Missing Parts

by Lucinda Berry

  “How do you do it?” Robin had asked me countless times over the years. She and Trey got into terrible screaming matches on a regular basis. They had the kind of fights where you were embarrassed to look your neighbors in the eye the next day.

  I’d shrug my shoulders and say, “No idea. We’re just lucky, I guess.”

  I couldn’t take credit for our peace. David was the one who kept us grounded. He always had. Unlike me, he hated to get worked up over anything and stayed calm no matter what. I lost it when things didn’t go my way or according to plans even though I did my best to hide any form of emotional upset from other people because I hated anyone to see me unraveled.

  We’d met during one of the rare moments where I freaked out in public. I’d walked out of my apartment on my way to interview with a prospective employer and discovered the left rear tire on my white Toyota Corolla was flat. It wasn’t a big deal at first. I took pride in being self-sufficient and never needing a man which meant I knew how to do things like check my oil and change a tire. I put the wrench on the lug nuts and they didn’t move. They refused to budge even when I jumped on the wrench. David happened to be wandering into the parking lot just as I was kicking the tire, swearing, and starting to cry. I hated being late and didn’t want to jeopardize my chance at landing the job I wanted.

  I heard a laugh behind me.

  “Um, you want some help with that?”

  I turned around and didn’t recognize him from the apartment unit. “I don’t need help. I know how to change a tire. The lug nuts are stuck.”

  He nodded at me, but the corners of his mouth were turned up in a half smirk. “Really? That’s weird. Mind if I try?”

  I rolled my eyes at him, disgusted about the flat tire, being late, and insulted he didn’t think I knew what I was doing. “Go right ahead, Mr. Fix It. Knock yourself out.” I stepped aside while he proceeded to do everything I’d just done. He assumed the crouched position next to the tire, gripped the wrench, and attempted to turn it. Nothing. I watched as his forehead lined with exertion as he tried again and again, but the lug nuts still didn’t move. Before long, he was standing on the wrench in the same position he’d found me in and trying to press it down with his weight.

  “I guess you’re right.” He shrugged. “This tire isn’t going to come off.”

  “Shocking,” I said.

  “Do you need a ride?” he asked.

  I was already going to be late and if I took the bus, I’d be even later since I had to go all the way downtown. I sized him up and noticed how good looking he was. He looked like he’d just stepped out of an Abercrombie and Fitch ad except he didn’t smell like the cologne that violently assaulted you each time you walked within a block of the store. He had blond hair, bleached nearly white in some spots and the muscular arms protruding out from his t-shirt were golden brown which meant he spent lots of time outside. His eyes were a crystalline baby blue that stared right through you even behind the black frames of his glasses. His lips were small and turned into a half smile even in resting position. His jeans were slung low on his hips and worn out on the bottoms from dragging on the ground. He wore a pair of Old Navy flip flops. I didn’t know any serial killers who wore Old Navy flip flops.

  “Fine,” I huffed as if he was the one responsible for making the tire flat and ruining my morning.

  He put me at ease as we drove downtown, a task which was almost impossible to do whenever my plans got ruined. I was even smiling and laughing by the time we pulled up in front of the tall office building. He waited for me to finish my interview and then helped me tow my car to the auto mechanic. As it turned out, when I’d gotten new tires a month earlier, the machine they used to put the lug nuts on had malfunctioned and the air pressure got so hot it melted the lug nuts onto my tire. David loved to tell the story of how we met and exaggerated my meltdown a bit more each time he told it because he loved to make people laugh. It was one of the things I’d always loved about him, but his sense of humor faded more and more with each passing day.

  He’d become a person I didn’t recognize ever since Rori was born and his transformation had grown to new heights since she started getting sick. I wasn’t bothered by her recurrent bladder infections because lots of girls got them at her age. Being four meant she was determined to do everything herself. She no longer allowed either of us to help her wipe and I was pretty sure the front-to-back wiping routine we’d drilled into her head before she was even out of diapers was not happening as often as it should. I had a strong feeling wiping amounted to a quick pat or an equally unhygienic game of “let’s explore what’s down there.” It wasn’t nearly as disturbing to me as it was to David that she’d had three bladder infections in the last month and spent all of February on an antibiotic.

  Our first foray into the realm of spousal screaming matches happened after I’d asked him if he was being sensitive to her bladder infections because he was afraid someone might become suspicious of him molesting her.

  “What? What the hell are you saying?” he asked the moment the question had innocently come out of my mouth.

  “Look. I didn’t mean anything by it. I was just saying…. I mean, I’m just asking if it could be possible you’re worried someone might think you’re messing with her and that’s why you’re so upset about it?”

  He narrowed his eyes to slits and shook his head. “That’s sick. Just sick. I can’t even believe you’d bring that up.”

  “You can’t believe I’d bring that up? Really?” I asked.

  David was hypersensitive to anything hinting at sexual abuse because he’d spent most of his late teenage years helping his mother through a nasty legal battle after his stepfather had molested his two half-sisters.

  “I’m disgusted by you.”

  He’d never said anything so derogatory to me before. I waited for him to realize what he’d said and apologize, but he jumped up from the couch, took the stairs two at a time to our bedroom, and slammed the door like a fifteen-year-old girl in the throes of PMS. I sat on the couch stunned. He’d never come close to calling me a name. It took me a few moments to gather my composure, but eventually I followed him upstairs and found him lying on our bed watching Sportscenter on the TV hanging on the wall across from the bed. I took a seat on the edge of the bed hesitantly, smoothing out the wrinkles in our silver comforter.

  “Listen. I’m sorry if I upset you. I didn’t mean anything by it. I thought you might be worried about people thinking that about you and it was why you were so scared. I didn’t realize you were really just that worried about her.”

  He turned his gaze away from the TV and looked me in the eye. “Somebody’s got to worry about her.”

  His words stung. I stood up.

  “Fuck you.” I spit the words out at him and this time, I was the one to turn around and leave.

  I’d spent the night on the couch trying to sleep. We’d never slept apart before. Other couples did it all the time and thought nothing of it. Some even had separate rooms, but we’d always slept together even if we were in an argument. David hated going to bed angry as much as I did. I barely slept because I kept listening for the sound of him coming downstairs to apologize, but he never came.

  It’d been a month since our fight and he still hadn’t apologized. Even though we were sleeping in the same bed again pretending as if it had never happened, his words still hung in the air. Before our fight, there’d been times when he’d indirectly implied I didn’t worry about Rori as much as he did, but he’d never gone so far as to accuse me of not caring about her like he did. He knew how insecure I was about my skills as a mother.

  I’d excelled and been the best at everything I tried right up until the point I started trying to get pregnant. I couldn’t even get pregnant right so it wasn’t a surprise that becoming a mother didn’t come easy either. I was awkward and clumsy from the moment Rori was placed in my arms.

  It became apparent right away that David was a better parent than me. It c
ame naturally to him. While I bumbled and stumbled like I had an extra pair of hands and didn’t know what to do with them, he changed diapers and bounced her to sleep like he’d been doing it his entire life. Holding and soothing her was like a perfectly choreographed dance for the two of them whereas it was a jerky no-rhythm movement for me which only resulted in increasing the intensity of her wails.

  Breastfeeding was a nightmare and never ran smoothly, but I kept at it because it was the best thing for her despite my bloody nipples and her sandpaper tongue. It was the same routine every time. We tried to find a position for her to latch, but could never get it right and she’d grow more and more agitated until she was so worked up she couldn’t eat. She ended up drinking more of my breastmilk from bottles given to her by David than she ever did from my breasts. I’d never felt like such a failure and didn’t know what to do with it.

  My three months of maternity leave were the longest three months I’d ever experienced. Time stood still. The walls of our house grew smaller and smaller every day and there were times I was on the verge of hyperventilating. I hid a brown paper bag behind the medicine cabinet in the bathroom because I was sure I was going to need it and didn’t want David or anyone else to see me do it. It was bad enough that my inadequacies as a mother were on display and I didn’t want to add to my humiliation by hyperventilating in front of someone.

  A few weeks after Rori was born, we decided David was going to be the one to stay home with her. He was convinced she needed to be with one of us during her early years and he’d offered to quit his teaching job at the college to stay home. We talked about it extensively as if there was a real chance I’d be the one to stay home, but we both knew he was the best fit. It wasn’t just because he was better with her than I was. It also made the most sense for us financially. David taught English at a local community college and although he loved it, my salary was more than four times what he made. A year before my maternity leave, I’d become the Chief Operating Officer at the insurance company where I’d worked since college. I was beyond thrilled when it was time for me to go back to work, although I did my best to pretend to be sad about it.

  “Oh, I’m going to miss her so much,” I cooed, looking at her sleeping in her polka-dotted bassinet with her pink puppy resting against her cheek as I got ready to leave for my first day back at work. “She’s just so precious.” I hoped I sounded convincing. The truth was that when she wasn’t screaming she was sleeping and I could only stand around for so long watching somebody else sleep. It was about as enjoyable as watching grass grow.

  “She’s going to miss you, too,” David said, trying equally hard to sound convincing.

  I gave him a quick peck on his lips and then placed a kiss on the top of her head. I grabbed my travel coffee mug and headed out the door. As I closed the door behind me, a huge smile spread across my face. I’d never been so happy to crawl through rush hour traffic. I rolled the windows down and let the cool wind blow against my face, turned the radio up, and sang at the top of my lungs to every song. I could breathe again.

  During the first few weeks back at my office, I pretended to be having a hard time being back because it was what I was supposed to do and how I was supposed to feel. I made a point to show my employees pictures of the two of them on my IPhone whenever they came into my office and made sure I announced how hard it was to be away from her at least once a day. The truth was it felt as if the noose that had been tied around my neck had been released. I felt like myself again for the first time since I’d gotten pregnant as I buried myself in the work that had piled up on my desk since I’d been gone. I dived into huge accounts determined to settle them in our favor.

  David was thrilled to be staying home with Rori and they easily fell into a routine. He’d always been passionate about photography, but teaching hadn’t left him much time to enjoy it. Now he could devote himself to his photography and Rori became his prized subject. He took roll after roll of film and never tired of taking pictures of her. During Rori’s first year, there was rarely a time where you didn’t catch him with a diaper bag and a camera slung over his shoulder.

  He took her to the park almost every day and enrolled her in all the mommy and me classes in our area. He was almost always the only dad in classes, but it never bothered him. He saw Robin more than I did because they took the kids to the same music and story time classes at the library every Monday and Wednesday afternoon.

  People wondered and questioned why he was the one to stay at home and be the primary caretaker while I was the one to go to work. Even though we lived in Los Angeles, people still looked at a dad staying home with a child as being abnormal even though everyone was politically correct enough not to say it. My mother was one of the worst.

  “It’s got to be so hard for you to go to work every day,” she’d say. “I can’t imagine leaving you kids alone with your father while I went to work. It would just feel so weird.”

  But it didn’t feel weird to us. It felt right even if other people didn’t understand it. Once when I was at the park with Rori by myself another mother was bold enough to ask me, “Don’t you feel like he’s doing your job?”

  I’d come home and cried to David. The woman at the park had said out loud what I knew everyone was thinking. He’d assured me again and again that it didn’t matter what other people said about our family. He promised me he was happy in his role and as long as I was happy in my role, then we were doing what worked best for our family.

  “Who cares what people think? We’re doing what’s right for us,” he said and we hadn’t talked about it again. It wasn’t the last time someone made a rude or insensitive comment about it, but we ignored them together. He’d betrayed our agreement during our fight. I was comfortable with strangers thinking I wasn’t a good mother, but I wasn’t okay with my husband thinking it.

  I tucked the blankets up under Rori’s chin a final time and tiptoed into the hallway bathroom. I didn’t use the master bathroom because I didn’t want to take the chance of waking David. He was a sensitive sleeper and if he got woke up after he’d fallen asleep, he had a tough time falling back to sleep. I washed my face and brushed my teeth, hoping I wouldn’t wake up with a headache in the morning from the wine. I undressed quietly and headed into our bedroom. I slipped into my pajamas and crawled into bed next to him. He stirred, opened his eyes to look at me, and then rolled over. I stared at his back wondering how long this phase was going to last.

  Chapter Three

  I was in the middle of writing a report when my cell phone rang. I looked down and saw it was David. I toyed with the idea of letting it go straight to voicemail but decided to pick up since I hadn’t seen him or Rori since yesterday morning. I’d gone straight to my mom’s night out dinner after work and I’d left early this morning before either of them was awake.

  “Hey. I–”

  “Rori threw up. She ate her breakfast and threw up everywhere.”

  I could hear the panic in his voice. David’s only phobia was throwing up. Nobody liked to throw up, but David got anxious watching people throw up on TV. Rori had only had the stomach flu once, and David’s nerves were so bad during it that he ended up making himself sick.

  “How are you doing?” I asked.

  “How am I doing? I’m good,” he said with an edge in his voice.

  “I know how you get. I was just making sure you weren’t freaking out.”

  “I’m freaking out, but not because of myself. I’m worried about her. Why is she throwing up now?”

  “Hon, she has the stomach flu. Kids get the stomach flu all the time. They’re germ magnets. Didn’t you tell me she was playing with a kid at the park the other day that ended up leaving with the nanny because he was sick?”

  “I did, but he had an asthma attack. Totally different deal.”

  “Okay.” I wasn’t sure what he wanted me to do. “Do you want me to come home and help? I can help you.”

  “No,” he snapped.

&nb
sp; I sighed. When had all our conversations become so strained and difficult? Things used to run smoothly between us and now our interactions were filled with tension. It was becoming more and more normal for us and it scared me. What if we never got back to how we used to be together? “What’s she doing now?”

  His voice relaxed a little. “She’s sleeping.”

  “That’s good.”

  “Sure. I’m just really worried about her.”

  “I know you are.” I quickly added, “I am too.”

  “Well, I’ll let you go.”

  “Keep me posted.”

  “Will do. Love you.”

  “You too.”

  As soon as I hung up, the phone rang again. This time, it was Robin and I let it go straight to voicemail. I was sure she was calling to gossip about dinner and let me know what happened with Emma. I’d be happy when flu season was over. Our kids were sick from November until March every year. Thankfully, we only had a month left and the runny noses would dry up for good.

  I stared at the report I’d been working on since I’d gotten into the office but I couldn’t concentrate. I didn’t like David’s underlying resentment toward me. It hovered below the surface despite the smile he put on his face. He hadn’t raised his voice at me again and he was polite toward me, but I sensed him slipping away and felt powerless to do anything about it. It made me second-guess everything I’d done for our family. I’d always imagined having a child would bring us closer together and instead it was ripping us apart. The worst part was there didn’t seem to be anything I could do about it. I didn’t know how to fix it.

  I busied myself with trying to finish the report. Once I finally got myself focused, I quickly tapped it out and moved on to the next one. I was in the middle of the second report when the phone rang. It was David again.