The Last Mrs. Parrish(74)
He walked over and pushed himself against me. “We should make another baby. A boy this time.”
I felt my stomach turn and tried to swallow. “So soon? Tallulah’s only two.”
He led me over to the bed and untied the belt holding my robe shut. “It’s perfect timing.”
I stalled. “What if it’s another girl?”
His eyes narrowed. “Then we’ll keep going until you give me what I want. What’s the big deal?”
The telltale vein in his temple started pulsating, and I rushed to smooth things over before he lost his temper. “You’re right, darling. It’s just that I’ve enjoyed being able to focus my attention on you. I wasn’t thinking about another baby. But if that’s what you want, then I want it too.”
He tilted his head and leveled a long stare at me. “Are you patronizing me?”
I inhaled. “No, Jackson. Of course not.”
Without another word he pulled my robe off and fell on top of me. When he finished, he grabbed two pillows and put them under my hips.
“Stay that way for half an hour. I’ve been tracking your cycles. You should be ovulating.”
I started to protest, but stopped myself. I could feel the frustration and anger welling up until it was a physical force that wanted to erupt, but I breathed deeply and smiled at him instead. “Here’s hoping.”
It took nearly nine months this time, and when it finally happened, he was so happy that he forgot to be cruel. And then we went for the twenty-week visit—the one that would reveal the sex of the baby. He’d cleared his schedule so he could go with me that day. I was on eggshells all morning, dreading his reaction if it didn’t go his way, but he was confident, even whistling in the car on the way over.
“I’ve got a good feeling about this, Daphne. Jackson Junior. That’s what we’ll call him.”
I looked at him from the corner of my eye. “Jackson, what if—”
He cut me off. “No negativity. Why do you always have to be such a downer?”
As the ultrasound wand moved around my belly and we looked at the heartbeat and the torso, I was making such a tight fist that I realized my nails were digging into my palm.
“Are you ready to know what you’re having?” the doctor asked in her cheery, singsong voice.
I looked at Jackson’s face.
“It’s a girl!” she said.
His eyes went cold, and he turned and left the room without a word. The doctor looked at me, surprised, and I came up with something on the fly.
“He just lost his mother. She always wanted a girl. He was embarrassed for you to see him cry.”
She gave me a strained smile and spoke stiffly. “Well, let’s get you cleaned up, and you can go home.”
He didn’t speak to me the entire ride home. I knew better than to try and say anything to make it better. I had screwed up again, and even though I knew that of course it wasn’t my fault, I felt my anger turn inward. Why couldn’t I just have given him a son?
He stayed in the New York apartment for the next three nights, and I was grateful for the reprieve. When he came home the next night, he almost seemed back to normal—or whatever normal was for him. He’d texted me to let me know he’d be home at seven, and I’d made sure to have stuffed pheasant ready for dinner, one of his favorites. When we sat down to eat, he poured himself a glass of wine, took a sip, then cleared his throat.
“I’ve come up with a solution.”
“What?”
He sighed loudly. “A solution to your ineptitude. It’s too late to do anything about this one.” He gestured at my stomach. “Everyone already knows you’re pregnant. But the next time, we’re getting an earlier test. CVS. I looked it up. It can tell us the sex, and we can do it well before your third month.”
“What will that accomplish?” I asked, even as I knew what the answer would be.
He raised his eyebrows. “If the next one’s a girl, you can abort it, and we’ll keep trying until you get it right.”
He picked up his fork and took a bite. “By the way, can I trust you to remember to send in Tallulah’s application to St. Patrick’s preschool? I want to make sure she gets into the threes program next year.”
I nodded mutely as the asparagus in my mouth turned to mush. I discreetly spit it into my napkin and took a swallow from the glass of water in front of me. Abortion? I had to do something. Could I get my tubes tied without him finding out? I’d have to figure something out after this baby was born. Some way to make sure it was the last pregnancy I ever had.
Forty-Eight
The children were what helped me to keep my sanity. As the saying goes, the days were long but the years were short. I learned to put up with his demands and his moods, only occasionally messing up and daring to talk back or refuse him something. On those occasions, he made sure to remind me of what was at stake if I screwed up. He showed me an updated letter from two doctors certifying my mental illness, which he kept locked in a safe-deposit box. I didn’t bother asking what he had on them to get them to go along with his lies. If I tried to leave again, he said, this time he’d lock me up in the loony bin forever. I wasn’t about to test him.
I became his pet project. By the time Bella was in first grade, both girls were in school all day, and he decided my education should continue as well. I had a master’s degree, but that wasn’t enough. He came home one night and handed me a catalog.