questions.
Seth sighs, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands.
“Let’s go to bed,” he says.
I study his face. For tonight, he’s done talking about them. He holds out a hand to help me up and I take it, letting him pull me to my feet.
We make love this time, kissing deeply as I wrap my legs around him. I shouldn’t wonder, but I do. How does a man love so many women? A different woman almost every other day. And where do I fall in the category of favor?
He falls asleep quickly, but I do not. Thursday is the day I don’t sleep.
On Friday morning, Seth leaves before I wake up. I tossed and turned until four and then must have fallen into a deep sleep, because I didn’t hear him when he left. Sometimes I feel like a girl who wakes up alone in bed after a one-night stand, him sneaking out before she can ask his name. I always lie in bed longer on Fridays and stare at the dent in his pillow until the sun shines right through the window and into my eyes. But the sun has yet to curl her fingers over the horizon, and I stare at that dent like it’s giving me life.
Mornings are hard. In a normal marriage, you wake up beside a person, validate your life with their sleep-soaked body. There are routines and schedules, and they get boring, but they are a comfort, as well. I do not have the comfort of normalcy: a snoring husband whom I kick during the night, or toothpaste glued to the sink that I scrub away in frustration. Seth can’t be felt in the fibers of this home, and most days that makes my heart heavy. He’s barely here and then he’s gone, off to another woman’s bed while mine grows cold.
I glance at my phone, apprehension making curlicues in my belly. I don’t like to text him. I imagine he is flooded with texts every day from the others, but this morning I have the urge to reach for my phone and text him: I miss you. He knows, surely he knows. When you don’t see your husband for five days out of the week he must know that you miss him. But I don’t reach for my phone, and I don’t text him. Resolutely, I throw my legs over the side of the bed and slide my feet into my slippers instead, my toes curling into the soft fleece inside. The slippers are part of my routine, my reach for normalcy. I walk to the kitchen, glancing out of the window at the city below. There is a snake of red brake lights down 99 as commuters wait their turn at the light. Wipers swish back and forth, clearing windshields of the mist-like rain. I wonder if Seth is among them, but no, he takes 5 away from here. Away from me.
I open the fridge and pull out a glass bottle of Coke, setting it on the counter. I dig around the silverware drawer for the bottle opener, cursing when a toothpick slides underneath my fingernail. I stick the finger in my mouth as I loosen the cap off the bottle with my free hand. I only keep one bottle of Coke in the fridge, and I hide the rest underneath the sink behind the watering can. Each time I drink the bottle, I replace it. That way, it looks like the same bottle of Coke has been sitting there forever. There is no one to fool but myself. And perhaps I don’t want Seth to know that I drink Coke for breakfast. He would tease me and I don’t mind his teasing, but soda for breakfast is not something you want people to know. When I was a little girl, I was the only one of my friends who liked to play with Barbie. At ten, they’d already moved on to makeup kits and MTV, asking their parents for clothes for Christmas instead of the new Barbie camper van. I was terribly ashamed of my love of Barbie dolls—especially after they made such a big deal out of it, calling me a baby. In one of the saddest moments of my young life, I packed away my Barbie dolls, retiring them to a box in my closet. I cried myself to sleep that night, not wanting to part with something I loved so much but knowing the teasing I’d take for it if I didn’t. When my mother found the box a few weeks later while packing laundry away, she’d questioned me about it. I tearfully told her the truth. I was too old for Barbie and it was time to move on.
You can play with them in secret. No one has to know. You don’t have to give up something you love just because other people disapprove, she said.
Secrets: I’m good at having them and keeping them.
I see that he made himself toast before he left. The remnants of bread crumbs litter the counter, and a knife lies in the sink, slick with butter. I chastise myself for not getting up early to make him something. Next week, I tell myself. Next week I’ll be better, I’ll feed my husband breakfast. I’ll be one of those wives who delivers sex and sustenance three times a day. Anxiety grips my stomach and I wonder if Monday and Tuesday get up to make him breakfast. Have I been slacking all this time? Does he think of me as neglectful because I stayed in bed? I clean up the crumbs, swiping them into my hand and then angrily shaking them into the sink, and then I carry my Coke to the living room. The bottle is cold in my palm and I sip, thinking of all the ways I could be better.
When I wake up, some time has gone by, the light has changed. I sit up and see the bottle of Coke turned on its side, a brown stain seeping into the carpet around it.
“Shit,” I say aloud, standing up. I must have dozed off holding the bottle. That’s what I get for lying awake all night, staring at the ceiling. I rush to grab a rag and stain solution to clean the carpet and drop to my knees, scrubbing furiously. The Coke has dried into the knotted beige rug, a sticky caramel. I am angry about something, I realize as tears roll down my face. The drips join the stain on the carpet and I scrub harder. When the carpet is clean, I fall back on my haunches and close my eyes. What has happened to me? How have I become this docile person, living for Thursdays and the love of a man who divides himself so thinly among three women? If you’d told nineteen-year-old me that this would be my life, she’d have laughed in your face.
The day he found me was five years ago, next week. I was studying in a coffee shop, my final nursing exam looming ahead of me, a wall I didn’t feel ready to climb. I’d not slept in two days, and I was at the point where I was drinking coffee like it was water just to stay awake. Half-delirious, I swayed in my armchair as Seth sat down next to me. I remember being irritated by his presence. There were five open armchairs to choose from; why take the one right next to me? He was handsome: glossy black hair and turquoise eyes, well-slept, well-groomed and well-spoken. He’d asked if I was studying to be a nurse and I’d snapped my answer, only to apologize a moment later for my rudeness. He’d waved away my apology and asked if he could quiz me.
A laugh burst from between my lips until I realized he was serious. “You want to spend your Friday night quizzing a half-dead nursing student?” I’d asked him.
“Sure,” he’d said, eyes glowing with humor. “I figure if I get in your good graces, you won’t say no when I ask you to have dinner with me.”
I remember frowning at him, wondering if it was a joke. Like his buddies had sent him over to humiliate the sad girl in the corner. He was too handsome. His type never bothered with girls like me. While I certainly wasn’t ugly, I was on the plain side. My mother always said I got the brains and my sister, Torrence, got the beauty.
“Are you being serious?” I’d asked. I suddenly felt self-conscious about my limp ponytail and lack of mascara.
“Only if you like Mexican,” he’d said. “I can’t fall for a girl who doesn’t like Mexican.”
“I don’t like Mexican,” I told him, and he’d grabbed at his heart like he was in pain. I’d laughed at the sight of him—a too-handsome man pretending to have a heart attack in a coffee shop.
“Just
