“Did you miss me?” Dex says, taking me into his arms.
“Yes,” I lie, prying the cap off of the perfume bottle. It smells bold and sickeningly sweet, like the type of women at the art shows who always brush up alongside Dex with their low-cut dresses and lipstick-stained champagne glasses.
“Oh,” he says, disappointed. “You don’t like it?”
“It’s fine,” I say. “I guess I’m just not used to such strong scents.”
“It’s what all the women are wearing in Beverly Hills,” he says authoritatively, as if he may have personally sniff-tested every female on Sunset Boulevard.
I spritz a bit onto my neck, and it pleases him. “I’m sure it just takes some getting used to,” I say. But now that the scent is on my skin, I feel a little nauseated.
He takes a step closer to me and unclasps a pin in my hair, and then another. My body still responds to his touch, and a chill immediately trickles from my neck, down my arms.
“Let’s change your hair,” he says, sweeping my bangs across my forehead the way Lana Turner wore hers the night at the Chateau Marmont. “Like this.”
“I don’t know,” I say, pulling my bangs out of my eyes. “I much prefer to wear my hair up.”
He looks momentarily wounded but then shakes it off as if none of it matters—my hair, me. “I’m going to spend the afternoon in the studio,” he says. “Lana wants a few paintings for her guesthouse.”
“Oh,” I say without emotion.
“I’ll be home tonight. For Bach on the Dock.”
I almost forgot. The night in July that everyone on Boat Street looks forward to. “Yes,” I say as he grabs his bag and heads out the door.
“Mama,” I say with a trembling voice on the phone later that day.
“What’s wrong, sweetheart?” she says.
I feel the cramp in my belly then, the type I’ve been having for a few weeks. I haven’t yet gone in to see Dr. Roberts. I don’t need him to tell me what I already know. “I’m going to have a baby.”
“Oh, honey!” she exclaims. “Really? This is the most wonderful news. Have you told Dex?”
“Not yet,” I say guardedly.
Of course, I haven’t told Collin my news either.
“I’ll talk to your aunt Sue,” Mama says. “We’ll have a baby shower for you, invite all your old friends from the neighborhood.”
“Mama, no,” I say quickly. “I’d really rather not have a shower. Please, don’t bother. If you don’t mind, I just want to keep things quiet for now.”
She doesn’t seem to hear me. “Does Dex have any sisters who I should send invitations to? I can’t recall if I met any at the wedding. And do you want to invite any neighbors, any friends from Miss Higgins Academy? We really ought to invite Miss Higgins. She’ll be tickled pink with this news. Her prized pupil is having a baby!”
“Mama,” I say, this time more firmly. “I don’t want a shower.”
“Don’t worry, dear,” she says. “We’ll have it in your second trimester, when you’re a bit farther along. And you needn’t worry about miscarriage. Nobody has those in our family. Your grandmother delivered seven healthy babies, and I would have had a half dozen if I’d found the right man.”
What I don’t tell her is that I won’t be around for a shower. If all goes as planned, I will be leaving tonight with Collin. He just finished the sailboat, and instead of him selling it to his client, it will be our home. Together we’ll sail the world, have breakfast in the Bahamas, dinner on the coast of Maine. The world will be our oyster, as Collin says. But most important, we’ll be together. Forever.
Dex’s return has put a damper on our plans, but we won’t let that stop us. I’ll sneak out after Dex falls asleep, pack my bag quietly, and leave a note before boarding the sailboat that we’ve spent the past week stocking to our liking. Canned food, blankets for when it gets cold. Plenty of kerosene for the lamps. Stacks of books to read.
It wasn’t easy to come to this decision. It was my view that the end of a marriage, even a bad one, would leave me brandished with a scarlet letter. Part of me wanted to continue to play along—Dex with his secrets, I with mine. As disjointed and dysfunctional as our marriage has been, there’s comfort and security in the ebb and flow of our lives, where a kiss on the cheek after a week apart erases the ice between us, the deception. And isn’t this the arrangement that some women long for? A life of independence, where I can come and go as I please, with a husband who does the same? But that isn’t the marriage I bargained for. I married for love and togetherness, not long stretches of silence and then a blue box from Tiffany & Co. three weeks later.