Bad Mommy(45)

“Jolene,” I said, coming up behind her. “I’m so sorry. You’re right. I’m selfish. I just want you to myself sometimes.” She spun around on her barstool and I could tell she’d been crying.

“You’re an asshole,” she said.

“I am, you’re right.”

I grabbed her face, kissed her forehead. She was stiff, unbelieving. I always had to work her extra hard, massage her shoulders, play with her hair.

“Jo, I want to help Fig, I do. I’m just tired and stressed. Listen, tell her to meet us here.”

I thought she was going to start crying again, but she pulled it together and nodded.

“She’s in a parking lot somewhere crying,” she said. I wanted to roll my eyes, but I nodded sympathetically and rubbed her neck.

I shrugged. “I know your heart. Do whatever you think is right, my love.”

When I first knew I wanted Jolene, I was still in a relationship with her best friend. I’d look. Men look even when they say they aren’t. We are sexual creatures: long legs, the outline of nipples against flimsy fabric, the cupping of jeans against an ass—we look and our dicks get hard. We’re wired that way. Some of the more self-righteous men, the fucking pious ones, say they don’t look. They say they avoid the appearance of evil, aka the type of women who make their dicks hard. It’s not women who make my dick hard; it’s my ability to control their emotions.

Jolene was something else to me. She transcended the games I played. When we were just friends, she’d look me in the eye and tell me I was lying when I was. She’d ask how I was and mean it. Sometimes she’d text me randomly to check on the state of my heart. That was her thing back then: “How’s your heart?” and you could try to lie to her, try to pretend, but she always knew. The confessions were like vomit. Jolene was the finger down your throat, probing until there was nothing else to do but gag. The truth came fast and hard, and it hurt. I think I grew addicted to the sort of reaction she inspired. You got to be yourself, tell her your ugliest parts, and she didn’t bat an eyelash. She was the real therapist; I was merely a pretender. I’d broken off my ten-year relationship and pursued her with an intensity I wasn’t used to. It didn’t matter that she was pregnant with another man’s child. It didn’t matter that my ex-fiancée loved her. You couldn’t fit love into the eye of a needle. You had to just take it in the form it came. And it came in the form of a very pregnant, very taboo—Jolene Avery. The girl who saw everything and nothing all at the same time.



I couldn’t write. I stared at the wall, and I stared at the keyboard, and I stared at my hands, which I thought were lovely and graceful some days, and haggard and witchlike on others. When I stopped staring and focused, I’d tap out a sentence and then delete it. I’d grab the skin on my wrist and tug on it—something I’d done since I was a child. I told everyone I was writing when they asked, but I wasn’t. I was almost relieved each day when my alarm went off at three o’clock to remind me that Mercy needed to be picked up from nursery school. It was something to do other than stare.

What was the truth? That love had slaughtered me? Killed my creativity? A little bit, yes. Until Darius, I had an open vein. I didn’t have to work hard for words, they poured from the nick like a proverbial fountain of creativity. Sadness is lucrative, folks. But, I wasn’t sad anymore, was I? I was, for the first time, cocooned in security and love. A man whom I loved and admired had taken me and my unborn child and given us a home. Strong hands, and soft touches, we fell under his spell. And a shrink! A shrink always knew the right thing to do. I could rest easy, take the love and trust. Such a sweet beguiling thing.

But, I was bored.

Not with life, life was a beautiful, ugly thing. And not with my career, it was at its peak. And most certainly not with motherhood, it was too tumultuous to be boring. I was bored with love.

What is love anyway? Most of us had no fucking clue because our parents gave us shit examples of it: prude, nonverbal, stiff; or on the opposite end of the spectrum: chaotic, uncommitted, inconsistent. Or maybe just divorced. So, we flounced around in adulthood, taking notes from romantic comedies … or porn. Love is flowers! Love is grand gestures! Love is trips to Paris hand in hand! Love is her opening her mouth whenever you want to stick your dick inside.

Love was whatever you decided it was, and if you’d had a narrow window to peek through, you were really fucked.

But then you became a mother, and all of that changed. Love was sacrificing your selfish nature for someone you were more committed to than yourself. Becoming a mother made me a better wife. My personality had a makeover and Darius reaped the benefits.

Darius wasn’t boring. Quite the opposite. But after three years, I was fairly certain our relationship was a fabrication. He’s not who he said he was. I was fascinated and horrified. My disappointment a sour stone in the pit of my stomach. I’d searched articles all over the internet on sociopaths and I was almost certain that my husband was one. Do you take this sociopath to be your lawfully wedded husband…

I once asked him if he’d ever diagnosed himself with anything, and he laughed and said no, but that he thought I was a sociopath. That was typical sociopathic behavior. Someone brought up an issue and you turned it around and accused them of it instead. Brava! Darius manipulated people’s minds, and I manipulated words, and so the two of us could not manipulate each other. It canceled out.