What If My Husband Dies?

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1

I think Evan lied to me. Not now — four years ago.

A dream life. "I have the means to make you happy." Some of it he said outright, the part about the means. Some of it was implied. Travel, for example, because I'd say wow about some landmark and he'd smile and take my hand. It's obvious. So it wasn't implied out of nowhere, believe me. And that's the dirtiest part: you can't bill anyone for what was implied. No receipt, no warranty card, no line in the contract — Party B agrees to take Party A somewhere beautiful twice a year.

I believed a successful orthodontist who'd already opened his second office. I was twenty-five, he said we, he had clean hands and a five-year plan, and all of it looked like a promise. And here's what I've got: a beautiful house to live in, and a husband who looks in people's mouths for a living and wants kids of his own.

The house really is beautiful, no argument there. He bought it a year before the wedding — on his own, in his own name, with a porch, hydrangeas along the fence, a kitchen where everything opens at a touch. Middlebury, fifteen hundred houses, and somebody in every one of them knows my last name. I moved in like it was a hotel. One suitcase, into a place already finished, right down to the towels.

In four years I've added exactly two things of my own: new towels and a vase in the entryway. Once I took a shot at a third. I said the bedroom could use repainting. He looked the walls over, honestly, carefully, the way he looks at a patient, and asked, "What's wrong with this color?"

And nothing is. The color's great. Somebody before me picked it.

Then he leaves for the office and the house goes quiet, eight in the morning to seven at night. In that time I manage to talk out loud to the coffee maker, restack the towels twice — those towels, the only thing here that's mine — and lie to my mother on the phone, once, about how wonderful everything is.

It wasn't always like this. I have a degree, for what it's worth. And I had an internship at the gallery on Second Street, and they took me out of a hundred twelve people. Evan said, "Why do you need that? That's not why you married me." He said it sweetly, took my hand, made some joke about something of his, and I laughed and agreed. That's what I think about most. Not even Egypt. The fact that I agreed, and nobody twisted my arm. Somebody took my hand and made me laugh.

No, that's a lie. I think about Egypt too.

I hinted twice. The first time at dinner — I left a tab of tour packages open on purpose so he'd "happen" to see it. He saw it. And said he was putting in a third chair over the summer and couldn't get away. He also said the heat is hard on him. A hundred degrees in the shade, his blood pressure, sure, I get it. And things being hard on me, apparently, isn't a diagnosis.

The second time was before Christmas, straight out, barely a hint at all. He gave me earrings. Beautiful. Expensive. I've worn them twice.

And that's all there's been. No ocean under sail, nothing at all except Saturday brunch and his conference in Chicago, where of course "they don't bring wives." They don't bring wives, but Dave Quinn somehow brought his — I saw the stories.

The stories, honestly, I'd be better off not looking at them. The girls I went to school with are all over Instagram now with photos and reels from these fancy places where, let's be honest, I'd look better than they do.

Right now I'm looking at a photo of Mary O'Brien, who's been Robinson for two years and in those two years has flown overseas three times: Thailand, London, and, damn it, Rome. Mary, who senior year had a face like an underbaked roll and who still hasn't figured out how to stand at an angle. She gets four hundred likes for holding a glass. Four hundred. I'd pull a thousand without getting out of the lounge chair.

And me — Claire, straight-A student, "that cute one with the freckles" — I know Rome from the photos on the wall of the Italian place Evan takes me to once a month. Always the same table. Always orders for me, because "you're going to get the same thing anyway." And I get the same thing, because he's right, and that's what makes me maddest of all.

And right there, under that paper Colosseum, back in February, he told me — calmly, like we were going over the heating bill — that it was time to start thinking about a baby. I know the rest without any help from him. Next comes a stroller instead of a suitcase, and instead of we're not going anywhere because of the practice it'll be we're not going anywhere because of the baby. That's not even an excuse anymore, it's a sentence nobody can appeal, because who argues with a baby.

He wants kids. "Kids are family."

And what am I, not family? Do you even see me?

No, of course he sees me. In bed he's good, I'll give him that. Except afterward he'll hug me, kiss me, and then snore like an animal with his mouth open.

There was a time I even liked it. Big, warm, alive, asleep next to me — so I wasn't alone. Now I feel like a trophy. He's the warrior who won the princess, and by snoring he's announcing to the village that his marital duty has been performed.

Though I know perfectly well where the snoring comes from, and there's no village involved. There's a blood pressure monitor in the kitchen, next to the notebook where he writes down the numbers. There's a pill in the morning, before coffee. There's the salt shaker he hasn't moved his way in two years, and one night at dinner I caught myself finding that unpleasant for some reason, like he was telling me something with it.

He has high blood pressure. Big deal. He's forty-one, not eighty. Half the men in this town have high blood pressure and it doesn't stop them from putting up a sail and flying across an ocean. The doctor said lose ten pounds, walk, get enough sleep. The doctor didn't say anything about not leaving the state.

Still, I like the warrior-and-trophy version better. It's prettier.

And he's great at it. Two months now we've been sleeping with the windows open, and Meredith next door keeps hinting about the snoring at night — smiling over the fence with that "oh, you must be so tired, Claire." I hope the snoring is all she hears. Or fine, if she hears more — let her be jealous.

And he keeps pushing harder about the baby. It used to be someday, now it's why hasn't it happened yet. In April it got to the point where we both got tested. It took a lot to get me to agree — I dragged it out about three weeks, kept coming up with reasons, I couldn't skip the gym. But saying no any longer would have looked suspicious, and I can't afford to look suspicious.

The tests came back funny, by the way. He's fine. I'm fine too — healthy, the doctor just said my ovulation is weak and irregular and prescribed pills to nudge it along. No treatment, nothing serious, two weeks out of the cycle, "it works for a lot of women the first time."

I don't take them, obviously. I wash them down the sink one at a time, so the pack empties out the way it should. What I do take, honestly and without missing a day, is my birth control. Fourth year now.

I didn't tell the doctor about it. She asked, of course, and I looked her in the eye and said no, we haven't used anything in a year. Lying to the doctor turned out to be the easiest thing of all. She doesn't know me at all, so she believes me right away.

Evan thinks I'm trying. Sometimes he asks how I'm feeling, and I say the pills make me queasy and give me cramps — it's more convincing. Then I reassure him: it took the Quinns three years, that couple from the clinic two. We're not the only ones. He nods, pats my hand, and says we'll wait as long as we need to.

We'll wait. That's the one promise of his he keeps.

So let them all be jealous, really. I have a beautiful house, earrings I've worn twice, and a husband who has never once cheated on me and, I'm sure, never will.

I'm twenty-nine. Thirty in October.

And the most disgusting part is that I can't say a word of it out loud. Not to my mother, not to Meredith, not to the therapist who's a forty-minute drive away. Not to Janine — and I tell Janine almost everything, which makes her the worst of all: if I don't tell her now and she finds out on her own later, she'll kill me. Or close to it. So here I am, three months now, trying to decide. Because anybody who heard it would look at the house, at the earrings, at the husband who doesn't drink, and say, "Claire, are you out of your mind? And if you don't like it, then get up and leave."

Although no, not anybody. Somebody would take me by the hand and look me in the eye and say, "Claire, you have to take what's yours."

So that's what I've been thinking about. What I could take. Weighing my options.