Hugo & Rose

by Bridget Foley

  Sleep was her escape. Sleep and Hugo.

  The island was vivid as ever. Even more so compared with the washed-out world her reality had become.

  She would drop the boys off at day care and rush home to sleep in her queen-sized bed, Penny snoozing by her side.

  She resented every time the baby pulled her out of the dream. Every dirty diaper, every little wail for attention.

  One night Josh discovered Rose sobbing uncontrollably during a feeding.

  “I can’t do this,” she cried. “It’s too much.” Josh looked at the little person sucking hungrily at Rose. There was something frightening and hollow about his wife’s eyes in that moment. The edge of a void.

  He took Penny from Rose’s arms and sent her to bed. That night he made a few phone calls, got a few recommendations.

  The next day Rose met Naomi.

  It was Josh who asked Rose to call Naomi by her name. It bothered him when Rose referred to her as her therapist. “Shrink” bothered him even more.

  And as for referring to Naomi as her “doctor” … well, everybody knows psychiatrists aren’t real doctors.

  At least, not the way he was a real doctor.

  But Naomi had been selected specifically for her “doctorness.” Josh had picked a psychiatrist so that she could quickly and chemically fix his broken wife. No waiting for a referral. A prescription to get Rose going, talk therapy to keep her moving.

  But Rose had resisted the offered drugs.

  She was nursing, she said. She worried about what might pass to the baby. How it could affect her still-wrinkling brain.

  But she was glad to go to the appointments. The appointments meant she could justify a babysitter. The appointments meant she could buy two hours of freedom from her never-ending obligation to her family.

  And so, Rose talked herself better.

  Marginally better, but better. Better enough to activate a dormant love for her newborn daughter. Better enough to be able to smile when the occasion called for it. Better enough to get by. Better enough for Josh.

  Still, as she listened to herself talk, it drove her mad how cliché her life was. The things that she struggled with were nothing compared with the real problems other people had.

  “What are ‘real’ problems?” Naomi would ask.

  “You know what I mean.”

  “But what comes to mind? I’m sure you’re thinking of something when you say that.”

  Images flew through Rose’s mind. Foreclosure signs. A man with a sign by the highway. The hungry African children in those late-night commercials. She shook her head. Even her ideas of real problems were cliché.

  “There’s a woman at the boys’ school. Another mom. She just got implants.”

  Naomi laughed. “Okay…”

  “I mean, her boobs are huge. So fake. And there’re always just out there. Like she wants you to look.”

  “That’s possible.”

  “It’s just she got them to save her marriage. But then she made a joke about the fact that if her husband left her, at least her new boobs were one thing he couldn’t get fifty percent of.”

  “She said that?”

  “That’s the thing—I don’t even know this woman. I’ve just seen her in the parking lot. It was another mother who told me she said that stuff.… People are talking about her, making jokes about her marriage. Thinking about her sex life. It’s possible none of this is true, I wouldn’t know.”

  “So this woman, she’s who you think of when you think of someone with real problems?”

  Rose shrugged. “They seem more real than my problems.”

  Rose also told Naomi about Hugo and the island.

  Naomi was intrigued. She encouraged Rose to talk more about them. Her adventures with Hugo, the same tales that enraptured the boys, seemed stale and immature in Naomi’s clean, dark office.

  And she sensed that Naomi didn’t believe her. Naomi would call the dreams “fantasies” and ask Rose what she thought they meant.

  “I don’t think they mean anything. They’re just dreams.”

  Which is what Rose said but was in truth not what she believed. Her time with Hugo meant a great deal, but it didn’t represent anything. It just … was.

  Besides, she was happy with her dreams.

  It was her life she didn’t like.

  five

  Rose hated soccer.

  The boys had been dutifully enrolled in a mini-league when Isaac turned four. Rose, as always, had done her research, questioning other mothers about which association was best—as if “best” could be used to describe anything that involved a passel of preschoolers clumping around a ball and aiming kicks at one another’s shins.

  But of course the other mothers had a great deal to say about which league was best. Some leagues were noncompete, all games ending in a tie—while others sidelined the less athletically talented children, refusing to guarantee time on the field. One association’s head coach was said to hit on the players’ mothers, while another’s was suspected to be gay, not that there was anything wrong with that, but, you know …

  Rose didn’t know. But she also didn’t find out.

  She ended up picking the most popular league, which ranged somewhere near the middle on the competitive scale, and at which, so far, she had witnessed no sex occur, heterosexual or otherwise.

  Rose began shuttling the boys to practice in the afternoons and to games on the weekends. As they grew older, entire weekends would revolve around their game schedule since it often happened that if Isaac’s game was on Saturday, then Adam’s would be on Sunday, and vice versa.

  During games, Rose would watch the boys from the sidelines, trying to look interested. Clapping when Isaac made an assist, shouting when Adam blocked a kick.

  But, dear Lord, was it boring.

  So fucking boring!

  And the other parents didn’t seem to think so at all. She felt it was all she could do to smile, and they were screaming at their kids. High-fiving when they scored. So invested in the game, as if there were something actually at stake other than cultivating the competitive spirit in a bunch of five-year-olds.

  What was wrong with them?

  Or better yet, what was wrong with her that she wasn’t feeling “it”?

  Instead she hated the parents who bounced and clapped from the sidelines. And once she connected a child player on the field to his or her screaming, wailing counterpart on the sidelines, she found things to hate about the child as well.

  Sydney, whose mother questioned every decision the referee made, ate her boogers while waiting for the game to resume.

  Cooper, the goalie, had a ratty face. He looked like a smaller version of his father, who clearly viewed his son’s position on the team as equivalent to an NFL draft pick.

  Jaden-with-an-E tripped smaller kids.

  Jaydon-with-an-O didn’t share the ball.

  Emma wasn’t going to be very pretty when she got older. She didn’t look as if she were going to be very bright either.

  Rose would cycle through these judgments, finally turning her eye on her own children.

  She would see them the way she imagined others saw them.

  Isaac’s pretty mouth would sneer when another player stole the ball from him. She could tell when his wheels were turning. His eyes would get that nasty narrow look and Rose knew by the direction in which he stared during the breaks which player he was going to target with an “accidental” blow to the shin. More than once, it was a member of his own team.

  Adam was careless, daydreaming. Other players often had to shout at him to get him to pay attention to the game. More than once he had lost the team goals because he wasn’t attending to the action on the field.

  She could tell by the way the other parents would glance over at her when this happened—Adam was a loser.

  Rose hated herself so much.

  Hated herself for thinking horrible things about children. Hated herself for seeing anything ugly in her ow
n. Hated herself for not being able to truly care whether it was the “Bobcats” or the “Pirates” that won the game, because all she wanted to do was get away from the noise and damp grass and screaming parents, go home, and take a nap.

  * * *

  Hemsford Fields was over an hour’s drive away.

  Though there had been no indication of that on the schedule, which had simply listed it as “Quarter Finals Tournament, Hemsford Fields.”

  Under which someone had typed, “Snack Captain—Isaac A.”

  Rose had been fortunate that she had overheard some players’ mothers complaining about the distance, how much it was going to cost them to get there. “The price of gas nowadays, minivans aren’t cheap.” Singsong voice: “But what’re you gonna do?”

  Rose did the sad calculus of the soccer mom.

  Adam’s first game was at eight thirty, but Isaac’s started at eight. Check-in was at seven thirty for all players. An hour’s drive with an extra fifteen minutes for buffer. And she had to make the snack. Load the kids in the car. Josh was working, so he couldn’t help.…

  Josh was always working.…

  Maybe the boys could sleep in their uniforms.

  Maybe she could shower before she went to bed.

  Maybe tomorrow wouldn’t be miserable.

  * * *

  The boys loved the idea of sleeping in their uniforms, though Rose had drawn the line at shin guards. Too sweaty.

  Isaac watched her face as she was tucking the covers in around his body.

  “Mom, I want a bike for my birthday.”

  It wasn’t a request. It wasn’t really a demand either. It was a simple statement of fact, the kind made by children whose parents make sure Santa Claus brings them everything on their list. His tone was the tone of a boy who simply expected to say what he wanted … and get it.

  “I’ll talk to Dad about it,” Rose said, though she already knew the content of the conversation she would be having with Josh.

  There was no way Isaac was getting a bike.

  * * *

  Do kids even bicycle anymore? thought Rose as she swept up for the night. The dishwasher hummed quietly, belching a chemic-lemon fragrance. I mean, aren’t they all stuck inside on the Internet? Playing video games so child molesters can’t snatch them from their backyards? Isn’t that why they keep saying every other kid has type two diabetes?

  No. Isaac couldn’t have a bike.

  He couldn’t have a bike because to Rose bicycles were so caught up in her mind with “near death” and “brain injury” that the idea of gifting her son one was akin to giving him a death trap.

  The bicycle her parents had given her was gone the day she had returned from the hospital. Rose’s parents, grateful that she had been returned to them, had gotten rid of it. A totem of their misfortune.

  So Rose had quietly passed out of childhood without ever learning how to ride one, a deficit that seemed to matter less and less the older she got.

  Isaac couldn’t have a bike because his mother didn’t know how to ride one. He couldn’t have a bike because she was convinced a bike would take him away from her, carrying his body away from consciousness.

  Rose knew this was irrational.

  Maybe a few more years.… He still seemed so small.

  She hated to disappoint him, but there was nothing for it. Isaac was going to have to want something else. They had time. His birthday wasn’t for weeks. This happened a lot: Isaac and Adam would decide that they needed something desperately, begging for it for days, until some new thing caught their attention and they began to insist they couldn’t live without that.

  Oh, God, Adam. She hadn’t even thought of him.

  If Isaac got a bike, Adam would want one. He would insist on one, and sibling parity was not something either of them let drop. If Adam got a lolly, Isaac squawked until he had one, too. It was just how they were.

  Rose supposed that was her fault. She had made them that way. When they were young they were so close together that it was just easier to bring two of everything; if one asked for juice, she’d fetch a second for the other. If one got a Tonka, she put a second in the other’s hand.

  For a moment, Rose fought with the image of both the boys’ bodies lying on the pavement, their heads sporting identical cracks, leaking identical trails of blood and brain.

  No. There was no way Isaac could have a bike.

  * * *

  Josh shouted when he came in, “Guys! I’m home!”

  Rose ran heel-toe to the foyer, arms waving. “Are you crazy!” she hissed.

  “But, it’s nine thirty.”

  “Exactly.”

  Rose receded to the kitchen. Josh followed, his eyes trailing up the stairs toward his sleeping progeny.

  “I thought you let them stay up on Fridays.”

  “Tournament tomorrow. Hemsford.”

  Josh made a face. “That’s a hike.”

  “I have to get them up at six. It’s not going to be pretty.”

  Josh quirked his mouth. A day in the sunshine watching his boys, talking to other dads. Seeing families be people and not next of kin. Sounded pretty great. “I wish I could go with you.”

  Rose pursed her lips. Thought, Me too.

  But she didn’t say it.

  She didn’t need to. There were a lot of things Josh and Rose didn’t say to each other now. There was no reason. They both already knew the stifled complaints. He was never home. She was never interested. He was lonely. She was resentful.

  Why talk about things they didn’t have the energy to change? Someday it would, but not now. Right now it was better just to accept that the best their marriage could do was keep its head above the swells. Tread water and wait for the waves to carry it closer to shore.

  Rose changed the subject. “Just in case Isaac tries to divide and conquer, he asked for a bicycle for his birthday.… It’s not…” She trailed off, correcting, “Just don’t get suckered into promising anything.”

  “He’s gonna be eight, Rosie.”

  “If he gets one, Adam will start and I don’t—”

  “I see injuries all day and I think you’re making more of this—”

  Rose closed her eyes to him. Buried her face in her hands.

  Her husband stopped talking. Stared at his wife. It was quiet for a moment as they both gauged the things they didn’t want to say.

  The dishwasher shifted cycles, grinding out a new pitch.

  Finally, through her fingers, Rose’s voice emerged. “Can we just … can we just … put a pin in this? All I want is for my day to end.”

  Josh nodded. It was a pass. A near miss of a disagreement. “Yep. Sure. Got it.”

  Ten minutes later, Josh was deep into the DVR’s cache of SportsCenter and Rose was on her way to the island. They did not forget to kiss each other good night.

  * * *

  Their lives would have been simpler had Josh and Rose stopped loving each other. Or if their love had faded into the background, like so many other relationships—a remnant of the past, the reason for the present.

  But Josh and Rose loved each other with a depth and breadth that surpassed the love they had before their children were born. To an outsider, witness to the facts of their marriage—the lack of sex, the disagreements, the absenteeism—this might not be obvious, but their love evidenced in the smaller truths that built the facts.

  On most nights, almost without fail, after the kids were tucked into bed, Rose would catch Josh scrolling through his cell phone, scanning their retirement portfolio. It was a ritual that seemed to soothe him, so it never bothered Rose. It wasn’t an act of greed, an obsessive concern over the accumulation of money.

  Rose knew that, for Josh, it was an act of romance.

  It was not numbers he saw in those expanding and contracting accounts, but a life lived with her. In them he saw the boys grown into men, Penny blooming into a younger version of his wife. The house they would one day be able to live in, the vacations they wou
ld one day be able to take. He saw Rose happy. He saw Rose relaxed, because there was finally enough of what they did not have now—money and time together.

  Rose understood the numbers and columns were an affirmation to Josh that now was not all there would ever be. He would be reassured, as he pushed through long and difficult shifts, that there was a reason for all of it. Someday things would be different.

  Josh’s love for her shone through in his words and actions. It was there in his smile, when she’d catch him looking at her across the dinner table. It was in his eyes as they made love—his eyes, always open, always full of love and hope. His eyes, always on hers.

  And it was this certitude, this intensity of his love, that worried her. It was the root of her avoidance, that even the slightest physical contact could lead to the intimacy he craved. Rose often worried he’d interpret her distance as a loss of affection. But the truth was far more complicated.

  * * *

  New lovers become old lovers. Their ways become practiced. In time they come to see less of each other, their minds wandering while their bodies couple.

  But Josh had never stopped seeing Rose. He made love to her in the same way he had when their love was fresh—more practiced than he was then, an expert now in her body, but still the entire world eclipsed by her. Looking at her. Smelling her. Being with her.

  Rose never wondered if he was thinking of someone else while they had sex … his eyes were wide and clear and hungry. There was no escaping them.

  But Rose was terrified of being seen.

  Josh had barely changed, but she had dissolved into a frumpy housewife, overweight, overtired. Sexless where she had once been sexy.

  Each time they made love she thought surely this time he would finally realize she wasn’t worthy of his worship. Surely, this time, he would realize he could find someone more beautiful to give his soul to.

  Rose ached at the thought. She could not lose Josh.

  But she also knew that she risked his loss by not letting him make love to her. So she parsed out sex to her husband, rationing it like a finite resource.