Rose
They were all there.
Her mother stood sideways, wiping her hands on her dirty apron, looking worried. Wisps of hair stood out around her face, while she held her youngest, Nick, by the hand. Nick looked at Rose blankly with wide eyes, like a lost child. The house girl, Delia, was wearing high heels and lipstick. Her feet were planted, legs slightly apart, arms crossed, chin tilted up, her eyes squinting at Rose with mascara rimmed eyes. Rose’s older brother, Hyun, a vacant stare on his face and missing one eye, was next to Delia. Glen, the army man, fat and shoddily dressed, his belly hanging over his tightly cinched belt, was there scratching his aging head and sparse black hair. The owner of the Chinese restaurant scowled and shook his fist the way he had when Rose quit her waitressing job. The slut that Josh had had an affair with at the hospital smiled at her, taunting, in a white lab coat, lacing her fingers around a stethoscope. Her children, Jason and Jake, were paying no attention. Jake ate a sandwich and Jason scrolled, bored, on his phone. Laila, Josh’s sister, loitered off to the side with an expensive French leather purse under her arm, her hair highlighted and perfect, while she regarded the group with the same indifference with which she had regarded Rose. Their stupid marriage counsellor grinned smugly, pushing her glasses up on her nose, and standing so close to Josh that their shoulders touched. Josh looked sullen as he faded in and out. The outline of his body melted into the crowd and blurred until he was unidentifiable. They all judged her, and she hated them for it.
Her head was splitting.
“God,” thought Beth, as she went toward the bathroom, one eye throbbing.
She hated these migraines. The right side of her face felt like it carried a load of rocks. Jaw clenched, she looked for the Tylenol.
Matt had sent her an email the night before with wording for an agreement for consensual divorce downloading it while scrolling through the internet.
She rifled through the tiny medicine cabinet one eye shut.
“Goddammit.”
Matt had been in the next room when he pressed send. He came into the office, where Beth was working late on the Gilhurst project, to proclamate that she had just received an email to her inbox and it was for divorce.
Beth rummaged in the little blue bureau and its contents like a racoon through a bag of garbage. She let the discarded medicine drop to the ground and unpacked the tiny medicine cabinet. Three thermometers, scattered band-aids, cortisone. For Christassake, where was the damn aspirin? It had been 1 a.m. when he jabbed open the door to the office where Beth was concentrating on a proposal. It was not unusual for Matt to sulk in the bedroom while Beth was busy with work or preparing dinner, cleaning, ironing. Matt resented Beth’s every movement lately. She understood that she could not make him happy and had given up trying entirely. It was freeing not to think about him. The issue of divorce hung in the air, but this was the first time one of them uttered the word. It came like a knife to the gut. Beth instinctively rubbed her temple in the sharp morning light that glared in the small bathroom window through thin white blinds she only made it worse. Her skin was sensitive to the touch so, the gentle friction of her fingertips felt like fire. Empty packages littered the floor, their contents scattered in the bottom of the drawer. She left the small drawers hanging open all at once, spilling out their innards on the tile floor like the guts of a freshly butchered wild animal.
Matt had gone to the trouble of itemizing the conditions of their divorce while brooding in the bedroom, angrily flicking his finger on the mouse pad. The document said child support would be 50/50. That was what had brought on the migraine. It would never stand up in court. Beth earned less than a fifth of what Matt earned, and working freelance work meant she had no job security. When the children were young, Beth talked about returning to work. She and Matt had agreed that she would pursue freelance work because it left her free to take the kids to the beach house during summer vacation. Beth stubbed her toe on the scale next to the medicine cabinet and shrilled at it.
“Damn you.”
The divorce would be a blessing considering the state of their marriage, but 50/50 for private schools and expenses for a family was unsustainable for Beth. The package of oblong blisters she dug out of the drawer looked like Tylenol. With one eye closed, she could not read the packaging. What strength was this, did she need two?
“Damn, damn,” Beth hissed to herself.
“Fine.”
She would take two and go back to bed. She turned on the light above the mirror and opened the faucet.
“500mcg,” she mumbled.
She would need two more in an hour if this did not work. Throwing the large white pills in the back of her mouth, she bent her head near the running water. Beth sucked at the stream. She stood and threw her head back quickly to get the pills down. Her head was pulsating so that she threw herself off balance when she did. She reached for the wall to balance herself. The rushing water was mostly air pressure and not enough to wash down the pills.
It was just like Matt to make a scene. She knew he wanted an argument. They would fight, he would lash out, dominating through it all. Beth would fall silent, knowing he needed to blow off steam without entirely understanding the source of his frustration. Typically, he began with a general complaint about something Beth had done wrong, something that infringed on his freedom, or she had cost the family money, was not pulling her weight, anything was game. They were all things Beth would have said to him. The contorted logic meant she had to listen to her thoughts flung back at her as accusations Beth knew she had not done, but that she had been holding back on saying to Matt. To respond would set him off on another rant late into the night. Matt could not accept defeat so, his outbursts came, strategically, when Beth was under pressure for a deadline. Her need to turn in a project trumped her capacity to argue with him. It was better to be silent and leave after he had spewed his venom.
The pills were bitter and stuck in her throat. She pressed them down against a gagging reflex, squeezed her eyes, choked while she willed the tablets down her oesophagus where they lodged until she swallowed again. She could not lower her head under the faucet another time. Her head exploded with the blood rushing against gravity. She held the crumpled blister packaging.
Beth could pretend nothing happened, ignore the email entitled, “Divorce” and Matt’s anger. It was not a legal petition. She knew, if she pursued it, the conditions Matt had written were a warning. He would make her pay more than she earned and had in savings, specified that he would take the house, refused any alimony or child support, adding a clause that Beth relinquished all demands on him. He was telling her the extent of his rath, were she to pursue separation. Hollowed out plastic package in her fist, Beth stepped on an empty packet under her cold, bare feet and she scuffed another one out of the way. She went to the computer, opened her email to see if there was a response from Gilhurst. The project manager’s address flashed in bold on the screen, announcing acceptance of her project. Now she needed to lay out a strategy outline.
Beth clicked on the name of a lawyer Sara had given her when they met last month.