Jessica Martinez - The Vow

I end up in the bedroom, Annie’s room, curled up on the bed like a baby. It’s not like I’m going to stay here. The guilt is just exhausting, and I’m dying to hide under real sheets and pretend I have a room. A bed. For a few minutes, I can pretend myself back to before the world decided to chew me up and spit me out.

But then I close my eyes, pull the blanket over my head, and inhale. It’s a mistake. The sheets smell like girl. Warm and earthy and vaguely floral, like Annie.

I’m crying. I hate crying, but I’m doing it, not just because I can’t protect Sarina or even know her anymore, but because I chose it. All of it. I chose to let Annie screw over her whole life. Being with her all the time—I’d never have guessed how hard that would be. The longer we live together the more I feel this pull toward her, this ache and certainty that only she can fill the gaping hole left by everyone who’s abandoned me. I want to breathe in her hair. Touch her.

I need to get out of this bed. The land of guilt, that’s where I’m heading. It’s infidelity in reverse—thinking about loving her in ways that we don’t love each other in this marriage. It’s not part of our agreement. It’s betrayal.

Annie

It isn’t betrayal. Or if it is, I don’t know who I’m even betraying anymore. I just know that when I finally get home and find Mo in my bed, crying like I have never seen him cry before, I don’t think about it. I climb in, wrap my arms around his torso, and press my cheek into his back.

We’re ten again. He’s broken.

I don’t think about the fact that I just had my hands on Reed’s chest, held my body against a different kind of desperation. I shhh Mo until he stops shaking and finally sleeps. And I fall asleep too.

* * *

Waking up in the same bed, fully clothed and sour-mouthed, is different. No, not different. Awkward. More for him than me, I think, based on the way he rolls away from me and stares at the wall while I stretch and stare at the ceiling. Maybe it’s the memory of spooning and sobbing more than the actual cosleeping that makes eye contact so impossible. So I do the only thing I can think of doing to make it less weird. As quietly as I can, I roll onto my side, reach over my head and brace myself with both hands on the headboard, place both feet flat on his lower back, and I shove him out of bed.

The thump of his body on the hardwood is a little louder than I expected, but he’s laughing. Thank goodness. He already got beat up once in this apartment.

“You are so going to regret that,” he says, hobbling around the bed and out of the room. “I think I twisted my ankle, so I probably won’t be able to do my half of the job chart.”

“Nice try.” I’m still considering what form of revenge I should be bracing myself for when he returns with strawberry Pop-Tarts and chocolate milk for both of us. “Did you spit in this?” I ask, lifting the glass to inspect it.

“I’m way more subtle than that. I’ll wait until you’ve forgotten it’s coming.”

“Great.” I take a sip and a bite before I ask him, “You want to talk to me about anything?”

“Not really.”

“Are you sure?”

“Are you asking why I had some kind of mental/emotional breakdown in your bed last night?”

“Maybe that. If you want.”

He leans back into the stack of pillows. “I don’t know. I mean I know, but I don’t know why I lost it like that. I talked to Sarina and she wasn’t herself, and it sort of annoyed me.”

“What do you mean, not herself ?”

He breaks the Pop-Tart in half and stares at the jam filling. “Not happy. Not stupidly optimistic, which is unfair to say or even think, since if I was her I wouldn’t be any kind of optimistic.”

“Did she say why?”

“No. But then I talked to my mom and found out Sarina got hit by a rock outside of her school a couple of days ago.”

“What?”

“On her cheek, I guess. She had to get stitches, so it must have been a good-sized cut.” He pieces the two Pop-Tart halves back together, examining the fault line he created. “A good-sized rock.”

I put my Pop-Tart on the bedside table. It tastes like sweet, chalky cardboard. “Is she being bullied, or was it just some random thing?”

“How can a flying rock be some random thing? Rocks don’t just fall from the sky—not even in the Middle East. Or are you asking if in Jordan people throw rocks all the time because they’re all just a bunch of violent barbarians and Sarina got caught in the crossfire?”

“Don’t be mad at me, Mo. I’m just trying to understand.”

“Sorry.” Mo separates the Pop-Tart halves again, dips one in the chocolate milk, and takes a bite. Since we’re having a serious conversation, I don’t tell him how disgusting that is.

“Your mom must be freaking out.”

Mo snorts. “If only. She was all denial and excuses. She made it sound like it would work itself out. Something about the way she said it, though, it’s like she thinks Sarina just needs to work at fitting in and everything will be fine.”

“So you don’t think she’ll adjust?” I ask. “Like you did here? I mean you said before that she is wearing a hijab and going to mosque and stuff.”

Mo doesn’t move or say anything for a while, and I know I’ve said the wrong thing. And stuff. Why did I say that and make it sound like a grocery list? And why am I always on the verge of insulting his nationality or his religion or his cultural whatever when I’m only trying to be nice? He’s too sensitive or I’m too clumsy. It has to be one or the other. Or maybe it’s just impossible to talk about—so neither of our faults.

“I don’t know. She’s too American and not American enough. I mean, according to my dad, lots of Jordanians like Americans, but I can see how Sarina would seem like a poseur. A Jordanian who thinks she’s American. It was different for me moving here. I was supposed to be different from everyone else. She’s not. Plus I had you.”

I picture Sarina, with her dreamy look and soft voice, so much like Mo but with all the hard edges smudged.

“Wouldn’t have happened if I was there,” he says, so quietly I can barely hear him.

“Don’t think like that,” I say.

“Why not? It’s the truth.”

“You have no way of knowing that. Besides, it’ll drive you nuts.”

He raises an eyebrow. “Nuts as in curl into fetal position in someone else’s bed and sob like a baby?”

“Exactly. Nuts as in dunk your Pop-Tart in chocolate milk. That’s disgusting, by the way.”

“I knew you were thinking that. That’s why I kept doing it. Do you want to watch SpongeBob?”

“No, but I will.”

* * *

We watch two episodes before I turn it off and force Mo to go put on his suit and tie. “Stop whining and do it,” I say, lifting my foot threateningly. “I’d hate to have to kick you out of bed again.”

But there is no element of surprise this time, and he pushes my foot away and pins me before I can blink.

“You didn’t seriously think that was going to work twice, did you?”

“Um . . .” I’m trying to wriggle free, but getting nowhere. “Neither attempt was all that calculated, actually.”

“Say we can take pictures tomorrow and I’ll let you go.”

“I don’t want to do it either, but we have to do it today so I can get Kristen’s dress back to her. All you have to do is put a suit on. I’m the one who has to hassle with hair and makeup, and you don’t hear me complaining.”

He lets me go. “Fine. You shower first.” He flops back onto the pillows and picks up the remote.

* * *

Neither of us has a clue about wedding picture venues, so we end up in the woods behind the apartments like I suggested, Mo’s camera propped on a tree stump, me standing on a huge rock trying to look . . . I’m not sure. Romantic?

“Say cheese,” Mo says, pressing the button and taking off sprinting through the ten feet of scrub brush and fallen trees between us.

The camera light blinks . . . and blinks . . . and blinks . . .

“Hurry, hurry, hurry!” I shout for no reason but to stress him out as he’s scrambling up the rock. We still have three more blinks by the time he’s behind me, wrapping his arms around my waist, putting his chin on my shoulder.

The picture takes.

“We have got to be almost finished,” he says, taking a step away.

“We probably have at least ten good ones. That has to be enough. Help me down.”

He jumps off the rock, then turns around to reach up for me. “I swear, you put on that dress and turned into a bridezilla. Mo, do this, Mo, do that. Mo, get me off this rock. Mo, massage my bunions.”

I crouch. “Returning the dress a day late I can explain—moss and dirt stains, probably not. And I don’t even know what bunions are, so just help me down.”

“Fine.” He reaches up, but looks at me like I’m a porcupine—all quills, nowhere to grab.

“Oh, come on,” I say. “Just pretend you’re pulling luggage off a conveyer belt.”

He grabs me by the waist and plants me on the relatively clear footpath. “We should’ve taken pictures inside,” he mutters.

“Where? People don’t take wedding pictures in front of their refrigerators. Besides, it’s pretty out here in the morning.”

He walks over to the camera to examine the pictures. “That last one was actually pretty good. Seriously, when did I get so hot?”

“Uh, sometime next year? Let’s go change. I’ve got to go to work.”

“I thought you weren’t supposed to have to work weekends.”

“I’m not,” I hear myself say. My voice sounds casual, perfectly even. “I’m filling in for someone.”