And Now She's Gone(73)
She didn’t react to his reaction because she wasn’t surprised. He was a hair freak. But her hair had lost its luster. Worse, her hair had been falling out.
“It’s stress,” according to her stylist, Shannon. “Just start over. I’ll cut it and it’ll grow back stronger, since you’re on those prenatal vitamins—”
“Shh,” Mrs. Dixon had warned. “I haven’t told him yet.” Even at eight weeks.
Shannon only knew about the pregnancy because Mrs. Dixon didn’t want to use hair color. And anyway, she planned to tell Sean over dinner that night. She’d tell him, and he’d cry and they’d hug and he’d lift her up and spin her around and they’d laugh because she’d want to throw up from all the spinning and he’d promise that he’d be good, that she wouldn’t lose this baby, that this time she’d make it all the way through.
She wasn’t that far along—her breasts had already swollen a cup size, but that was the only difference. Because of nausea and morning sickness, she had lost most of the weight she’d gained from stress and drinking, and now her clothes hung off of her and her cheekbones and clavicles jutted more beneath her brown skin. And her hair—that was different on this day, thanks to Shannon. And her eyes—they were brighter now and flickered with hope.
This one will be a good pregnancy.
No martini tonight. Instead, she sliced a lime and dunked two wedges into her Pellegrino.
“Still drinking that bougie shit,” Sean noted, even though he drank the bubbly water with vodka all the time. He put on music for dinner—more Notorious B.I.G. Not the soundtrack she would’ve selected for this special evening, but what-the-fuck-ever. Anything to keep him happy.
Sean had showered and had changed into trainers and a gray T-shirt. He sat across from her at the breakfast bar loaded with cartons of chicken and beef in various gravies. When Sean wasn’t glaring at her hair, he was glaring at the food on his plate.
She wanted to tell him the news—good or bad news, she couldn’t tell at this point—but something told her to keep silent and so she did. The food was making her nauseous and sickness now bubbled up her throat. Her head pounded as she waited for the firefight to begin.
He’d sent a few tracer rounds already. It stinks in here and Did you pick up batteries like I asked you to? and I don’t remember you asking me about paying for your fucking hair. Since then, the rumble of heavy artillery had moved in on her. She thought about the night he’d thrown glass noodle salad in her direction, not at her. She didn’t want to go through that again, but dread settled on her shoulders as darkness settled over the desert she now called home.
How could she raise a child when she couldn’t even keep food in her own belly? When she was almost always scared that he’d …
As his silence darkened, she became too scared to think. Even though this was their “normal”—moody silences, glares that could melt wax, levels of tension as thick as igneous rock—it drove her crazy. Being scared that her husband would conduct a one-sided food fight was nuts. That he would even think about throwing food at her was nuttier. That there was a history of him pelting her with Asian entrees? Fucking unbelievable.
Once tonight’s storm passed, though, she’d tell him that they were gonna have a baby.
They came to the end of dinner. Mrs. Dixon, now a sweaty, hollow mess, focused on the cartons she was plucking from the counter.
Sean grabbed the dirty plates, forks, and spoons. These plates had been on their wedding registry. Everyday plates. Two-toned in blue and white.
As she moved from the counter to the sink, her feet stopped working and she found herself splayed down on the tile. The left side of her head throbbed with hot and heavy heat. The room tilted as she blinked away sparks zapping white and red before her eyes.
He’d punched her.
She croaked, “Sean,” but that one word came out as a bark, since the impact of his size twelve Air Jordans against her abdomen took her breath away. He punched her twice—right ear, right cheek—and snarled, “You a fucking dyke now?” Then he swept his arms across the breakfast counter, sending Chow’s Chinese flying all around the kitchen. Breathing hard, he stomped to the door that led to the garage.
Back down on the tile, perfect drops of Mrs. Dixon’s blood flecked those empty spaces between grains of rice and spicy peanuts. Those drops were more perfect than the drops that last time, when she’d been thrown through the old glass patio door. She’d been pregnant then, too, and those drops splattered, a Pollock painting mixed with Swarovski crystals.
Tonight, Mrs. Dixon wept as she climbed the stairs, as she passed the room she’d thought of as the nursery, as she passed hanging pictures of Sean and her dancing at their wedding, as she plodded and panted to the bathroom. She slammed and locked the door, then plopped down on the toilet seat. She reached beside her and pulled open the drawer to a wicker chest.
Lotions, creams, soaps, and toners. And makeup. Lots of makeup. Bronzers, highlighters, concealers, correctors, primers, foundations; liquid, liquid powder, whip, mousse, pressed, stick, translucent, oil-free, wet/dry, satin; honey beige, NW400, cappuccino, almond, nutmeg.
Some were good at hiding scars.
Others were good at hiding bruises.
Some lightened the greens and purples her skin took on in bad times.
Others made her look as though she’d lain out on a Saint-Tropez beach with a le Carré novel in one hand and a Bloody Mary in the other.