Chapter Text
Dani lies, spread out like a sunburnt starfish, on the kitchen floor. Eyes closed, limbs sprawled and loose, she lets the cool of the tile seep into her.
There’s a low drone coming from the fan in the next room, pulsing through her. It’s reassuring.
Two breaths in, a long one out, well-practiced. Again and again until the rhythm of it syncs to the fan and lulls her head into emptiness.
The heat from the oven radiates out towards her, warming one shoulder pleasantly and pinking her cheeks.
It is nice and she is fine.
She is fine.
She is –
The crunch of tires on the drive startles her out of her silence.
Dani hauls herself to her feet, cursing this body, cursing this heart, which pounds as it roars to life again, leaving her dizzy and vaguely nauseated.
With shaking hands, she tucks her hair behind her ears and tugs straight the apron tied around her waist.
Shit.
The front door opens just as she sets the steaming casserole on the counter and flips closed the oven door.
“We brought Grandma!” Eddie sings, bouncing the toddler on his hip as he waltzes into the kitchen.
He leans down to peck Dani on the lips, then dances the little boy towards the table, set and waiting.
Judy bustles in behind them, cake carrier in hand as always, never without offerings.
Only a week since she’d been over last, but still she sets down the dish and hurries over to Dani, hands outstretched.
She kisses Dani on the cheek, already spreading her eager palms across Dani’s belly.
“It comes so easily the second time around, doesn’t it? Three months and already look at this!” Judy says, chuckling warmly, rubbing the soft swell and grinning brightly. “And just wait until the next one! I’ll tell you, I looked like a ripe watermelon by month five with my third!”
Body still as stone, no breath to be found in her, Dani nods and smiles placidly as she reaches out for the handle of the oven door and bears down on it, squeezes until her knuckles pale and the metal bites into her skin.
“Hello, baby,” Judy murmurs, oblivious and blissful as she ducks down to press a kiss over Dani’s navel.
“Dinner’s ready!” Dani chimes, a smidge too loudly, through the coil of tension in her jaw.
She settles at the table across from Eddie, this routine of Sunday dinner familiar and easy, and tries, desperately, ice cube trapped under tongue, not to think of anything but this, here and now. Beloved family around her, cool water, mac and cheese to burn the roof of her mouth.
She is fine.
She is fine.
She is –
Four years ago, Dani had sat across from Eddie at a different table, bathed in the cozy, yellow glow of the restaurant chandelier.
I thought, for a second, you were going to say you didn’t want to get married at all.
He’d said it like a joke, but it was a question without a mark.
Him, teetering on the edge of the gaping maw that is her gut, catching sight of it in the periphery of his vision. Her, split open, raw and braced for the words waiting on her tongue, terrified but determined.
And then, fighting against the pull of her jaw, she had told the truth. Not the whole truth, flesh and bone and hunger, but one facet of its surface, which was far more than she’d managed until that point and a feat all its own.
Eddie, I can’t.
Three words.
Three words, and she watched as this man, this boy she’d loved since she was nine years old, began to fall. She watched as the horror set in, as his big, kind, oblivious heart began to break, right there on the other side of the table.
She had imagined this moment, steeled herself for it, but she had imagined it incorrectly and found herself unprepared.
Him, still tumbling in midair towards the abyss of her, the well he had never once managed to look down properly. Her, seeing what would come, like a premonition on the glazed whites of her eyes.
All this she’d built, the only family she had, the only future she knew, would be gone. The ease in the eyes of that family, gone. The woman who was more mother to her than her own had ever been, gone.
Her best friend, her home, her certainty and security, the plans and plans and plans, all gone.
All gone in the name of the desperate gnawing in the pit of her stomach, that constant companion for as long as she could remember, grown hungrier and restless as the years had past.
There were scales here, and she knew the balance.
She pitted the entirety of herself,
all the truth, unvoiced,
all the hopes, held in secret,
all the thoughts, buried deep and glanced at in the dark of night, sick and intrigued and wanting,
all the writhing of her skin on her frame,
pitted it all against
all she knew,
all she had,
and all she’d ever wanted (all she’d ever been taught to want).
She weighed it all and she told herself the answer was clear. (She was lying, of course, but there’s no faulting her for that.)
So, she reached back across the table and squeezed his hands, soothed him softly, told him she was just overwhelmed and intimidated by this new phase they were entering.
Just wedding jitters, she said.
She spoke so convincingly she almost fell for it herself, right along beside him.
The wedding happened, big and sprawling, all peach and white and beautiful.
Then the baby, who came a year and a half later. Eddie named him Benjamin, but it was a big name for a little boy, so he became Bean to most instead.
Family dinners on Sunday nights with Judy and Christmases from a story book.
She kept teaching during the school year, kept up the picture of the life she’d had before this. But more and more, she let the world she inhabited narrow to a little blue house on a side street, the pad of little feet on the tile, the tenderness in Eddie’s eyes.
She loved them so dearly, this little family of hers.
It was a good life, without doubt.
And for a while, she was fine. For a while, she let herself believe she could go on like this forever.
She bit her nails, still, when no one was watching. Stirred her lunch around in its little glass dish and tipped it into the garbage bin when the school bell rang from time to time. Counted endless sheep who offered little company as the hours between dark and dawn ticked by.
But she was fine.
And then, she wasn’t.
It happened like the flick of a switch, though looking back on it after, she could see the slow erosion under her feet in the years that had come before, the years between first kiss and declined proposals, between a wedding dress and baby, baby and now.
Six or so months ago, Eddie had slipped his arms around her as she stood at the kitchen sink, pressed his lips to her neck and leaned in close.
She loved him, loved him close, but her breath caught in her chest incorrectly, didn’t match quite right.
Let’s have another baby, he’d said, hands spreading across the stomach that was her own, his breath on her cheek.
He had said it without restraint or hesitation, safe and assured in her love for him and his for her, safe and assured in this life they had built. Her body was his to touch like this, permission she had granted again and again. Willing, if not exactly wanting.
It was fine. She loved him and it was fine. She was comfortable and safe with him and it was fine. It was fine. It was –
She felt something in her crumble.
Already? she’d asked, turning in his arms, chest tight and throat too thick for the ease of the question.
He grinned and pressed in, kissing her soundly, as he had thousands of times before. Why wait? Let’s fill this house with babies, Dani. I love you and I love Bean and I love our life together – I want to do this forever with you.
She kissed him back, leaned into the familiarity of it, threaded her arms around his neck.
And when she cried a little, he readily assumed joy behind the tears, and she did not correct him.
It was easier to pretend before, the first time around. (She catches the word, pretend, on the corners of her mind and looks away quickly, wishes it unseen.)
There was newness in the first pregnancy, the body unsure, giving license for her to be unsure as well.
But this time, this time is different.
Now she bites her tongue all the time, swallowing back the panic that rises in her chest at the thought of the life stretching out before her, like the skin across her belly. A life she had looked straight in the face and agreed to, jaw set, even though – even though.
She fights back the instinct to swat away the hands that touch her like she’s theirs.
This body is a betrayal, as it leans into this, to that life, that future, as it grows and shifts and accepts the passage of time readily.
She’s wracked with the desire, again and again, to claw her way out of it.
This little blue house, a prison she chose and keeps on choosing, day in and day out. This little blue house, full of love and light and laughter, and she should be fine.
She should be fine.
She plays it off well enough. Tears are easy to forgive, easy to laugh away. A little distance is easily missed in the full picture of a cheery home, lost easily in the warmth of the scene.
She falters, increasingly often, but she passes well enough, passes for the woman she’s pretended to be all these years.
Pretended.
Shit.
The margins of error are growing thin, and no number of casseroles and neatly packed lunches,
no expanse of deep breaths forced into her ribcage,
no length of screaming in the car with the windows rolled up, hoarse for a day after,
no amount of history or love or family or duty or loyalty or stubborn determination
will stop their erosion.
The margins are growing thin.
And she is not fine.
Dani sits, curled up on the couch, working her way through the crossword puzzle from the morning paper.
The tv plays in the background, familiar white noise of the evenings, and Eddie, beside her, watches idly as he sorts through the remaining pages.
The nightly news switches to commercials for the dozenth time and Dani’s eyes tick absentmindedly to the screen.
Chipper music ushers in bustling marketplaces filled with rows of stalls, sprawling gardens, ornate architecture stretching up towards the sky, a neat row of red-suited guards in their pompom hats. The footage is dotted with smiling families and gaggles of young people gazing up in wonder.
Visit London! flashes merrily across the screen, before an ad for powdered detergent begins to play.
Dani looks back down and studies the next clue in the puzzle on her lap.
“Danielle?” Eddie ducks down into her field of vision.
Dani murmurs a response, tracing along the line of boxes with one finger, counting silently.
“Honey, why are you crying?”
Dani looks up at this, eyebrows knitting together when she registers the concern on his face. “What?”
“You’re crying.”
Dani brushes her cheeks off hastily, distantly surprised to find her fingertips damp.
“Dani…”
She shakes her head and laughs lightly, but he’s scooting closer now, one hand resting on her knee and it’s all she can do not to flinch away.
He’s sweet, she knows, but the softness of the gesture makes her vision dim and her palms go clammy.
“Everything makes me teary these days, Eddie, you know that. It’s hormones, that’s all.”
He nods but won’t look away, won’t let the moment break, damn him.
Under his waiting gaze, she sifts wildly through the jumble of ache in her chest and comes up with something suitable, something safe enough to let cross her lips.
“I just – I always thought I’d travel, just sort of roam the world for a while by myself, you know?”
He smiles at this a little, bemused, and she has to dig fingernails into her thigh to stay sitting, to keep her shoulders loose and easy.
“Anyway, I’m fine,” she chuckles, and sees him as he chooses to believe this, as he melts back into his evening. “I’ll probably cry at the next banking commercial too. Six more months of this!”
Eddie reaches across the gap between them and cups her cheek in his hand.
“Maybe once the kids are old enough for sleepovers with my mom, we can get away for a weekend here or there. Maybe drive out to Chicago and have a little adventure?” He winks at her and pats her knee, a single-sided conspiracy for future fun signed and sealed. “I’m off to bed. Are you coming soon?”
Dani nods, done with breathing for the night.
She waits, lets his footsteps have the stairs, the hallway, the bathroom door, tap running, then sinks her head to her knees and falls to pieces.
Two weeks later, on her thirty-first birthday, Dani sits at the kitchen table as her family sings. She blows out the candles in a single breath and they beam at her.
And she loves them all, dearly.
The cake is the same one she’s eaten on every birthday since she was ten years old, baked tirelessly by Eddie’s mom.
It is not a cake Dani particular enjoys, the coconut making her throat itch a bit and the dense chocolate sponge sitting heavy on her tongue.
If she had her pick, it would be vanilla, light and soft, frosted in white. She’ll buy herself a square of it at the bakery tomorrow, eat it in the car when she’s meant to be grocery shopping.
But every year she fawns over this cake, hugs Judy and heaps genuine thanks on her, because it matters, to have someone bake a cake on your birthday, even a cake like this.
Dani cuts the cake in thick slices and doles them out, segmenting off a sliver of hers for Bean, sitting beside her in his high chair, bouncing excitedly.
Working her way slowly through the slice, Dani tries to ignore the looks being passed back and forth across the table between Eddie and their moms. Something in the tilt of their mouths and the way their eyes tick towards her leaves her edgy and jittery.
It’s just the sugar, she tries to tell herself, pressing her knees together and turning inward to steady the stack of bones in her spine.
When she has only one bite left to stomach, Eddie clears his throat and begins a show of digging in his jacket pocket, Karen and Judy falling silent.
Dani looks at Bean for a moment, to delay whatever is coming. Face smeared in frosting, he signs more at her hopefully and she shakes her head, bending to kiss his sweet cheek.
Eddie produces an envelope, long and thin, like those cards given to teens on their graduation days, holding checks and crisp bills and wishes for the future.
He hands it to her, trying and failing to hold back his grin, triumphant already.
The three of them watch her, blatant now, the looks of expectation and glee painted across their faces. Looks which have never, not once, come to anything good.
She untucks the flap slowly, forcing her fingers steady, shoving the tremor of her hands down to her knee, which bounces hard enough she has to lift her elbows from the table to avoid spreading its quake and betraying herself.
Inside the envelope is a single plane ticket.
Eddie can’t wait for her to read it, for her to even begin to parse out what’s being done right now.
“London for three days!” he sings, all pep and chip. “We figured we’ll let you get away for a bit, before the baby comes. It’s now or never, right? The trip is all arranged – I even called school to tell them you’d be out. You leave Friday morning. The tour bus picks you up at the airport and drops you right back for your flight on Monday afternoon. You’ll be back in time for breakfast!”
She tunes him out halfway through this, his words filtering in through the static overtaking her head.
Her knee doubles its pace.
She has to say something, she knows, and soon, before the smiles on their faces can break, their brows dipping into concern. She has to say something.
“It’s too much,” Dani says, eyes trained still on the ticket, and she means it, though not at all in the way she bends her inflection to imply.
But they take the words happily as they rub her arms and beam with pride at their generosity.
“We know,” Eddie says, and she wants to reach over and shake the words out of him, because he doesn’t know, not at all, “but we all went in on it together and managed. Consider it Christmases and birthdays for a couple years.”
Claustrophobia closing in, her throat, closing up, but they’re watching her, expectant, waiting for her joy, for her praises, for her thanks.
And she loves them all, dearly.
So, she paints herself in gratitude and leans over to kiss him, offers up the obligatory, “But what about Bean? Will you be alright?”
“Mom said she’ll come stay and help out. We’ll manage without you for a couple days, won’t we?” Eddie directs the question more towards the boy than towards Dani, his voice drifting high. He ruffles the boy’s hair, fondly. “As long as Mommy doesn’t fall in love with London and run off, right?”
They all chuckle and Dani joins in, the easy laughter coming from the back of her throat where she stores it for moments like this.
She thanks them all again, kisses cheeks and squeezes hands.
Eats the last bite of cake on her plate and clears away the dishes for washing later.
Excuses herself for a moment and slips away to the bathroom to curl up in bottom of the empty tub for as long as she can spare, before there’s inquiring footsteps on the stairs and she has to get up and slip on her smile again.