They always did improve, of course, only to be quickly followed by some new curveball, some new challenge to my sanity. I made it through, though, in the hurtling way that the first year happens. It often felt like each day was a week long, and each week happened in the moment of a day.
And when she was eleven months old, she came down with an awful case of croup. Her cough sounded like a barking seal, and I felt so helpless as I watched her struggle for breath, her face red and her eyes watery. She was old enough to understand that she was sick, but not old enough to know that she needed to rest. So she would cruise around, holding on to the furniture, wheezing and coughing, frustrated that she couldn’t do the things that she always did, like push her walker around on the wood floor and hide underneath the kitchen table.
“Is the monitor turned all the way up?” I said to Matt that Saturday morning as we sat on the couch, cups of coffee and folded newspapers between us. Abby was down for her morning nap, something that she was slowly transitioning out of, but for that morning, we had an hour of quiet.
He didn’t look up from the paper. “Yes, Alex. Just relax. Our house isn’t that big; we can hear her down the hallway.”
I sat up straighter on the couch, my skin pricking with anger. “I can’t relax. Do you think we should have given her another dose of her antibiotic before we put her down? She’ll be due about halfway through the nap. I don’t want her to get worse. Her cough finally sounded better this morning.” I twisted the gold band on my right hand, a present from Matt after Abby was born, in worry.
“She’ll be fine,” he volleyed back. He took a sip of his coffee and set it back down on the end table as he looked at me. “Everything will be okay, I promise.”
It was something he said to me often, when I was worried about something and allowing it to consume me. When I was upset when the church for our wedding was booked on the date we wanted, he’d said it. When the sellers of our house didn’t accept our initial offer, he’d said it. And when I found out I was pregnant with Abby, far before either of us were ready, he’d written a letter to me and left it on the kitchen island. It ended with those words: Everything will be okay. I promise. I saved the letter in an old shoe box in my closet, and pulled it out throughout my pregnancy whenever I started to feel stressed or anxious.
Yet, after Abby was born, the words didn’t have the same impact on me anymore. I had ignored them and glanced out the window at the backyard. The spring weather was just beginning to turn warm, and I could see tulip shoots and other greenery emerging from the perennial beds in the back. We’d bought the house in the middle of winter, when the backyard was covered in snow, so when it all melted in the spring, I was surprised to discover the backyard wasn’t the expanse of green grass like I’d thought. Rather, it was separated by giant perennial beds that required more weeding and attention than I was prepared to give them.
I had wanted to rip them out and plant grass, so we could eventually get a swing set for Abby, but I didn’t have the energy when I was pregnant. And I never could find the time after she was born, despite spending many hours sitting on the couch nursing her, staring at those awful, weed-filled flower beds. Matt, of course, didn’t have the time or the desire to work on them. “Just hire someone,” he told me. Even that seemed monumental, so the weeds and flowers remained, with more weeds overtaking the beauty each year, until that year, when it was just a mess of undesirable plants fighting with each other and choking off sunlight and oxygen to everything else.
I sighed deeply, craning my head into the kitchen to glance at the time and calculate when I could give her the medicine. He looked up and put a hand on my foot, lightly pressing down. “I promise.” He smiled, that same big smile that I’d fallen in love with so long ago. “You worry too much. About everything. Just relax.” He traced a finger on my foot, tickling it.
I jerked my foot back reflexively. “I’ll try.”
“I bet I can help,” he said. He put the newspaper down and leaned forward toward me on the couch, putting a hand on either side of my waist. He kissed my neck and I flinched.
“No, we can’t.” I glanced at the monitor, squinting to make sure that the green light that flickered when she cried was shining steadily. Even though the monitor picked up every sound, even movement at times, I was always afraid it would malfunction and she would be crying hysterically in her bed while I sat downstairs.
He sat back and ran a hand through his hair, his mouth turned down in disappointment. “She’s asleep.”
“Yeah, but her nap might be short,” I said. “She’s sick, we should think of her. If she woke up in the middle of it, I would be scarred for life.”
I backed away, perfectly aware of how ridiculous, lame, and manipulative my reasons were, when I was really thinking of how I still needed to lose five pounds around my mushy stomach from the pregnancy, how my legs weren’t shaved, how I was wearing old underwear and an unflattering bra. And how it all seemed like an intrusion. Unplanned. Sex and intimacy in those days felt like one more thing I would have to do, Matt just one more person to make happy. Sex, one more item to check off the to-do list of things I was supposed to accomplish each day.
He laughed, still undeterred. “All we do is think of her. I want to think of you for a while. Or not think at all.”
I shook my head, and he began to slowly back away. I saw the rejection in his eyes, and I immediately felt guilty. We were married. We were supposed to be intimate, be close. But then I became annoyed that I felt guilty—didn’t I do enough for everyone already? It was an awful, self-perpetuating cycle of negativity that I couldn’t figure out how to stop. The worst part of it was that I was aware of all of it—that I was being ridiculous, insensitive, distant, angry.
“Later tonight. After she’s in bed,” I promised him with an encouraging smile and a quick nod.
He forced a smile, moving his eyes back to the newspaper. “Okay. Later, then.”
But, of course, there was no later. Abby wouldn’t go to bed easily, and it was after eleven when she finally fell asleep and I closed the door to her bedroom for good. By that time, Matt was asleep on the couch, his laptop on his lap and his fingers still poised on the keyboard. I woke him, but all he did was grunt, close the computer, and curl up on the couch with a blanket. I slept alone in our bed that night, as I had been doing more and more often. He would work late and I would go to bed right after Abby. He would fall asleep on the couch and not wake up until morning. I began to enjoy having the queen-sized bed to myself, so that when he did come in, it felt unwelcome. I didn’t sleep well when he was next to me, and I would wake up those mornings crabby and exhausted. He would be tired, too, from me elbowing him all night to stop snoring, turn over, move back. Sharing a bed became something that we did because it was what we were supposed to do, but it got to a point where it was easier for him to sleep on the couch most nights.
And then, of course, a year later, I never had to share a bed with him again.
CHAPTER 17
“Let’s do this. One . . . two . . .” I didn’t finish before the crew lifted their sledgehammers and began hitting the steel bathtub in the upstairs master bathroom. I quickly stepped back as they pounded away at the old tub, breaking it into small pieces so that they could haul it away to the Dumpster outside. Pieces of porcelain sprayed through the air, until finally the tub was completely broken apart on the cracked porcelain tile, ready for the trash.
The tub was powder blue, installed back in the 1970s, when colored fixtures were all the rage, and it hadn’t ever been reglazed or, it appeared, recaulked. A black line of mold and mildew ringed the tub where the faux marble walls met the edge. The drain on the bottom was covered in rust and grime, not having seen a sponge or cleaning product in years. There was no saving the hideous fixture, so it had to go.
I stepped back to let Eddie’s crew begin to haul away the tub remnants, but as they worked, I caught a glimpse of the floor underneath. I asked the crew to brush aside som
e of the pieces and stared at the floor. It was soft and black, rotting away from what appeared to be years of moisture.
“What the . . .” I grabbed a sledgehammer, turned it around, and poked the end of the handle at the soft wood. My stomach dropped as the end of it easily sank into the floor.
“It must have been leaking for years,” I muttered as I lightly tapped around the floor, feeling the handle sink in the same soft wood. I stood and slowly backed away from the exposed flooring. “Everybody, out of the bathroom,” I said before I ran downstairs.
I found Eddie in the kitchen, breaking down what was left of the kitchen cabinets. He dropped a piece of painted plastic wood when he saw my face.
“What now?”
“Floor under the upstairs tub is rotted through. Like, whipped-cream-foundation rotted through,” I said.
His face took on what I imagined to be an equally nauseated look, and we went to the dining room to locate the spot in the ceiling under the bathroom. He paused and looked at me.
“We have to. Go for it,” I said before he grabbed a ladder and cut into the ceiling.
Bits of plaster and dust rained down into the dining room as Eddie carefully tore away at the ceiling. He stopped suddenly and whistled before he grabbed a penlight out of his pocket and shone the light upward.
“Oh, no. What?” I said. I tried to peer up the ladder, but the ceiling was a black hole and I couldn’t see anything.
He looked at me, his face pale. “The water rotted through the floor joist. Like, completely.” He pulled a penknife out of his belt and poked upward. He shook his head. “Yup. It’s almost completely gone.” He cupped a hand around his mouth. “Everyone better be out of that bathroom, unless they have a death wish.”
“So, what do we need to do? Brace the beam?” I said when he climbed down.
He shook his head. “It’s too far gone. We have to replace the whole floor joist.”
“Which means opening up this whole ceiling, bracing the floor from underneath, and installing new supports.” I swallowed hard as I looked up at the ceiling, realizing that would set us back another day . . . and more dollars. I took a deep breath. “Okay. At least we discovered the problem.”
“You’re not kidding. That wood has only a couple of inches of support left. If you had left the tub, and just reglazed it or tried to cut corners, it would have fallen through to right here.” He pointed to a corner of the room. “Hopefully without someone in it.”
I thought of how many times Abby had been upstairs, wandering around in the rooms, imagining she was a ballerina twirling around on the wood floors. If she had set one foot in that tub, it might have fallen through the floor. I again wondered how one house could have so many dangers. “Are all the other joists sound?” I asked.
“As far as I can tell,” he said. He looked upward again, and shook his head, before he clapped a hand on my back. “And the fun continues.”
* * *
“Lo mein or fried rice?” Traci asked with a sweep of her hand across the white Chinese take-out containers spread out on her kitchen counter.
“Both. Why choose?” I said as I heaped my plate full of MSG and sodium. I stopped and stretched a hand in front of me. “My fingers are already swollen from sanding down the walls, why not make it worse?”
She grabbed two beers from the fridge and carefully balanced them in one hand and a plate full of food in the other, as we walked into her family room and settled on the couch. Her family room was comfortable, covered in dark wood paneling left over from the 1970s, and brown and cream plaid couches that swallowed whoever dared to sit down. The carpeting was a light tan shag that looked like the strings of a mop.
“Sorry the place is a mess. Jason isn’t the greatest about having Chris clean up after himself, and I was too exhausted after work on Friday to put everything away,” she said as she surveyed the books, papers, various electronic devices, and maps that were scattered all over the family room. Traci’s husband, Jason, was a police officer, and he often took the overnight shift while Traci worked during the day so someone could always be around for Chris. She said that most days they were like ships passing in the morning, tagging each other in the endless rotation of looking after Chris and working.
“This is nothing. Come to my house, and then an apology will really be called for.” I laughed, although it wasn’t true at that moment. I had spent the night furiously cleaning the house in an effort to dull the ache of not being able to comfort Abby while she was sick. According to a text I got from Matt that morning, Abby was doing better, but I still felt like a failure for not realizing that she was getting sick when I’d dropped her off. That, coupled with the unknown bathtub safety issue, made me feel like the worst mother in the world.
“So. Gavin?” Traci said as she bit into an egg roll and wiped the grease from it off her chin.
I twirled a lo mein noodle around my fork. “He’s nice. Really sweet, and we had a good time. We’re going to have dinner again soon, I think.”
She dropped her egg roll on her plate. “What? I didn’t realize you guys had already met. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I knew you would be really excited, and would make me more nervous about the whole thing. I figured I would scope out the situation first for myself and then let you know how it went,” I said before I stuffed a pile of noodles into my mouth.
“What’s there to be nervous about? He’s a cutie, and you deserve to have some fun. Finally. For the love of God, have some fun,” she said.
“True, but for starters, he’s almost too cute. Like, out-of-my-league cute,” I said. “And young. And nice. And I’m painfully rusty at all of this.”
“No, you—” she began to say when her son’s voice came down the hall.
“Hey, Mom,” Chris said. “I can have dinner?” Chris appeared in the family room, and I was once again struck at how handsome he was, and how typical he seemed at first glance. A blessing and a curse, Traci often said. He was an eighteen-year-old boy, with broad shoulders and long limbs and hair that flopped over the center of his forehead. After the first few moments of seeing him, however, a person might notice that he stood with a somewhat awkward stance and that his face rarely changed expression.
She nodded. “Sure. It’s in the kitchen. I got you plain white rice and sweet and sour chicken.” He opened his mouth, and she quickly added, “Without any pineapple or green peppers.”
He turned to leave, without looking in my direction, and she said, “Did you say hi to Alex?”
His eyes flickered toward me, and he gave me a wave. “Hi, Alex.” His voice was even-toned, and without inflection—like always—and he looked at his mom for dismissal.
“Hey, Chris! I love your shirt,” I said, pointing to the Chicago Blackhawks logo.
“They won last week,” he said. “How many goals did Jonathan Toews score?”
“Oh, I’m not sure. I didn’t watch the—” I started to say when Traci interrupted me.
“You know, Chris,” she said. “Just tell her.”
“Three! He scored three goals!” His eyes grew wide, alive, and twinkled with excitement as he hopped up and down. “Do you like the Blackhawks?”
I laughed. “I do. They’re a great team.”
He took a step toward me, engaged. Wanting to engage. “Do you live on Lawn Avenue?”
Traci held up three fingers. “Three questions, like we talked about,” she said to Chris, and then gave me an apologetic smile.
“He can ask me whatever he wants,” I said. “Yes, I do,” I said to Chris.
He jumped up and down again, before he stopped and pointed his finger at me. “How many televisions do you have?”
I cocked my head to the side. “Two, I think.”
“One more question,” Traci said.
His eyes shifted around the room as he rocked back and forth on his toes. “Okay. Are you fixing up a house that is old?”
I answered yes, and he hopped up and down ag
ain.
“Is it really, really old and have a lot of things that are broken? Maybe I should come see it sometime,” he said.
“I’d love that.” I smiled. “If you want some work to do, there’s plenty of it at the house.”
He opened his mouth to ask more questions, but then looked at Traci, who shook her head.
“Go grab some dinner,” she said.
He turned and walked out of the room, toward the kitchen, on his toes. “I’m gonna grab some dinner now,” he whispered to himself as he left. “And then I’m gonna go back to my room.”
“Like I said, I would be happy to talk to him,” I whispered.
Traci smiled as she stared at her plate of food. “Yes, but it can get intense. We’re working on the three-question rule. At least he’s happy today.”
I nodded. “He seems happy. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him so excited.” There had been more than one time when I’d gone over to Traci’s house when Chris was having a tougher time. I had seen him drop to the floor and cry, whine and hop up and down, and shake in frustration. All, typically, over things such as running out of orange juice, not being able to find one of his rocks in his room, or having difficulty tying his shoes.
“Today is a good day. Who knows what tomorrow will be like?” she said. “Or next week.” She cocked her head to the side and set down her food. “Speaking of which, can you believe he’ll be eighteen next week?”
“No. How is that even possible?” I shook my head.
She stood up and walked into the kitchen, reappearing with a stack of papers. She held them in front of me and sighed. The top read Application for Guardianship.
“I get to go to court next week and submit this application to basically take away all of his adult rights.” The papers in her hand twitched.
“Meaning, what?” I frowned.
“Meaning he will stay a child legally. Jason and I will be responsible for, and in charge of, all of his legal, financial, and medical decisions. We already are now, really, so that will just continue,” she said. She walked back to the couch and sat down, placing the papers carefully on the end table. “I love how there’s a section for ‘standby guardian’—someone who gets to take over in case Jason or I kick the bucket.” She took a long sip of her beer before she smiled. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to be such a Debbie Downer.”
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