But as she pulled her first card from the stack in the middle of the game board, she let those questions slip out to sea with the receding tide she could see from the kitchen window. Willow didn’t want the moment to unravel. And there was a sense that the lightest tug on any loose string could unwind this precariously woven but beautiful moment her father had crafted.
The three of them turned over game cards and counted spaces until Asher made it to the Candy Castle at the end of the board. And all the way along, they giggled over setbacks and fortuitous color jumps. Over Gramma Nutt and her peanut brittle house. Over Lord Licorice and his sharp chin. Over Mr. Mint and his candy cane legs.
And Rex and Willow and Asher all swirled around in their laughter and happiness. They allowed themselves to be enveloped in each other’s laughter and happiness. They allowed themselves to stay so present in it. And when the game was over, and it was about to get quiet, Dad kept the fun flowing. Kept the love flowing.
“Want to head down to the beach?” he asked casually and hopefully. “It’s usually just warm enough in April.”
Willow nodded her head and her wild hair bobbed around. Asher exposed the big gap in his teeth with a full smile.
But then Willow’s chin sank down. “But I didn’t bring a bathing suit,” Willow said to her father. He was always disappointed when they weren’t prepared.
But today was different.
“I got ’em right here for both of you,” Rex told his daughter. And Willow noticed how her father’s chest puffed out at these words. She noticed how his chest puffed out at what fatherhood could also look like if he were just a little bit less demanding of structure and perfection. If he were just a little bit more open to fun. A little bit more willing to love freely.
Asher and Willow cheered and dived into their bathing suits and then the ocean. The water still had some of its winter chill in it, but it felt so good as it first shocked, and then soothed Willow’s skin. There was splashing and diving and toes covered in sand. There were boogie boards and breath-holding contests and cartwheels. There was fun. Unadulterated wholesome all-consuming fun.
And when Willow and Asher had wrinkled fingertips and salty hair, Rex held one towel open at a time and wrapped his son and then his daughter in the warm cotton. They shuffled through the sand back to the house, pulling one foot in front of the other. And when they reached the blue wooden door with the chipped paint, both Willow’s and Asher’s feet were caked in sand.
Rex stood by the door and stared down at his children’s toes. Willow looked up at her father and waited for his instructions to clean off her feet before coming inside and messing the carpet. But instead, her father pressed gently on her shoulders until Willow was sitting down on the front steps, and then bent down and used a wet towel to wipe the sand from Willow’s feet. He held her ankle and patted around gently until her feet were clean. He did it with such focus and such precision. They were traits that Willow had always seen in her father, but she had never felt the love behind them. But here, outside this house at the beach, she saw how Dad could take care of her. How he could be gentle. And warm. And caring. And kind. She saw how he could get sandy toes so clean.
And when there wasn’t a single grain of sand left on Willow’s toes, Rex pressed his daughter’s feet together and kissed them decidedly. And when Rex picked up his head, he and his daughter locked eyes. And just for that instant, they locked hearts too.
And for this day, and six more days at this house at the beach, Willow, Asher and Rex created a new and magical world. Here at this house at the beach, Asher didn’t spill anything or forget to tie his shoes. And Willow didn’t stumble or wet the bed. And Rex didn’t yell into his phone or ask his children to keep quiet.
Instead, here at this house at the beach, it was seven full days of ocean and beach and corn on the cob. Of sand castles and spotted handstands. Of board games and sea glass. Of sweatshirts on the top and towels wrapped around the bottom.
They were all a new version of themselves in that old house breathing in the salty air. And on the drive away from the beach, it was impossible to say whether Willow or Asher or Rex could live as their new selves back at home. But for at least these seven days, each of them could have almost envisioned the three of them living happily ever after.
37
One Month Ago
Rex’s organs twisted and gushed as he picked up the phone to call his ex-wife. To call her and tell her that it had to stop. To call her and tell her that she had to stop. To tell her that he wouldn’t let her around their children when she was like this. Stoned like this.
It broke his heart to think of Rosie without her children. Her children without their mother. But this wasn’t their mother.
Rex said these things to Rosie as gently and kindly as he could.
“When they’re in my world, I get to make the rules,” Rosie came back sharply before Rex could even finish his plea. But there was an airiness, a detachment, in her voice that Rex didn’t recognize. Rex had seen Rosie frazzled, even untethered, a few times in their relationship. And she had been frazzled and untethered in precisely the way she had been in every other facet of her life. Wholly and fully. But not now. Not in these words. Not in this new state. She sounded so far away.
“Rosie, your rules don’t get to be that there are no rules. It’s not fair to them,” Rex said as gently as he could. But his disappointment, his desperation, his exasperation was thinly veiled.
There was silence on both ends.
“It’s just not fair, Rosie. You need to do better here. You need to, Rosie.”
More silence.
“You just need to.”
Rex said it, urged it, with all of the kindness he could muster.
And then Rosie moved so quickly to tears.
“I love them, Rex. I love them so much.”
All Rosie’s anguish, and sorrow, and hopelessness was pouring out of her eyes and straight through the phone. Her suffering coursed through his veins and clung to his heart.
And then his ex-wife asked so simply, so innocently, so naively, “Isn’t that enough?”
And then Rosie fell into full sobs.
“Why can’t it be enough?”
And then Rex, invoking all the love he still had for Rosie, said something so plain, and so true. But so difficult.
“No, baby. It’s not enough. You need help, Rosie,” Rex stated calmly, plainly and warmly. “But it needs to come from you. You need to get yourself help.”
There was a moment of thick, sticky silence.
“Okay? Can you do that, Rosie?” Rex said into the phone.
He held his ear to the phone. And then, through breathless whimpers, Rosie said, “I need some time away from it all. I’m sorry.”
When Rex opened his mouth to ask what it meant, there was just an empty dial tone on the other end of the phone. He hoped his plea had been enough.
“I’m sorry too,” he said into the empty telephone.
* * *
As Rosie pressed the phone into the receiver, she knew everything that her ex-husband just said was true. She could taste it in her tears and feel it in her heart. Because, for months now, sadness had been seeping out of her every pore. In every moment of every day.
And it was relentless.
And it spilled all over everyone and everything around her.
And it was too much for her babies to soak up. She knew they had already become saturated with her sadness. Especially Willow. And Rex was right, it wasn’t fair at all. She had to be better. But she couldn’t be better.
Because early in her sadness, Rosie had the sense that it could dry up. That if she cried enough tears, released enough pain, that eventually there might be none left. So she would allow herself days and days crying in her room. Sometimes within moments of Willow and Asher smiling at her feet, she would poise he
rself for happiness. She would dry her eyes and try to put on some red lipstick. She would pull out a sparkly vest or play “Little Red Corvette” as loudly as her speakers would go. But no matter what, it was always straight back to sadness. Straight back to listlessness.
Rosie knew, and so did her children, that her sadness was an endless repository. Her sadness rose up in her faster than she could pour it out. And the more that sadness flowed out of her, the more sadness had filled up inside of her. She was drowning in it. And her kids were too.
The more she felt sad, the more she retreated to her room. And the more she retreated to her room, the more Vicodin pills she swallowed. And the more Vicodin pills she swallowed, the more guilt she felt. And the more guilt she felt, the more she felt sad. And the more she felt sad, the more she retreated to her room.
Rosie knew Rex was right. She needed help. She needed it if she wanted to survive.
So as she admitted herself to Clareton Rehab Center, she thought about the vicissitudes of her whole life. With those little white pills and everything else. She wanted to rid herself of them.
And in meeting after meeting, counseling session after counseling session, she described how there was so much love and then none of it. So much life and then none of it. How she had already hurt Rex so badly with her ups and downs. How she couldn’t bear the idea of hurting her children with it too. How she couldn’t keep filling up her children with love, and then draining them of it. How she couldn’t keep allowing them to absorb her love. And then her sadness. And then her love again. And then her sadness again. It would hurt them too much.
She explained that she never intended for it to happen that way, but it did. That she saw the future for her children in which she filled them with love, and then wrung them out with sadness over and over and over again. That it was so unfair to them. So, so unfair. Mothers were supposed to mitigate their children’s ups and downs. Not cause them.
She asked, begged, for help getting rid of the ups and downs. But it was right there at Clareton Rehab Center, in meeting after meeting, and counseling session after counseling session, that she realized she would always be this way. She wished she wasn’t but she was.
She wished she hadn’t spent her whole life loving something, and then hating it. Wearing it every Saturday night and then letting it sit in the back of her closet. Eating it every day for lunch and then never again. Going there every afternoon and then, all of a sudden one day, avoiding it entirely. Loving Rex so much, and then withdrawing from him. Filling Willow and Asher with her life, and then wringing them dry.
She wished she had never tried those pills. She wished she had never had those pills again. She wished she’d had the strength to move back to New York. She wished she had never had those pills again. She wished she could resist the temptation to contact the dealer who made it so easy to buy more pills whenever she thought she had resolved to stop. Again and again and again.
Rosie wished she could take her whole life back so that she could be a better mother now.
She wished she could be helped. But all of this was just part of the pattern. A pattern of being away at rehab or stoned behind a locked bedroom door. Over, and over again. A hopeless pattern of up and down and up and down. In and out of pills. In and out of happiness. In and out of rehab.
Her children needed to be loved in a way that was steady. Steady and sustainable. Her children needed to be loved in a way that was better than the way she could love. They needed to be loved by Rex. And Rex alone. She felt an overwhelming certainty that Rex was with Willow and Asher now. Protecting them, caring for them. Bringing them happiness. What a relief it must be for her children to find that peace without her.
Rosie knew she needed to be out of this terrible cycle.
She knew all these things as simple truths.
And so Rosie stood up with more energy, more conviction, than she had stood up with in months. And she walked out of Clareton Rehab Center. And straight back to her bedroom.
38
When Willow and Asher got back from the beach and returned to their mother’s house, it was mostly quiet all the time. Sometimes there was the clanking of spoons in cereal bowls. And sometimes there was Asher accidentally knocking a wave of cookies out of the box. And sometimes there was Willow bracing herself against the wall after a stumble. But it was mostly just quiet.
As Asher played with his action figures underneath the breakfast table, Willow looked around at her quiet world. At the quiet kitchen. The quiet kitchen without her mom in it.
It had never looked messy in here to Willow before, but it did now. The cabinet doors were left open. There were empty cartons on the counters. There was a lazily tied garbage bag tilting over in the middle of the floor. There were stains on the tiles and dirty plates stacked in the sink.
It was all a big mess here.
In the kitchen and everywhere else.
Willow reached into the cookie jar where lunch money was usually kept, but it was empty. So she spread peanut butter and jelly over white bread for both herself and Asher. She wrapped tinfoil around the sandwiches and placed them into brown paper bags. And then called out for Mom.
“Mommy!” Willow shouted from the bottom of the stairs, gently requesting for her mother to come down and bring them to school.
“Moooooommmmyyyy!” Asher joined through a giggle. Asher bounced his knees and hollered from the bottom of the stairs toward the second floor.
But Willow knew her mother wasn’t going to come down.
* * *
“Stay here,” Willow told Asher and walked slowly up the stairs, holding the railing the entire way.
Mom’s door was closed, but Willow turned the knob anyway. The gold handle stayed in place. Again.
“Mommy?” Willow whispered to her mother with her mouth on the door.
She wasn’t sure if the sound would move through it, but she sensed a need for quiet.
“Mommy, are you in there?”
More quiet.
“If you’re there, please come out.”
Willow closed her eyes and willed it to happen. She willed her mother to open the door with her Elton John T-shirt and red lipstick on. Ready for fun. Ready for love. Ready to bring her and her brother to school. Willow willed it with every fiber in her body. She willed it from the bottoms of her unreliable feet to her longest twisting curl.
Willow turned her head to put her ear against the door. And although she heard nothing, she knew her mother was in there. She could feel her breathing. Breathing amongst her tangled sheets.
Willow could have banged on the door or jerked on the knob or yelled louder, but she didn’t. There was a solemnity in the air. A quiet calm. Eye of the storm calm.
Willow turned around, went downstairs, grabbed her brother’s hand, and they walked to school.
39
Rosie heard her daughter’s jagged footsteps approaching her door. “Mommy,” Willow whispered innocently.
“Mommy, are you in there?” she heard her daughter say, but Rosie couldn’t bring herself to respond.
“If you’re there, please come out,” Willow continued so gently.
It was breaking Rosie’s heart picturing Willow outside her locked door in her purple leggings. It twisted her insides picturing Willow with her ear against the door with her wild hair and backpack full of CDs. It suffocated her heart picturing Asher downstairs bouncing up and down with his backpack already on.
But still, Rosie remained immobile. Immobile and entwined in the sheets of her bed. She lay still in her bed until she heard her daughter shuffle away.
When Rosie heard the front door squeak closed behind her children, she felt ready for the pain of her failure as a mother to stop.
She felt ready to give Willow and Asher the steady, better love they deserved. The good, whole, love she knew Rex could give to them. Be
cause Rex was smart and true and kind when it mattered. He was disciplined and determined. He was thoughtful and willing. And he was all of those things all the time.
Rosie knew she had stolen his children’s love with her candy and effervescence. With her singing and splatter paint. But she wanted to give it back. She wanted to give it back to the man who could love his children the way they needed to be loved. Wholly and steadily. Responsibly and with stability.
Rosie grabbed a purple pen from next to her and in neat rounded cursive, Rosie wrote a note for the three people in the world she loved most.
My Willow. My Asher. And also my Rex.
I love you oodles and oodles and noodle poodles.
I am sorry for all of it.
—Mom
And with this note resting on her bedside table, Rosie let an avalanche of pills slide from her hand into her mouth.
She swallowed the pills—and then they swallowed her.
* * *
There was a moment of calm before all her muscles contracted.
Rosie let out a delicate gasp that no one was there to hear.
And she did it as all the love in her heart—past and present—released into the universe.
40
After school, Willow and Asher waited and waited for their mother on the curb of the pickup circle. Again. Willow did her word searches and Asher hopped around the pavement trying not to touch any cracks. Again.
Aside from the sporadic squeak of Asher’s shoes against the blacktop, the school had already gone quiet for almost an hour when Rex pulled up in his sleek, black car. Again.
A sense of fear bubbled up in Willow. Her body still tensed at the sight of her father’s car. At the thought of being forced into it. At the image of her mother running hopelessly down the street behind it. How it had been so hard to breathe in that car. With her seat belt pressing against her chest and her heart twisting behind ribs and her lungs trying to keep up with her tears.
Rosie Coloured Glasses Page 18