Chapter 2

The TV room is the darkest room in the house when the curtains are closed and it’s a place where I can get away. It was a place where Deb and I would cuddle, as long as I didn’t play smooth jazz. She thought it sounded like the sound track from a porn. I thought that it was soothing, especially over the past week.

The sperm test I took after I found that she was on the pill showed that I was as fertile as I could be, so that placed Deb and I into one of two categories. The first, she really didn’t want kids unlike what she said before and during our marriage. Or second, she was cheating and didn’t want to get knocked up by her lover.

I hated to think that the second might be the case, but right now it was a fifty-fifty possibility. I slept in the guest room the first night, until it occurred to me that she might be decent enough to fuck her lover in the guest bed where I slept during my bout with the flu instead of our marital bed. I came back to sleep in our bed in the master bedroom.

For the rest of the week, I was able to beg off sex with my wife, using the flu and the body aches as an excuse. Soon I was going to be needing to take care of my husbandly duties and urges, although if she was getting it on with a lover, I don’t know what she needed with me.

It was five days after I’d been to Dr. Simons that I got the results of the STI tests and I was clean. If she did have a lover, she was keeping it clean. So, it seemed to me that it was time to push one of the buttons.

“Hi Mick, how do you feel?” Deb asked.

“OK,” I said calmly.

“OK enough to spend some special time with me in bed tonight?” She turned her body a little from side to side showing off the size and shape of her bra encased breasts.

“I guess so. What did you have in mind?” I looked at her and waggled my eyebrows.

“I thought that we would take another shot at a baby.”

There was my opening.

“Sure, have you been off of the Yaz birth control pills long enough?” I asked calmly.

“What are you talking about?” Her face remained neutral.

“You have a standing prescription for Yaz at the Walgreen’s and have had one ever since I first asked you to move in with me, even though we were using rubbers back in the good old days. Is the stuff out of your system by now? Or are you still lying to me every minute of every day?”

Deb stood there looking at me, processing, her options.

“I don’t know what you are talking about.”

“Bad answer. When I went to the drug store last week for medicine to fight the flu, they told me you had a standing prescription for the birth control pill, Yaz. They said you set it up as account for cash only purchases, and that it had been in effect since the month after I asked you to move in with me the first time. It was the following month that you and I moved in and we still used rubbers. I went to the doctor this past week to get tested for fertility and STI’s.”

“You what?” Now she was concerned.

“Well after finding out about the pills, I wondered if you were really on them. If not, that maybe I was sterile, so I had myself checked. If you were on the pill, then maybe you are cheating on me and I needed to get tested for any bugs you might have brought home from your lovers.”

Deb stood there with her mouth open, the expression on her face was something I couldn’t read. After a few minutes of silence, I walked out of the room and went to another part of the house. I was still holding onto the fact that she didn’t say ‘I love you’ anymore. I wanted to use it as a retort to her response. I sat down in the TV room and turned on some smooth jazz and waited to see what happened next.

After, almost seven songs, Deb walked in and sat on the couch next to my recliner. She sat still for about three more songs and then she very quietly spoke.

“I love you, Mick.”

“Not, “I know you do?”, Deb?” I asked quietly.

“What?”

“Deb for a very long time now, every time I told you that I loved you, your answer was ‘I know you do’. You haven’t told me ‘I love you’ in a long time. As a matter of fact, until just now, I can’t remember the last time you said it, do you?”

She sat quietly for a bit longer and then she began the story.

“Mick, the last time I told you I loved you was a few seconds ago. Before that ... I don’t remember either. It’s not because I don’t love you. It’s because I’m a really horrible person.”

“Because you’re cheating on me and you love someone else.”

“No! I don’t love any one else and I am not having sex with anyone else.”

“Really? And I should believe you why?”

“Because it’s true.”

“Deb, if you had made that argument last week, I would have believed you, no questions asked, but not now.”

“Why not now?”

“Pills.”

“Shit. Mick, I told you I’m a horrible person. I...”

“Before you say that you are taking them to regulate your periods, I’ll demand to see the proof.”

“ ... No, it is nothing like that.”

“Then stop taking the pills and let’s finally have kids.’

“Mick, I told you I’m a horrible person,” she took a deep breath before she continued. “I really don’t want to have children. I had a choice to have you and lie about wanting kids, or not have you at all. I chose to lie to you.”

I looked at my wife and felt waves of revulsion wash over me.

“That’s a shitty thing to say and do, Deb. You know how much I wanted kids.”

“I know and it has hurt me every day.”

“That’s bullshit. Look around you, with the exception of this room everything in this house, including the house itself, was what you wanted. You haven’t been hurting in any way, shape, or form. You have your dream job. You have your dream wardrobe. You have your dream house, except for this room. If I were to walk out of here tonight, you would be set up just fine. So try again about being hurt every day.”

“I have been hurting. I’ve been lying to you. I’ve been denying you your life’s fulfillment,” Deb spoke, the whole time looking at the floor. “The pills are to be sure I don’t have a baby. Having a baby scares me to death. I don’t know why. But the thought of having something grow inside me and then pop out just horrifies me.”

“Yeah, and you’ve seen “Alien” too many times. I’ll tell you what I think, I think that you have been screwing someone or many someones and you don’t want THEM to be the daddy.”

“Mick, it has nothing to do with the possible daddies. It has everything to do with me NOT being a mommy,” Deb said firmly.

“So you are taking the pill so the others are not daddy’s either? How many are there?”

“None! I am not cheating!” She started to sound exasperated.

“OK. By the way, what were you going to do today?”