, "Get the fuck away from her, you gross piece of shit." I must have looked absolutely unhinged because he'd dropped the girl like a sack and scuttled away with his head down as he passed through the murmuring crowd. What would that version of me think about who I'd become? Would I have the courage to help the girl if it happened now?

The muscles tensed in my jaw as I continued to study Steven. How has it come to this? I took a deep breath, in and out. His stone-cold expression fixated wholly on his phone filled me with this volcanic, bottomless fury, and I wanted to punch him in his statue-like face. A voice in the back of my mind whispered to me, "You turned out just like your mom, angry and unfulfilled. "

We'd fallen in love, hadn't we? We'd been happy once. Right? Everything good felt too distant to be real anymore. A few years ago, I couldn't have imagined a life without him. I'd called him my best friend and spent all of my free time with him. Now, every minute in his presence felt like a tiny torture.

My therapist once said marriages have ups and downs and go through phases of disconnect. How long does one wait to see if they are in a "bad phase" or if it has all gone to shit forever? At least I had my girls. My beautiful, spirited, pain in the ass, wonderful girls. I breathed in for five seconds and out for five seconds. Forced myself to sit taller and forced my chin up, then reached into the air and stretched, concentrating on my muscles and the dull ache along my spine and biceps as I pushed towards the ceiling. My watch dinged.

"Oh, shit," I muttered. "We're going to be late for your game. Time to go! I'll scoot out of here and grab your bags and snacks. Finish up, then meet me at the front door."

I nodded at Steven, "Can you help them finish up?" He glanced up, his chin dipping down just once before his gaze settled back on his phone screen. My eyes rolled so hard they ached in their sockets; I slid out of the window seat and stalked around the house like a tornado, collecting a water bottle here, a snack cup there, and a shoe. I yanked on my black Chelsea boots before swinging a long taupe wool jacket over my shoulders. My girls bounded towards me; Steven herded them absentmindedly, still scrolling on his phone. I waited for them to put on their sneakers, doing my best to resist the urge to harass them to move faster. Two hundred hours later, I shoved their backpacks towards them as they burst onto the porch to sprint towards my embarrassing car: sporty, posh-y, and showy, an unexpected marriage gift from some great aunt I'd never met. It embodied all the things I was not and didn't want to be. Standing on the porch, the light hit him just so. He looked handsome there, and for a moment, it was just him, the cute man who used to make me coffee in the morning, who would scream and run from spiders. I leaned in to kiss Steven on the cheek, but he cringed and tilted his head just out of reach.

"Oh…sorry." I fumbled an apology and hopped down the steps.

"Hurry, you're going to be late," Steven hollered to the girls.

So stupid. Why did I do that? My cheeks heated with shame, but I forced myself to shake off the small rejection as I crunched through the fallen leaves to my car.

Pressing the gas with a little more force than necessary, the car lurched forward and we were on our way. The radio buzzed alive with the news, "another body found in the mountains as police continue the search for what they believe to be a serial ki—". I changed the station. Classic rock filled the car, and the girls got some of their pre-game jitters out by aggressively fist-pumping to the music. I tried to concentrate on my hands gripping the wheel, on the music thrumming around us, but I just kept thinking about Steven and his comment, "One of us has to work," and the way he jerked away from me when I'd tried to kiss him goodbye.

Steven wasn't violent, but I was afraid of him. I was afraid of how he made me feel, like I was beneath him, wrong somehow, like my needs were an intolerable inconvenience, a character flaw, something broken in me. I'd seen the aftermath of disembowelment up close, but I knew for a fact that you could gut a person without ever laying a hand on them.