Mother of All Secrets(50)

After two margaritas, I was feeling almost like a real human being again, not just Clara’s grouchy, slovenly mom. It was ten o’clock before I knew it, and my friends were ready to call it a night; they were planning to go into school to set up their classrooms the next morning. Originally, I had doubted that I’d even last this long. But I had just gotten an unexpected All good! Clara took a bottle and is sleeping next to me in the DockATot. Hope you’re having fun. Take your time! text from Tim. A few drinks in, and so relieved to be separated from the baby for a few hours, I found that I really did not want to go home yet.

My friends felt bad leaving me there by myself, but I shooed them out and told them I’d be right behind them, that I was going to use the bathroom and maybe try to get some fries to bring home. But instead, after they left, I sat down at the bar and got a tequila shot, which I hadn’t done in practically a decade. It burned my throat in the best possible way, a punishment and a reward all in one, and made me feel twenty-two. I ordered another margarita, too. I was sort of pretending I was in a movie. I didn’t even feel drunk; all I felt was relieved. Like I could breathe for the first time in months. It felt so good to be alone. And a frumpy, exhausted, frustrated, still-grieving new mom would never have a tequila shot, so as long as I was here doing exactly that, I was Old Jenn. Or, Young Jenn, more accurately.

And knowing that Clara was fine, safe at home with Tim, made my little taste of freedom all the sweeter. We could be apart and she would be okay. It was like a revelation. And it just made me love her even more.

I’d had enough, though; all I needed was a taste of freedom. Just a taste. I was ready to go home. I was going to ask for the check when another shot appeared in front of me. The bartender gestured vaguely—warily, in retrospect, perhaps—and there down at the end of the bar was a tall, brown-haired guy with an expensive-looking haircut and a narrow gray suit, raising his own shot toward me with a slight smile. I was surprised. Flattered. I felt rude not taking it. Or uncool, or both. Why the hell not, I thought to myself.

I smiled back and downed it.

It’s blurry after that. We moved toward each other at the bar and talked a little. About what, I couldn’t say. I remember at least two more shots and a beer, drunk in rapid succession. I can’t recall laughing. Or his name, if I ever learned it.

I remember it all in scenic flashes only. Leaving the barstools. Entering the bathroom, him ushering me along like I was a child. I don’t think I quite knew where we were going until I saw the toilet and heard the door lock. Him kissing me, hard and brief, in the bathroom. His rough stubble, which had looked sexy from afar, hurting my cheeks. That was the first time I said no. He responded by turning me around and shoving my head into the wall. I remember staring at my wedding ring as he entered me from behind and feeling momentarily nauseated. I was sure I’d throw up during sex. At least that will put an end to it, I thought. Who would want to have sex with someone who was puking? I felt myself floating outside of my body, looking down at myself, thinking, What is happening, Jenn? What the hell is this? But this was what I had wanted, wasn’t it? To be someone else for a little while. I’d accepted a drink from him, and another, hadn’t I? Pretending I was a character in a movie, right?

None of this felt like what I had wanted, though. I so badly wanted to scream for him to stop, but instead I only whispered it—once, maybe twice—my efforts feeble and futile. In truth, I felt like I had already let it go too far to shut it down. It was happening. The only thing left to do was see it through until the end.

It hurt. He wasn’t gentle. I was irrationally terrified that all my organs would fall out of my still-healing vagina. But he kept saying “You’re so tight,” which had to have been a lie. He also kept saying “You slut,” which, though I knew I deserved, still made tears fall from my eyes.

The encounter felt like it lasted hours, but in reality, it was probably a matter of a couple of minutes. He came quickly, pulling out and finishing himself off with a grunt. He said we probably shouldn’t leave the bathroom together and that he would leave first. When I followed a minute later, dazed and in shock at what had just happened, he wasn’t in the bar anymore. I already knew he wouldn’t be.

One minute I was in the bathroom with him breathing heavily behind me, my eyes shut tight, praying for it to be over. The next I was in a cab, heading home to my husband and baby, not sure of who the hell I was, in disbelief at what had just transpired. My underwear was in my pocket because it was ripped and I couldn’t wear it anymore. I called my mom’s voice mail from the back of the cab, to hear her voice, something I did more often than I should have. I closed my eyes and imagined myself curled up in her hug, on her bed, eating pizza. Pizza in bed had always been her solution to everything—a bad day at school, a fight with a friend, a broken heart. But no amount of pizza in bed could make me feel better about what had just happened. And then, for the briefest moment, I was relieved she was dead, because what would she think if she could see me now?

When I got home it wasn’t even that late, barely midnight, but so much had changed between when my friends left the bar and when I got home. I peeled off all my clothes and got into the shower, turning up the heat to an almost unbearable temperature. I deserved for it to hurt. My skin started to turn red. Good, I thought. I scrubbed my face, watching black mascara peel off in bits and fall into the drain. I knew tears were running down my face, too, but I was too disconnected from my body to really register that I was crying.