Make Me Beg, Daddy

Chapter 9

Mom told me to go easy on Vivian, to give her grace.

Well, I’m about to read her texts with my husband.

We’ll see how much “grace” I have left over after that.

Every marriage worth its filing fee has a junk drawer full of accumulated crap. We’re no different than anyone else in that regard.

Going through it is like becoming an archaeologist for a while. I’m Indiana Jones, dusting off takeout menus from a Thai place that closed during the pandemic, an AAA card that expired when Obama was president, a handful of broken chip clips and bent-out-of-shape staples, a bottle opener from somebody’s wedding with the date printed on it, two chargers for phones that no longer exist on this earth.

Underneath all of it, face-down and forgotten, is the iPad.

We bought it for recipes. That was the plan, at least. Back when I had pep in my step, I’d come home from a day filled with baking just so I could start baking some more.

When the bakery started consuming more and more of my life, free time, and will to persevere, the iPad became Connor’s in-flight entertainment so he didn’t have to squint at the seatback screen.

In practice, I’ve cooked maybe four things off it and he watched half of Gladiator on the way to a work trip in Orlando.

The essential bit here is that he’s still signed in.

He insisted on doing it, as a matter of fact. If I let you take control, you’ll just ask me what your password is a billion times a day. Let me.

He snatched it out of my hands, still in its plastic wrapping, and did it all himself.

Hoisted by his own petard, as they say. I mean, I think someone says that. Truth be told, I’m not one hundred percent sure what it means.

It’s stone-cold dead, though, so the hoisting will have to wait a minute.

I dig the matching cable out from under the menus, plug it in behind the toaster, and then stand in place and wait for the logo of the little apple with a bite taken out of it to appear.

While I wait, I have plenty of time to review every mistake in my life that led me here. I offer a silent apology to Tonya Blackburn, for secretly putting gum in her hair in second grade after she cut me in line for kickball. Maybe that was my first sin, and everything that’s followed is downstream of it.

Worth a quick sorry, if nothing else.

Finally, the logo appears. I go over my plan again as the home screen loads.

I can’t screenshot anything or open any unread messages. The second I do, it’ll get synced to the cloud, and I’m not dumb enough to make the same mistakes that got Vivian caught.

“Thank you, Viv,” I say to the empty kitchen. “You’ve taught me so much.”

Then the apple goes away, the login screen replaces it, and we’re ready to get hacking.

Well, “hacking” might be a stretch. I’m typing in my husband’s passcode, the same four-digit sequence he’s used since college. Not quite Ocean’s Eleven.

6969. He’s got the maturity of a tween, I know. I can’t believe I used to find him funny.

As simple as that, I’m in.

Add this to the list of things I can’t quite believe: that two fully-functioning adults can be this stupid.

Am I the only one in this family who knows how to read a settings menu?

Apparently.

I tap through to his messages, find the thread with Vivian, scroll endlessly until I finally reach the top, and start to read.

Strangely, the oldest thing in here is from October of last year. Maybe a sync issue, or something similar.

Which means everything before October of last year is out of my hands. Deleted or stored elsewhere, I can’t be sure and I have no way to know.

I don’t know how far back this goes. But it doesn’t really matter in the end, does it?

All that matters is what I choose to do with it.

The early stuff is hotel logistics.

CONNOR: Booked. Same room if they have it.

CONNOR: [confirmation.pdf]

VIVIAN:

VIVIAN: obsessed. dont text me after 9, im at yvettes

There are a lot of exchanges like that. Scheduling on scheduling on scheduling.

There are also a lot of selfies. Between the ones she uploads to our sisters album and the ones she’s been sending to my husband, I don’t know where Vivian finds the time to actually live her life.

It’s just an endless parade of duck lips and ironic peace signs, of making hearts with herself in the mirror and showing an awful lot of cleavage at every possible moment.

Bathing suits galore.

Bathrobes, too.

And then⁠—

Ew.

I mean, my sister’s s*x tape started this whole thing. So I guess seeing her naked shouldn’t bother me.

Also, she’s my sister, so I’ve seen her naked plenty of times in our life. (Even if I was always shy to follow suit, for fear of her pinching my side or mocking my too-wide hips.)

But seeing her naked like this feels different.

It’s so… male-gazey, I guess. Designed to seduce.

Ass on a bathroom counter, hand cupping her breasts.

A mirror shot of her from behind, kneeling on her bedroom carpet.

A pink-panties-clad hip.

A n****e. A tongue. Fingers going up under the hem of a skirt.

I swallow down the tide of nauseous, jealous bile rising up my throat. These emotions won’t serve me now, so I think they’re best saved for later.

Just keep taking pictures on my own phone, file it all away in my growing evidence folder, and repress anything that won’t fit in tonight’s slideshow.

Except that turns out to be harder than I anticipated.

Because, in between the selfies, the scheduling, the sexting, and the sweet nothings, I find a whole ‘nother thing. Their running bit. Their inside joke.

In March:

CONNOR: She made HERSELF a birthday cake this year. Who does that?

VIVIAN: someone with no friends and two appetites lol

VIVIAN: Eat-It-All Delilah

I remember that cake. It was lemon and lavender. I ate it mostly alone, because Vivian had a “rooftop soirée” and Connor got called into “the office” on a Sunday.

More follows. A whole genre of the stuff.

CONNOR: She tried to wear a strapless dress to the charity gala. I told her she looked like Andre the Giant in it, lol.

VIVIAN: ur evil lmaooo

My face starts to heat up. I don’t want to let them trigger me, especially not from a year and change in the past.

But I’m only human, and these two know where to aim to do maximum psychological damage.

VIVIAN: does she know

CONNOR: Know what?

VIVIAN: that those jeans make her look fkin massive

More.

CONNOR: She wanted to have s*x last night. I said I had a headache, lol.

VIVIAN: ur so mean

VIVIAN: but also, like, save it all for me bb

CONNOR: I’m serious. It’s like, there’s more of her every year.

VIVIAN:

More. From a family trip to the Catskills on the Fourth of July:

VIVIAN: cn u believe she wore a bikini???

CONNOR: Wish she hadn’t.

I remember that day, too. I felt Viv’s eyes on me and got embarrassed that I didn’t have visible abs like she did.

I ended up pulling on Connor’s shirt, a raggedy gray tee from a 10K he never ran. It stuck to me and made me feel like a wet dishrag the whole afternoon.

The ashamed heat accumulates in every part of me. Every spot of my body they point out, I feel it warming. My face, my hips, my thighs, my stomach, my appetite, the snort I make when I laugh too hard. All of it is just fuel for them.

I don’t even know where to direct my rage. They’re both equally responsible.

Half the time, he’s the one who starts it. He hands her the setup and she takes the swing, then he comes back in underneath with something worse. They’re a duo. They’ve got timing. They’re tighter as a comedy act than he and I ever were as a marriage.

You’d almost admire the teamwork, if you weren’t the material.

But, like the masochist I am, I make myself read every single one.

I don’t have to. My job here is to gather the evidence, and I could do that with my eyes half-closed. Just photograph and scroll, photograph and scroll, get in and get out.

I do, though. I read all of it. In their voices, just so it hurts that much more.

I don’t know what to call that instinct.

Not brave. Not smart, either.

I just don’t want to be told about my own life secondhand ever again.

The last bit is from yesterday morning, minutes after Vivian left my counter with her free desserts.

VIVIAN: mixup with my photos. i handled it. do NOT text me till i say so.

CONNOR: What did you do?

She didn’t reply.

I need a second to recalibrate. I swipe apps on my phone and check to be sure that Connor hasn’t moved.

Sure enough, he’s where I left him, halfway between a Sephora and a Yankee Candle. He’s probably buying me something out of the clearance bin with a bow on it, and then heading into Victoria’s Secret to get something frilly and crotchless for my skinnier, prettier sister.