by Lexi Scott
“A king. Her parents own a furniture place, so we have all kinds of extravagant stuff in our little shoebox.” Her eyes flick up and I rush to add, “Not that I’m not grateful and all. I am very grateful. It’s just that Gen has worked there since she was young, and even though all that stuff was a gift, I sometimes feel like she sees it as an exchange for indentured service at the furniture store.” I laugh like it’s a joke, but Carlita just tilts her head and looks at me with black bright eyes, like she’s wondering how she got a job interviewing raving assholes all day.
“Who makes breakfast in your home?” She draws a long, neat line across the paper, and my overzealous imagination goes bonkers. What the hell does that line mean?
“I don’t eat breakfast,” I say, my eye on the line. “Just coffee. But if it’s a weekend or something, Gen does. She makes this recipe, this French toast my mother made when I was a kid. And—I shouldn’t even say this—but hers is better. Which is weird, because it’s pretty hard to compete with a childhood memory, right?” Carlita looks at me with no expression. “Especially when you throw a dead mother into the memory mix.” I say it just to see if I get a rise out of her.
Because I’ve gone off the fucking deep end.
This isn’t a game. This isn’t a joke. This is my life, and my wife’s. If we’re caught without all our i’s dotted and t’s crossed, there could be fines. Jail time. On top of deportation for me. Gen would lose her school grants. She would be shamed and punished because I’m too much of a dickhead to keep my mouth shut when I feel cornered.
Carlita slides the cap on her pen and places it at the edge of the folder. I figure my time is up, but she asks, “Where do you keep the spare toilet paper?”
“Excuse me?”
I feel offended, even though that’s ludicrous. I’m sure if she’s asking me a question, it must be a U.S. Government issued question. And I get why this process has to be invasive. The whole point is to shine a light on all different aspects of a marriage.
But our toilet paper? It feels like she’s overstepping. Like nothing in my marriage is sacred. Like this is all some big joke.
But I don’t have any room to get pissed over the ridiculous nature of these questions. I’ve got a responsibility to make this work, and that means gritting my teeth and getting through it.
“Genevieve’s abuela knits these stupid dolls.” I try to describe them, but my fury is blocking me. We’re already talking about a pretty private thing, and now I have to reveal this absurd detail that drives me fucking nuts. “These dolls have dresses with ruffly…ruffles.” I wave my hand to illustrate. “And they have this long, narrow cylinder that you pop into the toilet paper tube, then the skirts cover the roll. They sit on the tank.”
And watch me conduct my business like creepy little Mexican bathroom monitors. I hate them, but I know better than to mess with Abeula’s bathroom voodoo.
For the first time in the entire interview, I think Carlita is about to smile. “What is Genevieve’s birthday?”
“August twelfth.” The words hardly have time to settle before I sit up, startled. “Wait. No. August thirteenth.”
Is it thirteen? Or twelve? She told me. She told me she didn’t believe in bad luck because she had to face the thirteenth on her birthday every year.
Wait. Or did she tell me she felt like she escaped bad luck because she was born just before the thirteenth?
Fuck. Fucking fuckity fuck.
Sweat pools at my lower back, and I feel like I’m hyperventilating.
Carlita’s pen scratches on the paper.
“Her favorite show?”
The dancing one? The mystery one with the detective so good-looking, no one seems to mind the colossal plot holes? The period piece with that uppity family that only runs for a few weeks each year? She likes them all.
“Her least favorite food?”
She always cooks. And buys the groceries. And agrees about where to eat out. She loves food, but she can’t love all food. What does she hate? Why don’t I know?
I stumble through answers, hardly remembering what I said the minute after I said it.
“What type of curtains do you have in your living room?” Carlita’s stare is cool and disturbingly patient.
Like she knows she has all the time in the world to let me dig myself deep into my own grave.
“The walls are red.” My mouth is completely dry. I need some damn water! “Not an interrogation” my ass.
“And the curtains?” she presses.
Genevieve leaves them drawn back all the time to let as much light in as possible. She and Cece picked them out the day we moved in. Enzo hung them too low and too close to the edges of the window. I know every goddamn detail about these curtains except the one that matters.
“I don’t know. I’m sorry. I just can’t remember.”
Carlita stands up, and I jump to attention. She puts her hand out and I shake, shocked that she’s—as far as I can tell—a living, breathing human and not some cyborg with programmable feelings.
“It was a pleasure meeting you, Adam. We’ll be in contact soon.”
I don’t remember walking back to the waiting room, but Genevieve isn’t there when I step out. I’m about to text her to let her know I’ll be waiting outside, when I bump into her in the hallway. She looks pale and nervous, but manages to smile.
“I apologize for the way I talked to you in the waiting room—” I start, but she shushes me.
“Forget it. You were right. I’m guessing they were throwing a curveball to see if we could handle it, and my having a tantrum was not the way to handle it.”
I breathe deep and hope she’s right. I hope they didn’t question us separately because there were so many red flags in our file they had no choice.
“Was it bad?” I ask, glancing over my shoulder to double-check that no one followed us out.
“Is your father’s middle name Levi?” she asks, her forehead wrinkled.
“Reuben.” I gnaw on the inside of my cheek and she looks stricken.
“Hey, c’mon, they expect us to get some things wrong. Even couples who’ve been together for years have little things they don’t know. It’s fine.” I wrap my arms around her shoulders and kiss her face softly. “Hey, today’s been shitty. How about we get in that big king bed, order in some food, and forget about this.”
Her smile starts slow and spreads all the way up to her eyes. “All right. I’m up for whatever. Just not that barbeque place Cody kept raving about. I know you said you wanted to try it next, but barbeque is the one thing I just can’t get into.”
My stomach drops. “Right. That’s fine. That’s good to know. I’ll check it out with Cody. No worries.”
Why the hell couldn’t we have had that conversation half an hour ago?
She kisses my lips softly, rubbing her nose against mine. “And California king.”
“What?” My eyes are closed and I’m falling into the sweet smell of her, then peppering that with my fantasies of tangling with her in the sheets, naked, and forgetting just how badly I fucked up this afternoon.
“Our bed. It’s a California king. Bigger than a regular king.” She laces her fingers through mine, and I swallow hard against the bile in the back of my throat.
The woman I love is looking at me like she trusts me to make our whole world right, but she has no clue at all how badly I may have just shredded it beyond repair.
Chapter Eighteen
Genevieve
“Did they ask you about our toilet paper?” Adam asks, closing the door to our apartment behind him. He neatly unties his dress shoes and lines them next to the other shoes in the small closet.
“Our toilet paper?” I crinkle my nose. “Oh! You mean where do we keep it? Yeah, they asked me that. Weird, right?”
“And what did you tell them?” He unknots his tie and leaves it hanging loose around his neck.
I pull open the fridge and grab a bottle of water. “I told them that we keep th
e spare rolls in the hall closet, like we do.” I unscrew the lid and take a long, cold drink. When I look back at Adam, his mouth is hanging open.
“You told them what?” He runs a hand over his face, looking beyond weary.
“I told them where we keep our toilet paper?” I repeat it back, matching his ridiculous, questioning tone.
He smacks his palm to his forehead dramatically, groaning. “Genevieve! What about the dolls?”
“Dolls?” What the hell is he talking about?
He paces back and forth, the space too ridiculously small for his long strides. “Yes, those godforsaken stupid dolls that you put the toilet paper in!”
“Oh, yeah, but, that’s just a few rolls. We keep the big Costco pack in the hall closet. So, the majority of our spare toilet paper is in the closet. Meaning I was right.” I say it smugly, but it’s only to cover up the panic building in me.
What if we answered every question this way? Truthfully, but also different? How many wrong answers about toilet paper, how many strikes against us, would send Adam back to Israel—away from me?
“What else did they ask you?” Adam asks, running his hands through his hair so it sticks up all over his head.
His panic is catching. I start to nibble on my thumbnail, falling back on a habit I kicked when I was eight years old. “I don’t know, Adam. Lots of things. If we sleep with the light on. They asked me that.”
“And?” He stops and stares, eyes bugged out, waiting like this one answer might be our saving grace.
My voice wobbles, because I know I’ll be wrong before I answer. I know I screwed this up like I screw everything up. “And, I told them yes.”
“Genevieve, you always want to turn all of the lights off before you come to bed,” he says, gripping the back of the sofa and staring at the floor, his face slack with shock.
“Right, but you always convince me to leave one on. At least…at least for a little while.” I feel the heat spread across my face, thinking of how Adam insists on having a light on so he can watch me as he makes me moan with the pleasure only he can cause, as he makes me yell for him not to stop.
“This is bad,” he says through gritted teeth. “Really bad.”
I can’t disagree at this point. “Well,” I begin. “We can’t—”
“Don’t, Genevieve. Don’t say that we can’t worry about it right now because we can. We need to. There’s a strong possibility that I’ll be going back to Israel. That all of my work here was for nothing. All of that research down the drain, all of this—” Adam sweeps his arm around in a grand gesture and shakes his head. “All of this was pointless.”
I tip my chin up defiantly. “I don’t believe that.”
“You, Genevieve!” His eyes zero in on me, hot and accusing. “You could go to jail! Did you even read those pamphlets in the waiting room? Did you see the penalties spelled out in black and white for doing what we’ve done?”
I shake my head. I feel like a damn child.
He smacks his palm hard on the back of the sofa and lets loose a long line of curses before he says, “Five years. We could be locked up for five years. Or fines, Gen, fines that would bankrupt your parents. Fines that I would never be able to pay. This was such a stupid idea, I can’t believe—”
I interrupt him, my voice snapping low with fury. “I’m so sorry that I came up with this stupid plan, Adam. I’m sorry I forced you to marry me.”
I’m sorry that you forced me to fall in love with you. You gave me no freaking choice.
I want him to say it isn’t true. That this wasn’t a ridiculous plan. That it’s real to him now. Maybe that it always was, because I’m really starting to feel like it’s always been real for me. The seconds tick by on that stupid clock that’s shaped like the fertility god, Kokopelli, a wedding gift from my ridiculous brother, Enzo.
And the longer Adam is quiet, the more I feel like it’s confirmation that he wants out.
He finally answers, his shoulders sagging, his head hanging like he’s defeated. “You didn’t force me, Genevieve. But I never should have agreed to it. Look at us. We’re on the verge of spending years in jail. For what? I won’t finish my research…”
I close my eyes and try to block out his words. The pieces are slowly clicking together, like a nightmarish jigsaw puzzle. Adam is only disappointed that his academic dreams aren’t going to be coming true. That this marriage didn’t help him get what he wanted…which clearly wasn’t me. All he’s cared about all along was that stupid green card. How could none of this have been real to him?
“I think…I think I should go,” I say, fumbling around the room in a daze, looking for my purse.
“Go where, Genevieve? Running away isn’t going to help anything. We need to sit down and talk.” He heads toward me, but the last thing I need is his hands on me, tricking me into thinking what we have is legitimate.
I rush to the counter, where the contents of my purse have spilled out from when I chucked it there after our disastrous interview. I scoop lip gloss and my wallet and keys back in, glad to have even this simple task to focus on. My phone? Where is it? I look around, but it’s not there, so I have no choice. I face Adam. “About what? About how I ruined everything? About how I answered the questions all wrong—”
“I didn’t say that.”
I glance over at him, and his brow is furrowed. He makes his way to me again, and I dart around the dining room table to avoid him.
“You sort of did.” I hold his gaze across the room, and I can’t read his expression through the blur of my tears. “I did my best, Adam. And I did my best for you. It’s always been for you. The only reason I showed up for my tutoring sessions and didn’t just drop out was because of you. Because seeing you in that lab coat, and the way you looked at me…that was the best part of my day. I asked you to marry me not so you could get a stupid piece of paper saying you’re allowed to stay here. I did it so you’d stay here with me.”
My hands dig into the back of the chair in front of me. I hold on for dear life, because I sure as hell can’t trust my own legs to support me as everything I thought I knew about my life comes crashing down around my ears.
“I am here,” he insists, stalking my way.
“Right. Unless the absolute worst happens and you have to leave your yeast behind!” I take a few wobbly steps backward, toward the door.
“I didn’t mean it like that, Gen.” He catches up with me and stands close, so close that I should be able to see whatever truth is in his eyes. But for once I can’t read him.
I hold my hands up so he can’t come any closer. “I guess it makes it easier for you that you can blame the fallout on me, right? That I messed up all of the questions. Maybe if I was smarter in the first place you wouldn’t have gotten stuck tutoring me, and you would have solved your precious yeast conundrum, and been able to concentrate on getting your paperwork in, and we wouldn’t have ever had a reason to meet.”
I want to stop the anger from spewing, but with every word, I just dig us further into a quarry of hurt that I’m not sure we can climb out of. At least not together.
“Don’t say that,” he begs. He laces his fingers behind his head and looks frustrated. “Please don’t say things like that. I’m confused, I’m nervous, I’m full of fucking guilt. It’s just not a great day, Gen.”
All he needs to do is say that this is real, and he doesn’t. He can’t. Because, I guess, for him, it really never was. And that’s all I need to know. “It didn’t mean anything to you, did it? None of it.”
“Of course it did. It does. I’m worried. Am I not allowed to be worried? I don’t understand how you’re not.” Adam reaches for me, but I pull away, and he lets his arm fall to his side.
“Worried about yourself,” I accuse.
“No. About you. I go back to Israel and it sucks. It sucks really fucking bad. But if I screw things up with you, that’s just not acceptable.” His eyes are wild with regret. A mixed-up, swirling regret that I’m par
t of in a way I never wanted to be or expected.
“Hmm…” I bite my lip to hold the tears in check. I finally find my phone, under one of the sofa pillows I just flipped off the couch. “Well, too late.”
Por favor, no intentes detenerme.
Please don’t try to stop me.
…
“I had a feeling you’d be by,” Marigold says, as she opens the rainbow-painted back door to the home she shares with Rocko.
“Oh, yeah?” I ask. I shouldn’t sound skeptical. Marigold has always been the most insightful person I’ve ever known, but the last time I saw her I was completely enamored with Adam and the world, so her predicting I’d show up on her doorstep alone, with my face stained with tears, seems odd.
“Of course. Come in, we were just sitting down to dinner.” She wraps her thin arm around me. I breathe in the familiar smell of lavender and patchouli and try to let it calm me like it normally does.
“I don’t want to intrude on dinner, Marigold.” I start to back up. Rocko and Marigold deserve their time together without my neediness.
Marigold shakes her head and her long, unruly curls bounce around with the movement.
“I don’t want you to finish your thought, darling. You know our doors and our arms are always open.”
She continues down the hall with her long, floral dress making a swish-swish sound with each step. I’m so in my own head, I don’t notice the other voice until I’m standing at the end of Marigold’s blue dining room table.
“Hey, Gennie,” Deo says, grinning like he always does. “Long time no see. How you doing?”
“Good.” I nod.
Why did I come here? I should have gone to Mom’s. But I was worried Lydia would be there, and I couldn’t deal with her tonight and thought this would be the better option. Plus I selfishly wanted to come to Marigold’s and have her solve all of my problems like she normally does. It’s tempting to come to her because she has a way of managing them all—even the ones that seem too big, the ones that seem to swallow you completely whole, like this one. But, instead, I’m going to sit across from Deo and eat spelt bread and whatever the undercooked pie-looking thing in the center of the table is.
