The Baumgartners Plus One

couldn't…I just couldn't fix it.”

“You still can't,” I reminded him in a small voice. “No one can.”

We listened to the refrigerator hum and the clock over the kitchen sink tick in the silence between us. Jezebel took the opportunity to jump up onto the table and stalk back and forth between us.

“Maybe we should move back home.” His suggestion came out of left field and I knew then that this was it. This was the thing he’d really come to talk about, to tell me.

“What?” And still it shocked me. The idea of going back to our tiny hometown four hours away from here, the place where we’d both attended high school, where we’d made out in the cramped backseat of his little Escort, where our parents continued to live their very different, very separate lives, was so anathema to me, it actually made me nauseous.

“My dad's offered me a job.”

I stared at him, agape. I couldn’t say anything.

“Fixing up houses and flipping them.” I think he mistook my silence for agreement. He just kept talking. “There's good money in it. We could get our own place.

Start again. Try again.”

Try again. Oh my god, he meant try to have another baby. A replacement baby.

Now I really was nauseous.

I took a deep breath, getting the words out as calmly as I could manage. “I'm going to Italy, Mason.”

“You don't have to!” He raised his voice almost to a yell and I gave it right back to him.

“I want to!”

His jaw clenched, unclenched. “So you want to leave me?”

“You left me first,” I snapped.

“I beg to differ on that point.”

I shoved Jezebel off the table as she tried to settle on the table between us and she mewed at me in protest from the floor. “Mason, I'm not going to live off your parents anymore. I don't want that kind of life.”

“You don't have a problem with them paying your rent now!” he growled.

I gaped at him and then stood, the chair falling over behind me to the floor, making Jezebel bolt for the bedroom. “If you believe that, you don't know anything about me!”

“I know everything about you!” He grabbed my arm as I started after the cat, jolting me around so I was facing him. “I know that you can't stand being wrong or hurt. I know you wish you had died instead of her.”

“Stop it.” I tried to shake him off me, but he held my arm in a bruising grip.

“I know that you love me!” he yelled, shaking my arm, making my teeth rattle.

I glared up at him, using my other hand to push against his chest. “Love doesn't solve anything! I loved her and she died. I loved you and you left. What the fuck does love do for me? Nothing!”

Mason grabbed my other arm, the one shoving him, and held me still. “Come home with me.”

“To do what?” I was shaking all over. “So you can work for your parents, so we can live their lives? That’s like asking me to live in quicksand! I want my own life! Don't you, Mason? Don't you?”

The look in his eyes almost melted me. Almost. “I've never wanted anything but you.”

“I can't do this anymore.” Even as I said it, I realized it was true. Enough. I’d had enough. “You're never going to grow up are you, Peter Pan? Do you want to live in Neverland forever? Are you going to spend the rest of your life playing games and pretending bad things don't happen?”

“I'm trying!” he croaked.

“Trying isn't good enough.” It was a painful truth and he didn’t want to hear me, pretended I hadn’t spoken.

“I'm trying to make a life for us-for you!” He shook me, hard, and I struggled to get away. “A job, a house, a baby-isn't that what you want?”

“No!” I yelled, giving it back to him. “I want us. I always wanted us. I don't care what you do, as long as it’s yours. Don't you understand that?”

“Nothing is ever good enough for you!” He let me go, walking away, pacing.

“Jesus, my mother was right!”

“Your mother?” I gulped, trying to breathe.

“She warned me you were a gold digger. That you got pregnant on purpose. She warned me not to marry you.”

I knew she’d never liked me, but this! His words made me go cold inside.

“And I did it anyway.” He paced, talking to himself. “Because I loved you.

Because I thought you loved me. Because the baby…” His voice broke and he ran a shaking hand through his hair. “You know they think it's your fault? My mother swears it was all that freaky yoga stuff you were doing. That you killed her!”

He lifted his twisted face to me and I saw his tears. “Not that it matters. They don’t believe she was mine anyway.”

I went after him, screaming like an animal. I don’t remember anything I said, although I know I said things, and he did too. He shoved me away from him into the wall, knocking the wind out of me and I sat there, dazed, the world going in and out of focus, not sure if the pounding I heard was on the door or in my head.

“Dani!” Someone was calling my name. “Open up! Dani! Are you okay?”

It was Doc pounding on my front door. I struggled to stand and Mason stepped aside as I moved to open it.

“Sounded like you might need a little help over here.” Doc’s jaw worked as he looked past me toward Mason. Doc was wearing just a sweatshirt, no jacket, his breath making white mist in the cold. He must have heard us yelling and run over in a hurry.

“Mason was just leaving.” I swung the front door wide, letting Doc in.

“Is that so?” Doc’s big bulk filled the doorway, his gaze fixed steadily on my husband.

Mason looked just at me, his voice soft. “If I walk out that door, it will be for the last time.”

I didn’t say anything. Instead I walked to the back door, opened it and waved him through. When I shut it behind him, I turned to find Doc behind me, his face filled with concern.

“Are you okay?” He looked like he wanted to say something else, maybe reach for me, but was holding himself back.

“No,” I whispered, telling him the truth. Then I collapsed in his arms and sobbed.

He carried me to the couch. At least I’m pretty sure that’s how we got there, me in his lap, my hot face pressed against his neck. He rocked me and patted me and shushed me for a long, long time. I couldn’t stop crying. I hadn’t cried like that since Isabella was born, when my eyes had been so swollen I could barely open them and I had to ice both my face and my breasts to keep the swelling down.

“What happened?” Doc finally asked when my breath had settled into occasional hitches.

“It’s over.” I sniffed, wiping at my face with the sleeve of my turtleneck. It was no use-I’d soaked them both. “Not that it wasn’t already. I don’t know. I just wish it all could have been different.”

“I’m sorry.” He rocked me some more and I felt him kiss my hair. “You’ve had it rough, Dani.”

“I guess so.” I was feeling even more sorry for myself, hearing the sympathy in his voice. I lifted my head to glance at the clock. “Carrie must be going crazy.”

“She’s at her pottery class,” he assured me. “If she’d heard what I did before I came over here, she would have been knocking on your door with a baseball bat.”

I laughed. “She’s heard us before.”

“But she wasn’t sleeping with you then.”

I blushed. “About that…” They were both so matter-of-fact, but it made me want to crawl under the couch or something.

“I just thought we should talk about the elephant.” Doc smiled, his eyes bright.

“The…elephant?” I blinked.

“Yeah, you know, the pink one in the middle of the room?”

I tried not to laugh. “Oh that one.”