Bittersweet Short Stories & Hypocrisy Marriage Novels

Penelope Rivera's little boy toy, Theodore Schneider, is throwing another tantrum. She slides the divorce papers across the table toward me. "Just sign them for show. It's to keep Teddy happy." I clench the cuff of my suit and nod in silence. I sign my name in one swift stroke. As I'm walking out, I hear one of her girlfriends teasing, "Samuel's way too easygoing. Does he actually do everything you say?" Penelope takes a graceful sip of red wine and smirks. "Wanna bet?" They bet that I will quietly go through with the divorce at the courthouse, even if my eyes are red with tears. Listening their laughter, I rub my thumb over my phone screen and reply to the message I've just received. "Will you marry me?" it says. "I will."

I married my vampire husband ten years ago and gave him a half-blood heir, abandoning my career as a painter to become a full-time mother. Fortunately, my son inherited my talent. At just six years old, he held his first solo art exhibition, inspired by the theme "My Mother." But he never let me attend, and he never let me see his paintings. My husband said my presence would make Luke nervous---that I should stay home and do the housework as a good wife and mother, and wait for them to come back. I told myself he was just young and didn't know better, that he was only pushing back against my discipline, not truly rejecting me. Until the day I snuck into the gallery wearing a surgical mask pulled low. In the center of the crowd, my husband held our son's hand while tenderly pulling a woman in a red dress into his arms. He turned to the guests and announced: "This is Luke's mother---my wife." The three of them stood together, beaming with perfect happiness. And I---the one who'd stayed up all night setting up this exhibition---stood before the paintings while not a single person recognized me. That was when I finally understood. My seemingly gentle, caring vampire husband had long ago given our son a replacement mother. And I was nothing more than the human nanny who'd served her purpose by producing an heir.

I was thrown out someone else's door twice before I even turned thirty. The first time was during my marriage with Donald Stern, a businessman. When it was time for my pregnancy checkup, I found out he was making love to a college girl right in front of the 100th floor's window. He called me a childish woman and threw me out the door. My father told me that all wealthy men cheated sooner or later. To prove people wrong, I married my childhood friend of ten years, Shawn Foster. He was accepting and caring of me. He did not mind that my ex-husband still sent apology gifts every year. He did not even mind that we had no children after three years of marriage. Every time we were going at it and reaching the climax, he would nibble on my ear and whisper, "We don't need children. All I need is you." On our anniversary, he brought home a woman I had never seen before and ordered the butler to throw my luggage out of the main bedroom. I clenched the pregnancy test I had not yet shown him. With a trembling voice, I asked, "What's the meaning of this?" A cigarette sat between his fingers. He had a look on his face that said he had just heard the biggest joke getting cracked. "Drop the act already, Yvonne. Haven't you learned anything from Donald dumping you?"