Because You're Mine

by Rea Frey

  She whirls away from the mirror and lets any sort of physical desire evaporate. There will be time for romance, but she has to stay focused. There’s such a precarious balance to her life at the moment: Mason comes first, her sobriety second, then her business. She spins back toward the mirror. There’s more to that balance. Of course there is. A knock at the door—her first client—snaps her out of her reverie.

  She rises to answer it.

  There’s the deep, underlying truth.

  She plasters on a smile as she pulls the door open.

  The truth she keeps only for herself.

  secret [see-krit]

  adjective

  1. done, made, or conducted without the knowledge of others

  2. kept from the knowledge of any but the initiated or privileged

  Sometimes, I wonder if we ever really know the people in our lives: their layers, their hidden truths, their complexities, their lies.

  I wonder how many secrets each of us juggles.

  Are we afraid of not being liked?

  Are we afraid of being judged?

  Are we afraid of consequences?

  I know I am.

  I’ve always been good at keeping secrets—other people’s secrets, friends’ secrets, family secrets, strangers’ secrets. But I’m even better at creating secrets.

  No one ever guesses them … even if I beg them to try.

  3

  lee

  “So, I have to tell you what happened last night. You’ll die. Seriously, you will just die.” Alice reworks her scarf around her clavicle and yells at her daughter, who is suctioned around the Two Rivers playground fire pole. “Olivia, get off that pole. Now!”

  Carol peels an orange for her daughter, Zoe. “Let’s hope you’re not telling her that ten years from now.”

  Lee sits next to Carol, Alice, and Grace on the park bench, her eyes glued to Mason, who constructs a kite by the swings. This is their post-school afternoon ritual, at least one day a week.

  Alice uncrosses her legs, her jewel-tone skirt swishing across her ankles. “Right? Seriously. She’s obsessed with poles right now. Anytime she sees one, she wraps herself around it and just hangs there. I asked her why she does it, and do you know what she said? She said, ‘Because it feels good.’”

  Grace laughs. “Isn’t she a little young for that?”

  Alice lifts her sunglasses to her forehead. “Are we ever too young for that?” She arches her eyebrows and lets the aviators slide back into place. “So. Last night. Fred and I finally had sex, because, it’s been, I don’t know, fucking forever, and we start and it’s just … awkward. Like, I feel awkward underneath my own husband. I’m trying to get past that, but then I’m paying attention to the damn condom—”

  “Gross! How can you guys still use condoms? In your thirties?” Carol asks.

  “Because not all of our husbands jump at the chance to get a vasectomy.”

  “Point taken.”

  “So, I’m totally grossed out by the condom, and then … there was an incident.”

  “What kind of incident?” Grace asks.

  Alice inhales. “Like a chest fart incident.”

  Carol laughs, strangling juice from one of the oranges. She licks her fingers. “Oh my God. That is seriously the best thing I’ve ever heard.”

  Lee rolls her eyes beneath her sunglasses and laughs good-naturedly. These ladies and their sex stories. Lee hasn’t had sex since Mason was born. Since before actually. While Alice and Carol complain about their snoring husbands or their inability to spoon, Lee has slept alone, night after night, for as long as she can remember. The loneliness has become an actual living thing. Noah flashes through her mind again, but she buries the fantasy. She smiles at Grace. Thank God she’s single too, or she’d be on an island all by herself.

  “Like full-on chest-against-chest farting,” Alice continues. “I was like, ‘What’s next? Clinking our teeth like we’re sixteen?’ I mean, what is that? Olivia, seriously, get off that pole right now and let the other kids slide down, or we are leaving! Do you hear me, young lady?”

  “Did you guys finish?” Grace inquires. She side-eyes Luca, who is busy flying down the slide, belly first.

  “We did,” she says. She gathers her skirt in her fist and knots it below her knees. “I don’t know how because we were both so embarrassed by ourselves. It’s tragic when I think back to how we used to rip each other’s clothes off every chance we got. Now, we’re like clumsy, middle-aged virgins.”

  Carol nods and hands the squished orange to Zoe. “I’ve got one better than that. Charlie and I had sex for the first time in three months the other night. Three entire months. It lasted about twelve seconds. We suck.”

  “It’s these kids.” Alice’s eyes drift to Zoe and Olivia, who chase Luca across the playground. Mason pieces focuses on the kite, seemingly immune to the activity around him. “I mean, do you remember the days of waking up on weekends and … I don’t know, taking a few minutes to come into the day instead of being forced into it by these little voices that have to tell you every last detail of their dreams, or what they want for breakfast, or that they had an accident or whatever?”

  Lee wants to scream no. Life before Mason was haunted, dark, and … no. She can’t imagine. Mason is the hardest thing she’s ever done, but he keeps her grounded. He keeps her alive. She could never go back.

  “What about when they pounce on your bladder, like they have radar for the exact spot you have to pee?” Grace asks.

  “I’m not kidding, I think Olivia actually punctured my bladder with her knee.” Alice sighs. “I was just talking to Fred the other day about all of this. Do you know what I used to do? Every morning, I would smother him with kisses—”

  “Vomit,” Grace jokes.

  “And go make pancakes and coffee. We’d have leisurely sex, lounge around, and decide what to do with our day. Usually, our biggest decision was where we were going to get takeout from and what video to rent. Back when Blockbuster was a real thing. I mean, we’d decide what to do with our day. Do you know how foreign that feels now?”

  “Uh, yeah, I do. Obviously.” Carol looks at Lee, finally registering that she’s been silent. “You okay, Lee?”

  Lee forces a smile and shakes her head. “Sorry. I’m a little out of it today. Didn’t sleep well. Sounds awful though. The chest farting stuff.”

  They laugh, and Alice wipes away tears. “When did passion switch places with, I don’t know, a roommate?”

  “I have a theory,” Carol interjects. “In my experience, parenting and romantic relationships don’t really go together. I read this article that your spouse becomes like a relative or something. I think they call it familialization.”

  Grace nods. “Exactly. I’ve been saying that forever. Hence my divorce. No one wants to sleep with a relative.”

  As much as Lee reads about divorce rates or failed relationships, she’d still take one over having none. She’s never had a successful relationship. She craves that as much as she craves happiness for Mason. Noah floods her thoughts again, and her entire body warms.

  “We do live in the South, you know,” Carol jokes. “So, the whole sleeping with a relative thing…” She glances at her phone, which vibrates in her hand. “Ugh. It’s my mother.”

  “Answer it,” Grace demands.

  “Please answer it,” Alice begs, tenting her fingers in mock prayer. “Cheryl is the highlight of my day.”

  “Speaker,” Lee adds, suddenly interested. “For us?”

  “Fine.” Carol sighs, hits speaker, and feigns enthusiasm. “Hey, Mom. I’m just at the park with the girls, so I won’t be able to talk long—”

  “I think I have cancer.”

  Lee balks. Normally, Cheryl’s outbursts, though bordering on hypochondria, make them all laugh. The time she almost got arrested for stealing a mannequin from Kmart because she wanted that particular garment, even though it wasn’t for sale. The time she refused to stand up on a bus so a p
regnant woman could sit down because she insisted the elderly were a forgotten group and that pregnant women all over the world carried baskets on their heads and babies on their backs, so standing on a bus was the least of the soon-to-be-mother’s worries. The time she made her granddaughter almost cry because she insisted that watching a Disney princess movie meant that she would grow up relying on men. No matter the preposterousness of the situation, Cheryl keeps their lives entertaining.

  Carol rolls her eyes at the group. “You do not have cancer.”

  “I know I have cancer.”

  “I repeat: you do not have cancer.”

  Grace mouths to Alice, She totally doesn’t have cancer.

  “Well, your father had cancer. And he died, Carol. He died. That could happen to me too, you know.”

  “Mom, I was there, remember? I know Dad died.”

  “Then you should know that I have cancer and that I’m going to die too. And leave all you girls without a mother. Oh my. This is”—her mother inhales sharply and lowers her voice to a whisper—“the real deal.”

  Cheryl launches into a tirade about her right breast, which has become sore and lumpy. This week it’s her breast, last week her brain, the weeks before that her thyroid, her pancreas, her lymph nodes, and her colon, if Lee is remembering correctly. She is a true hypochondriac, and the girls fear that when the “real deal” actually comes for Cheryl, no one will believe her.

  “Are you giving yourself breast exams regularly?” Carol snaps her fingers at Zoe and hisses at her to drop the branch she’s chasing Luca with.

  “Well, no. But when Arnie and I were fooling around, he grabbed my breast and he said—”

  “Mom! Stop! You’re on speaker.”

  Grace and Alice laugh and lean in to say hello to Cheryl. Lee knows that Cheryl dating someone besides Carol’s father is hard enough; the fact that it’s Arnie—Cheryl’s mailman of all things—might push the envelope a bit too far.

  “I’ve got to go. You do not have breast cancer. Okay?”

  “But I went to this one website, and you would not believe what it said. Let me find it…” The rustle of papers explodes over the phone.

  “Did you actually print out the article? I thought your printer wasn’t work—listen. It doesn’t matter. Just stop googling stuff. You do not have cancer. You are fine. Every time you go to the doctor, you are always fine. Better than fine. You’re the healthiest senior I know.”

  “Har har, Carol. Very funny.”

  “I really have to go.”

  “Give that delicious granddaughter of mine a huge kiss from her Maw-Maw.”

  “I will, Mom. Love you.” Carol tosses the phone back in the bag, and the women look at her with slight concern. “Ridiculous, right? She does not have cancer.”

  “I’m sure she’s fine,” Grace assures her. “She’s always fine.”

  “I mean, what would I even do? When we created our will, it states that Zoe will go to her if something ever happened to me and Charlie, but is that a mistake? What if she dies?”

  Lee shudders. Unfortunately, she’s been there, going through the horror of losing one parent and being left with another parent who could care less about the responsibility of raising a young child. It’s her worst nightmare—leaving Mason without a parent.

  “That’s why I sometimes think friends with kids are the better choice for that type of thing,” Alice says. “Our parents have all been-there-done-that with raising kids and don’t have the energy anymore. We’ve seriously thought about changing ours.”

  Grace looks at Lee and offers a comforting smile. They’ve had this conversation on numerous occasions. Since they are both single mothers, Grace urged Lee to get her affairs in order.

  A month ago, Grace had arranged a meeting with her lawyer and they’d drawn up legal papers for Lee to get notarized. When Lee was creating the draft, she’d watched Grace painstakingly comb through the documents to make sure they hadn’t missed anything. Certainty had swirled in Lee’s chest.

  “Will you?”

  “Will I what?” Grace had removed her reading glasses and turned her attention to Lee.

  “Mason. If something happens to me, will you take Mason?” It was the hardest thing she’d ever had to ask. Grace had pressed a hand to her chest, shocked.

  “Are you sure? That’s a monumental decision.”

  She’d nodded. “He adores you. You two just click. I see it every time you’re together.”

  Grace had crushed her in a hug and told her what an honor it was. “I’d ask you to do the same, but I’m pretty sure Chad would fight you for Luca.” She’d rolled her eyes and dabbed her tears with her sleeve. It had been such a huge decision, but she’d never been more certain that Grace was the right choice.

  “Your mom will be fine,” Lee says now. “She’s not going anywhere.”

  “Because she wants to annoy me until I’m old and gray.”

  Lee shrugs. “You’re still lucky to have her.”

  “Until she’s your mother.” Carol sighs and scrolls through a few new texts.

  Lee would take any type of mother. The anniversary of her mother’s death is tomorrow. Every year, it eclipses daily life—from parenting to work to making dinner—until it’s all she can think about. It’s the elephant in the room, the sole memory her mind snags on, the day she can’t change, the day everything changed, the day she became … different.

  It used to be alcohol that quelled the ache of remembrance. She’d drink wine until she passed out and wake the next day, groggy and swollen, realizing that horrible footprint in history was gone. Until the next year.

  Since her sobriety, Grace is now her crutch. She literally can’t imagine getting through the tough stuff without her. It’s been years since she could rely on a best friend, and it’s one of the things she is most thankful for, even when daily life wears her down: Grace.

  “Zoe, let’s go, baby!” Carol calls.

  Lee hurtles back to the present moment—the friends; the playground; the packing of various snacks, bags, and water bottles; Mason; and the laundry list of to-dos for the rest of the day. She waves good-bye to the group, thinking once more of her mother and what she would give to have even one more day with her. A day like this. A day chatting on the phone. A day fighting. A day laughing about her with her friends.

  She steps forward and calls to her son.

  4

  lee

  Mason launches his kite and watches it sway, unwinding the string when necessary. She’s always amazed at his ability to get so engrossed in a project that he doesn’t share the need to run, play, jump, and explore. She brings him here to be with his friends, but every week she vows not to do it again, because he’s always off on his own.

  “You ready, bud?”

  He nods and begins to wind the string and lower the kite to the earth. He scoops it up and deposits the fabric in the trunk. In the car, he buckles himself into his booster. They drive home in silence—Mason isn’t in the mood for the radio today—and she lets the same handful of thoughts accost her. Who she is. What she’s become.

  “I’m hungry. I’m so hungry. I need food right now or I will faint.” Mason’s words pull her from the repetitive mental abuse.

  “You will not faint.”

  “I am so hungry that I will faint in exactly forty-six seconds if I don’t consume something substantial.” He grips his stomach for effect.

  She laughs. “Well, forty-six seconds is not a lot of time.”

  “You should have thought about that before I was about to faint.”

  “We’ll be home in five minutes. You can wait until then.”

  He kicks the back of her seat in sets of threes—thunk, thunk, thunk—and she grits her teeth. “Mason, please stop kicking my seat. That doesn’t feel good.”

  “You don’t feel good.”

  “Well, that doesn’t really make any sense.”

  “Yes, it does. It makes perfect sense.” He settles down almost immediate
ly, knowing that if he throws a tantrum, it will do nothing but agitate them both. She resists the urge to get to the bottom of what is wrong. He will tell her when he’s ready. Her mind sorts through the possible reasons anyway: is it the playground? The other kids? He has promised her that he doesn’t feel left out, but really … why wouldn’t he?

  She drives the rest of the way home on autopilot and replays Carol’s conversation with her mother. She’s so flippant with Cheryl, the two of them sharing an almost comical relationship. Lee wonders what she and her mother would be talking about if she were still alive right this very second. Would she offer some parental words of wisdom about how fast childhood goes and to pick her battles?

  As she takes a sharp right into her neighborhood, she is brought back to the night her mother died. She fiddles with the radio knob, but then remembers Mason wants it off. She searches desperately for something else to take over her mind. She doesn’t want to think about that night yet. She doesn’t want to catalog the loss, as she does each year, bit by bit. Not until she can call Grace.

  She comes to a stop sign, eases her foot off the gas, and waits.

  “Mom, what are you doing? There aren’t any other cars.”

  “Sorry.” She presses the gas after almost a full minute of stillness, and they lurch forward toward their street.

  She is restless to get Mason settled, to call Grace and get it over with, as she does every year, in a passionate rush. If she doesn’t talk about it, she will forget her. If she forgets her, there is nobody left to remember.

  The timeline of her mother’s death unfolds in quick snapshots. Lee was a child and had been sick. All she’d wanted was 7UP and crackers. It was her father who was supposed to go to the store, not her mother. But he was drunk and watching the game. Her mother had shrugged into a coat, kissed her hot forehead, and said she’d be right back. That was the last time she’d seen her alive.

  She cringes from the memory and tucks it away once they pull into the drive. Mason slams the car door and runs inside. When she’s set up an afternoon project for him, she calls Grace. “Hi.”