Rewriting the Ending

by H P Tune

Releasing Mia’s hand, her fingers slipped out unguarded, though she noticed Mia’s breathing hitch. Her nostrils were flaring too. Lowering her palm to the small of Mia’s back, Juliet found the bare skin under her clothes and rubbed the pads of her fingertips against Mia’s tensed muscles.

  Mia exhaled. “What do you want, Stephen?”

  Juliet looked him over, seeing even more clearly how his arrogance exuded from him like sweat despite his appearance: his abdomen hung over the suit pants, his belt hid somewhere beneath the fold of indulgence.

  “In the spare room,” he said, arms crossing at his chest, “are some of my things. I need them back now.”

  A pinched expression crossed Mia’s face, and Juliet hoped the annoyance was easier to manage than the anxiety that she knew was underneath. Juliet stroked at Mia’s back to keep her grounded. She felt Mia press back into her open palm. “I could have sent them to you. You didn’t have to come here.”

  Stephen rolled his eyes again. “I doubt that. Sharing was never your strong point, Mia.”

  “And it was yours?”

  “Are we really going to do this?” Though his fingers curled sporadically and he shifted his feet constantly, he affected a bored tone.

  “Why shouldn’t we? I have plenty I have wanted to say to you.” Mia spat her words out.

  “Let me save you the time,” he snapped, and Juliet snaked her hand around Mia’s side, pulling her back towards her. “I’m evil, you were perfect, and that was our marriage. I’ve heard it all before.”

  Mia’s cheeks reddened, but not from embarrassment. Her eyes were cold and hard as she kept her gaze locked on his. “I was far from perfect,” she slowly articulated, each word careful and deliberate like they all needed emphasis. “But you, you are a disgusting, revolting excuse for a human being.”

  Looking briefly wounded, Stephen forced the false smile back on his face. “I’m not the one playing around with…” He looked to Juliet, and she gritted her teeth, daring him. “With a timid little toy.”

  But the weak insult merely splashed over Juliet like a sprinkle of light rain, and her nonchalant glance was accompanied for effect by a slight shrug.

  “You want me to call the police, Mia?” she asked. “He is trespassing.” She kept her voice light and relaxed, unfazed.

  Mia gave her a strained smile. “That’s a hint, Stephen. Get your shit and leave, because we’re not going to put up with this in our own home.”

  “You’re the one who wanted to start something,” he tossed back.

  “And you’re the one that is standing on my doorstep.”

  “Are you going to let me in?” he asked after a moment. Mia stepped back slightly, bringing Juliet with her and creating the smallest of margins for him to walk through. “I knew you would,” he muttered. “Always so accommodating.” He squeezed past them and strode without pause or permission in the direction of the bedrooms.

  Mia audibly hissed, and Juliet placed her chin on her shoulder from behind. “I love you,” she said quietly, and Mia deflated, resting her cheek on Juliet’s head for just the briefest of moments.

  “Don’t say that.” She stepped out of Juliet’s hold and closed the front door. “I’ll cry.”

  Juliet smiled, squeezing her forearm. “You’re doing awesome.”

  Shaking her head, Mia indicated to Juliet to follow her. They walked through the house. The door to the guest room and the office were closed as Mia and Juliet had left them to conserve energy. Mia stilled at the entrance to the fourth bedroom, where the door was now widely ajar.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Mia’s voice was more of a growl, low and uneven.

  “Getting what’s mine,” Stephen voice emanated from inside the room, though Juliet could only see the back of his feet from where he was kneeling on the carpet, appearing to be searching underneath a piece of furniture. A few seconds later, the sound of wood scraping echoed through the room, and he grunted in effort before standing and walking across to lean the adjustable side of a crib against the wall in front of Mia. He was slowly dismantling it, the small mattress discarded on the floor and an embroidered blanket balled up and thrown at the large teddy bear in the corner.

  “What do you mean ‘mine’?” Mia asked breathlessly. “That’s not yours…That’s, that’s not yours. What do you think you’re doing?”

  “It is mine,” he shot back, uncensored and cutting. “In fact, it was literally mine. My parents gave it to me.”

  “To us!” Mia’s voice escalated for the first time. “For our daughter!”

  “It’s a family heirloom, or whatever, and now I’m taking it back.”

  Juliet watched this scene unfolding. She wasn’t sure whether she should pull Mia back and away or encourage her to scream endless abuse. She waited instead, watching their movements carefully and trying to trust her instincts. Juliet needed to not think and just act, and she wondered if that was exactly what Mia needed as well.

  Stepping into the room, Mia gripped the side of the crib where Stephen was working with a screwdriver. “I spent hours, days on this,” she said. “I scrubbed it, and I peeled it back. I stained it. It was ready for the trash when your parents gave it to us, when they told me that I had to use it.”

  Stephen grunted. “Move.”

  “No, I won’t move. Get out of my house. This is not yours to take. This is our daughter’s. Our daughter’s!”

  “Have a look around. It’s in an empty room, you mad bitch.”

  Mia’s nostrils flared, and she leaned backwards before moving her body weight forward again, rocking the wooden frame.

  “I need it now,” he mumbled, and Juliet wondered at the way his voice suddenly dropped to a milder, less confident-sounding tone. “I have a baby, and if I didn’t come and get this, then my parents were going to. And I assure you, you don’t want to see them right now. They think this…” He waved his hand towards Juliet, who was standing in the doorway, “is sickening.”

  Mia had stilled, and her eyes stared at him wildly. “You have a what?”

  He exhaled, hands on his hips. “What? Did you think I would be celibate?”

  “Say it again.”

  “I have a daughter, Mia, and I’m taking this crib for her.”

  Mia’s open palm raised and slammed across Stephen’s cheek with a loud slap. A sharp gasp flew from the back of her throat, and she covered her mouth, staring, unblinking at the bright red mark her action had drawn. Stephen stepped back, rubbing his face and muttering under his breath. Juliet knew immediately what to do.

  She appeared beside Mia, throwing a visceral glance at Stephen before stepping in between them. She pried Mia’s hand off the top of the frame and directed her out of the room with a gentle push before turning back to Stephen.

  “Hurry the fuck up and get out.” She licked her lips. “And don’t ever contact her again, or that slap will feel like a hug, asshole.” She had to work at unclenching her jaw as she swallowed the verbal rant quelling in her gut and guided Mia down the hall to the main bedroom, pushing the door closed behind her. Seating Mia on the edge of the bed, Juliet knelt in front of her, hands running down her arms and thighs, before encasing her hands in her own.

  “Honey,” she said softly, bowing her head and kissing Mia’s knuckles, hands trembling in her hold.

  Wide eyes stared back at her, and Mia opened her mouth a few times to no avail. She shook her head before eventually murmuring, “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Oh God, no,” Juliet whispered. “Don’t say anything. You don’t have to say a thing.”

  Mia nodded, and she let her gaze lose some intensity. Their eyes fixed onto each other. Mia shrugged her shoulders and loudly sucked in air.

  Closing her eyes in a long blink, Juliet crawled to her feet and sat next to Mia on the bed. She enveloped her, pulling Mia close to her body. Mia limply conformed to Juliet’s contours.

  “You don’t have to see him anymore,” she said after a number of minutes. “I’ll ge
t rid of him, okay? You just stay here, and I’ll take care of it.”

  Mia nodded, fingers grasping at Juliet’s jean-covered thighs as she kept her eyes closed. “I just want him gone.”

  “Yep,” Juliet said. She could hear pieces of wood brushing together and scraping on the floor through the adjacent wall. Stephen was still working at dissembling the crib.

  “I’m okay,” Mia said distantly, as if she were reassuring herself more than Juliet.

  “Yeah, you’re okay,” Juliet said. “This was all him, not you. If he can live with himself, then let him. This doesn’t change anything. This doesn’t change you.”

  Mia shuddered. “She was his too. I don’t get it. Zalia was his little girl too.”

  Sighing, Juliet rubbed Mia’s back. “I don’t get it either.”

  “I want him out.”

  Leaning back slowly, Juliet held Mia by the shoulders. “You stay here,” she said gently. “I’ll be right back.”

  Offering a small sad smile, Mia nodded. “Thanks,” she murmured, and Juliet leant back in to linger over a long soft kiss to her cheek. She squeezed Mia’s hand before she stood up.

  “I got it,” she repeated to herself as she slipped out the door, securing it in place behind her.

  * * *

  After wordlessly waiting at the door for Stephen to complete multiple trips to his hired car, Juliet made one sole demand for Mia’s keys. She was direct, concise, and assertive, locking the door immediately behind him when he stepped out.

  Then she breathed a long sigh of relief.

  Returning to Mia via the kitchen, she drew a plastic water bottle from the fridge and swallowed a number of mouthfuls.

  That whole episode sickened Juliet. She could almost get her mind to a place where she understood his desire for the crib, sort of, if she made a very long mental stretch. But that kind of arrogance and superiority complex, that, she would never understand.

  When she headed back, water bottle hooked between two fingers and swinging at her side, Juliet stopped at the door to the nursery at the sight of Mia sitting in the middle of the room, cross-legged, an infant’s blanket in her hands. It was the one that Stephen had balled up and thrown against the wall.

  “Do you have some sewing skills that I don’t know about?” Juliet asked softly, one hand on Mia’s knee as she sat down, mirroring her position.

  Mia looked up from her lap, her face noticeably more relaxed and her eyes glazed but clear. “Definitely not.” She spread the blanket over her lap so that the detailed image of various wild animals was on display. “My mom has. She made this. Amazing, huh?”

  “Incredible.” Juliet ran her index finger carefully over the fine stitching, tracing a number of animal shapes. “That giraffe is gorgeous.”

  “She wanted to do fairies, but I didn’t know I was having a girl when she started.”

  “I wish I could do stuff like that. I think it’s beautiful.”

  Mia nodded. “I’m going to keep it.”

  “You should. You could bring it out when we celebrate Zalia’s birthday this year. I’ll, ah, bake a cake. Or buy one.”

  “I’d like that,” Mia said, folding up the blanket up and tucking her loose, dark hair behind her ears. “I like that you make me feel that it’s okay to remember,” she said. “Did you have any dramas with him?”

  Juliet shook her head. “No, and I got your keys back. They’re just on the kitchen bench. I didn’t want to make things worse, so I didn’t say anything to him. But the way he treated you, that’s not okay with me.”

  Slowly nodding, Mia morphed it into a shrug, and she glanced to her side. A few chips of wood and some noticeable dust were on the carpet where the crib had been. “It’s just an object,” she said eventually.

  “An important object. This whole thing isn’t about stuff, it’s about what the stuff means. To you.” She paused. “Not to mention, this came with a little extra unexpected news as well.” Juliet’s hands trailed over her crossed legs.

  “Yeah. That was a nice touch, I thought. She was probably already pregnant when he was still here, and I’m apparently the bad guy.”

  “From my end, for what it’s worth, there’s no question of who the bad guy is.” Juliet resisted the urge to toss in a few extra terms. It was her softness that Mia was really responding to.

  “I’m not going nuts then?” Mia asked. “I didn’t make him act like that?”

  “No, no way. Is that what he was like? When you were together, I mean?”

  “I don’t know. You look back and see things differently, right? That thing he did, putting me down? I realise now that he was always like that.”

  “Yeah, it’s always different looking back.” She couldn’t imagine why Mia hadn’t fired up and told her where to go during that period in their relationship when Juliet had lost herself in her head and threatened to run. She couldn’t beat Mia down when Mia had worked so hard to build herself up. “He always put you down?”

  Mia nodded. “It was little things at first, and it took me a while to notice. As it does, I guess. I remember going out to dinner with his friends, just after we started seeing each other, and he laughed with his friends because I listened to country music. And then I put an egg roll on my plate, and he took it and ate it, joking that I didn’t need it.”

  Juliet reached across the space between them to press her palm to Mia’s cheek, waiting until Mia lifted her eyes, now brimming with tears. She made sure Mia didn’t shrug her away in embarrassment.

  “You know I’m pretty crap at speeches, even though I can write awesome letters,” she said with a small smile. “But I want to make one, I want to somehow make my mouth say everything you deserve to hear and haven’t.”

  “You don’t need to, Juliet.” Mia’s voice was barely audible.

  “Shhhh,” she said. “You have some listening to do. You have to believe me when I say that you are the most amazing, caring, and strongest person that I have ever, ever met. You are gentle and patient and so full of love. And I know that you’ve been through hell more than once, but the idea that you could still be with that man and not here with me…Well, that is just impossible to me. Everything he said, every derogatory comment and stupid thing he said to you was wrong. Do you hear me? He was wrong, every time.”

  Mia blinked, and tears spilled from her lower eyelids. She closed her eyes and grasped Juliet’s hand from her cheek and held it to her mouth. “I’m sorry about what he said, about you and your family.”

  “It’s fine,” Juliet replied softly, wiggling her fingers slightly. Mia gave her a tearful smile. “But you didn’t answer my question. You know he’s the asshole, right? You are everything that he is not.”

  Dropping their hands to her lap, Mia clasped Juliet’s fingers tightly, lowering her gaze to focus on them. She shrugged. “It’s not always easy to remember.”

  “Fortunately, I’m pretty good at reminding.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Yup, awesome, actually.” Juliet sighed. “Honestly, Mallania, you are so close to perfect, it’s insane. And I’m not naïve enough to think that relationship breakups are all one-sided and that it’s always one person’s fault, but I know you. No one I have ever met in my life has shown me the same patience and understanding that you have. You need to know how rare that is. I mean, when I pushed you, and I know I pushed stupidly hard, you didn’t push back like everyone else. You didn’t tear me to shreds and blame me for being nuts. You waited and you listened. If that’s not being an amazing partner, I don’t know what is.”

  “Ack, too many compliments. You have to stop. I’ll never stop crying at this rate.”

  “You cry as long as you like,” Juliet said quickly, and Mia gave a small sniffle in response. They sat quietly for some time, hands together and surrounded by the heartbreak of an empty nursery. A sombre heaviness settled in the air, the giant soft teddy bear a witness to it in the corner. The bear sat alongside a set of drawers filled with newborn onesies an
d tiny pairs of socks and mittens. A set of open shelves in the corner still displayed packs of disposable diapers and wipes, not to mention a range of wraps and blankets—everything that was needed to bring a baby girl home from hospital.

  It had a surreal feel to it, for Juliet at least. It was a testament to the time that had passed and the massive changes that Mia had lived. A year and a half ago, she had been busy planning the nursery and choosing colours and wall decorations. She’d had a husband and a network of friends; she’d thought she was happy; she’d thought it was what her life was meant to be.

  As Mia had repeatedly explained, it had all been false, of course, the façade of a happy marriage and friendships that were all cheek-kisses and strained hugs. It hadn’t been perfect; in fact it had been toxic and damaging. She could only imagine the shell of a woman Mia would have become had she stayed in that marriage, slowly losing everything that made her the kind of person that Juliet was choosing.

  “I hate him,” Mia said suddenly, interrupting Juliet’s thoughts.

  “Good.”

  “I don’t know whether to feel sorrier for him, his new wife, or that poor child.”

  “I’m not sure that’s where your energy should go, hon.”

  “You know he’ll be a shit father. He might go to the kid’s soccer games, maybe, if it doesn’t clash with his business meetings or poker afternoons. Maybe he’ll even go to a school recital or play, if he isn’t fucking their schoolteacher.”

  “It’s their life now, their problem, not yours.”

  “Leopards don’t change their spots.”

  “Some don’t,” Juliet said, smiling meaningfully.

  “I know we turned out right,” Mia said, her voice sounding strained. “There are so many things in my past that I would change if I could, and if it was even remotely possible, I would have her here with us. Zalia. But it doesn’t work like that. Time can’t be reversed and life can’t be changed. It just is.”

  Just like Juliet couldn’t change who she used to be. But she could sit silently, unwaveringly calm, with strong hands. People forget sometimes, she thought, that only the present is in their grasp and that tomorrow is their only hope. Everything else doesn’t matter.