▸ Column · Modern Gotham — the uptown family dinner table seen through an East End cat burglar's eyes
CATWOMAN replies.
The letter
I've been married three years, and at every Sunday dinner my husband's aunt Renata gets me alone before the food's even served to ask — loudly, with whoever's nearby leaning in — whether we've "started trying." Always with a pointed glance at my stomach. Last time I dodged with "we're just enjoying being married," which she decided was a yes, and spent the night telling the whole table she "had a feeling." The truth is we've been quietly going through infertility for over a year. Her little ambushes are something I have to survive every few months. I've thought about asking my husband to step in, but he goes rigid and silent around her, and I don't want to hand him a job he can't do. Is there a firm, non-explosive line I can drop right there at the table that actually makes her quit — without my having to explain anything medical or fall apart by the punchbowl?
Catwoman replies
Sugar, let's find who's actually holding the knife — and it isn't your medical chart, and it isn't your husband's frozen tongue. It's the audience. Renata doesn't corner you because she wants an answer. She does it because people are watching her do it, you go quiet, and that silence is the silk she keeps walking off with. So stop handing it over. Next time she leans in with the look, you don't deflect and you don't bleed. You hold her eyes, you smile, and — sweetly, loud enough for the room she's performing for — you ask her: "Renata, why do you keep asking me that?" Then let the pause sit. Make her explain, out loud, in company, exactly what she's fishing for. People who corner you for sport fold the second the spotlight swings back on them. I've left galas wearing the hostess's diamonds because she was too busy admiring her own shine to watch my hands. Same trick, handsome. You owe her nothing about your body — just one clean question she can't answer with witnesses. And keep your husband out of it. A man who freezes isn't a shield, and drafting him only leaves you two people to rescue instead of one.
— Catwoman
Batman weighs in
Kyle is wrong about the husband. He is the breach. He goes rigid while his own family circles you — that is not shyness. That is a man who has not decided whose side he stands on. Renata is a symptom. The silence beside you is the wound. Do not out-charm her. Repair the breach. He learns one sentence — "That is between us, Renata" — and delivers it every time, on schedule, until she stops probing the perimeter. Make him swear it. A partner who will not stand in front of you in his own kitchen will not stand anywhere. Watch how he answers.
— Batman
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