Dating : Birth

“Look,” he says, turning away from the window to face me. I keep my eyes away from his face, careful to keep my expression neutral.

The clouds outside are gray and portentous. The rain, when it comes, will be dramatic, howling winds whipping branches off trees, battering icy drops against the window panes, demanding to be let in. I want to join in, to howl, to rage, to empty out all my discontent. But, as always, I stay silent.

“I’m sorry,” he continues.

I already know what I will see if I look at him. A wry expression that usually elicits instant forgiveness before my brain can even protest. He isn’t good-looking by any measure. His forehead is too prominent, his lips comically small on his wide face, his eyes deep-set and a murky, unremarkable brown.

Yet his face always has an openness that makes him seem more alive than the average person. His features move constantly with his emotions; his brows traveling the breadth of his forehead to meet when he was angry or concerned, his mouth widening and cracking open to expose his oddly spaced teeth when he is happy or excited, like they did the first time we met.

I remember wondering, during our first conversation, how he could have gone all twenty-seven years of his life without lying. There’s no way he could be pull it off with a face like that, I had decided.

What a foolish thought.

“I understand how you must feel right now,” his left hand reaches out to touch my arm. I looked pointedly at it, until he stops just short of my skin and let it fall back to his side.

I finally find my voice, hoping it won’t tremble.

“I thought you were dead. Or sick, or hurt, or something. I called everyone I knew who could possibly reach you. I even posted your picture online. I was terrified!” My voice keeps rising despite my best efforts to keep it low.

He always said he liked that about me. How calm I was, even in stressful situations. How I was a perfect complement to his hyperactive temperament.

“I know,” he replies, his tone somewhat petulant, perhaps at my refusal to understand, to let it go, to indulge him.

I’m married to a child, I realize. An overgrown baby. How did I not see this?

“You know I would have called if my phone hadn’t died. And the birth took longer than expected. It was a difficult one. They had to do a-”

“Excuse me, sir,” a voice comes from behind me. I turn around to see a nurse in the doorway. “You’re Mr. Ajayi?”

“Yes,” he answers, not bothering to correct her.

“Your wife is awake now, and you can also see the baby,” she says and turns to leave.

His wife is standing right here, I want to yell but she is already gone. And what would be the point anyway? She doesn’t care. She’s just doing her job. At best, this would be something to gossip about with her coworkers on their lunch break.

The person whose job it is care, doesn’t. Instead he is already striding out of the room, letting his meaningless apologies trail behind him, as if he knows how utterly worthless they were. “I’m really sorry. I have to go now. We’ll talk about this later I promise.”

I stand alone in the room for a moment, unsure of what to do next. I was prepared for what I thought was the worst when his phone finally turned on and I was able to track his location to the hospital.

I thought becoming a widow two days into my marriage was a tragedy. As it turns out, there are worse things.

I finally will myself to move, out of the empty chapel, down the hallway, through the front lobby where I had asked the receptionist fearfully if they had seen my husband, trying not to cause a scene.

I fiddle with the gold band on my ring finger. We hadn’t had time to get it resized after all the weight I had lost for the wedding.

I walk across the parking lot to my sister’s car where she is waiting, suitcases haphazardly stuffed into the boot and the backseat. I hadn’t cared about placing them properly when she came to pick me up from the airport, after he hadn’t returned for our flight.

“I forgot my passport at home,” he’d said before he left me with the our luggage and climbed into a cab.

Over 24 hours later, here I am, wondering if he had even forgotten his passport at all, or if it was just a ruse to come witness the birth of his first child. At least, what I think is his first child.

I’m almost at the passenger door when the sky brightens briefly, and then a roar, and then a torrent.

I stop and stand still and wait to dissolve.