***
It wasn’t long before Quinn decided that being the perfect wife also meant having sex with him whenever he wanted, even when I wasn’t in the mood—and increasingly I wasn’t. As far as he was concerned, though, flu’, cramps and fatigue were all my problems. Sometimes he did make the effort to pleasure me but he was almost calculated about it in a way I didn’t like. More often, he just took what he wanted and rolled off of me. My life was in a holding pattern—waking up wary, wondering what I would do that day that would set Quinn off, going to bed weary, exhausted from simply trying ever harder to never misstep.
Sherry noticed that something was going on. She began again dropping remarks, this time about “trouble in paradise”. One afternoon when we were sitting around Mom’s kitchen table, helping to chop fruit for cake (Mom doesn’t hold much store either by women who can’t cook or by the ease of food processors. Cakes in her house are handmade the old fashioned way.) Sherry looked at me and came right out and said that I looked like a ghost of my old self.
“It’s me, Sherry,” I said. “Just more grown up. I’m a wife now.”
She snorted. “If this is how being a wife makes you grow up, Lord keep me single and juvenile.”
“He probably will. Marriage takes sharing and compromise to make it strong and you’re too selfish and stubborn for anyone to live with.” A quick insult I didn’t have to think about.
My mother just gave this small, proud smile. She’d had a lifetime with my father, with plenty ups and downs, and it pleased her that I was as committed now to my marriage vows as she always taught us we should be, as she’d been to hers. She didn’t seem to notice whatever it was that Sherry was picking up on.
My brother, too, asked me once or twice if I was okay. Part of me wanted to confess to questioning my blessings, but the guilt at being ungrateful was even stronger. I told Bobby everything was okay, just a few things I had to work out for myself.
It took another two years—until just recently—for me to realize just how much I’d have to work out.
Six months ago, Quinn and I stayed at the Crowne Plaza in West Palm Beach on a three-day business weekend. To get through it, I downed enough champagne to keep me numb and played the corporate wife so well Quinn screwed me every night that weekend. I was mildly drunk the whole time so I wasn’t thinking about the time of the month, just about cages and ingratitude.
One morning, six weeks after that—four months ago—I vomited up the pancakes I made for breakfast. I headed to the drug store and confirmed my suspicions with an over-the-counter pregnancy test. That little blue line—that “positive”—felt like it was happening to someone else. I saw my doctor. He asked some questions, did some poking around, and announced that there was no reason I shouldn’t have a healthy, happy baby.
A baby.
My baby.
It had been the farthest thing from my mind after Quinn had said “no” for so long, but I was twenty-seven and finally going to be a mother.
My maternal engine cranked on, old visions of the future started to flow anew. I had to tell Quinn.
The next night we sat down to medium-rare pepper steaks and grilled asparagus—Quinn’s favorite meal. After he polished it off, he set down his fork and smiled approvingly across the table at me. In that relaxed moment, with flickering candlelight and soft music drifting around us, I didn’t see his need for control, his constant demands, his lightning temper. I only saw that Quinn was loving and charming most of the time and that was why people warmed to him so quickly. I thought of how he looked when he poured his soul out on the piano with so much heart and feeling. I thought about how he helped Mrs. Daniels to her car every Sunday after church even though, between her weak right side and her longwinded conversation, it took nearly half an hour. And he still opened doors for his mother, always addressed his father as “Sir”. Sometimes he would take two days off from the office just to spend them with me. Those were the things I saw in his smile that night across the dinner table. Quinn loved me. I knew he did. Everything would be alright.
“Quinn, I’m pregnant.”
And just like that, his smile vanished. I had forgotten how it could do that. Light on. Light off.
“What?”
I eased my chair back and his hand flashed out and clamped onto mine before I’d moved too far. “Pregnant?” His voice had a way of getting softer the madder he was. It was very soft then.
“I didn’t plan it, Quinn. You made me stop taking the pill because I was putting on weight, and you don’t always use condoms.”
He looked at me like I had turned into the Whore of Babylon. “Get rid of it.”
There was no hesitation. I was dumbstruck. Something inside me finally snapped. “What? No.”
His nostrils flared. “I said get rid of it.” His voice was so soft now I was hearing just the vowels.
I didn’t raise my voice either but I was braced like steel. “No…fucking…way. Get used to it.”
He jerked back, yanked his hand away and stared at me like he didn’t know who I was. I wanted to look back to see if the candlelight had cast a writhing shadow of me with twisted horns, spread wings, and slashing claws on the wall.
Quinn got up from the table and walked out, leaving a vacuum of quiet behind him.
I sat at the dining table for a long time, thinking. I had finally figured out what it took to get my husband to relinquish his need to control me—I simply had to fight back. Maybe I had nothing to fight back for before, but I did now. Now I would take on anyone and anything that threatened the baby inside me, even my husband’s evil side.
I cleared the table, and went to bed. Quinn never came to bed that night.
When I woke up the next morning, he had already left for work, and he came home after I’d gone to bed. He did that the next two days as well.
The fourth night I was lying on the couch, reading, and he came in at his usual time again—around seven—bearing pink carnations and hot Italian take-out.
“I didn’t think the glutamate in Chinese would be good for the baby,” he said with a one-sided smile.
My jaw dropped. Then I closed my mouth and looked closer at him.
He saw that I was distrustful, hurt, and still angry. He set the food and the flowers down on the coffee table and knelt down in front of me the same way he had on the night he proposed six years ago.
“I’m so sorry, honey. I don’t know what came over me. I guess I’ve had you to myself so long, I got a little crazy at the thought of sharing you. I didn’t mean what I said about an abortion. I could never really ask you to consider something like that. Forgive me, please?” He rested his hand on my belly and I flinched. If he noticed, he didn’t let on. But this was the old Quinn I’d fallen in love with—the charmer. I couldn’t connect with all the old emotion just then, and he didn’t expect me to tumble into his arms (even he wasn’t that dense) but I gave a little; I nodded. He served us the take out, cleaned up afterward, and slept beside me in our bed again.
Just because he was back in our bed didn’t mean I was letting him back inside me, though. In middle of the night, when his hand snaked out and fondled my breast, I shrugged it off. He gave up and I went back to sleep.
I woke up the next morning feeling stronger. I liked who I saw when I looked in the mirror, someone I hadn’t seen in years—me. I liked my cool head, my control. I liked that Quinn was finally seeing that I had control, too—over my life and that of the child growing inside me.