Dead to Her(4)
Half an hour later, when he was sprawled out and snoring, Marcie got up and padded into her dressing room beyond the his-and-hers bathrooms. Under the glare of the light, she looked at herself. She remembered how proud the new Mrs. Radford had been coming down those stairs. How beautiful. The way she’d danced, so drunk. She didn’t care, that was it. She reminded Marcie of someone she herself used to be a long time ago, back before she’d met Jason. Before she had entered this world.
When had she started to feel so small? Was it when the house—much as she adored their new home—got so big? Or was it after the boutique failed and they—Jason—quietly decided that a life in business wasn’t for her? No more expensive hobbies. When had she stopped being hungry for excitement? When she’d become a good Southern wife? Was Keisha a reminder of all she’d given up for this life and was that why she felt so untethered around her?
Too much time for self-reflection, she decided as she opened her small chest of creams and toiletries.
She’d have to wait and see how it all panned out. No doubt Keisha would be in a nice prim dress and pearls—full submissive wife—before the first whisper of fall and Jason would be back to his normal charming, attentive self, she would make sure of it. Keisha was just a small bump, a momentary distraction. She was determined to get their marriage back on track; after all, wasn’t this all she’d ever wanted?
The thought didn’t bring her as much comfort as she expected. Was she angry at Jason for getting bored with her because she knew deep down that she, in turn, was growing bored with him? Maybe this had been what she wanted, but that was before she’d gotten it. Now her wants had changed. She was tired of being so goddamned dependent. Grateful. Even so wealthy, she felt like a second-class citizen. The other wives might tolerate her, but she didn’t have any of their respect, and these days she wasn’t even sure she had Jason’s. She’d hoped money would bring that, to finally be a person of merit, no longer looked down on, but apparently it wasn’t enough.
You wanna have another go at making a baby?
The thought of bringing a child into this made her stomach tense. If they divorced and she was saddled with a kid, then what? No man here would want her with baggage.
She worried at her lip as she looked in the mirror. Making sure the door was locked, she carefully pulled away the inner lining of her vanity case and took out the strip of pills hidden inside. She stared long and hard in the mirror and her eyes hardened as she popped one free.
No, Marcie thought, looking up at the air-conditioning grille on the ceiling as she swallowed the secret contraceptive. No, I don’t want to make a fucking baby.
4.
Marcie wished they’d had this late lunch at the house rather than on Iris and Noah Cartwright’s boat moored at the end of the jetty. Perhaps then she wouldn’t be forcing a smile through her nausea from the slight movement of the creek beneath them. Although it was a still day the air was humid and heavy with the endless heat suffocating the city, and even the water was lazy in its wake. Iris knew Marcie got motion sickness, but Noah loved his boat and they always entertained on it in the summer. It was a tradition and it had been clear from the start that they wouldn’t change for Marcie.
“You have to get used to it,” Jason had said when they’d first gotten married. “Water’s in the veins as much as blood here. We grow up on it. But I guess you’re all landlubbers back in Boise, Idaho.” He’d smiled as he teased her and she’d wanted to point out that they had water in Boise too, but he wouldn’t have cared. That was one thing she and Keisha had in common. They were both from elsewhere. Boise could be as far away as London. Only the South mattered. In the main, Marcie liked it that way.
At least this would be the last of the boat for a while. Noah and Iris were going away to the Hamptons to visit their beloved daughter, Heather. The only girl out of their four children. She was a few years older and frumpier than Marcie, and had just had their latest grandson, whose name Marcie couldn’t remember even though she’d dutifully bought gifts of booties, baby gowns, and bears for him and gushed over photos. Babies all looked the same to her and given Jason’s recent thirst to reproduce she was always happier when the subject changed.
She leaned her head against her husband’s broad shoulder and breathed slowly as the queasy moment passed. Across the table Keisha clearly wasn’t bothered by the movement of the water. She had a half-empty margarita in one hand while biting into a plump king prawn plucked from the platter of iced seafood in the middle of the table. It wasn’t her first. She ate with gusto while Marcie, Iris, and Virginia sipped chardonnay and let their stomachs gnaw on their own linings. Iris occasionally fed Midge, their old black cat, a fishy tidbit as if it made up for her barely eating herself.
“They don’t come like this in Tesco,” Keisha said, and Virginia, still primly dressed from church, laughed, although she probably didn’t know what Tesco was any more than Marcie did. Keisha was wearing a thin summer dress and as she leaned over to kiss William on the cheek with her wet glossy lips, the curves of her breasts were clearly visible. Jason had his aviators on, and when Marcie glanced his way—was he looking?—all she could see was her own distorted face reflected back at her.
Keisha showed no signs of a hangover from the previous night’s party; if anything, she was still glowing with health, but William looked tired. Poor old fool. Marcie heard the words in Eleanor’s voice. Always so forgiving of her man.