“A few more arrangements need to be made, but then we’re good to go.” Sadie flung her hands back and forth in front of her, trying to forge her way through two dancing children to the phone desk. She picked up her calendar, which reminded me that even with a vacation in mind, work still called, for both of us.
I turned my chair, the legs scraping against the tile, as I beat my fingers against the tabletop. “What about your work?”
“I’ve triple-checked with everyone there already, and we’re good. Jackie can handle in-house items, and I can do some tasks from the cottage. It should be fine.”
“What about Wi-Fi?”
“Really, it’s fine, Theo. The library has great hours, and if the owners have caved and gotten it at the cottage...”
Of course, Sadie had a ready answer. She always did.
She was right, though. We’d been staying at a private cottage for several years, and much of the reason we both enjoyed our time at Walloon Lake was because of our ability to unplug. No land lines and weeks without Facebook and Twitter. No email, even, if that’s what you wanted. That time away from technology used to be sacred, and any Walloon Lake vacation was deemed “blissful” by Sadie’s standards. On the other hand, having Wi-Fi access would make the trip much easier this time. However, my job—I’d need to take vacation days, those I might not even have.
“But what about me?” I continued the drumbeat on the tabletop and realized the act helped me, kept me in the present with my family; maybe it even tamped down the “mercurial swings in mood” Doc and I had discussed.
“You, Theo? Did you think I was going to leave you here?”
Sadie’s tone of voice teased me, yet at the back of my mind I had to question her motivation: did she have a notion that time away from me, from us, would be a good thing?
“Do I have a choice?”
“Actually, you do. If you want to stay here, so be it. If you want to come, the offer is open.”
“But what about the kids when you’re trying to work? Is Brooke coming?”
Comprehension seemed to wash over her, and she stretched out a hand to cover my fingers, stopping their movement. “Oh, no. She couldn’t this time, but thankfully, I found someone who would be more than happy to earn a couple extra bucks by helping out when I’m out of the house.”
Sadie—always prepared for come what may—would have a current itinerary of a typical day drawn up in no time, including all emergency numbers and applicable medications. Her ability to multitask, well, it was admirable at times. She “got shit done,” as Liam used to say.
“Well, it’s clear you’ve thought of everything, haven’t you?”
With a quick nod she said, “I hope so. Which means I should get our belongings together and find all the extra things we need and contact the teachers and principal with a few more questions, and we’ll be good to go! Let me know what you decide!” Sadie turned on her heels and headed toward the stairs. Her form retreated and her footsteps faded. A new thought came to mind: enabler. That’s what Sadie was; that’s the role she played in our story. Doc would be so proud of me for recognizing it.
. . . . .
The decision was easy: as much as Kettering was a great place to live, Walloon was a great place to visit. And work had no issue with me taking time off. Again, the byproduct of working for someone who pretty much gave you a job.
“One thing you can do for us, Theo,” the boss said. “Scope out the area. See what the fitness centers are like up there and how many they have.”
“Can do, Boss.”
Walloon had never been a place I looked to for a workout, so I had no idea what was available, but I’d have time to investigate. And as usual, being busy would be good for me. Not that I didn’t have plans to spend time with the kids, but the boss’s mission would give structure to my day. Doc and I had both determined my best days were those where I’d planned my activities—fewer changes, less unpredictability.
While I was entering my vacation time into the computer log, Andrew stopped by the desk.
“You okay?”
I hadn’t spoken much to him after I left him at the bar. No reason; just busy, and I didn’t want to discuss the possibility of dating again. He might be ready, but I wasn’t. In fact, I was still hung up on the woman I legally called my wife. Shit. Thankfully, my knuckles had healed and another interaction with the wall hadn’t occurred.
“I’m fine. I’m not sure what that was the other night.”
“Working too hard perhaps?”
“It’s happened before.”
Andrew patted the counter. “Haven’t we all? Glad you’re okay. See you later.” He turned toward the locker rooms.
“Hey, I’ll be gone for a few weeks. Headed on vacation with the family for a bit.”
Andrew stopped and furrowed his brow. “Might I say it’s an odd time to go on vacation?”
I laughed. “You’re right. But I need it. I’m pretty sure we all need it.”
He didn’t ask more. “Enough said. Then I’ll see you when you get back. And maybe we can talk more about future projects?”
Andrew’s projects. What I’d read had lured me in. If I was to keep making forward progress, I might need a better distraction. “Sure. I’ll text you.”
After work, I stopped by Doc’s office. The receptionist told me I was lucky: Doc’s latest appointment had been canceled, and she had a few moments to chat.
“The mood swings—they keep coming—but a vacation might help,” I told her.
“Really? Is it a means of escape for Sadie?”
“Well if it is, then I can place the blame on her, right? Her idea and all.”
“You know what I’m going to say.”
My thoughts coalesced in the silence of Doc’s office, and it didn’t take long. Yes, I’d blamed Sadie. I could have said no to the idea of a vacation. Staying home by myself would be a “staycation” as they said, time to myself if the rest of the family was gone.
“I do, and you’re right. No was an option. But Walloon Lake—”
Doc held up her index finger. “From what I hear, it’s tough to stay away from. Someday, I’d like to go there,” she said.
“You should. I’ll give you the contact information for the place we rent.”
“Let’s not get distracted. Is this about Walloon or Sadie? Going on vacation together,” and Doc used her fingers to put air quotes about the word, “might not be the best way to get over your wife—soon to be ex-wife—is it? Your feelings for her, unresolved as they may be, are getting in the way. It might be...”
Doc’s true thoughts didn’t interest me, but I knew better than to be rude about it. I held up my hand, and she graciously paused. “Yes. I’m waffling on my feelings for my wife.”
“So, you admit it...”
Yes, I’d admitted it. I wasn’t sure what it was about the last few months, but one thing had become clear: I wasn’t ready to cut the cord. However, she was. And Sadie was the type of woman you didn’t force into anything. Plus, who wants to be with someone who doesn’t want you back? The question was: did a way to get her back exist?
“Theo.” Doc leaned in, her voice almost a low whisper. “I understand what makes you tick. Deep down, you’re a good guy. You want to get better—for yourself and for your family. And I don’t doubt you still love Sadie. But I have to wonder if we shouldn’t consider something more, change your medications, look at other CBT therapies than we’re using...an inpatient program for you. This waffling...it might be indicative of something else.”
“Like what?”
“Well, have your episodes been increa
sing? We haven’t talked much about your anger lately or whether you’ve still been having nightmares. And I wonder if you aren’t actually in denial.”
“About what?”
Doc sighed. “About Sadie. About her perspective. I don’t want to upset you, but the two of you had decided to divorce. For a time, Sadie was encouraging you to sign the papers—”
“But she hasn’t in a while!”
“Okay, she hasn’t in a while. But have you spoken to her? You said yourself a few months ago, in the summer,” she looked at her notes, “she seemed different, distracted. Did you talk about it? If she wanted to get back together, wouldn’t she have come talk to you?”
Breathe in, breathe out. Doc’s words rebounded off the walls of my brain. I tried to shut them out but couldn’t. The arms of the plush chair dimpled under the crushing weight of my fingers as I gripped them, and I took a final, deep breath in through my nose once again.
“Don’t say anything. Not yet. I mentioned this before a while ago, and I’ll admit...I even called Sadie to talk about in-patient possibilities—”
“You did what?” I rose, ready to punch not Doc, but the wall, the door, the chair, whatever I found in my path.
“Hey!” Doc got up from her chair, palms facing me. “Hold up. I didn’t speak to her. She never returned my call, and I admit, I dropped the ball. But now, I need to speak with her.”
“Not yet. Let me talk to her first.”
Doc tapped her chin with her finger. “Okay, I’ll give you until after you return from vacation. Is that fair? We can hold a virtual session or two while you’re gone, but check in with me when you return, and if you haven’t spoken to her about your feelings, and even if you have, if you’d be best in hospital, that’s where we’re going.”
My vacation plans had veered in a direction I didn’t want them to go. Such was the state of my life.
Chapter 19: Sadie
Kettering sat about fifty miles north of the Ohio-Kentucky border, while Walloon Lake was nestled almost the same distance south of the tip of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula. With three kids and a front-seat passenger who might need to take frequent breaks, I wasn’t sure how much time the journey would take or how many hours it would feel like it took.
The strum of the tires against the pavement lulled me into a false sense of security. Inside the car, with the radio on low and Theo and the kids asleep, it was easy to imagine this vacation would be like any other Walloon vacation we’d taken in the past. Lexie would point out the taxidermy on the walls of the gas stations where we stopped, and Delia would clamor for snacks from Ann Arbor to Elmira. Nonstop talking from Charlie—about the merits of Petoskey stones—would begin about the time we turned onto Evergreen Road. While Theo had proven beyond measure that Walloon Lake vacations agreed with him, this time, based on the reason for booking this vacation, my confidence waned.
After our third stop in five hours, discontent engulfed me. Little things jumped to my attention: the dust covering the dashboard; the large amount of paper receipts left in the console; Theo’s snoring drowning out my beloved alternative music. I pushed away at the minor annoyances and tried to concentrate on the passing landscape—barren, the skeletal trees projected foreboding—but even there, the poor driving skills of the truck to the right of me drew my attention.
With a quick shake of my head and a roll of my neck, I gripped the steering wheel until my knuckles turned white. When had I become so focused on the negative?
A slight shuffle from the passenger seat alerted me Theo was awake, with sleep still trying to hold his eyelids shut. Dragging my gaze back to the road, I waited for him to speak.
“Hey,” he whispered.
“Yeah?”
“Traffic okay?” Theo shimmied his shoulders against the back of the car seat—an attempt to get more comfortable.
“Yeah. You need anything?” While the snack bag and drinks sat nearer to his feet, I was used to asking that question. As for the seat belt and the lack of circulation he was sure to be experiencing—something that might tip his irritation off—there was nothing to do.
“No, I’m good. Thanks.”
The angle of the road shifted enough, and the muted afternoon sun sliced into my eyes. One more little aggravation that took on monumental proportions the longer I sat in the car. Envisioning the quaint houses lining the streets surrounding Walloon Lake helped my ire dissipate. “Remember when we looked at the cottage on East Street? The one with the three bedrooms and front porch?”
We’d considered purchasing a piece of property near the foot of the lake, but once Theo’s symptoms set in, we pulled back on any extra expenditures in case we lost insurance coverage or another emergency emerged. A short vacation once or twice a year was no trouble; purchasing a second home constituted a grandiose dream that had to be shelved, at least for the interim. And now with an impending divorce....
“I do. It would be nice to have that house right now though. We’d come up here whenever and however often we wanted to.” Theo’s voice sounded wistful, as if he longed to be somewhere else in his life, and I imagined he did. What would he say if he knew I did too?
“Sure, but what about your treatment? Another doctor might not want to take you on.” Pausing, I pursed my lips because of my mangled words, somewhat annoyed Theo had woken, and he had started this conversation in the first place. “You know what I mean...I didn’t mean it the way it sounded. It’s just that, you’d miss Doc.” The dust motes on the dashboard caught my attention once again.
Theo chuckled, and the vestiges of his old self rang out loud and clear. “We’ve been together long enough. I knew what you meant and didn’t take it any other way.” He awkwardly patted my knee once, a sign that he stood behind his words. But how long had it been since Theo had performed such a gesture? And how did I feel about it? Truth be told, I felt nothing beneath his touch, and that realization—
“Charlie! You can’t do that!” In the few moments Theo and I had been speaking, Charlie must have woken and erected a mountain of pillows that blocked my view out the back window.
“Sorry, Mom.”
I tried to catch his gaze in the rearview mirror. “It’s okay. I need to see out the back. Just keep the pillows down, all right?”
“Okay.” He lifted his arms above his head and cracked his back, a motion I’d always loathed. “Are we there yet?”
“Hush! If you say it loud enough, Lexie will wake, and that’s all we’ll hear for the rest of the trip.”
Charlie nodded once and grabbed his most recent acquisition from the library—the next book in the Percy Jackson series—and within minutes, he’d been transported elsewhere.
Lexie and Delia stayed quiet, and while no one else demanded my time, I glanced again into the rearview mirror to spy on the girls, whose slender necks were stretched back, their heads resting on the car seat head rests, mouths hanging open and eyes closed.
“You sounded a bit harsh there, to Charlie I mean.” Theo said.
“I what?”
“You didn’t need to yell at him is all.”
“I didn’t—”
“To me it sounded like you did.”
Arguments were never fun, especially in tight surroundings when the kids were within earshot. “I’m...sorry. I didn’t intend to sound that way. It’s been a long trip. We can talk about this another time. Little ears and all.”
Theo nodded in understanding. “Well, I’m sorry too. Maybe I misheard. I’ve had a tough few weeks. And months. Actually, it’s been rough for a couple years. You know that.”
Yes, and I sympathized with him, what his life was like, and where he was headed in the future. If he knew all
I was going through, he’d have no sympathy for me. There was no way I wanted to reveal anything to him on a car ride up the interstate. He deserved more than a shoddy conversation.
A safer conversation topic would allow Theo and me to speak quietly while at the same time let me release some of my frustration. “So, I planned out this vacation with the idea we’d run it like we have any other year.”
“Which means?”
“Well...I’ll need to get to the store for groceries pretty much right away, but I want to meet the babysitter first.” Before we’d left Kettering, I’d called a few people we knew at Walloon, who suggested contacting a local church for babysitters. Not that I didn’t trust Theo, but he needed this vacation in a way I didn’t, and stress from the kids—which came at any time—meant we should keep a babysitter handy for those times when I needed to work.
As luck would have it, a family we knew had a cousin, a woman in her early thirties named Lena, who was between jobs and would be happy to help. “After such a long car ride you won’t want to go to the store, will you? You can chat with her and see if she’ll work out.”
“You’re right. I won’t want to get back in the car. But we can get a few things from the general store tonight and then go in the morning. What do you say?”
The grocery store bag between us stood three-quarters full, and I mentally checked everything I had loaded into it and the small travel cooler. We’d be fine with what we had and a gallon of milk from the small general store at the heart of the village. “Let’s see what time we get there, and then we’ll make a decision.”
“Sounds good.” Theo clumsily reached for my right hand and took it in his. His long fingers, which used to be so warm, now brought a chill to me, and they seemed to cling to mine, as if to gather heat and...what else? “You always know what to do, Sadie. How do you do it?”
That was the second time in as many months Theo had spoken those words. I swallowed a large lump in my throat and forced a stiff smile onto my face—the best I could do to cover up the lie spreading between us like a blood stain. If you only knew, Theo. If you only knew.
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