What You Don't Know(60)
Oh, she was afraid. Yes, she was. She was twenty years old and still a virgin, had never gotten to second base, even with Jacky, who didn’t seem to have all that much interest in petting. He’d kiss her when they went to the movies, but he’d pull away when things got too heavy, and he’d hold the popcorn on his lap, looking embarrassed.
She gestured, lamely, tugging at the hem of her wedding dress. She’d heard about doing it from girls at school, but it’s not as if hearing about it was the same as the actual act.
“I don’t know,” Jacky said. He looked at her, then at the door, and for a minute she thought he was going to run. She’d never seen him nervous before, even when her father had promoted him from dishwasher to head cook, with more promises of management. Owner, her father had said. He’ll be running it all in no time.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“Should I turn out the light?”
“I don’t know. Yeah, I guess.”
He came to bed once the lights were out, came to her, his skin smooth and cold under her fingers. He was trembling, and finished fast, his breath hot in the cup of skin between her neck and shoulder.
“I didn’t know,” he said.
“Know what?”
“Nothing. Nothing.”
*
Jacky will only have butter in the restaurant, and at home. Real butter, not margarine or oleo, not even the good stuff no one can tell isn’t butter. She tried to fool him once, to replace the stuff in their butter dish with margarine, thinking that he’d never know the difference and she could save money on groceries, but somehow he knew, he knew even though she’d thrown the evidence away. And not even in their own trash but in one of the bins outside the grocery store. She’d leaned way over the side of the can, shoved the empty box way down deep, covering it over with greasy bags of fast food and crumpled newspapers, looking over her shoulder as she did it, as if Jacky might be standing right behind her in the parking lot, watching her, knowing exactly what she was up to. She covered her tracks, did everything perfectly, but somehow Jacky still knew, and he’d thrown the nice crystal butter dish they’d gotten as a wedding gift at a wall and screamed at her for lying, for trying to trick him, and flecks of spit had gathered at the corners of his mouth.
He’d picked up all sorts of quirks like that after the wedding, mostly about things at the restaurant. Her father, who handed the keys and the deed over three months after they were married, says it’s good. That it shows Jacky’s a discerning man. He’s got what it takes to make the restaurant run properly. And even though it hasn’t been that long since he took over, Jacky’s already talking about expanding, taking out a loan and opening up a second location, in a newish building where there used to be a barbershop, and a bar.
“Do you think that’s a good idea?” she asks, but Jacky doesn’t answer. He doesn’t pay much attention to her these days, and she understands, he’s busy at work, making a living to support her. He needs space, she thinks. But the only time he really seems to see her is when he wants it, fast and hard, and then he lets her keep the TV on while he takes care of his business, and she’s glad for that, because she still doesn’t understand the appeal of it, even though the women on her soaps love to taunt men with it, and it’s all the men seem to care about.
*
A year passes before she catches pregnant. She’s exhausted during those first few months, so she spends most of her days on the couch with the TV on, watching Erica Kane prance through life in Pine Valley, her feet propped up on a pillow and her hands roaming over her belly. It’s not changed much, still flat and taut, but she can feel the tiniest push, a little extra something nestled under her belly button. She sees pregnant women every day, at the grocery store, out walking through the park, and she wants to be one of them, to have a round belly and wear those ridiculous smock tops that balloon out at the waist. And then there’ll be a baby, a boy who looks like Jacky, and later they can have a girl. One of each flavor. She’s already started buying clothes, tiny socks and bottles of tearless shampoo, and the checkout girl doesn’t ask but she has to know, she looks at those things and then at Gloria’s belly, beaming, and it’s like they understand each other without saying a word.
And then, as quickly as it happened, it’s over. She wakes up one morning thinking that she must’ve had an accident because there’s a wet spot in the bed, she hasn’t done that since she was very small and her father had hung all the bedding outside so the entire neighborhood could see she was a bed-wetter. But when she throws back the covers all she sees is red. It seems to her in that moment that the entire bed is filled with blood, an ocean of it; it’s actually not that much but it’s enough, and the baby is gone. The doctor tells her to rest, that they can try again soon, that these things happen all the time. Jacky is sympathetic at first, but he’s confused by how upset she is, how sad, and says that he doesn’t understand why she’s acting like this, over something she never even had.
She bleeds for a week, and every time she goes to the bathroom she searches the toilet bowl before flushing, although she doesn’t know what she’s looking for. There’s nothing but urine and clotted blood and other bits she doesn’t have a name for, but she keeps looking anyway, expecting something more.