I roll my eyes. “Yes. From an evolutionary standpoint, being on goodterms with a dominant person increases your chances of keeping the resources you need to survive.”
“And I’m the dominant person in this situation?”
“You know you are. Most men are.”
Henry raises his chin and narrows his eyes, staring at me down the bridge of his nose.Ahhh. He gets it now. “I’m picturing little twenty-two-year-old Faye, thinking she would shatter my heart and she would be fine. That she’d have her pick of the litter.”
“I did think that, yes.”
“And now you know how good you had it?” That cocky grin again, the one that makes my skin feel too tight for my body.
“Ha-ha,” I say. “I’ll take my licks.”
“Oh, I know you will.”
Warmth surges through me, as much a cardiac shock to the system as jumping into the half-frozen lake in the wintertime.
Henry drops his head, scratches the back of his neck, his face all screwed up from thinking. “But if that’s what you like, then why marry your husband?”
“Because in a weird way, this is control. This is how he wants things, for reasons neither of us understand, because he doesn’t want to go there, and I’m the one who is falling in line.”
“Last night,” Henry says. “How long had it been?”
“Since someone else got me off? I don’t actually know.”
“Ballpark.”
“Eight.”
“Eight months?”
“Don’t be obtuse.”
“Faye,” Henry says sternly, like I’ve told him an outlandish lie.
“I mean we’ve had some sex in that time. But me getting off with him?”
“Eight fucking years, Faye?”
“Please stop. I’m mortified.”
“What do you have to be mortified about? He’s the one who should be mortified.”
I glance at the bedroom door, my cheeks flaming. “Because I don’t even know what I’m doing anymore. Last night was easy. Last night my hands were literally tied. But the person I was when we were together, I don’t recognize her anymore. I don’t really remember how we used to do things, just that it was good, and I’m scared it’s not going to be good now, because I feel like such a freak and I’ve… given up.” I lift a hand. What more is there to say? I don’t know why people call it an unburdening. Nothing about me feels lighter for saying this. I want to weep from the exhaustion of carrying something so huge and shameful, which now feels close to colossal for putting words to it. Before, it was merely a free-floating abstraction of unhappiness I could bat away like a bad odor while I barked at people about the lens I wanted, to kick up the audio in the edit room.Not that actor, I got to write back to my casting director,I don’t believe he’s ever really struggled in his life, find me someone with yellow teeth and acne scars, someone I buy. I did an all right job of fashioning a way to say what I want and get it, to tunnel around the truth: I’m still in here. I cannot be deleted.
“It would be so easy,” Henry says in his posh, appealing voice, “for me to make it easy for you.”
My stomach contracts, hot and tight. I reach for my water, drain what’s left, then roll the empty glass around in my hands for something to do.
“Do you want me to?”
I stare at my glass, give an almost imperceptible nod. Outside, the sky pulses with heat lightning, the kind they say is not dangerous.
Henry does not move, but his voice changes like he’s risen tohis full and towering height. “I didn’t like it when you told him you missed him today.”
I sit very still and think about my answer. “If I didn’t say it back,” I say, and I can hear how nervous I am in my quaky prepubescent voice, “he would have been suspicious.”
Henry’s face is stone. “I didn’t like it, Faye.”