A rhythm of humiliation.
When I reached the door, my hands were shaking so badly I fumbled my keys and dropped them. They clattered against the concrete with a sharp metallic sound that felt like mockery.
I had to crouch down in my nice silk dress to retrieve them from where they’d fallen near my potted fern.
A sound escaped from somewhere deep in my chest. Half laugh, half sob. The kind of noise that happens when your body doesn’t know whether to break down or rage.
“Get yourself together, Suzanne,” I whispered harshly to myself.
Inside, the house was cool and dark after the bright sunlight.
The contrast was blinding. I stood in my entryway blinking while my eyes adjusted, one hand still on the doorknob behind me.
I closed the door and leaned my back against it, needing the solid surface to hold me upright.
The silence hit differently now.
Before, it had been the silence of anticipation, of waiting for something wonderful.
Now it felt like a tomb. Like being buried alive.
My jasmine perfume still lingered in the hallway from when I’d applied it earlier, but now the scent smelled sad instead of hopeful. It smelled like effort wasted, like a performance for an empty theater.
I kicked off my nude pumps right there in the entryway without caring where they landed. One hit the baseboard with a soft thud. The other skittered across the tile.
I walked barefoot across the cold floor to my living room.
I caught my reflection in the dark television screen as I passed.
The woman looking back at me didn’t look dignified anymore.
She looked foolish.
The blue silk dress that had made me feel beautiful an hour ago now looked too bright, too hopeful, too desperate. Like a costume for a role I was never actually cast in.
I waited for tears. I expected to collapse onto the sofa and sob into throw pillows, mourning the relationship I thought I had with my son.
But the tears didn’t come.
Instead, something else rose up in my chest.
Not heartbreak.
Anger.
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