The Secret Lives of Married Women by Elissa Wald

downtown Vancouver. “He just got out of Red Rock and he wanted to come over. It took everything I had—and I do mean everything—not to let him.”
    “Red Rock?”
    “Oh, sorry. That would be the Arizona state pen.”
    “What was he in for?”
    “This time? He shot out someone’s kneecaps. He would have been in longer, but half a dozen witnesses heard the other guy threaten Angel earlier that night. Plus the guy can still walk. He needs a cane, but at least he’s not in a wheelchair or anything.”
    “Rae,” I said. “Is there anything Angel could do that would change your feelings about him? I don’t mean anything he could do to you—I mean something he might do to someone else.”
    “I don’t know,” she said. “I mean, I guess so—like if he hurt a little kid or something. But he would never do that. He’s in the life, in the game, and there’s a certain honor to it. He wouldn’t hurt anybody who wasn’t trying to hurt him or his people first.”
    “What if...” I said. “Just, as a hypothetical question—what if he killed someone?” I didn’t quite manage to look at her as I asked this.
    “To tell you the truth? He probably has,” she said. “But no. That’s not something that would change the way I feel about him.”
    “Rae. I know you have great sex with this guy,” I said. “But aside from that. Do you really love him?”
    “I really love him.”
    * * *
    Something changed after this conversation. Had I just needed permission? To accept what Stas had done? After talking with Rae, something shifted, lifted, inside me. As I got into my car, I felt a certain lightness. I had wished Jack were dead, and now he was. I felt lithe and agile and devious. Glinting with secrets, with hidden power.
    For the first time since the earliest days of our marriage, Stas and I had sex every night. All day, all evening, I waited for it. The moment Clara was asleep, I tugged him toward the bed. I would join him in the shower without warning, straddle him at his desk when he was working. When we weren’t in bed, I would stare at him as I’d stared at Clara for the first few days after she was born. It was as if I were seeing him for the first time. During weekday afternoons, when Clara was napping, I lay in our bed and touched myself, thinking only of him.
    Every day I recorded more poems and often they took on a special resonance.
    Now I’ll take to bed
    this body and the phantom
    of what it once was, inseparable
    as they are these days, smoke
    rising from a stubborn fire.
    In an upscale maternity boutique in Portland, I bought a sassy bikini set: a black bra with a pink satin bow front and center; a matching g-string with its bow at the back.
    “What is this about a movie you were in?” Stas asked me one night. “What is the name? Back Pay?” This actually made me laugh now.
    “Payback.”
    “It was a porn movie?”
    “Not hard-core porn. And I didn’t have real sex with anyone but my boyfriend,” I said. “But beyond that, there was plenty of nudity and simulation. I mean, it was trashy.”
    “Did you need money at that time?” Stas asked. “What made you decide to be in a movie like this?”
    “I wanted to,” I said. “I was nineteen.”
    And although we had just made love, I felt him harden once more against the round swell of my belly.
    The days grew longer. In late June, I felt the baby move for the first time. Not long after that, we went for an ultrasound and were jubilant to learn I was carrying a boy. We decided to make the nursery walls Wedgwood blue instead of yellow. Stas declared he would do it himself and made good on his word the very next weekend.
    We spent the Fourth of July holiday in Seattle, visiting some old friends, leaving late in the afternoon the Thursday before. It was the first road trip I could remember where Stas and I didn’t argue. I let him play Frank Sinatra all the way there. He let me plan too many activities. We went to Pike Place market for