STAGE

The world tilting on its head. A very accurate description to this moment. The world and my living room have turned downside up and nothing makes sense as the numbers 99.99% stares back at me from the white print that holds all of my life’s decision.

“Say something Elise.” He begs.

He…

The world keeps tilting, flipping a dangerous edge. Baby blue eyes implore me to lie, school my expression, laugh and say it's fine. He has that look of absolute loss even before the leak of warm tears. My eyes drop back to the white sheet that holds reckoning.

“It’s positive”

Is all I manage to say. The world just keeps tilting. Mach’s knees hit the floor, head bowed, shoulders slumped in absolute defeat. I have no idea what to do or say. The consequences of my decision twenty-one years ago is right before me. My son and my husband…

---

Meeting Mach was like a toddler eating ice cream for the first time. Tall, broad shoulders, well-built athletic body with just the right amount of muscles. His dirty blonde was always a few strands stray no matter how he styled it and that just added to his bad boy charm. Tattoos and the lackadaisical air about him drew me in.

In my early thirties, I had missed the opportunity to build a home for myself after working away my years in the finance sector. Building my portfolio and becoming a Forbes Woman, under 40 recognized for my numerical and moneymaking prowess took years of dedication and hard work. Sadly, it took away leisure and my social life too. Which is why I had no idea what to do with myself when Mach came barging into my life.

He was younger with an attitude that I always told him would get him killed. He was the ‘do now, think later’ type of man and it worried me to no end how I would always have to get him out of trouble in the first few weeks of knowing him. He took what he wanted and when he decided what he wanted was me, there was no stopping him. I couldn’t even if I tried.

Mach was the air I never knew I needed. A change in scenery. He was impulsive and spontaneous but would always consider me and that is why I fell in love with him.

A year later, Mach got his GED and proposed to me. I had already began plans of retirement and the huge rock he slipped on my finger solidified my decision. His auto repair shop was doing well for someone so young. He was the definition of 'what I want, I get'.

I learned he was adopted when I met his family. His father, Gary, was not open to the idea of his son settling with an older woman no matter how rich she was and his mother, Antoine, was a sweetheart who enjoyed recounting tales of wiping his baby butt. At the table one Monday afternoon with Mach and his family, Gary has stared at me long and hard enough to make me uncomfortable before saying,

“You both have a resemblance." His hand holding the fork gestured to where we sat on the other side of the table, "Even when you smile," he pointed at me, "I see his face.”

“Honey! Stop.” Antoine had reprimanded to which he grunted 'what' and continued on eating. Gary was a grumpy yet affectionate man in his fifties, with copper colored balding hair from his excessive use of hair dye. His wife was his opposite. Sunshine and sprinkles with dark flowy hair. Took some time to learn of her Indian roots.

Mach and I were always mistaken for siblings whenever we went out and I thought nothing of it. Not until Antoine told me of the orphanage where Mach was adopted. It was a sunny day that instantly turned dark when I heard the name, St. Monica.

---

I was only thirteen when I learned of my pregnancy. I never meant for it to happen but it did. Neither my boyfriend – fourteen years of age – or I knew what we were doing. It all just seemed to happen so fast. In a small town like Orana, kids were sheltered and barely taught what sex was. My mother was a divorcee with a strong dislike for men. We left the town two hours after getting the test result because in a place like Orana, word spreads like wildfire.

My child was taken to St. Monica Orphanage almost immediately. I never even had time to hold him. I watched weak and breathless as the nurses took him further and further away. I could not get him back because Mom did not want him.

“Don’t get attached to that thing,” she would say with a scowl when she caught me rubbing and whispering to my bulging belly, “You have a future where it is not in it. Get a grip.”

---

“You okay?”

I never knew I had spaced out. It was only seven in the evening and we were having dinner.

“I’m fine. I just…” I could not bring myself to say it. I did not fear Mach’s judgement because I knew it would never come. What I feared was how I would move forward after opening a can of worms.

“What?” I had his full attention.

“There is something I never told you.” I said as I dropped my fork.

“What is it?” He said as he dropped his napkin neatly beside his plate, never once looking away from me. His actions made him seem more mature and I wondered if I was a catalyst to that change.

“I was pregnant when I was thirteen. And I put him up for adoption.”

Mach stared at me for a while, his expression the same but his eyes bounced around a little. Something he does when he feels perplexed and uncertain of what his next actions should be.

“I was really young and my-”

“You don’t have to explain. You were thirteen. That is all the answer. What is the matter? You seem worried.”

“I gave him to St. Monica.”

His eyes popped, “What?”

“Yeah. I haven’t had this much time to think in a while and I… I want to see him. Meet him even from afar.”

He took my hand and squeezed it affectionately, “You want to find him? Then let’s do that.”

If I had known that a night that ended with passionate lovemaking would set the stage for this disaster, I would have never mentioned my past at all.

---

Mach sat across from me, his hands clasped together in fist form in front of his mouth, elbows on his knees. His face was red from crying so much and I had no doubt that mine was as blotchy as his was. We sat in the heavy silence; our house of five bedrooms had shrunk to a suffocating level.

“Mach…”

He flinched and my heart ripped. With no words, his hands went into his hair that had grown longer in strands. I wanted to comfort him. I wanted to hold him but I knew he wouldn’t want me to. I was not strong enough to.

After a while, I heard him lift his head and I raised mine when he got to his feet. He walked passed me and came back later with two packed suitcases. I rose, my heart breaking at the blank expression on his face.

“I’ll send you the divorce papers. I don’t need any settlement. It is all yours. The house…just take it.”

My body reacted before my brain could think and I held unto his arm. The warmth reminding me this could be the last time I ever got to touch him…feel him. It did not last long because he ripped his arm away before you would say the word ace. My body trembled from the feeling of his rejection. Those baby blues that always looked down on me with warmth were bloodshot and hard. No emotions. Almost like, he was staring at a stranger. Almost…

“Keep the house. You own more than half of it.” I told him

“No. I want nothing from you, Elise. Goodbye.”

He left. Never looking back. In that moment, I realized that I was wrong. This was destined to happen from the very beginning. From the moment, we bumped bodies in the elevator... No. Not then. From the moment I let them take him away from me, the stage was set.

---

Three years later, I have written two best sellers on the art of making money, become the richest woman in America according to Forbes and… raising a two-year-old girl with eyes just like her fathers’ eyes.

I never heard from Mach again after the divorce. I could not bring myself to face his parents and left the country a week before I confirmed that I was pregnant. Right now, as little Mona runs towards me with a huge smile on her face and arms stretched out, the teacher struggling to keep up with her, I realise once more that I cannot make the same mistake twice. One day, Mona would meet her father. One day…

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Photo by cottonbro studio