Unhinge

  Photo number three: me and Wes together, with our arms wrapped around each other. We’re standing in the entryway of our house. Light curves around us. I can see the boxes lined against the wall inside the house. Wes’s smile is genuine. But mine is not. I look dead behind my eyes.

  The process speeds up, just like the first time.

  Then, I hear them. The voices. They start out so quietly that it feels like someone’s whispering into my ear. The volume slowly increases and so does the number of voices. I try to block them out; it’s all becoming too much.

  Right before my eyes the image of Wes seems to rise from the picture, until he’s standing right in front of me, his face a mask of frozen shock. The room starts to spin. I feel like I’m on a carousel, spinning around and around. Soon everything around me is nothing but one big blur. I see a diaphanous array of lights all around me. Very slowly they are closing in on me.

  I hum to block out the past, but it’s stronger than I am. It squeezes past my barriers and hugs me tight. It sucks me down, away from the present, until I transport back into my past….

  The last thing I remember is my pleading for the past to be nice to me.

  Please, please, be on my side.

  May 2013

  Our first anniversary snuck up on us like a thief.

  One second we’re walking down the aisle, going on our honeymoon, and the next we’re in May. If every year of marriage is like this, then we’re golden.

  Instead of celebrating with a nice dinner at a fancy restaurant we were staying in. Our townhouse had quickly turned into our cozy getaway from the stress of work and life.

  We ordered Chinese takeout. The small boxes were scattered around the table. This entire week at work had been brutal. Likewise for Wes. The only thing that kept me upbeat was knowing our anniversary was waiting for us that weekend. The two of us were wearing sweats. The atmosphere was laid-back and casual and I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

  “Goals for this year?” I asked.

  Wes leaned back in his chair. “Make partner.”

  “Of course, of course.” I finished the last of the orange chicken and pushed the box aside. “Anything else?”

  “To always be happy. With you.” He took a drink, tilted his glass in my direction, and gave me a cheesy wink. “What about you?”

  My throat suddenly became dry. Without a doubt we were happy. Every day I seemed to love him more and more. I wanted to extend that love. I wanted to start a family. How Wes felt about starting a family remained to be seen. In the beginning of our engagement, kids were brought up, but always in the distant future. For me, the distant future was upon us. For Wes, it might still be years away.

  This urge, this desire, didn’t come out of nowhere. It had been brewing in me for months. Every time I saw a mother pushing a baby in a stroller, holding a child’s hand in the grocery store, or watched a mom or dad hold their child’s hand or whisper comforting words in their ear as they got stitches or shots, a part of me cried out for that.

  I’d always thought that I would never love anyone else in the world the way I loved Wes, but something told me being a parent would easily trump that love. What would it be like to have that much love for another human being?

  “I was thinking…” I started out slowly.

  Wes lifted a brow and waited patiently for me to continue speaking.

  “I was thinking that maybe we should try for a baby.”

  “A baby?” he asked bluntly. His question was said with no emotion, almost as if I were asking if he was going to do the dishes or take out the trash.

  It threw me off guard for a second. I hadn’t known what his reaction would be, but deep down I’d hoped that he would be a little interested in the idea. Just a little.

  “Well, yes,” I replied.

  He sat back in the chair heavily and frowned at me with confusion. My stomach dropped; this was not how I expected this to go. At all.

  “Look,” Wes began slowly. “We’ve always vowed to be honest about everything, right?”

  I nodded. Suddenly it seemed that that vow was biting me in the ass. Dread and apprehension clashed together and danced down my spine.

  “I don’t want kids,” Wes finally said.

  He shrugged and gave me a half smirk, as though it was a decision that could never be reversed no matter how hard I tried.

  “Never?”

  “Never.”

  I was shell-shocked. I blinked rapidly “Why not?”

  “Do I need a reason?”

  “Yes.”

  “Come on, Victoria.” A laugh escaped him. He raised his hands. “What do you want me to say? I don’t want kids.”

  “I want you to tell me why. I don’t want kids because…” I trailed off. “Fill in the blanks, Wes.”

  Abruptly he stood up from the table, taking his plate with him. I followed him, not ready to lay this conversation to rest.

  “Tell me why,” I persisted. “I want to talk about this.”

  “We already did.”

  “No, we kind of did and then you flipped out.”

  “I didn’t flip out!”

  He dumped the remaining food into the trash. “Why are we even talking about this?”

  “Because it’s important to me. Because you asked me what my goals were for this year and I told you and now you’re angry with me. That’s why we’re talking about this.”

  Wes turned around, his hands curled around the lip of the counter. All happy anniversary vibes had disappeared, replaced with anger.

  Like every normal couple, we’d had our arguments. We’d disagreed. But those moments never seemed to last long enough to make a dent in our relationship. One of us always caved.

  But in this case, I was willing to make an exception; this was something that I really wanted.

  “You need to let this go,” Wes said, a slight edge to his words. “You’re like a dog with a fucking bone.”

  “Then just give me an answer!”

  “I don’t want kids because I don’t want the responsibility,” he said like an explosion.

  Silence. The TV blared in the living room, but in the kitchen it was so quiet you could hear a pin drop.

  “I have too much on my plate right now to think about having a child, Victoria.”

  “There will always be too much on our plate. There will never be a right time to start a family.”

  “If there’s no right time, then why try?” Once again, he shrugged. That gesture was seriously starting to piss me off. It seemed lazy to me, as if he saw my frustration and anger and just didn’t really want to take the time to fix everything.

  I took a step back. His words had struck my heart. “Well,” I breathed, “there you have it.”

  “I would ask if that’s a problem, but clearly it is.”

  “Of course it is! I want kids!”

  Wes crossed his arms. “All right, say we have a baby. What are you going to do when it’s born? Continue to work and abandon it?”

  His words were said with such venom and hatred I flinched.

  “What are you talking about? I would never abandon my child.”

  Wes rejected my words and shook his head. “We’re not having a baby.”

  Wes was shutting the conversation down. I turned and walked away.

  “Victoria! Come back.” He caught up with me and wrapped his arms around me from behind. “I’m sorry. I want our child to have the best. I want it to have all our attention. My caseload is getting heavier by the minute and I’m afraid that I couldn’t give a child the love and affection he or she deserves. That’s all. I didn’t mean to make you cry, all right? Even if we tried for a child, look around. Right now it’s just the two of us and yet we’re outgrowing this townhouse. We need a home—a place to settle down.”

  Wes painted such a beautiful picture. It was so alluring, so perfect that I found myself agreeing.

  “Then I’ll give my two weeks’ notice to the hospital.” The words slippe
d out of my mouth before I could really think about them.

  Wes’s eyes brightened. “You’re sure about that?”

  “Yeah,” I said anxiously. The more I thought about it, the more sense it made. “Absolutely.”

  Wes stopped in front of me and held my face between both hands. He smiled as he leaned in and gave me a gentle kiss. One filled with promises and hopes for our future. When we pulled apart I rested my head against his chest.

  “So we’re going to do this?” I whispered into his shirt.

  “We’re going to do this. But I don’t want to rush. I want us to get a house and settle into the perfect home that we can call our own.”

  There was so much excitement brewing inside me. It was impossible to wipe the beaming smile off my face.

  Together we cleaned the kitchen, exchanging secret smiles every few minutes. I was wiping down the counter when I looked in the direction of the living room. I did a double take at the large, framed photo of the two of us on our wedding day. Hopefully, in a year, there would be a framed photo of our baby right next to it. I swiped my phone from the counter, turned, and looked at Wes. “Hey! Look over here, Future Father of my children.”

  Wes whipped his head around and I snapped a photo. If I had to title this photo, it’d be one simple word: Before.

  Before kids.

  Before exhaustion.

  Before that perfect family I wanted us to be.

  This chapter of our life was coming to a close. A new one was waiting to be written and I knew it would be unforgettable.

  August 2013

  “Well, what do you think?”

  Wes removed his hands from my eyes and stood next to me, a big smile on his face. In front of me was the beginning of our house. I’d been here once when we were looking at property and when the foundation was being poured.

  Since then, it had come a long way. But it was still the bare bones of the home it was to be. The house had been framed, with some areas covered with plywood on the outside. Even from here I could see the special framing for where the rooms would be and the cutouts for windows.

  “I think it’s certainly different from our townhouse.”

  “Before you start to freak out, remember it can normally take up to eight months for a custom home to be built. But before you know it, you, my queen will be living here.”

  I smiled at his promise.

  Excitement surged through me as I pictured the life and family that Wes and I could have here. It was a beautiful dream.

  “Want to go inside?” Wes asked. He looked so happy. The sleeves of his light blue dress shirt were rolled up as he looked up at the house. This house was his creation. All of it. I couldn’t say no to him.

  “Of course,” I replied.

  “We couldn’t have chosen a better spot,” Wes commented. “I was talking to the contractor and he said that Senator Carradine was thinking about buying the property to our right.”

  I nodded idly, barely paying attention to what he was saying. In my mind, I was adding items to the to-do list for this house.

  Since May we’d looked at nothing but properties, trying to find the perfect place for our forever home. Instantly I fell in love with the property on Bellamy Road. It was attached to a newer subdivision, with maybe four or five homes on the street. It was peaceful and quiet, surrounded by nothing but acres and acres of woods. It was a far cry from living in town, where there was always something going on.

  Hand in hand the two of us walked across the road. There was no sidewalk, or even a front yard for that matter. Any grass that remained was matted down or covered with dirt. Construction workers toiled around us, completely focused on getting the job done. There was no front porch. Two thick pieces of wood were turned into a makeshift ramp that led into what would be the foyer. We stepped inside. Just this space alone was larger than our kitchen and living room combined in the townhouse.

  I turned in a circle, looking at all the wooden beams and plywood. To the right I looked at the U-shaped staircase with two landings. I pictured them finished: mahogany steps. White risers. The banister would match the steps and the wrought iron spindles would complete it all.

  Even though it was just the two of us, we were very slowly outgrowing the townhouse. The spare bedroom was Wes’s office, and that was putting it loosely.

  One of the first things he wanted in this house was an office, with built-in bookshelves.

  My wants were simpler. I wanted an open floor plan. In my head I could picture each room having multiple windows. French doors that led to the deck. A bay window in the master bedroom. Most of all, I pictured a beautiful backyard, with flowers everywhere. I didn’t have much of a green thumb. The last time I tried to “garden,” I was a little girl helping my mother out. A few flowers wilted away. After that I stuck to plants and fake ficus.

  “Straight ahead is the living room and kitchen,” Wes said. “Now, I talked to the contractor and he said that the type of flooring you want in the kitchen is on back order and it may take a couple of months. He left other options for you to look at.” I nodded, overwhelmed by everything I was seeing but smiling in spite of myself. Wes’s enthusiasm was contagious. How could I not be so happy when that was all he was feeling?

  “Let’s look around some more,” he said as he guided me deeper into the house.

  We moved from room to room, quietly watching the people work around us. We walked up the stairs to the second floor and the whole time I pictured what it would be like to hear the sound of kids’ feet running up and down the halls. The idea made me smile and gave me hope; I still wasn’t pregnant.

  In the back of my mind, I knew there was no reason to be down on myself. We’d only been “trying” to get pregnant actively since the beginning of the summer, but almost immediately my imagination kicked in and started to reach for all the things that could possibly be wrong.

  Wes showed me the spacious master bedroom, with a massive walk-in closet with separate racks for my dresses and shoes and purses. “Do you love it?”

  “Who wouldn’t love this? It’s amazing.”

  “This is all for you.”

  I gave him a grateful smile and made a slow circle around the room.

  Up next were the two spare bedrooms. It was the bedroom next to ours that caught my eye. I could picture soft white carpet beneath my feet and the walls painted a soothing yellow. There would be a rocking chair in the corner. A white armoire filled with baby clothes with a changing table right next to it. A wicker basket of toys would be on the floor. And placed right in front of the large window would be a white crib. I walked over to where the window would be and looked out into the backyard. The grass needed to be mowed but I could picture flowers in a wide range of colors planted along the white picket fence that was being put up. I saw a hammock hanging between the two large oak trees. I would put brown wicker furniture on the deck. It would be my own personal escape.

  I turned back to Wes. He was watching me with a hint of a smile.

  “This would be a nice nursery,” I said casually.

  Wes leaned against the doorframe and cocked his head to the side. “You think so?”

  “Yeah,” I said softly. “I do.”

  “You’re not pregnant, are you?” he asked bluntly.

  My smile slipped. “No, I’m not.”

  What kind of question was that, and why did he look so relieved? His reaction clashed with my pain, instantly putting me on the defensive.

  Without a word, I walked out of the room. In such an empty space, the sound of my footsteps echoed all around me. I hurried down the stairs with Wes hot on my heels.

  “Victoria!”

  I stopped and whirled around. “What?”

  Wes stopped two steps above me. He gripped the wall and banister for support. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “What’s wrong?” I stared at him with disbelief. “You looked so happy when I said I wasn’t pregnant. And you know how much I want a child.”

&nb
sp; He looked genuinely confused and hurt by my actions. It was as though we’d never discussed the idea of kids. It was as though my efforts to quit my job had all been in vain. “Getting pregnant isn’t going to happen in a flash. It might take time.”

  “I know that,” I said through gritted teeth. “But you looked so relieved back there!”

  In this empty house, my words echoed all around us, slamming home my point.

  His lips moved into a thin line. In my eyes, this shouldn’t be an argument. Money and things should create arguments. Not children. He dragged his hands through his hair. “I’m still coming around to the idea of it, okay?”

  “But just two months ago you said we could start trying for a baby. I didn’t put the words in your mouth!”

  “In a way, you did. You wouldn’t let the topic go.”

  There was nothing I could say to that. It was clear that we had each taken different things away from the baby conversation. On the first floor, workers discreetly tried to get out of the eye of the storm. I didn’t blame them one bit. I wished I could walk out with them.

  Wes walked down the steps until he was right next to me. “Isn’t it enough that I’m open to the idea of a baby?”

  “No. It’s not enough. Having a baby is not like buying a car. You can’t trade it in if you don’t like it. That’s not how it works.”

  Within seconds, his face morphed into anger. I saw rage in his eyes. His fist flew, only inches away from my head, and hit the plywood next to me. I covered my head as I hurried down the rest of the steps and looked at Wes in shock.

  He stared at the now-cracked piece of wood and at his fist, looking just as shocked as me. When his eyes met mine, I saw a wild, frantic, terrified look on his face. He hurried down the stairs. I stopped myself from taking a step back, away from him.

  A hush descended across the house. Even the construction workers were staring our way.

  “I’m sorry,” Wes whispered. He pulled me to him. His arms encircled my shoulders. My body was rigid.

  Wes pulled back, his hands cupping my face. He smiled, but it didn’t have the same effect it usually did. “I’m so sorry, Victoria. I exploded. You know I love you. I love you.”