Liv Constantine - The Last Mrs. Parrish

The telltale vein in his temple started pulsating, and I rushed to smooth things over before he lost his temper. “You’re right, darling. It’s just that I’ve enjoyed being able to focus my attention on you. I wasn’t thinking about another baby. But if that’s what you want, then I want it too.”

He tilted his head and leveled a long stare at me. “Are you patronizing me?”

I inhaled. “No, Jackson. Of course not.”

Without another word he pulled my robe off and fell on top of me. When he finished, he grabbed two pillows and put them under my hips.

“Stay that way for half an hour. I’ve been tracking your cycles. You should be ovulating.”

I started to protest, but stopped myself. I could feel the frustration and anger welling up until it was a physical force that wanted to erupt, but I breathed deeply and smiled at him instead. “Here’s hoping.”

It took nearly nine months this time, and when it finally happened, he was so happy that he forgot to be cruel. And then we went for the twenty-week visit — the one that would reveal the sex of the baby. He’d cleared his schedule so he could go with me that day. I was on eggshells all morning, dreading his reaction if it didn’t go his way, but he was confident, even whistling in the car on the way over.

“I’ve got a good feeling about this, Daphne. Jackson Junior. That’s what we’ll call him.”

I looked at him from the corner of my eye. “Jackson, what if—”

He cut me off. “No negativity. Why do you always have to be such a downer?”

As the ultrasound wand moved around my belly and we looked at the heartbeat and the torso, I was making such a tight fist that I realized my nails were digging into my palm.

“Are you ready to know what you’re having?” the doctor asked in her cheery, singsong voice.

I looked at Jackson’s face.

“It’s a girl!” she said.

His eyes went cold, and he turned and left the room without a word. The doctor looked at me, surprised, and I came up with something on the fly.

“He just lost his mother. She always wanted a girl. He was embarrassed for you to see him cry.”

She gave me a strained smile and spoke stiffly. “Well, let’s get you cleaned up, and you can go home.”

He didn’t speak to me the entire ride home. I knew better than to try and say anything to make it better. I had screwed up again, and even though I knew that of course it wasn’t my fault, I felt my anger turn inward. Why couldn’t I just have given him a son?

He stayed in the New York apartment for the next three nights, and I was grateful for the reprieve. When he came home the next night, he almost seemed back to normal — or whatever normal was for him. He’d texted me to let me know he’d be home at seven, and I’d made sure to have stuffed pheasant ready for dinner, one of his favorites. When we sat down to eat, he poured himself a glass of wine, took a sip, then cleared his throat.

“I’ve come up with a solution.”

“What?”

He sighed loudly. “A solution to your ineptitude. It’s too late to do anything about this one.” He gestured at my stomach. “Everyone already knows you’re pregnant. But the next time, we’re getting an earlier test. CVS. I looked it up. It can tell us the sex, and we can do it well before your third month.”

“What will that accomplish?” I asked, even as I knew what the answer would be.

He raised his eyebrows. “If the next one’s a girl, you can abort it, and we’ll keep trying until you get it right.”

He picked up his fork and took a bite. “By the way, can I trust you to remember to send in Tallulah’s application to St. Patrick’s preschool? I want to make sure she gets into the threes program next year.”

I nodded mutely as the asparagus in my mouth turned to mush. I discreetly spit it into my napkin and took a swallow from the glass of water in front of me. Abortion? I had to do something. Could I get my tubes tied without him finding out? I’d have to figure something out after this baby was born. Some way to make sure it was the last pregnancy I ever had.

The children were what helped me to keep my sanity. As the saying goes, the days were long but the years were short. I learned to put up with his demands and his moods, only occasionally messing up and daring to talk back or refuse him something. On those occasions, he made sure to remind me of what was at stake if I screwed up. He showed me an updated letter from two doctors certifying my mental illness, which he kept locked in a safe-deposit box. I didn’t bother asking what he had on them to get them to go along with his lies. If I tried to leave again, he said, this time he’d lock me up in the loony bin forever. I wasn’t about to test him.

I became his pet project. By the time Bella was in first grade, both girls were in school all day, and he decided my education should continue as well. I had a master’s degree, but that wasn’t enough. He came home one night and handed me a catalog.

“I’ve signed you up for French lessons three days a week. The class starts at 2:45. That way you can still get to the foundation on your two days there and the gym beforehand.”

The girls were doing their homework at the kitchen island, and Tallulah looked up, pencil poised in the air, waiting for me to answer.

“Jackson, what are you talking about?”

He looked at Tallulah. “Mommy’s going back to school. Isn’t that great?”

Bella clapped her hands. “Yay. Will she come to my school?”

“No, darling. She’ll go to the local university.”

Tallulah pursed her lips. “Didn’t Mommy already go to college?”

Jackson walked over to her. “Yes, my sweet, but she doesn’t know how to speak French like you two do. You don’t want a stupid mommy, do you?”

Tallulah’s eyebrows furrowed. “Mommy’s not stupid.”

He laughed. “You’re right, sweetie. She’s not stupid. But she’s not polished. She came from a poor family where they don’t know how to behave in polite society. We need to help her learn. Right, Mommy?”

“Right,” I answered through clenched teeth.

The class was right in the middle of the day, and I hated it. The professor was a snobby Frenchwoman who wore fake eyelashes and too-red lipstick and talked about how crass Americans were. She took special delight in pointing out the flaws in my accent. I’d only been to one class and was already sick of it.

I was nonetheless getting ready to go back the next week when I got an emergency call from Fiona at the foundation. One of our clients needed to get his son to the hospital, and his car wouldn’t start. I offered to take him, even though it meant missing a class. Of course, I never mentioned a thing to Jackson.

The following Monday, I received a frantic call from the girls’ school just as I got back to the house after a long massage and facial.

“Mrs. Parrish?”

“Yes.”

“We’ve been trying to reach you for three hours.”

“Is everything okay? Are the children all right?”

“Yes. But they are quite upset. You were supposed to pick them up at noon.”

Noon? What was she talking about? “They don’t get dismissed until three.”

An exasperated sigh on the other end. “It’s a teacher planning afternoon. It’s been on the calendar for a month, and we sent a note home. You should also have received an e-mail and a text.”

“I’m so sorry. I’ll be right there. I didn’t receive any calls on my cell,” I said apologetically.

“Well, we’ve been dialing it for hours. We couldn’t reach your husband either. He’s apparently out of town.”

Jackson wasn’t on a business trip, and I had no idea why his assistant hadn’t put her through.