“Pregnancy suits you. The hair too.”
Her unexpected kindness makes me want to ask her to come into the exam room with me to hold my hand.
I find the most secluded seat possible, far in the corner. I pull my phone out of my bag so I don’t have to make eye contact with anyone else. I already have eleven missed calls. All from “Unknown” or unfamiliar numbers. Reporters… or worse. It’s escalated since the interview. In the last twenty-four hours alone, I’ve received multiple messages from crazy strangers saying that Kevin should burn in hell for what he did, or that our baby should be taken away from us. And then there was the woman who’d hissed, “Maybe you’d understand if your own baby was killed.” After that I vowed to never listen again. I delete anything that doesn’t come from a number I recognize.
My forefinger swipes the screen and presses down to pull up the video again. I don’t know why I do it—it’s like a car crash I keep rubbernecking. The counter at the corner says Riley’s interview with Tamara has been viewed 437,322 times since it aired Saturday night. I’m probably at least a dozen of those. Riley’s face, the size of my thumb, is close to the screen. I watch as she nods along when Tamara Dwyer demands that the officers who shot her son get sent to prison “for the rest of their lives.”
I drag my finger along the bottom of the screen, fast-forwarding a few seconds to another close-up of Riley, her glassy eyes, her tight grip on Tamara’s hand. If any other reporter did that, I’d think it was an act, turning it on for the camera, except this is Riley, and I can tell she means it, that’s what makes her so good. She truly cares. Riley looks so genuinely pained, I want to reach through the phone and comfort her, the grieving mother too. Then I remember: The man they’re talking about locking up for the rest of his life is my husband.
And maybe Riley is just doing her job, so why do I feel like I’ve been stabbed in the back every time I watch this video? Why does it feel like Riley is choosing sides?
We’re fine, Riley had written me yesterday, a full two days after I’d texted her that I didn’t want to be fighting, after I’d almost stopped expecting to hear back from her. It’s obviously not true, which is why I haven’t responded. Besides, after that interview, what could I even say? Nice job making the case that my husband is a monster.
As betrayed as I felt watching that one-sided interview, I’d still somehow found myself defending Riley to the Murphys when it aired. “She’s just doing her job,” I offered meekly as we watched it live in the sunken living room on the too-big TV. That I felt the need to stick up for Riley at all only made me more pissed off about the whole thing.
Matt’s voice had thundered through the room, rattling Cookie’s Precious Moments figurines. “Are you kidding me? That Black bitch knows exactly what she’s doing!”
“Do not call her that!” I spat back.
Kevin jumped to his feet, upsetting the empty beer cans on the coffee table. “She’s a traitor. She knows me, Jen. She knows me, and she does this?” He stormed out through the patio doors, into the freezing night. Matt joined him; the two of them paced and passed a vape back and forth for hours, long after I went to bed.
Does Riley know Kevin? Even I don’t know my husband right now. Before we were married, when we did our Pre-Cana at St. Matthew （at Cookie’s insistence）， Father Mike, who’d christened Kevin as a baby, looked across his massive cherry desk and asked us to tell him about the hardest challenge we’d faced so far as a couple. He was dead serious, but it didn’t stop our nervous giggles. We were all of twenty-five. We’d only been dating for a year. Life was all sex in weird places and dirty texts.
It was hard to imagine a time when Kevin wouldn’t make me happy. I tried to force myself to think of scenarios that would break us and came up blank. Kevin would never cheat, never hit me, never leave me. He had a good job. He’d support our family. I guess everyone goes into their wedding day believing these things, but with Kevin, they were facts, not wishes. I was building a life on the bedrock of these truths.
Father Mike left us with what he claimed was his very best advice. “Try not to stop loving each other on the same day.” He let loose an uncharacteristic chuckle. “Or, rather, try not to hate each other on the same day.”
It sounded ridiculous at the time. I could never hate Kevin. But when I couldn’t get pregnant, Father Mike’s advice took on a whole new meaning. That’s when I became the worst wife in the world, moody, angry, quick to snap for long stretches of time. Sometimes I blamed the hormones; the truth is that I was miserable and scared and took it all out on Kevin because he was there, a sponge to absorb my hostility. He withstood my outbursts like a tree standing in a hurricane. He remained calm, even when we got into the biggest fight of our marriage, last Christmas Eve, when I came home with the check from Riley. I presented it triumphantly, giddily, ready to call the clinic as soon as they opened after the holiday. Kevin had looked at the check with actual disgust and demanded that I return it.
“I don’t want to be in debt to her,” he’d shouted.
I should have known how he’d react. He’s not a huge fan of Riley under the best of circumstances. He thinks he hides it, but Kevin can’t hide anything. So when he says things like, “Riley thinks she’s the shit, doesn’t she?” or, “You always do what Riley says,” I let it go most of the time. He’s only jealous. He wants to be the most important person in my life—and he is, but Riley’s a very close second, a scenario that doesn’t make either of them happy.
And there was no way I was turning down the money. I made this pretty clear by screaming it at the top of my lungs. I hate what I said to him before storming out of our bedroom. “Maybe we should get a divorce and I’ll have a baby on my own. I’m not the one with the fucking problem.” I can only blame my outburst on the fact that I wanted a child with a longing so desperate and feral it consumed me. It changed me; it was like being possessed. The old Jen, the one who sat in Father Mike’s office wild-eyed with love, would never have said those words.
My whole life there’s been a little voice inside me, reminding me not to want too much. I used to complain to Lou about how unfair it was that I didn’t have a father, or new clothes, or a mother who came to school events. “Life’s not fair. Get used to it,” she’d bark at me. And I accepted that. But a baby—one healthy baby—that felt like a reasonable thing to want. I couldn’t summon a dad, or a new mother, but I could, surely, somehow, make a baby. The more it seemed like Kevin was resigned to it not happening, the more determined I felt. Even if the money from Riley wasn’t enough and I had to open yet another credit card to make up the difference. Even if taking her money made me feel embarrassed, exposed. Even if I didn’t want Riley to think Kevin had failed me somehow. The only thing that mattered was that it gave me one more chance—and that cycle, our Hail Mary, had worked, thank God. But a part of me will always wonder, What if it hadn’t? If we hadn’t gotten pregnant, would our marriage have survived? Would I have?