Kiss Mommy Goodbye Page 8

  “Why do you have to take everything so personally? Why, if I say ‘shit’ out of sheer frustration do you automatically assume I’m saying it to upset you?”

  “Because you are.”

  “That’s paranoid, Victor!”

  She had gone too far. She knew it as soon as the words were out of her mouth. He had held out the gun and she had supplied him with the necessary ammunition. He had been waiting for the slip, pushing for it, the one word he could use to blow them both to smithereens. Her five minutes were up and she had given him his word. Paranoid.

  His voice was quiet.

  “Well, you finally said what you wanted to say, didn’t you, Donna.”

  “I just meant—”

  “I don’t want to hear anymore of what you have to say. You’ve said it all. You’ve hurt me enough. Do you want to see blood? Is that what you want? You’ve taken a simple little disagreement, a stupid little statement I made, for which I apologized—”

  “You apologized? When did you apologize?”

  “You don’t listen to me, Donna. I keep telling you that.”

  “You never apologized!”

  He suddenly screamed. “All right, I never apologized! If you say I didn’t, then you must be right because, God knows, you’re always right. I thought I did. But I guess I was wrong. Again.” He paused. “What difference does it make?”

  “It makes all the difference. If you’d apologized, this whole fight wouldn’t have happened.”

  “Of course it would have, don’t you see? You were so determined to tell me what a rat I am, how paranoid I am, how wrong I am, you would have found a way regardless of whatever I did or didn’t say. I think I apologized. You say I didn’t. It doesn’t really matter. What’s important is what you said later.”

  Donna tried to clear her head. Something was wrong with what he was saying, but she was just too confused and tired to figure it out.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “No, you never do,” he said sadly.

  Donna felt the pangs of guilt beginning to congeal inside her stomach. Why didn’t she understand? Why did she always yell? Why did she have to swear so much? She knew he didn’t like it. She knew he liked shepherd’s pie—why didn’t she make it more often? Had she deliberately, subconsciously, bought him the wrong cheese? No, damn it, she thought suddenly, no, she hadn’t.

  “You’re always so intent on being right,” he said slowly and with such quiet conviction that Donna, already struggling with her guilt, felt compelled to listen. “You don’t understand that it doesn’t matter ultimately who’s right or who’s wrong. What’s important is what’s said in the interim. You didn’t hear me insulting you.”

  “You don’t call telling me I deliberately change everything you like insulting?” she exclaimed.

  “You’re interrupting again.”

  “Sorry, I thought you were finished.”

  He raised his hands in the air in mock surrender. “Okay, if that’s what you say.”

  “No, please, Victor. Go on. I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

  “You’ll let me finish what I have to say? You won’t interrupt?”

  “What is this? An organized debate or something? People have discussions; they interrupt each other.”

  “But you do it all the time. You never let me finish a thought.”

  Donna bit down hard on her lower lip. “All right,” she said slowly. “I won’t interrupt again.”

  He took a dramatic pause. “The reason we go around in circles is simple, Donna. You ask me what’s bothering me. I already know what’s going to happen if I tell you—this is going to happen; tonight is going to happen, because you really don’t want to hear what I have to say. You just want the opportunity to tell me I’m wrong.”

  “That’s—”

  “You’re interrupting.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Look at tonight, Donna. It wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t pushed it. I asked you to drop it. Whatever’s bothering me would eventually go away. But no, you have to drag it out so you can tell me how stupid it is, how trivial it is, how wrong I am. About it. About you. About everything. If you don’t want to hear what I have to say, then don’t ask me what’s bothering me. But a funny thing happens in all our fights, Donna. You always ask me what’s bothering me and yet somehow all that ever really gets said is what’s bothering you. And I get called all sorts of lovely little names that I can still hear in my head long after I’ve forgotten what the fight was all about.” He paused. “It’s your mouth, Donna, you just don’t know what damage you do with your mouth. You start in on me and you don’t let go.”

  “I start in on you?”

  “You can’t help but interrupt, can you?”

  Donna’s shoulders slumped under the gathering weight of guilt. She wiped a tear away from her eyes and said nothing. There seemed to be a lot of truth to what he was saying. Why couldn’t she just shut up when he told her to? Why couldn’t she just agree with him about things? Everything was always fine as long as she agreed with him, as long as she let him make all the decisions. Why did she always have to push for a solution? In the end, nothing was ever solved. Just as nothing that was bothering him ever really went away. She sighed. Nothing dropped, nothing solved. A sort of married nothing ventured, nothing gained.

  In the end, she spent half of what was left of the night apologizing, begging forgiveness, chastising herself while he looked on with silent approval. Still, somewhere in the back of her mind she could hear her mother’s voice—“Don’t let anyone bamboozle you. Speak up.” She felt somewhere down deep in her gut that there was something specious in his arguments. But they contained enough truth, just enough truth, to serve as the necessary bait to snare the fish, and once the sharp hook had torn into her tender cheek, she was consigned to—resigned to—her place at the bottom of some boat and left flopping and desperate for breath, a fish out of water.

  The other half of the night would be spent making love and Donna was always surprised to discover that their performance outside of bed had no effect on their subsequent performance once inside it. If anything, their lovemaking was that much more intense.

  It was always the same. Each argument brought the same results. If her apologies were not immediately forthcoming, they always hobbled along several days of chilling silence later. And with each fresh apology, her mother’s voice deep inside her became quieter and quieter.

  It would be the same tonight, Donna had known as soon as her husband had walked wearily out of the room, his back hunched as if he’d been lashed. Except there would be no lovemaking. Nothing to dull the mind by release of the body. Why had she started up? Would it have hurt to do the stupid breathing exercises? God, she was lucky he took such an interest in her pregnancy. Some husbands didn’t care about any of it. Victor was as interested in her condition as if it were happening to himself. He just wanted to be a part of it, to share it with her. And his concern about the breathing exercises was concern for her and for their baby. Why did she begrudge him so? Concern—or control? the voice inside her asked. She shoved the voice aside and walked into the bedroom.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “Really.”

  He looked more hurt than ever. “You always are. But it never changes anything.”

  “I’m just irritable tonight. I feel a cold coming on.”

  “Another one?”

  She shrugged. “I have that awful post-nasal drip. You know.”

  “You didn’t take anything for it, did you?” Again, concern for her pregnancy, their unborn child. Why did it sound so much like an accusation?

  “Of course not.” She paused. “You want to do the breathing?”

  He checked his watch. “It’s eleven o’clock. It’s too late.” He grimaced with invisible pain.

  “Something wrong?”

  “My stomach has a hard time with your rampages.”

  Donna said nothing, feeling the sudden weight of Sisyphus’ rock descendi
ng on her shoulders. She sat down on the bed and started to remove her clothes. There was silence while he used the bathroom, a silence which was only broken by several loud blows of his nose.

  “You shouldn’t do that,” she said when he came out of the bathroom. “You’ll destroy the fibers in your nose.”

  He said nothing. She went into the bathroom. Why did she always feel much worse after she apologized.

  She crawled into bed beside him. He lay on his back looking up at the ceiling, his hands folded under his head. Donna spent several minutes looking at him before she spoke. “I love you,” watching his mouth, waiting for him to reply.

  “It’s okay,” he said, sliding an arm out from under his head and moving it toward her, her signal that she was finally being forgiven and it was all right to approach him. She moved into the half-circle his arm created, resting against his chest, running a hand up and down his body while his hand absently stroked her back.

  “Why do you give me such a hard time?” he asked softly.

  Somewhere in her gut, in muted, muffled cries, the voice inside her began screaming.

  SEVEN

  “You made this a different way,” he said.

  “It’s the same way I always make shepherd’s pie.”

  “No, it isn’t. Something’s different. I can taste it.”

  “Nothing’s different. You say that every time.”

  “Every time it’s different.”

  “It’s the same way I always make it. Don’t you like it?”

  “It’s all right. Not as thick as usual.” He rose from the table.

  “Where are you going?”

  He opened the cabinet door under the sink.

  “What are you doing in there?”

  He had his hand in the garbage bag.

  “I thought so,” he said triumphantly, pulling out an empty tin of tomato sauce.

  “You thought what?” Donna asked, her finely tuned tentacles sensing a response she would not like.

  “Tomato sauce. I thought the recipe called for tomato paste.”

  “The recipe calls for tomato sauce,” she said testily. “Are you going to come back to the table before it gets cold?”

  “Let me see the recipe book.”

  “Don’t you believe me?”

  “Can’t I see the recipe book? No one said I didn’t believe you! Jeez, Donna. A little paranoid, aren’t you?”

  Donna put down her fork and got up from the table. “You know, if I said something like that to you, you’d be furious.” She reached into the shelves over the phone where she kept her assorted cookbooks and handed him the well-worn copy of Second Helpings, Please.

  He took the book from her hands and let out a deep sigh. “Are you going to start something because I asked if I could see the cookbook?”

  She looked down at her enormous belly. The doctor had said the baby could come any time now. Her due date was only two weeks away and it was, at best, an educated guess. “No, I’m not trying to start anything.”

  She watched with growing irritation as he flipped through the pages.

  “What’s it called?” he asked.

  “Hamburger Shepherd’s Pie,” she answered, walking back to the kitchen table and sitting down. “And it’s getting cold.”

  He read the list of ingredients. “Well, you’re right. Tomato sauce is what it says.”

  “Thank you.”

  He returned the book to its shelf. “I always thought you used tomato paste.”

  “I usually do,” she said, then immediately wished she hadn’t. His eyes shot to hers with lightning speed. She continued quietly. “I made a mistake once and used the tomato paste, and when you said you liked it—”

  “You changed it.”

  “No! I used it. Except today I didn’t have any tomato paste so I used tomato sauce which is what the recipe calls for in the first place.”

  “Then why did you tell me you hadn’t changed anything?”

  “Because I didn’t want to have precisely this conversation.”

  “We wouldn’t be having it if you had told me the truth. I’m not stupid, you know. I knew something was different.”

  “It tastes the same to me.”

  “But not to me! I knew right away there was something different.”

  “Do we have to continue this discussion? We sound like one of those commercials on TV! ‘That’s not Heinz,’” she mimicked.

  “Here goes the mouth.”

  “Oh, come on, Victor. Does everything have to be such a big deal?”

  “You’re the one who made it into a big deal. Why did you have to lie about it?”

  “I wasn’t lying.”

  “You said that nothing was different.”

  “Oh God, Victor. Let’s just drop it!”

  “Sure. Whenever you want to drop something, it just gets dropped.”

  “You really want to fight about the tomato sauce?”

  “It’s just your attitude, Donna. It’s the same old thing. What’s important to Victor is of no consequence. It’s too trivial to discuss. Every day it’s the same damn thing.”

  “You’re swearing,” she reminded him.

  “Oh, I forgot. Only you’re allowed to swear.”

  “Jesus Christ, Victor,” she burst out, “you make me so mad! ‘Every day it’s the same damn thing!’” she said, going over his words.

  “If that’s what you say.”

  “That’s what you said! Word for word you said, ‘Every day it’s the same damn thing.’”

  “I don’t remember saying that.”

  “Well, you did. Then I told you you were swearing.”

  “Oh, yes, I forgot. I’m not allowed to swear. Just you.”

  “Nobody said that.” She was crying.

  “Get a Kleenex, Donna.”

  “No.”

  “Fine. Don’t get a Kleenex.”

  Silence.

  “Aren’t you going to finish your supper?”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “Oh, fine. I make shepherd’s pie especially for you—”

  “Don’t do things especially for me, Donna. It’s not worth the price I have to pay.”

  “I like doing things especially for you,” she found herself pleading.

  “Maybe. But somehow they never come out the way I like them, do they?”

  Just enough truth. She felt the sharp tug at her cheek.

  Later, with the apologies still fresh in the air, his following hers (“I’m sorry, too,” with such world-weary resignation), his arm around her shoulders, lying side by side in bed, her eyes almost closed to sleep, he spoke. “I don’t understand how you could run out of something like tomato paste. Didn’t you go shopping the other day?”

  “I forgot to get some.” She moved away from him and flopped onto her left side like a giant whale.

  “How could you forget? Didn’t you make a list?”

  “No, I never make lists. Please let me get some sleep.”

  “No wonder you never have anything! No wonder you’re so disorganized! Eureka, I have found it! How can you not make a list?”

  “I’ll make a list,” Donna said. “Now please, let me get some sleep.”

  “How could you not make a list?” he repeated. Even with her back turned and her eyes closed, she knew he was shaking his head.

  At three A.M. her water broke and the bed was instantly soaking wet. Victor leaped frantically from the bed. “Jesus Christ, what did you do?”

  Donna simply smiled at him, her smile a mixture of excitement and perverse satisfaction. Serves him right, she thought, and then immediately felt guilty.

  In the end, she had to have a Caesarian section. The doctor had prepared them for that possibility a month before, telling them that the baby was in a breech position and while there was still a good possibility that it would turn itself around, they should be prepared for surgery if it became necessary.

  Donna spent twenty-six hours in labor before the doctor decid
ed it was necessary. She and Victor had more than enough time to get her breathing down to perfection, with Victor breathing along beside her the whole time, telling her jokes, encouraging her, wetting her lips with the sponge he had remembered to bring (part of their prenatal instructions), rubbing her back almost constantly.

  Donna coped quite well, the excitement she was feeling being sufficient at first to take her mind off the pain. After fifteen hours in labor, no food and no sleep, she began to feel less excitement, more pain. “I’m getting a little tired of this,” she announced to Victor. He kissed her forehead and continued to rub her back.

  At the end of twenty hours she was becoming increasingly belligerent. “This is ridiculous,” she moaned, looking around the small labor room. “Why don’t they put a television in here?” The room itself was very pleasant, one wall freshly papered in green and white, bright-colored closets and a Kandinsky print directly across from her bed. “Do I really need all this stuff around me?”

  “It’s monitoring the baby’s heartbeat,” Victor said of the large gray computer they had hooked up to her body by means of a special belt that went around her stomach. It traced the heartbeat and seemed, to those who knew nothing of computers, to work along much the same lines as a lie detector. It also monitored and took note of her contractions.

  “Oh, you’re having another contraction,” Victor stated, obviously startled at its coming so soon after the previous one.

  “Thanks for telling me,” she gasped.

  “A big one. Look at it, honey.”

  “I don’t have to look at it! I can feel it! What do you think I’m doing here?”

  “It’s very exciting.”

  “Good—then you have the contractions and I’ll watch the bloody machine. That’s it, I’ve had enough.”

  “You must be in transition,” he said happily. “Trish said you’d get very irritable during transition.”

  “Where is she? I’ll kill her.”

  Victor was behind her again rubbing her back. “You should be happy,” he said. “Transition means it’s almost over. Just another couple of hours.”

  Only a man could say something like that, she thought.