Safe with Me: A Novel

The instant Maddie was born, Olivia didn’t think she would ever be unhappy again. How could she, with this beautiful baby girl in her arms? Maddie was a sweet, smiley infant with huge, round eyes and a cap of dark hair. In the hospital, the first time James held her, Olivia saw something in him soften. His shoulders visibly relaxed, his hard edges went blurry. “My angel,” he cooed. “My little butternut squash.”

“Butternut squash?” Olivia repeated with a tender smile. She shifted beneath the covers. The labor had been a long one; she felt like she’d been torn in two. “You’re comparing our child to a gourd?”

James chuckled. “I have no idea where that came from,” he said, unable to take his eyes off Maddie. “She’s ruined me.” He put the tip of his index finger in Maddie’s tiny starfish hand and she stared up at him, blinking and seemingly enraptured. Finally looking up at Olivia, his eyes were shiny. “Thank you,” he said, and his voice wavered. The first year of marriage is the hardest, she told herself. Now that Maddie is here, we’ll settle into becoming a family.

Once they brought Maddie home, though, James seemed to harden again. He focused as he always had, completely on work, leaving the house at six a.m., returning at the very earliest twelve hours later. Olivia often suspected that if success were a drug, James would have chopped it up and snorted it. He’d worked so hard to build his company—taking on three jobs in college so he could pay his own way. In his senior year, just before graduating, he was accepted for an internship at an investment firm, where he was mentored by William Stern, chairman and CEO of Stern Global—one of the most respected money-management companies in the world. “William taught me everything I know,” James once told her. “His first rule was be ruthless. He was in business to make money, not friends.”

James took that philosophy to heart when at twenty-nine, he decided to launch his own firm, taking all of his clients from Stern Global with him. And later, even with a baby at home, he was obsessed with every deal, every stock bought or sold, doing whatever it took to keep the money pouring in. Olivia told herself that he needed to work this hard to prove his father had been wrong—that James wasn’t worthless. She tried to understand why being at the office was more important than being home, but with a new baby, it was hard to not beg him to cut back. Before Maddie was born, Olivia had asked him to let go of the housekeeper like he had the chef, reasoning that since she wasn’t working, she was more than capable of taking care of their home without hired help. And for a little while, she did. But now that Olivia was alone with Maddie most of the day, nursing, changing diapers, trying to sleep when her baby slept, she knew the house wasn’t as clean as James liked it and the meals she prepared weren’t up to her own standards. She considered asking him to hire a baby nurse, but it felt so overindulgent she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Other women do this on their own every day, she told herself. Not everyone has the luxury of being able to afford help. And the truth was, Olivia didn’t want hired help—she wanted her husband’s.

“I’m so tired I can’t see straight,” Olivia told her mother during the phone call they shared each morning. Olivia could hear the noisy jangle of the television in the background; both her mother and her nurse, Tanesa, were big fans of The Price Is Right.

“That’s how it is with a baby,” her mother said. Her voice was weak; all the meds she had to take for her heart made her woozy. “I promise, it will pass.”

“But James is never home to help me.” Olivia knew she was pouting, but she was too exhausted to care. She also knew she wouldn’t get much sympathy from her mother, who’d actually welcomed the solitude she experienced after Olivia’s father had left. Olivia didn’t want to give her mother a reason to say “I told you so” by complaining too much about James.

“They never are,” her mother said simply, and a few minutes later, they hung up the phone. Olivia knew that despite her mother’s misgivings about men in general, she didn’t want the marriage to end because then James would stop paying for her condo and her nurse. Olivia had only hinted to her mother about the sometimes malicious edge to James; she never said a word to anyone about the time he slapped her. It would be on the tip of her tongue, but something would hold it back. Fear, maybe, that if she said it out loud, she’d be forced to act—to leave him or file a police report. As long as she was silent, it remained a secret, and nobody could judge her for not walking out the door.

Olivia wasn’t exactly sure why she hadn’t. Part of her felt like what he’d done was her fault, that maybe the tone of her voice that night had brought out the worst in her husband—that he felt like she was judging him. Another part of her was sure that no one would believe her. James never showed his darker side in public—he opened doors for her and kept his hand at the small of her back, a tender act of possession. Also, he hadn’t raised a hand or his voice to her again since—he’d been kind and attentive, rubbing her sore feet and massaging her aching shoulders. He’d even attended the baby shower Waverly and Sara Beth threw for her, playing silly shower games and opening their presents. He agreed to name their daughter Madelyn, after Olivia’s grandmother. He indulged her every whim to decorate for the nursery—he sent her flowers at least once a week. It was easy to convince herself the slap was just a one-time thing. She put that night into a box and buried it somewhere deep inside her, leaving no marker so she could easily ignore the spot.

As the months passed, Maddie began sleeping more and Olivia started to feel better. She found a routine that worked for them both, taking long walks each morning with Maddie in the stroller, strapping her daughter to her chest as she vacuumed and dusted the house. She often had lunch with Waverly and Sara Beth, smiling as they oohed and aahed over adorable seven-month-old Maddie. “She’s just a little peach!” Waverly exclaimed. “I want to take a big bite out of her!”

Olivia laughed. “I know, right? There’s something about her chunky little thighs that makes me want to nibble them.” She looked over to the car seat next to her, where Maddie was contentedly chewing on a gel teething ring. Her daughter gave her a drool-soaked grin, showing just the tips of her two front teeth poking through her gums.

“You look like you’ve lost almost all the weight,” Waverly observed, running her sharp gaze over Olivia’s body.

Olivia shifted in her chair, suddenly hyperconscious of her own new shape next to her friends’ leaner silhouettes. While it was true she had already lost the twenty-five pounds she’d gained with the pregnancy, her body had definitely shifted—her hips widened, her breasts swelled, and her stomach developed a small pooch that wouldn’t disappear no matter how many crunches she did at the gym. Just last night, after Maddie had settled to sleep in her crib, James had stared at Olivia’s naked body as she stood in front of the mirror next to the closet, brushing her hair.

“I’ll pay for a tummy tuck, you know,” he said out of nowhere, as though Olivia had been complaining to him. Which she hadn’t. In fact, while she knew her body had changed, Olivia actually felt better about it after giving birth than she ever had before. She was amazed by what it had pulled off, and figured a slightly rounded belly and a little jiggle on her thighs was a small price to pay for the miracle of their daughter’s life.

“Excuse me?” Olivia said, setting her brush on the dresser, then spinning around to face him. She reached for her robe from its hook on the closet door and wrapped it tightly around her, tying it at the waist.

James waved a dismissive hand in her general direction. “Maddie’s seven months old, Liv. If your shape hasn’t bounced back on its own by now, it never will.” Seeing the look of horror on her face, he laughed. “C’mon. Don’t be upset. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. You’d be in and out in an afternoon.”

“I don’t need a tummy tuck,” Olivia said, feeling the heat creep up her chest and neck onto her face.

James’s eyes narrowed. “You think it’s attractive, all that fat bouncing around when I’m fucking you?” Olivia cringed. “I’ll have my assistant make the appointment,” he continued, as though his words hadn’t just stabbed her in the heart.

Olivia knew better than to try to argue with him, and in the end, she was happy with the results of the procedure, if not the manner in which it came about. Now, as she drives Maddie home from Ciseaux Salon with her newly darkened and shaped pageboy, she worries about what kind of message she has just given her daughter—that as long as she looks beautiful on the outside, how she actually feels doesn’t matter.

“Do you think Dad will like it?” Maddie asks as they enter their house, gesturing to her hair. Her daughter looks like a different person than the one Olivia picked up from school—her shoulders are pushed back, she walks as though there is an invisible string pulling her up at the top of her head. Hannah did a beautiful job on the color—deepening the natural brown just enough to warm up Maddie’s pale skin. The layers she added create the illusion of fullness, and the longer, feathery bangs frame her daughter’s hazel eyes perfectly, bringing your attention directly to them. She went into the salon looking like a little girl; she came out looking like the pretty young woman she actually is.

“I think he’ll love it,” Olivia says, hoping with everything in her this turns out to be true. James won’t be thrilled she made this kind of decision without consulting him, but Maddie’s happiness might outweigh his need to control how the change came about. She puts her purse on the entryway table and smiles at Maddie. “I’m starved. What sounds good for dinner?”

“Pepperoni pizza!” Maddie says with a playful, sparkly smile.

“Nice try. Too much grease. I think we can manage tomato, mozzarella, and basil, though. And a salad.” She waits a beat, hesitant to bring up anything having to do with school, not wanting to ruin Maddie’s markedly improved mood. “Do you have homework?”

Looking away, Maddie shrugs one shoulder, as though she were trying to shake something off her skin. “Not really. Just some reading. And a trig work sheet, so the teacher can figure out what we already know. Or don’t know.”

“Okay, so, why don’t you work on it in the kitchen while I cook?” This is new for Olivia, being able to spend time with Maddie, doing something other than caring for her daughter’s immediate physical needs. She tries not to worry about something going wrong, that Maddie’s body will reject her new liver or be riddled by some dangerous infection, but there are times she can’t help it. Like tonight, when Hannah told them about losing her daughter, fear overwhelmed Olivia again.

“I sort of was going to check my email,” Maddie says.

“Later,” Olivia says. “Homework first.”

Maddie sighs, but follows her mother into their enormous kitchen. She sets her backpack on the counter and settles onto one of the barstools, watching as Olivia digs through the refrigerator for the ingredients she’ll need. “That was really sad about Hannah’s daughter,” Maddie says, as she pulls out her notebook.

“It was,” Olivia agrees. She feels horrible about accidentally bringing up such a painful subject for this woman they just met. Olivia hadn’t asked for any details—whether or not Hannah was married or how her daughter had died. “I like her.”

“Me, too,” Maddie says. She holds her pencil over a piece of paper. “Maybe you should get your hair done by her, too. You could go back to your natural color. We could match!”

Olivia smiles as she sets the ball of gluten-free pizza dough on the marble-topped counter and unwraps it. “I could. But your dad wouldn’t be happy. He likes me blond.”

Maddie makes a face. “And you always do what makes Dad happy, right? Not what you want to do?”

Olivia cringes, not looking at her daughter as she rolls out the dough into a thin circle. She wants to tell Maddie her plan. She wants to show her the cash she has stashed away, little by little over the past ten years. Money she made from the small bits of jewelry she sold—pieces James would give her after a particularly bad fight or bruise left on her skin. But this isn’t the kind of thing Olivia discusses with Maddie—she wants her daughter to have plausible deniability if James should ever confront her. She has to keep Maddie safe.

“How about I think about it?” Olivia says, as she runs a sharp knife through a Roma tomato. Maddie shrugs again, keeping her eyes on the work sheet in front of her. Olivia hates that she hasn’t been a better role model. “I stay with him for you,” she longs to say. “I keep myself small, I keep my mouth shut all because of you!”

But she knows Maddie is too young to understand these kinds of decisions. Her daughter still sees the world in stark divisions of right and wrong, black and white, when the truth is, life is so much more complicated than that, colored by infinite shades of gray.