Page 35 of Beautiful Ugly
“So now I’m in trouble for the way other people look at me?”
“Don’t think I haven’t noticed how you’re looking at them too.”
“What does that mean? Should I walk around with my eyes closed? I only have eyes for you. You know that. You’re always the most interesting woman in the room.”
“Interestingis an interesting choice of word.”
“It’s true. You have an amazing career. A life. All the women downstairs talk about are endless stories about their children—”
“There’s nothing wrong with being a mother. What if I wanted that too one day?”
He looked at me as though I had told a joke. Then, when there wasn’t a punch line, he looked at me as though I had lost my mind. “But you don’t want children. You never have. I think you’ve been working too hard, you’re stressed, and you’re taking it out on me. As usual.”
Me working so hard benefited both of us, financially and in other ways. I was tired of his complaints about the long hours and late nights.
“I’m sure it’s all very flattering and a nice little ego boost when they flutter their eyelids at you,” I said. “But none of it is real. They think you’re something you’re not.”
“And what am I?”
I bit my tongue. Until he met me, his writing career had hit a dead end. My connections were the reason he was a success. We both knew it; I didn’t need to say it. But I didn’t want to hurt him. I still don’t.
“You used to look at me the way they do,” he said then. “As though you believed in me. As though you were proud.”
“You used to look at me as though you still found me attractive.”
He frowned. “I do still find you attractive.”
Then he kissed me in a way that he hadn’t for so long.
“Stop that. Someone could come up here any moment,” I said, pushing him away.
“I can’t kiss my wife now?”
“It’s been so long I’m surprised you remember how.”
He pushed me up against the wall and kissed me again.
“I remember how,” he whispered, and this time I kissed him back. We stumbled down the hallway like drunk teenagers, tugging at each other’s clothes, until we found an empty bedroom. In the darkness he pulled the hem of my skirt up, my underwear down, and maneuvered me to a vintage armchair in the corner of the room. He fucked me on that chair. There is no other word for it. One of his hands bent me over from behind and held me in place, the other covered my mouth.
Despite what he’d said, I felt like I could have been anyone, and that something had changed between us.
Sex didn’t feel like making love after that night. We took what we needed from each other, when we needed it, and intimacy became even more of a rare currency in our marriage. Then it stopped altogether. I could see in the mirror that I didn’t look how I used to, but he looked better than ever. Some men get more handsome with age. Our jobs became our lives, and the women he worked with—publishers, publicists—all seemed to be getting younger and prettier. It’s hard for a woman my age to compete with a twentysomething with stars in her eyes.
We started to unravel and I didn’t know how to fix us or if I even wanted to. I was always working, he was always writing, and we muddled on. There is nothing sweet about sorrow. Sadness can consume a person if it is allowed to linger too long. It takes root and buries itself inside a person’s soul, until every thought is too heavy, too painful to think. It felt like we had lost the version of us that knew how to be happy. We’re still together but I have never felt so alone.
“He thinks he still loves me,” I tell the woman in black, realizing that I have allowed myself to wander and get lost inside memories I would rather forget.
She waits for me to say more, but I don’t.
I have forgotten how it feels not to feel lonely.
Sometimes at night, while he is sleeping right next to me but seems so far away, I remember how things used to be. Retired feelings of desire return and I can’t sleep unless I do something to satisfy them. When I am sure he is sound asleep, my fingers creep beneath the sheets, silently slide down my tummy, and find their way between my legs. I’ve learned to be silent as I touch myself the way he used to touch me. Sometimes I pretend that it is his hand, his fingers, him, even though he is unconscious and uninterested. Other times I pretend that other hands are touching me. People I know, people I don’t. I’ve nevercheated on my husband in real life, only in my fantasies. I thought I could fix us. Find a way to make things work.
Wives think their husbands will change but they don’t.
Husbands think their wives won’t change but they do.
BIG BABY