My Perfect Marriage

Chapter 9

There's a long pause as her eyes glaze over, and the urge to cry hits her hard. She misses him. Maybe because of what today is, but the aching longing inside of her to break down and beg him to come home overwhelms her, and suddenly she wants to be that little kid again who used to hide in his arms when she was scared of the world.

The Leon that cared, the Leon that was present in their first four months of marriage before they started fighting all the time. The Leon who held her at her parent's funeral and took care of her for days after when she couldn't get out of bed. She misses Leon, the eight-year-old who taught her how to ride a bike and gave her her first taste of candy floss when he took her to the children's circus when she was ten. He was her best friend.

"If you're not hanging up, then I am. Goodnight."

"Wait!" It's a desperate snap of words as she panics to keep him there, clinging to memories and feelings she always tries to fight, and his loud sigh makes her bite on her lip and give herself a mental slap for being this way. He hates her acting like this.

"Can we not? Please. Just for once. I know what today is; I didn't forget. Do you think that I can so easily stop caring about her because she only lived a week? She was my daughter, my baby. Sophia, she was our kid.... I wanted her." His words slur more than before, and Sophia realizes he's much drunker than she thought he was. He's never this way. He never opens up and talks to anyone, let alone her, especially not about her. Not like this, never like this. He avoids drinking for this exact reason because he doesn't want to and can't face them ever bringing her up, and a tear fills one eye making her vision blurry, so she has to bite on her lip hard to stop herself from sobbing.

"We never even gave her a name. Sophia. How could we not name her? She was a real little person, even if it was only for a short while. She was your daughter; you were her mother. Why didn't you come when she needed you? She held on for you for six days.... I held on for you too. If you'd come... maybe........" Leon's voice breaks, soft breathiness that tells her he's crying, and the mental picture of him doing so rips her soul in two. Shame washing over her, guilt eating her raw, which numbs her heart painfully, and she tries to blot it out. Shaking all over because she knows she did wrong, and she can never turn back time to change it no matter what she says or does.

She laid in her hospital bed, recovering from blood loss, and used it as an excuse to never venture to her ward because she just couldn't accept what she let happen. She was selfish and afraid of seeing her when she was so tiny and helpless. Knowing she did that. Knowing she was dying. She hid from her because she couldn't take another loss after her parents, after Mr. Hale.

She knows he blames her for her letting go and leaving them, and she, too, blames herself for not being there when she needed her most. Maybe if she did, she might have found the fight to hang on and survived. Perhaps they would have gotten through it differently and been something else right now. It's the one thing Johnny has never understood, but she does.

Leon hates her for not just hurting her and causing an early birth with her negligence, but for abandoning her and leaving her to die without her. Her death is on her head, no matter which way she tells the story or what excuse she makes, and she has to live with it for the rest of her life.

"I shouldn't have called you." Her voice sobers up, empty and sour, and the cold and icy part of her that takes over when she mentally can't handle anything anymore pushes in to save her from harm. Cutting him off. Locking him out once more and hating herself that she's become so accustomed to doing this that it's like autopilot against her will.

It isn't just Leon that keeps Sophia far away and unable to love; it's a two-way street where she can't allow him to love her either. She doesn't deserve his love after what she did. They both put an invisible barrier there, and neither ever tries to take it down. Lack of talking about important things and their willingness to play pretend and carry on every day without getting to the root of where they started to go wrong.

"And there she is right back to being cold. You're right, you shouldn't have called. I forgot for a second that you're never going to be how you were again, and I delude myself for ever thinking you're still in there somewhere. I'm hanging up, Sophia. Go to bed." His voice returns to cold and icy and all hints of emotion evaporate. His wall comes up as high as hers until they're separated by ten feet of solid steel on each side, and she sinks onto the floor while cradling it close despite her behavior. Her insides are aching and throbbing, and her body is weak, vibrating. While her face is blank, and her heart slowly turns to a block of ice.

"Enjoy your night." It's an emotionless farewell, and she ends his call before either says anything else. Sat in the dark of the closet and staring blankly at the wall in front of her. She doesn't move for a long time, losing count of the minutes with no will to do anything else but stop and wait.

And yet she doesn't think, feel, or do anything else except sit there. Turning off her brain and zoned out to allow a numbness to take over. She does it until the clock passes midnight, and the chimes stop ringing in the house below, fading out to a low hum of past echo until it's no longer the day she let her baby die.