by Kim Golden
“Fanden, Anton, you know how many clients we've had. I couldn't just leave when everyone else was working their asses off to meet deadlines."
"No one would have faulted you for going home and spending some time with Laney and the girls. They would've understood." Anton shrugged. "I told Morten and Jonas about how Laney was feeling...how she was having a difficult time after the pregnancy. That's why they were working late all the time. I tried to get you to go home, but you wouldn't."
"They knew?"
He nodded and then shrugged again. "I tried to tell you."
"I thought they were staying because we were behind schedule." I rubbed the bridge of my nose, hoping it would ease away the dull pain inside me. "I only stayed because I thought they needed my help..."
"I wish you'd listened, Mads. I've been trying to tell you for months that Laney was not doing so well. I thought you'd see it. I thought you'd take care of her...like you did when Liv was born. You were so devoted to her—Ingrid is furious with you right now, I'm trying not to be, but damn, it's hard."
"How am I supposed to go home now? I can't be there without her..."
"Yes, you can. Give her a month. Give her some time to heal and then you go to her."
"Where is she going...?"
"America."
"Where, though?"
"She'll call you, Mads. She just needs some time."
"I want to speak to her, though—"
"She's on a goddamned plane, you won't be able to talk to her anyway."
Sinking, sinking. My wife leaves me, my friend and his wife know. And all I knew was that she needed to be away from me. That I was the reason she no longer felt she could hold on.
Once Anton left, I knew I couldn't hang around any longer. I went through the workshop, making sure all the machines were turned off, locking everything that needed to be locked.
Everyone else had gone home or headed out to enjoy the long summer night.
I tried to shut it all out as I walked home.
Back to the silence.
Back to being reminded that I'd driven her away.
CHAPTER FIVE: Laney
I Fall Apart
I don't know how I made it through the flight without falling apart. I kept telling myself to keep it together, keep the girls happy and entertained, make them think this is an adventure, make them think Daddy would join us in a few days...maybe a few weeks. I didn't even think when I was packing our bags. I just grabbed whatever was clean.
But now we were somewhere over the north Atlantic. Freya was drooling on my shoulder. Liv was sleeping in the seat next to mine. The flight attendants kept coming over to coo over my little girls and tell me how precious they were. I guess the other passengers were happy they were so calm. Hell, I was, too. I wasn't sure what to expect. I'd flown with Liv to the US when she was a baby and the flight was a nightmare—too much turbulence, Liv had colic and cried for close to two hours, Mads was airsick. By the time we arrived in New York, my nerves were frayed. And I said I would never fly with a baby again.
I still couldn't believe I'd done it. I'd left him.
Thinking about him...about how he'd touched me, how he'd reclaimed me last night...still sent electric shivers through me. But...then a flash of what had led to it was enough to dull the longing. The lipstick smudge...his nonchalance... our anniversary date in shambles, the argument. As if she sensed it too, Freya stirred and let out a tiny cry. I rocked her and murmured in her ear. She soon settled, but I wondered how long I would be able to soothe her so easily.
One of the attendants knelt beside me. "We found a baby cot for you," she said. "In case you want to put her down for a nap."
I thanked her and stood aside while she set it up on the floor in front of Liv's seat. She took the blanket I'd brought with me and lined the cot with it; she even found Mr. Penguin and set him there. We settled Freya into the cot and then swaddled her with the blanket.
"Is this her first flight?" the attendant asked.
"Yes...first flight, first vacation without her father, too."
"Just a trip for the girls, then."
I nodded. It was mostly true.
"The three of you will have a wonderful time together, I'm sure." She patted my shoulder. "Just let me know if you need anything else."
I thanked her and watched as she returned to the galley. Liv had shifted in her seat. Her blanket had slid down to her lap. I readjusted it and wondered if she understood what was happening. Would she forgive me if things never improved, if the only way to getting back to me was to leave Mads for good?
My sleeping girls dreamed on, probably dreaming of foxes and penguins. It was a nicer dream than the reality of being without their father.
My aunt met us at Miami International Airport with all the fanfare of visiting dignitaries. In one hand, she was waving a Danish flag and an American flag; in the other she was holding a handwritten sign emblazoned with "Halliwell-Rasmussen Family.” Any other day, I would have rolled my eyes at such a sight but today it made me cry. Though she looked nothing like my mother, Aunt Cecily was the closest thing I had to a mother after my own mother lost her battle with breast cancer. Aunt Cecily was whom Liv called "gramma" —as close as she managed to get to "grandmother" or "grandmom.” Even now, a still groggy Liv was squealing with delight at seeing Cecily waving flags for her. She let go of my hand and ran over to her, throwing herself into my aunt's waiting arms and giggling as she was welcomed with hugs and kisses. Freya was more cautious. The last time my aunt had been in Copenhagen, Freya was just a few days old. She'd only seen pictures of her. "Don't worry," I told my more reserved daughter as we pushed our luggage trolley over to where my aunt was waiting. "This is your gramma, and she loves you so very much."
With Liv now in her arms and commandeering the flags, my aunt gave me a fierce hug and then she patted Freya's cheeks and said, "You are a little doll, aren't you? Looking exactly like your mother when she was a tiny one!" Freya seemed to accept this. She reached out for Cecily, wanting now to be held by someone besides me.
"Thank you for letting us come at such short notice." We were walking now towards the exit for short-term parking. "I really appreciate this, Cecily."
My aunt shushed me and pressed a kiss to my cheek. "Nonsense, my dear. You needed me, and I am here for you. Now let's get these two cuties to the car. You must be exhausted after that flight."
I was. I could only imagine how I looked. I was certain I had bags under my eyes, Freya's drool stains on the shoulder of my shirt. Long flights always made me crave a shower. Breathing in all that recycled air, being too close to so many other people for such a long period of time... That's all I wanted...to take a shower, to wash away everything awful and to feel whole again.
"Does Mads know you're here?"
"Not yet, no."
"I want you to call him once we get the little ones settled and tell him where you are." We were outside now. The oppressive heat and humidity slapped me in the face and made me gasp.
"Slowly, sweetie..." My aunt made me stop. "Just breathe in and out slowly. Let your lungs get used to it."
"I always forget..."
"I know, my darling. You've been away from this sort of heat for a very long time."
"Am I doing the right thing?"
We started walking again. Liv was chattering, telling Cecily about her fox and how Bobbi Fox was going to love our adventure. Freya was giggling and taking in all the sights and sounds. My aunt didn't answer me until we'd found her car and loaded all of our bags into the trunk.
"I don't know, Laney. But you look like you needed a break, and that's exactly what I am going to make sure you get."
My aunt came prepared. She'd made sure there were two car seats—one for Liv and one for Freya. In my haste to make an escape, I'd not even thought about it. Once we strapped the girls in, we headed off towards my aunt's new home. I'd never pictured my aunt as a snowbird. For me, she was the quintessential New Yorker. But even when Edd
y and I were teenagers, we used to wonder if Aunt Cecily was really meant to be someplace else. She was practicing yoga before celebrities made it trendy. She was a health-food nut who gave us green smoothies with our breakfast every morning.
Around ten years ago, she grew tired of New York's snow chaos after one blizzard too many. She sold the brownstone Eddy grew up in and where I'd lived once my mother was gone, and moved to Florida. At first she lived in Miami, but then she decided the people there were just as crazy as in New York and so she headed north along the Atlantic coastline until she found the perfect four-bedroom bungalow in Juno Beach. The crazy thing was that she looked so relaxed, so happy—even in the face of her wayward niece showing up with two toddlers—that it made me wonder what was her secret. Was it the Florida air? Was it the warmth 365 days a year? My sixty-nine-year old aunt looked younger and more harmonic than most people my age.
I was still thinking about how I wished I could be more like her when she asked me if I'd thought about what I was going to do now that I was here.
"No, not really," I admitted. We passed palm tree after palm tree. Sometimes I glimpsed the Atlantic Ocean and wondered when I would be able to take a dip and lose myself for a while. I glanced back at Liv and Freya. They'd fallen asleep again. I was pretty sure I would pay for this later but at least they were calm.
"It hasn't been easy—and I didn't expect it to be. I just didn't think he would leave me in the lurch."
"My darling, what is going on with you and that handsome husband of yours? When I was there in January, I never saw a more devoted man."
"I don't know what happened. One day he was there all the time, helping, being the kind of father I always knew he would be...and then he just...stopped."
"Did you try to speak to him about it?"
I nodded. "He doesn't understand, though. He thinks that I don't need his help. He thinks I manage to do everything on my own. And I don't."
"Well, I have to say, I've never seen you look so worn out, even when the two of you were having to go back and forth to the hospital for Liv."
"I'm fine..."
"If you were fine, you wouldn't have left your husband."
"I haven't left him."
"Well, you're here, he's there and he hasn't got a clue where you are. Sounds like you left him."
Put like that, there was no way to pretend I had not done so. I turned my face away, kept my eyes trained on the line of trees and concrete barriers we passed. It was probably around one in the morning in Copenhagen. Mads would be going crazy...wondering where we were. He'd probably tried to track me down through Eddy and Ingrid.
"We'll get you sorted out in the morning," my aunt said wistfully. She patted my knee then turned on the car stereo. One of her meditation podcasts filled the car with clinking cymbals and the sound of the wind.
It was closing in on dinnertime when we arrived. My aunt helped us get situated. She took the girls to show them the room where they would sleep. Liv asked if her daddy would sleep there too. My aunt didn't miss a beat. "When he arrives, he can sleep here too." This seemed to please Liv enough that she didn't ask more questions, but every now and then she'd flicker her eyes toward me and the confused look I saw made me feel ashamed for leaving the way I did.
I slept fitfully. Twice I reached for Mads, my body craving his firmness and his heat, only to remember too late that he was not with me. At some point, Liv crawled into bed with me. She croaked a very hoarse "Mommy" as she stroked my cheek. "I'm here," I whispered. I wasn't sure what time it was. The sky was still dark, but I could hear seagulls so it must have been close to sunrise.
"Mommy's here..."
Her springy curls tickled my neck as she shifted in the unfamiliar bed. "The bed smells funny here," she said in Danish. "It smells like candy..."
"It's the fabric softener," I murmured to her. "Gramma uses a different one from us."
"Why?"
"Because they don't sell the one we like here," I told her. "I'll look for another brand when we go to the store and then we can wash your sheets."
"Okay...I don't think Papa will like candy sheets."
"No, probably not."
"When is Papa coming?"
"Soon..." I pressed a kiss to the top of her head. She still smelled warm and sleepy. Maybe she would fall asleep again...I wasn't ready to talk about Mads yet. I hadn't called him last night, even though I'd promised Aunt Cecily I would. His voice...even now when I was furious with him...I knew it would make me melt. The roughness of it, the way he could say my name and it sent waves of lust through me, no...it was better not to call him yet. I needed a clear head to speak with him. But Liv...she was used to speaking to him every day, seeing him every day. She would want to talk to her father. I couldn't isolate the kids from him. No matter how upset I was, I couldn't keep our children from him forever. Sooner or later...he would demand to see them, even if he gave up on me.
"But when, Mommy?"
"Soon...he'll come soon." But for now, no matter how much my body wanted Mads's, my mind was telling me we needed a break. And even if it meant telling a white lie to my daughter, I needed peace of mind. I loved him...maybe I loved him too much.
But I couldn't be with him.
Not right now.
The next morning, Aunt Cecily treated us to a "proper" American breakfast of pancakes, scrambled eggs, fried apples and bacon. Both Liv and Freya were mystified—our version of American breakfast was usually just scrambled eggs and bacon, maybe some bagels if we had time to pick any up from Torvnehallerne. At first, Liv picked at her fried apples, but Cecily convinced her to taste a tiny bit.
Liv clapped excitedly. "Mommy, det smager ligesom jul!"
I smiled at her. "It does, doesn't it?" Then I said to Cecily, "She says it tastes like Christmas—so that's a good thing."
Freya was in the highchair beside me, using a Winnie-the-Pooh toddler spoon to feed herself. I watched as she managed to get fried apples in her hair, on her nose...sometimes in her mouth. The sides of my mouth twitched into a smile. I asked her if she wanted more apples. She nodded and declared them "nam-nam"—Freya's favorite way of saying "delicious". Anything nam-nam was good—she could be such a fussy eater sometimes.
My aunt was watching the whole exchange. I wondered if she was analyzing it. "Can Liv understand English?"
"Mostly," I said. "So if you want to ask me something...personal, maybe we should wait."
Cecily nodded. "We need to fix you, Laney. But we'll talk about that when little ears aren't listening."
Once we'd eaten, and the girls were bathed and dressed, we took them for a walk—Liv in her stroller, Freya in the Baby Björn backpack that Mads usually used. The tree-lined street Aunt Cecily lived on was in a neighborhood called Dido Gardens. It was not directly on the beach, but it only took a few minutes to walk there and when Liv saw the long expanse of beach and then the glittering ocean, she jumped up and down in her stroller and called out to me, "Mommy, Mommy! Havet!"
"It's beautiful, isn't it?" The Atlantic Ocean glittered green in the morning sun. Freya, too, seemed charmed by it. Though I often took them to Amager Strand and Hellerup, they were not used to seeing a sea so vast.
Aunt Cecily pointed to a playground with a view of the beach. "Let's go there so the girls can work off a little of that jet lag."
At the playground, Liv was suddenly shy. She hovered, not wanting to approach the other children. I assured her it would be okay and walked her over to the swing set. Aunt Cecily was on the play center with Freya, taking her on the slide and having a blast. I asked Liv if she wanted to do that instead, but she shook her head no and began to cry.
I picked her up and held her tightly. My sweet Liv, so tired, so confused by hearing so much English around her when she was used to hearing more Danish...sleeping in a new house, not having her father around. It was all too much for her today.
With each sob, a piece of my will shattered. She was well and truly a daddy's girl. Even when Mads wo
rked late he would find time for Liv. Everything we went through to bring her into the world...the nights we spent together at the hospital, learning to care for our prematurely born daughter, terrified she might not make it through her first months of life... If anyone had all of Mads's heart it was Liv. And for Liv, Mads was the sun, the moon, the stars. She might like cuddles from me, but she adored her father—broken promises and all. At home, her eyes followed him wherever he went. She trailed him, always ready to clamber into his lap, always finding pebbles or bits of paper to present to him as if they were the finest gifts. Sometimes I'd find them napping together on the sofa or their heads bent over drawings—Mads sketching new ideas for future projects, Liv scribbling family portraits or animals. And in the evenings, if Mads was home early, only he could tuck her in.
Freya and Aunt Cecily spent a few more minutes on the play center before they joined us on the bench.
"You know, it's not going to get any easier." Cecily unzipped the cooler bag we'd brought with us. She rummaged around inside it until she found Freya's sippy cup. "One of the hardest things you can do is be a single parent."
"I know... I'm not taking any of this lightly."
"I know you aren't, Laney... and I know you needed to come here. You look worn out...don't protest, I see it—there's no light in your eyes, you move like there is no fire in you anymore."
"I'll be fine—"
"Not if you don't take care of yourself."
"I don't have time to think about me."
"Of course you do. That's why you're here. Now, I think I know how to help you."
"I was hoping you'd have a solution," I admitted. My arms were numb from holding Liv for so long. I brushed her hair back from her forehead. She'd fallen asleep again, so I put her in the stroller and draped my shawl over it to keep the worst of the sun off her. She wasn't used to this strong sunlight and we'd forgotten sunscreen at my aunt's house.
"Well, I do. You need a babysitter, to start with."