“There are a couple of houses I’m going to look at today,” he said, as if we were any married couple chatting about the day’s events.
In the past, I might have asked him a question or made a comment, something that would have furthered the illusion that all was fine in this house.
“Oh,” I said casually, as I dumped a handful of cheese into the pan, never looking up from the stove.
“Once I find a place, I’ll take the kids over to show it to them. We still have to figure out the schedule of when they’re with each of us. I do want them with me half of the time.”
I could hear the challenge in his tone.
“You’re right: we do need to do it immediately. It should be a priority.”
“I know what I want. What is your suggestion?”
“I just want the schedule to be one where there are as few transitions as possible. I also want them to be in one house on school nights. I think it’s too hard for kids when they’re going back and forth during the school week.” The visceral tension in the room increased with each word I said.
Charles smiled tightly. “You think it’s all going to be your way? You don’t know me very well.”
“Charles, I don’t want to fight. You make your proposal, and I will make mine. We can discuss our ideas with our attorneys and with the mediator.” The scripted phrase resounding in my head was act with dignity. That was what Dr. Putman had helped me with in my efforts not to respond to Charles with the internal rage I felt. I was much better at not acting on my rage. Internally, I still felt eaten alive. More and more, I saw the malignancy that was both my illness and my marriage.
Chapter Thirty-Four
“MOM, CAN WE GO TO THE MALL TODAY?” ELLI’S QUEStion startled me, and I dropped the stack of e-mails I had been reading. I quickly picked them up, put them back into the drawer, and locked it. “What’s that, Mom?” Elli asked, as she watched me.
“Oh, you just surprised me, that’s all. I didn’t know you were even awake yet,” I got up from my desk and gave her a hug. Then I offered to start breakfast.
Sammy was already in the family room when we came downstairs, watching his regular Saturday morning shows.
“Did you ask Mom about the mall?” Sam pulled Elli over, whispering in a not-very-quiet voice.
“What’s at the mall today?” My eyes scanned the two faces in front of me.
“Oh, nothing.” Sam quickly added, “We just want to go to that new game store that opened.”
“Yeah, I wanted to go there, too.” Elli rolled her eyes at Sam, and then smiled back at me.
“Okay, as long as we go early, because I have a lot of things to get done today.” The words were hardly out of my mouth when they both ran upstairs to get dressed.
After breakfast, we headed out, the pink and purple azaleas glowing brilliantly in the late-April sunshine. The soft, invigorating breeze was a good antidote for my earlier feelings of despair. The mall was still pretty quiet when we arrived, and Elli and Sammy’s laughter echoed through the hollow space. It didn’t take them long to find the store, and they immediately started their exploration. I walked around with them for a bit and then told them that I would be sitting on the bench in front of the store.
About twenty minutes later, they appeared. “Mom, Sammy wants to go to the video store. I don’t mind taking him. You can just sit here and relax, okay?” Elli said, in an unusually mature tone that was hard to ignore.
“Yeah, Momma, let Elli take me. You stay right here and relax.” Sam was already pulling his sister by her arm.
“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you wanted to get rid of me. Is there something I should know?”
“No, Momma. I just want to go with Elli. We’re not babies.” Sam pulled on Elli even harder.
“Okay.” I sighed. “I’ll be right here, but I want you to go only to the video store and then come right back.”
“Great, we will,” they said in chorus, as they started to run off.
“If you’re not back in twenty minutes, I’ll come to the video store.”
“Thanks, Mom. I promise I’ll keep him next to me,” Elli called back to me.
It was hard to let them go off by themselves, even though I remembered all the things I had done on my own when I was their age. Times were different now, but . . . I continued to watch them until they turned down the corridor toward the video store. The filigree hands on the ornate gilded clock that hung from the apex of the vaulted ceiling moved very slowly. Perhaps if I only stared harder, the minutes would move more quickly. I took some breaths and tried to will myself to relax. It was no use.
Just as I was about to get up and walk to meet them, I saw their two curly heads, smiling, as they bounded toward me. It was hard to miss the shopping bag with the Kay Jewelers logo in Sam’s hand.
“I was just about to come find you. What have you guys been up to?” I asked, looking at the bag.
“We got a surprise!” Sam blurted out.
Elli, rolling her eyes at him, intervened. “We just had something we had to get.”
It was the end of April. The mall was adorned with signs about Mother’s Day, so it didn’t take long for me to figure out what was going on. As we walked to the car, there were lots of whispers and giggles between the two of them. Just as we got to the car, Elli said, “Mom, we have a surprise for you.”
“Yes, it’s for Mother’s Day,” Sam added. “Would you like to open it early?” he asked, clearly hoping I would say yes.
“It’s hard to keep a surprise.” I laughed. “You know I’m not too good at keeping them.”
“Momma, please open it. It’s so special,” Sam continued.
“Wow, this is a hard decision. I’m so excited, but are you sure you wouldn’t rather wait until Mother’s Day?”
“No.” Sammy was emphatic, and Elli laughed.
I was able to convince them that we should at least wait until we got home, because that would make it even more special.
As we drove the short distance home, I wondered how I had managed to have these two, most magnificent children.
Charles was not there when we arrived home, and the kids pushed me toward the sofa, telling me to sit down.
“Here, Momma. This is from both of us because we love you.” Sam looked at his sister and smiled. I did try to hold the tears back, but it didn’t work.
“Mom, really it’s from Sammy; I just helped him put it all together.” Elli smiled at her younger brother.
Inside the shopping bag was a white gift box tied with purple ribbons.
“Wow, this beautiful. It’s almost too pretty to open,” I said. Their faces were glowing.
Sammy quickly responded, “You have to open it, Momma. The best part is inside.”
Wanting to savor every moment, I carefully unwrapped the gift. The purple tissue paper inside crinkled as I pulled it open. Out of the box, I took a soft, fluffy white bear. He had a purple ribbon around his neck and held a small purple-and-silver gift box in his hands.
“Oh, this is so lovely. I am so happy to be your mother. I love him. He is so beautiful. Thank you.” I got up and moved to grab them close to me.
“Mom, you didn’t open the present yet.” Elli looked slightly exasperated. “The box he’s holding is the present, Mom,” she said, emphasizing the word Mom.
“Oh, really? I didn’t know. I thought the box was just a decoration.” We all laughed at my foolishness. I then opened the small box.
There lay, on a cushion of black velvet, a golden ring. As I lifted it, I saw that it had two rows of small diamonds on the top. On the edge, the word Mom was cut out in the gold. I looked at my two beautiful children, pulling them close, and I cried. “It’s so pretty!” I closed my fingers tightly around it. “How were you able to do this? Where did you get the money? This was expensive!” Still with wet eyes, I slipped the ring on. “And it fits. . . . How did you do this?”
“Mom, we took one of your rings with us so we could make sure it would fit.�
�� Elli, smiling, moved to her backpack, opened a compartment, and handed me my wedding ring, which I had stopped wearing when Charles had given me that letter.
“Momma, it was my idea,” said Sammy. “I put all my birthday and savings money together and bought it. Do you like it? The lady was so nice. She even sold it to us for cheaper than it was s’pose to be. Right, Elli?” Sammy came and sat on my lap as he spoke.
Elli said, “Mom, when we walked in, the saleslady asked if we were with a grown-up. I told her no and that we wanted to buy the ring on the sign outside the store—”
Sam interrupted: “She asked if our dad had given us the money to buy something, and I told her that it was my own money and our dad didn’t even know about it.” Sam’s eyes glowed with pride.
Elli continued, “So the lady asked how much money we had, and I told her we had eighty-seven dollars. She told us to wait a minute. She went and talked to a man, and when she came back, she said that even though the ring was a little more expensive than that, she would sell it to us for eighty-seven dollars! She was so nice, Mom!”
“Then she said she would make a great package for it, and she put in the box the bear was holding. That was so cool!” Sammy added.
“And you thought the bear was the present. That was so funny, Momma!” Sam turned his curly-topped head to his sister and gave her a high five.
Maybe what Charles said about my being a bad mother, a poor role model for the children, was not true. It was just so hard not to feel wounded knowing he thought that about me. I heard his rejection in everything he said and did. The move to the new house felt as if it couldn’t come fast enough.
Charles had told me that he didn’t want much of the furniture and other possessions we had collected over the course of our marriage. That, too, felt like a rejection, until an incident involving Elli pushed me over the edge.
Elli was an artist. At two years old, she could draw a person with differentiated body parts better than some eight-year-olds, probably better than some adults. When she was seven and in first grade, I insisted one day that we go through her bulging backpack. From the bottom of the bag, I salvaged three, slightly scrunched, stapled pieces of orange construction paper.
“Charles, you have to see this,” I called from the kitchen in the house on St. John’s Lane. I turned to Elli, who had moved from the table to the pantry to find a snack. “Elli, this is a phenomenal drawing.”
“It is? I thought I had thrown it out. I guess I just stuck it in my backpack.” Elli’s mouth was filled with chocolate chip cookies. Charles had walked into the room and stood over me, looking at what I held in my hand.
“Wow, did you do this, Elli? It’s fabulous! Do you know this is like a painting by a famous artist?” Charles’s eyes were wide with amazement as he looked at the face of a dog: an eye on each of the two top papers, and the snout on the bottom. “I have a book I want to show you, Elli.” He walked into the office, and Elli and I followed.
“Mommy, what’s so special about this dumb dog’s face? I was just playing around!” Another cookie went into her mouth.
“I think I know what Daddy wants to show you. I think you’re going to be surprised.” Charles was standing at his desk, flipping pages in a thick book of paintings. “Here it is. Look at this painting by Paul Klee, Elli. What does it look like?”
“It looks just like mine, but it’s a cat’s face. How did he have the same idea that I did? It’s pretty cool, though.”
“Next time we go to New York, we’ll go to the Museum of Modern Art so you can see the real painting,” Charles said, still shaking his head in amazement.
“This is something we have to frame and hang so everyone can see it,” I added.
“Maybe they’ll want to hang mine up, too. So we should take it with us when we go. But it’s kind of scrunched up.” Elli took a deep breath.
“I think the person at the frame shop will know how to fix that,” I assured her, as Charles and I glowed with pride at our daughter’s very real talent.
The large, framed picture of the dog adorned the center of the wall of the staircase on St. John’s Lane. When we moved to the rental house, I didn’t have much interest in decorating. Nevertheless, we hung the dog in a place of honor. And now Elli had made it very clear that she wanted the picture to hang over the fireplace in our new house.
One evening in early May, Charles said he wanted to go through photos so that he could have some for himself. As we began to sort through the first box, Charles looked up and said that one of the few things he wanted was Elli’s dog picture.
My stomach tightened, but, despite that feeling in my gut, I told him, “Elli has said that she wants the picture. She knows where she wants to hang it.”
“You really are something else. You manipulated her. I want the picture,” he said.
“It’s Elli’s picture. She should be able to decide where she wants it,” I said.
“Get out of here. I can’t stand the sight of you. I don’t know what I would do if you were in my presence any longer, so get out.” His eyes raged.
I started to leave, going up the stairs from the basement. “It’s Elli’s picture,” I said, turning to him. “It has nothing to do with me.”
“It has everything to do with you. Everything has everything to do with you. You think only of yourself!”
The fierceness of his tone, the aggression in his voice, put me in a place where I couldn’t hold back. “What are you going to do to me? Shoot me like you shot Mr. Buttons?” I couldn’t believe I’d said that. Had that been the noose hanging loosely around my neck for years? I ran up the stairs before he had a chance to respond.
Chapter Thirty-Five
DESPITE THE LONGER DAYS, THE WARMING SUN, AND the blooming colors, I still found it hard to get out of bed some mornings, and my first thought was still sometimes Help me, Momma. Then I would think of Elli and Sam and force myself to put one leg on the floor and then the other.
I was determined to see my children grow up, and I knew I would have more of a chance at survival once I was out of this house and away from the toxicity that was here. The move was getting closer.
Meanwhile, I met with my attorney and told him that Charles had said I didn’t have to worry about my financial future.
“Diane, that’s bullshit. He will try his best to give you nothing.” Dan shook his head and smiled sadly.
“He said he’d pay for the movers. So you don’t think I should believe him, do you?” I asked.
“If he does, that will be great, but you should have a backup plan, because I wouldn’t expect anything from him. He’s not a stable man. He’s not a nice man.”
Nothing could have been truer.
For Mother’s Day, the children made me beautiful cards and brought me breakfast in bed. Surprisingly, Charles gave me a gift, too. It was a rock waterfall fountain. It was very beautiful but why did he do it? I knew he thought this gesture reflected his belief that he had a new, more “spiritual” self, that he existed on some “higher plane,” as he often implied in his journal entries, but I also knew better than to believe such premeditated bullshit. Although I had no way of knowing what would come next, I knew there would be something. One thing I had learned over these past months was that there was always, always an ulterior motive when Charles did something nice.
That same night, I got an e-mail from Katja, the German au pair who had lived with us for a year when Sammy was two and Elli was five. She had been eighteen and like a teenage daughter to me. She had been close with Charles, too, but her bond with me had been extra special.
Diane, I am so sad. I received a letter from Charles, and he tells me you are separating. That makes my heart break for all of you, especially Sammy and Elli. But, Diane, I am also angry and want to send a letter to Charles and tell him how angry I am for what he wrote. But I am writing you instead. In his letter he said that when I was with you, “Katja, you were really the mother; you did everything.” How could he say that?
It wasn’t true. I helped you when you were working, but I still needed a mother. I was homesick and you took care of Sammy, Elli, and me. I helped with the kids, but only you were the mother. It makes me so mad. . . .
Then I read his journal, and, as I expected, his words about me as a mother were scathing:
She is incompetent as a mother. She has no control over the children. They don’t respect her. . . . She had trouble even becoming a biological mother. . . .
I was going to give him the fountain back to let him know what I thought of his gift. Instead, I just put it in the trash without saying anything. Saying anything was pointless.
The days passed, and the renovations on the new house were under way. The kids and I went over there several more times, and I sat with the neighbors on the porch while Elli and Sammy played Capture the Flag in the courtyard with their new friends. Within the fourteen townhouses in the court, there were eight single mothers. There would be a lot of support and camaraderie.
It was a Tuesday evening, and we had been over at the new house for a couple of hours. Moments after we arrived home, Charles walked in. “My parents are going to visit this weekend,” he said, as he opened the refrigerator to get a drink.
“This weekend? We’re in the middle of packing. Is this really a good time for a visit?” I asked, sensing that he was setting me up for something.
“Well, they want to see the kids before the upheaval of the move,” he continued, as if there were nothing at all strange about this.
I thought back to when I was ill and my father would come over to the house to see me, and Charles would get angry, saying that it was an intrusion to have Dad there. He said the same thing when my niece, Lisa, visited from Denver during my illness. In those instances, my relatives helped me. This was an intrusion. This was inappropriate. I bit my tongue and said nothing. I knew we were going to have to go over the child custody agreement before the move, so I figured it was better to save my energy for that battle.
His parents arrived, and, as was always the case when Charles was around them, his tension was high. This time, though, he didn’t have me to entertain them. For the most part, everyone but my children ignored me.
Lost in the Reflecting Pool Page 23