by Annie Ward
I thought of the many days and nights I’d climbed those dingy, meat-scented stairs with a six-pack of Corona and a plastic carton of some horrible pasta salad from the corner deli. Watching box sets of DVDs one after another with my computer sitting on my lap. Never forgetting the birthdays of my friends’ and families’ children because I wanted to be invited around and to have children in my life. Being alone and living with the expectation of long lonely years to come.
I loved him for better or for worse. The tears finally came, and he kissed them away.
He stayed and I was grateful.
MADDIE
Ten days before
Skopie and Sophie are traumatized. On and off for three days it’s as if a train has been rumbling past the house, reminding me of the night the helicopters blanketed the sky in Skopje. Kansas storms are legend and for good reason. They’re some of the most beautiful and terrifying I’ve ever seen. The sky becomes fissured with roping, coiling clouds. Spiraling funnels dip down, and then the electric cracks and booms begin, coming from all directions, shaking the shutters. Our storms throw everything at you; rain, sleet, lightning, wind and swirling black tornado clouds more evil than those over Sauron’s Dark Tower.
It’s stormed for three days, and these little dogs, they can’t stop trembling. They follow me everywhere. If I’m dressing in my closet and Charlie is in the connecting room watching television, they curl up in the piles of clothes that Ian has left on his side. I suppose the underwear, T-shirts and socks must smell comfortingly like Ian. Yesterday Skopie found an especially appealing spot on one of Ian’s favorite fleece camping jackets. Maybe he has been waiting all this time for me to sort through his shit. Iron it, too, no doubt—you know, with all the free time I have when I’m not looking after Charlie. Let his clothes be a dog bed then.
I suppose he’ll be angry when he gets home.
Today, the torrential rains are slowing down. The yard is mud. The ponds are full. The gutters are gushing, but it’s almost over. Skopie and Sophie seem less afraid, and Cami J has agreed to see me today since I canceled yesterday, not wanting to leave the dogs frightened at home alone during the storms.
“Charlie, come get dressed, sugar booger! I’ve got to drop you by Kids Club for a few hours.”
He comes running to me on his slightly bowed legs with his round tummy leading the way. One of the million things I love about having him to myself is that I don’t have to worry about Ian calling him a “Mama’s Boy.” Charlie will run and hug me every time I summon him, as if that’s just what all children do.
As we are backing out of the driveway, I can see that Wayne is in his driveway with his wheelbarrow, contemplating his miniature fortress comprised of fiftysomething bags of mulch. He’s stayed in the last three days of rain, but now he’s back at it. He’s wearing overalls, a baseball cap and work gloves. It occurs to me that I have not seen his wife come or go, nor roll her chair to the window or porch, in a very, very long time.
I stop the car and lower the window. I put on my biggest, friendliest smile. “Hey, Wayne! How’s my favorite neighbor?”
He trots over gleefully. “G’day, you two.” He peeks in my window and grins at Charlie. “And how’s the little cheeky monkey, eh? Y’all right, lad? You been mindin’ yer mum?”
Charlie regards him suspiciously, and I wonder if he can even understand a word Wayne says in his trailer-park English accent.
“We’re fine, Wayne. How’re you and Linda?”
“Linda could be better, but I’m all right. I need to get a new layer of mulch down, though.” He glances toward the weeds that run rampant around our rosebushes and trees. “If you need anything, Maddie, you just call. I can help you with the yard or what have you. You know that, right?”
“I do! Thank you. There is something, actually.”
“What, doll?”
“My dad just called and said there’s another flood warning and asked if my sump pump is working. I don’t know about sump pumps.”
“Oh that’s easy. I’ll come have a look and sort it out sometime this week. Call me.”
“Thank you, Wayne.”
“That’s all right, doll.” He switches back into his accent and removes his cap with a flourish. “Wayne Randall, handyman extraordinaire, at your service, milady.”
* * *
Cami J’s assignments are becoming more focused. Despite her unconventional demeanor and approach, I can see that she is smarter, more perceptive and altogether more demanding than I originally thought. I suppose I should have expected this.
I’m having trouble.
I don’t like this one. I don’t know if I can do this. It’s just that, I really can’t remember.
I put my pen down and look up at Cami J helplessly. “Cami J,” I say. “This is the one subject you keep asking me to work on, and it’s the one that I feel I can’t do and it’s getting frustrating. Like maybe you don’t believe me.”
Cami J is not hiding her irritation very well. It’s been building for a long time, and she wants to know exactly what happened that night in Colorado. “I’m sorry,” she says, obviously exasperated. “Okay. Look. I’m after something here. If you can’t write about it, let’s talk.”
“All right.”
“Tell me about the camping trip. Can you do that?”
“Up until the accident, I guess. Sure.”
“Where did you go?”
“Estes Park. I used to go to a sleepover camp there when I was a teenager, so I knew I really liked it. I chose Jellystone Campground because Charlie’s still so little, and those kinds of places are fun. There are other kids. There’s a pool and miniature golf, normal bathrooms, stuff like that. Ian wanted to go a little more hard core but—”
“When you say hard core, what do you mean?”
We both have a little nervous laugh, but we are not in our safe, naughty humor, everything-is-okay place anymore. Not that kind of hard core. She wants answers.
“Just farther into the woods, away from the RVs and all the people.”
Her mouth drops open for a split second before she snaps it shut. Her eyes are snarky and inquisitive, as if she’d like to ask, So he could punish you for planning to leave him by bashing your head in with a rock with no one around to see?
What she actually says is, “So he could do his whole survivalist thing.”
“So it would be real camping, I guess.”
“But you didn’t know the extent of his obsession with the doomsday prepping until much later. When you found out about the bunker.”
“Yes. But...” I laugh. “I’m not sure I agree with the use of words like obsession and doomsday.”
“You don’t?”
“The more I think about it, the more I realize I should have seen that whole thing coming. A lot was going wrong in the world all of a sudden last year. North Korea, ISIS, Ebola, Syria was getting worse, and Ian was very worried about what NATO’s response would be to Russia going into the Ukraine. He had worries about the looting after Hurricane Katrina. He had his reasons. He believed that World War III was a real possibility. He did what he thought was...was...prudent.”
“Prudent?” Cami J is staring at me.
“Okay, it’s a weird word. Why are you looking at me like that?”
“You’ve never really been willing to talk very openly about your relationship with Ian.”
“Well, he’s been out of the country the entire time I’ve been seeing you, so.”
“How would you characterize it, though?”
“Strained, but functioning. I love him. Obviously I’m upset about the ‘Fiona porn from the past’ but—”
She shoots up from her slouch. “See! It concerns me that you might be trivializing something disturbing by referring to it in that sarcastic way.”
I’m starting to feel defensive and I don’t lik
e it. “Look. He’s a man, and he has some pornography on his computer. Obviously I’m not thrilled about it. But what I’m trying to convey here is that it’s possible I overreacted when I found the wall of water and all the food and supplies. I don’t know. He’s not necessarily a nut job because he has some canned food and water set aside in a corner of the basement.”
I laugh and Cami J does not. She’s playing with her pen. “So you’re good with the bunker now.”
“I’m going to ask Ian about it when he gets home. But I’m better with it now than I was when I found it.”
“So you’re no longer considering leaving with Charlie?”
“It’s something I think about from time to time. That’s all it’s ever been and that’s still where I am.”
“Okay fine. Back to the camping. Do you actually like it?”
“Yes. Ian does it well. It’s almost glamping with him. Our tent is huge and we sleep on cots, and he hangs colored lanterns in the trees. We make a fire and have a nice dinner, and Charlie and I take the dogs on walks. Ian always brings some of those glow-in-the-dark necklaces and torches and the other kids from the campground run around with them. We play music. We drink wine. He’s at his best when he is away from crowds and the hustle bustle. He’s fun.”
“And that’s what you were doing right before you fell. Drinking wine and having fun.”
There is something I don’t like about the way she asks this question. I want my warm and cuddly Cami J back. Today she actually seems angry. Today she won’t stop fucking around with her damn pen and looking at me sideways.
I glance at the clock, and for the first time since I have been coming to see her, I am relieved that my time with Cami J is up. “Gosh,” I say. “That went by fast today.”
“Wait,” she says, as I start to stand. “Can we try something different?”
“Sadly, our time is up.” She blinks and I must admit, I sounded a bit like a game show announcer.
“I’ll be quick. I understand that you can’t write about a frightening accident if you can’t remember it. I’m trying to do something here, Maddie. Trust me. I’m trying to understand how you, as an individual, process a traumatic experience. The more insight I have into your thoughts and feelings when confronted with danger or pain, the better I can address the ensuing anxiety and denial—”
“But what am I denying?” I ask, involuntarily throwing my arms out in exasperation. I hear the unintended confrontation in my own voice.
“Okay.” She uses her open hand to shush me. “Okay. Maybe you aren’t denying anything, and all this anxiety you’re feeling is directly related to the accident and not to your overall circumstances. In that event, what I want you to do will be even more helpful. Listen.”
“I’m listening.”
“If you can’t write about your fall, can you write about another time in your life when you were very scared? When something bad happened and you had to deal with it and then with the aftermath? Could you do that for me?”
“I had that bad boating accident when I was a kid. I’ve mentioned it.”
“That sounds like that would work. I’d like to experience that with you, through your words. What happened before, during and after, and how you felt about it.”
I look at the clock again. “The only problem is, that might take me a while.”
“This is another homework assignment, Maddie. Write about your experience at home and bring it to me next week.”
“Okay,” I say, relieved to be excused, and also relieved at the prospect of finally being forced to write this story. I had been involuntarily reliving it pretty much every day of my entire life.
MADDIE
2011–2012
Ian was nocturnal. It took only that first month of sitting quietly next to me on the futon watching television at low volume all night while I slept for him to insist that we move into a bigger apartment. We packed up my little studio, said goodbye to the pretty, tree-lined, cobblestoned streets of the Village and relocated to a large two-bedroom on the Upper East Side.
Ian liked the wide even streets, tall buildings and clean, cold steel of uptown. The location was close to the school most of my tutoring kids attended, as well as to Hunter College, where I was taking evening classes toward my master’s in education so that I could teach full-time. Ian was happy that I would no longer be traveling by subway, which he had flatly refused to ever enter for any reason.
I missed the Village, but the new apartment was spacious, bright and even had a kitchen. And, yes, Ian was paying for it. He could stay up at night in the living room and drink, smoke and laugh out loud at the ongoing chat with his brothers back home and his World of Warcraft guild, and I could sleep peacefully in a quiet, dark room of my own. Though I wished he would come to bed with me, I understood that I was working and he was not. Ian was essentially on vacation, and it wasn’t as if I could bug him to get out and find a job. He took care of everything. He provided all that I could possibly want without lifting a finger. I sometimes had to remind myself that he had made enormous sacrifices for the comfortable life that he enabled us to lead.
I adored him, as damaged as he was. I found him all the more fascinating for the chunks that had been torn out of him. I told myself that even if I could never change him, I would never abandon him.
* * *
Ian had been going home for a week or two every ninety days to keep his visa legal. He’d been with me in the States for over a year, and he was due for his fifth visit to England. He made arrangements to split his time between brothers and sisters in Birkenhead for two weeks. He promised to call me every night.
Ten days into his absence, I woke up and saw that it was three o’clock in the morning. I’d been expecting his call five hours earlier.
That night I tossed and turned with a pit in my stomach. Early Saturday morning when he still hadn’t called I decided to track him down. I knew that he’d gone to the horse races in Chester with some of his brothers and brothers-in-law, and I decided that Robbie was the most likely to answer my questions truthfully if I were able to get ahold of him.
“Alo?” Robbie was a prison guard at one of the worst jails in Northern England, and he had a Scouse accent that I could not always understand.
“Robbie, it’s Madeline.”
“Ah, love,” he said, and it was as though he’d already told me the whole story. Whatever it was, it was bad.
“So? Has something happened with Ian?”
“Yeah, love, he’s okay, but he’s been arrested and is in the nick overnight. I would’ve rung you, but I thought it was the middle of the night over there. Listen. There was a bit of trouble after the race.”
“Oh no.” My stomach cramped.
“It wasn’t our Ian’s fault. All the streets in Chester town center were closed down to cars after the race, and the bunch of us were just walking around and hitting the pubs. Anyway, like I said, the streets were closed down to cars, but all of a sudden some git comes up behind us and revs his engine. So we ignore him, Ian, Barry, our Chris and I do. And the next thing you know he bumped us.”
That was all I needed to know. For over a year I had seen the effect the city had on Ian. He recoiled from the horns, the sirens and the blinking lights. He tried to stay away from the crowds, and he did his best to stay out of trouble. He knew he was volatile, and he wanted to be careful to keep himself under control. He tried to be responsible. I could only imagine what dark fury had passed through his body when he heard the car’s revving engine behind him.
“What did he do?”
Robbie laughed. “Shat his pants like the rest of us. But then Ian walked over to the driver’s window and put his fist straight through it.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No. Safety glass it was. If I’d not seen it I’d have said it was impossible. And there he was reaching through all tha
t broken glass for the guy’s neck when all of a sudden he just pulled his hand out and walked over to a police officer and turned himself in.”
“Is he okay?”
“Yes, love, he’s fine. A few stitches. The only thing he’s worried about now is if this is going to keep him from coming back to you. He doesn’t know how he let such a stupid thing happen. Ah, love, he’s miserable, he is. Awful sorry, love.”
Ian was in the nick. Cute word, nick. I call it jail. My boyfriend was in jail.
Because Ian turned himself in, paid immediately and in full for the damage to the driver’s window, and made a counter complaint against the driver, the charges against him were eventually dropped.
* * *
A week later, the night before his flight back to New York, he was unusually cheerful when he called. He said to me, “This has been a wake-up call. I realize it, Maddie. I’ve got to calm down, sort myself out and cut back on the drinking. Yeah?”
“I’m on board with that.”
“I thought for a second I might not be able to return to you. Depending on if they charged me and with what, it might have been bad, but we’re okay. It made me realize that losing you would be the stupidest thing I could ever do. You’ve saved my life, Petal. I don’t know where I’d be without you.”
This was all very nice, but he was the one into saving lives, not me. I didn’t say this, but apparently I didn’t have to.
“And to prove to you that I’m not going to be a pain in the bum anymore, I think we should take a little trip.”