I sat down in the swinging chair while the dog ate. It was a gift. It was thoughtful. They always were so thoughtful until they weren’t.
I lifted my feet. My face found a sunbeam, and I shut my eyes against the light.
The phone rang. I answered it on the first verse of Highway to Hell.
“You up?”
“I am.”
No need to tell him I just got out of bed. He hated when I slept in, always had. Though he said it wasn’t a problem, I knew by the way he looked at me. Nothing was ever as okay as he claimed.
Not for most things.
“I’m taking Holden to the doc in a box.”
“Oh God, what happened?” I sat forward, blood draining. The scenarios piled in the back of my mind while I waited, seconds becoming lifetimes.
“Nothing big. He was screwing around last night with Baker. Hurt his ankle. I think it’s just a sprain.” He cleared his throat. The tell, he always did that when he was nervous.
“Okay. You want to bring him home after?”
He laughed. “I think I can handle a sprain.”
“Alright.” I was both let down and relieved, simultaneously. I hadn’t gotten anything done around the house yet, and I didn’t want Holden to know. I liked the idea of him still thinking I had my shit together.
I did not.
Roger hung up. We stopped saying goodbye about eight months ago. He slipped and said he loved me one night. Just a muscle memory thing, but rigid as he was, he just stopped saying goodbye at all. I wondered if she had heard him, gotten angry. That made me laugh. All things considered.
A bolt of anxiety propelled me up and I ticked four of the items off the to do list. Not quite half the list, but enough to tell myself I wasn’t a piece of garbage.
It was cold. I started keeping it cooler after Roger left. I didn’t mind sweaters and blankets, neither did Holden. But today there was a chill that the house couldn’t shake.
He would have built a fire. Roger always said it was for me, but it wasn’t. He loved it as much or more than anyone. I stared into the black hole of the fireplace, gauging my energy.
Noelle followed me out as I drug in a stack of logs. She looked confused. I propped the logs and built a fire. When it flamed up picture perfect, I snapped one and sent it to Roger.
He replied – Sacrilege
It was good to be friendly with him. If not for him, or for myself, for Holden.
Seventeen years, longer than I had done anything in my life.
I was twenty-seven when we met. He was thirty-nine. I was messy, and he was my savior. Mature and well formed, he had a decent job and a good head on his shoulders.
I was flighty and full of energy and lonely.
We met in a hotel bar. Our jobs had us both in the same place at the same time. A fun story we told thousands of times, at dinner parties where no one really cared how you met. Filler.
Oh, how lucky. – People would say, and we would nod. But after a while, I’m not sure he felt like it was luck. Well luck, but not the good kind.
He bought me a drink that night. I was there to get food and escape back to my room, but he convinced me it was good to blow off steam. So, I did. Roger was very charming. Everyone loved him. It was easy to be led by him, and I ached to be led.
I didn’t sleep with him right away. I’m not without morals, but I certainly let him know I would be open to it after a reasonable amount of time, and that was all the encouragement he needed. Even if my biological clock wasn’t ticking, his was thumping like a drum.
We married in a rush. He had a friend, a partial owner in a vineyard. Before I knew it, I was wrapped in an off-white gown and making my way down an aisle nestled between the vines.
I remember it was a beautiful day. So much of it as I look back was picture perfect. Curated. Everything but me.
He was perfect, and I was reminded of that fact often.
I guess that was part of the problem. He was always everyone’s favorite character. He never met a stranger, never lost a friend, never pissed anyone off, just perfect Roger all the perfect time.
He went to bed early and got up early. He worked out in the mornings and went to work after one cup of coffee. Every day exactly the same. He did everything he was supposed to do and told himself that he loved it. Maybe he did. I really don’t know. We didn’t talk like that, but like I said, I was messy and after a while Roger got boring.
I tried. God, I tried. I followed his advice. I made nice with his friends. I joined the book club, tagged along for the dinners, and all the little things you do to make your partner smile. But I never quite hit the mark.
I was a walking disaster, or so I had been told so often it was really all I could see anymore. But truth is truth and when the girls started getting together without me and the book club broke up only to reform in my absence, I drifted away from Roger’s suggestions and his friends. They thought I was an odd duck, and I thought they were dull, and sometimes cruel. Besides, they never actually read the books for book club.
When Roger announced “our” pregnancy, as he like to call it, all their issues with me vaporized and I was pulled in close again. Suddenly, everyone loved me, loved us, and were thrilled about the baby. I got a good talking to about how serious his job had become and how critical it was that I find a way to blend. So, I tried again.
Roger was a force and somehow, in the rolling waves of pregnancy and the overwhelming intensity of the years that followed, he became my only measurement of myself.
Roger’s pleasure or displeasure became the guidepost of my self-worth.
And boy, did I displease him.
I was too loud, too flighty, too emotional, too opinionated, too angry, too funny, and I never could find the right amount of talkativeness for him.
He wanted me to settle in, to be “normal” just like him. So, I crammed myself into the box he chose, making myself smaller and more controlled.
I just didn’t want to be alone again.
Day and years flew, just like they show in the cartoons, when calendar pages pile onto the floor.
Roger rounded 50, and he really changed. His face grew white and grey. His hairline slipped, and he was a mess over it. I didn’t mind it. The change was just human, but he was restless. He lost weight, got a new wardrobe, and the business trips started extending through weekends. Some critical client need seemed to crop up once or twice a month, always late notice, always in a rush, and always accompanied with a fight.
There wasn’t much passion left in our marriage, but there was anger in abundance. I think I had pushed so much aside over the years, and he felt so disappointed in who I was, that when we stopped fighting to control ourselves, well, we let go all over each other.
That’s when I learned about her, for real. In a fight. I wasn’t shocked, but I was surprised. My foundation shifted. I had to adjust. That adjustment took a while, and would be going on still if I hadn’t just given up. Which I did.
The fight, the one that ended them all.
I was cleaning the bathroom and noticed that his pills were missing. Something was off in the medicine cabinet and once I realized which little magic pills were no longer on the third shelf by the acetaminophen, fear washed over me like a hot wave. I didn’t mention it, not right away. I held onto it, afraid of what it would mean to say it out loud. They beat women up for that all the time, the delay. Harsh statements about what she knew or didn’t know and when, but I can tell you, sometimes you need a minute to decide. You live with it while you wait for it to make some kind of sense.
The next time he was leaving, I watched him pack. I hung in the bathroom with him, like I did when we were younger. Only this time, I wasn’t admiring his process. He made some shitty remark about the busy week I had planned, and I snapped. I didn’t mean to, remember, messy.
We had the mother of all fights, and I thanked God Holden was at a friend’s house.
Her name was Katherine. Katie, she wanted to be called. On more than one sickening occasion, I’ve been forced to hear him call her Kit Kat. I can still taste the bile in my throat.
Katherine was everything I wasn’t. Happy and stereotypical, young and impressed with him, and most of all, focused on being exactly what he needed.
They started going to church together. I thought it was odd seeing as how they were living together and technically, he was still married to me, but it didn’t seem to come up in their new social circles.
Roger’s business did well those last few years of our marriage and he bought her a bright shiny new house two miles from mine. I say mine because he gave it to me, emotionless, like casting off old shoes.
I cringe every time I go to the grocery store, hoping I don’t run into her, or them holding hands on aisle 7.
Holden rebelled a little against them. He and his dad had a rough six months, the ownership of which fell to my feet. I was apparently poisoning him against his father. I didn’t. I just withdrew. My classic move and for the first time in his life, Holden recognized it. Seeing me as a person. A weak and listless person who hurt.
Let me be clear, I didn’t want him to hate her. I didn’t want him to hate anything. I wanted him to wander through life in a pink fuzzy bubble of happiness. But he was smart and, under all the complications of being a teenaged boy, he was compassionate.
I don’t blame Katherine, and most of the time I don’t blame Roger. He just never really wanted me. I looked the part, and he settled for that. He wasn’t what I really wanted, either. I think we both had our fingers crossed the day we got married. My heart belonged to someone else, and Roger needed me to be someone who didn’t exist. Or well, someone who was only 10 years old that beautiful spring day among the grapes.
Thinking about him stirred up my stomach, and I shoved him back in that box labeled Ex.
Mom: How’s the leg?
NHC: Ankle
Mom: How’s the Ankle?
NHC: Hurts, about to go in. Call you after.
A few moments later.
NHC: love you
Mom: I love you, sweetheart.
NHC: Dad’s an ass.
Mom: Don’t say ass. He loves you.