“Not now, Gigi.” It comes out sterner than he meant it to. Or not.
Another long silence while he tries to figure out how to feed himself. Sliding off the cardboard sleeve, poking holes in the plastic film, saying without words that he’s annoyed that, once again, nothing was prepared for his arrival. That he’s worked all day and traveled and what is it that I do all day? I can hear him thinking it, What does she do all day? as he flips over the cardboard sleeve to check the temperatures again.
I pretend not to notice. Change the subject. I need therapy, I’m struggling, the doctor gave me a prescription for drugs weeks ago and maybe I should take them but I say, “I have to pay for Johnny’s cricket membership.”
“Fine.” Harry holds the cardboard sleeve close to his face to decode the instructions.
“Also the bill for the dentist,” I say, finding it hard to stay composed. I can’t stand this. He’s a fucking grown man and he has to make a show of how he’s “making dinner.”
“OK, I’ll transfer some money to the house account.”
“There’s the card for your aunt on the table to sign.”
“OK.” Because I do that too now. Remember his fucking shit for his fucking family. Even though that aunt calls me Georgina because Gigi isn’t a “proper name.”
He flounders around the kitchen looking for a, “Baking tray? What’s a baking tray? Do we have one? It says put on a baking tray.”
He wants me to do it. Find the baking tray, make the food, be the wife. Let him focus on his one very important task, his one thing, his work. He’s too important to heat up this ready meal because he works. He’s forgotten I have a job, that I know what it means to work. That when I did my work I came home and did all the home stuff too. I didn’t make anywhere near the same money as him but dammit if I didn’t work as hard at both my jobs.
“There’s a baking tray in the bottom drawer. Johnny has a game, I mean a cricket match, on Saturday. Can you take him?” Because I can’t. Can you take the baby too? Can someone take the baby because maybe if you took the baby for a day—
“OK, where is it?” He’s half shouting.
“Surbiton.”
“No, the baking tray.”
“The bottom drawer.” Please, just for that one day, because if I can get to Saturday and he just takes the—
“I’m in the bottom drawer, I can’t find it.”
“It’s there.”
“Where?”
“Well, ordinarily, if something’s not right on top you might find that using your hands to move other things out of the way may help you to find it. That’s called ‘looking for something.’ You live here, you should find out where we keep shit.”
It goes on and I let it. The fruitless search for the hidden pot holders, the camouflaged serving spoon, the missing condiments that are visible only to women. There’s an implicit meaning in every clang of a pan, pans that should not even be clanging because he’s making a fucking frozen dinner.
Twenty minutes of silence while I sort the laundry mindlessly and he checks the window of the oven compulsively so he doesn’t burn his food. He finally sits down to eat. Alone. He opens his laptop to read the news. Then, “I’m out tomorrow night and the night after.”
“But you just got home.”
“It’s part of my job, you know that.”
“Lucky you.” I leave him to his pasta and load the washer and try to figure out how this went wrong. How I went from needing him to hating him so fast. How I went from wanting to tell him everything to saying nothing.
“I’m going to bed. I’ll be in the guestroom.”
“I just got home, as you said, but of course you will,” he says to his screen, winding spaghetti absent-mindedly on the fork.
I stop in my tracks and say, with my back to him, my head bowed, “Why should I go up and down stairs all night when I can just sleep near them?”
“It’s fine, I understand, you just haven’t slept in our room for I don’t know how long.”
“And you haven’t gotten up in the night for I don’t know how long either.”
“I have a deal on. I have work. It’d be nice if you would acknowledge me and what I do for this family. It would be nice to have some support sometimes.” It’d be nice, Gigi, if you could just have sex with me when I want it and make fucking dinner and not be mentally ill or make me dread coming home every night to listen to you complain about the life I’ve made for us. There’s a silence and then he says it again, “It would be nice.”
“Yeah, it would.” Yeah, it would.
“I’m under a lot of stress.”
“Of course you are. I can’t imagine.”
“That’s not what I’m saying. You know that’s not what I’m saying. I’m not competing with you. Have you ever asked, even once, how I’m doing? God, you’re so self-absorbed.” And he pushes back from the table, takes his tie off. He can’t stand the sight of me. “Do you think nothing has changed for me?”
He’s been waiting to say this for months. What about me? What about me? I’ve been feeling him not say it, I’ve actually felt it cross his mind when I’ve interrupted him watching rugby or asked him to give Johnny a bath after work. He’s said it finally. But I don’t care.
I stand in the doorway of the kitchen, pull at my T-shirt so it doesn’t cling to my belly, my breasts. I feel exposed under this light so I bend down to start picking up toys, throwing them at a basket, each toss punctuating my fury.
“What’s changed, Harry? You leave the house, go to work, talk to adults, eat whatever you want whenever you want to, your clothes fit, you don’t pee sideways, you go to drinks at the end of the day with other men who have wives at home taking care of their lives too. Oh, and you get paid!” I’m screaming now, throwing toys like grenades.
“Have you ever once—ever once—thought about packing Johnny’s bag for school? Washing his uniform socks? Labeling his shoes? And now there’s a baby. Do you know what formula we use? What size diapers? You never once thought about it, you’ve never had to because I’m here—I AM HERE—I am here washing your boxer shorts, feeding your children, trying not to disappear. All you have to do is go to work, just like you did before. So what’s changed so drastically for you? What’s so different about your new life?”
Harry exhales. He speaks quietly. “You. You’re gone.” He unclenches the sides of the table he was holding on to before, no longer needing the support.
I stop short. If I speak now I’ll break down and I don’t want to give him the satisfaction of being right so that he can comfort me when I cry. I don’t want to be comforted. I say, “So you’ve noticed.”
Sarcasm is a weak defense. Of course he’s noticed, he loves me. I know that. I know that I make things worse when I get angry and defensive and refuse to acknowledge him and refuse to acknowledge him acknowledging me. But I don’t want to share this space.
This is mine—this pain, this anger. I just want him to say—anyone to say—yes, it was terrible, Gigi. What happened to you was the worst. You have a right to be mad and sad. No one has been through as much as you. I gave up my body, my work, my friends, my home—all of it for this man and these kids. They can’t have my trauma too. I pull out a chair and sit down at the opposite side of the table because I’m too tired to stand or leave the room. Just too tired.
Harry looks at me across the table. The light above him shows the patch on the top of his head where his hair is thinning. His stubble is flecked with gray. That’s new; I haven’t seen that before. The collar of his work shirt is frayed at the corners from too many dry cleans. That’s not like him. He’s so meticulous about his work clothes; even now, at this late hour, in this argument, he’s still wearing his cuff links. He looks at me with his velvet framed eyes. I haven’t seen his face for months.
He says, “What you did, how he was born—I’ll never discount that, I’ll never say it doesn’t matter or that you should get over it. I thank God you survived it. But it happened to me too. I was there. You’re not the only one struggling. I lose my place in my presentations. I lost three clients in the space of two weeks. My last review was a warning. I haven’t hit my numbers for the third month in a row. While you’re sleeping in a separate room I’m working on our finances into the night to make sure we can still pay for Johnny’s school in case I get fired. Yes, you sleep less than me, no, I don’t get up with the baby, but do you know that Johnny crawls into bed with me at three every morning? And whispers to me for an hour about all his worries? That he won’t go back to sleep unless his arm is around my neck and he’s holding my hand? You don’t see any of that either.”
Any goodwill he built up with his frayed collar and his flecks of gray evaporates. “No, I don’t. So what, you want credit? I’m sorry you can’t keep your head together at work. I’m sorry I never considered the impact on you of everything that happened to me. And Johnny’s gotten into bed with you about three times, but you know what, your efforts with him are heroic. I don’t know how you’re managing.”
“Gigi, I…” Harry says as I leave the table. But then he gives up. He’s thinking it’s not worth it. He’s right, it’s not.
He stays in the kitchen with his laptop open to the sports pages, luxury car websites, triathlon videos. His world that has nothing to do with me. Or that hasn’t for a long time.
As I get into the guest bed on the floor above I hear a dish break against the stainless steel when he throws it in the sink. An accident, of course. He’s not hot-tempered or volatile, he doesn’t throw things. But maybe that would be better. Preferable to what I know he’ll do in the aftermath of this dish breaking. He may leave it there, another mess for me to clean up, claiming ignorance of how to handle this chore, claiming that he didn’t bother because I would just tell him he did it wrong anyway. The mess will be my fault, the consequence of my Crazy. And if I get angry about being framed this way it’ll only prove that what he says is true.
Or maybe he’ll wrap up the shards in old newspaper and leave the package on the counter by the sink so that I’ll have to ask in the morning, “What’s this?” and he’ll explain, secretly satisfied to have evidence that he does actually help around the house. He won’t admit that’s why he left it there, although we both will know that it is, but I’ll seem irrational for making the assumption. This will infuriate me. He’ll say that I’m unreasonable for getting angry about the fact that he cleaned up the mess. I won’t be able to articulate that the fact he had to leave the evidence on the counter is worse than doing nothing at all. And he will be damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t. This will also be my fault.
I turn on my side. I could fix this if I just go downstairs, hug him, tell him that I do acknowledge what he does. Say that I know it’s been hard for him too, that of course it was scary for him to have to see his wife cut open and his baby torn out. That I love him, that I’m sorry I haven’t asked him how his day was for eight months, and that we’ll be OK, we just have to get through this time. This is the hardest time, I should say, but it won’t last forever and we’re going to make it. That’s what I should say.
That’s what I should say.
12
soup
A Wednesday in August 2016, 8:30 p.m. London, Grand Euro Star Lodge Hotel, Room 506
The TV’s still on with the sound off. I listen to the bathroom faucet drip and watch the ladies laugh and yell at each other silently. I’ve kept the phone to my ear for a while, unsure whether this is a good idea. The receiver smells like someone’s breath. Finally, I dial the numbers on the ancient international calling card I keep in my wallet.
“Yeah.” Dad picks up.
“Hi, Dad, how you doin’?” I say, trying to sound normal.
“Hey,” he rasps and grunts as he shifts his weight. I hear the effort it takes for him to sit up and talk from his usual position, lying down in front of the TV.
“You guys OK? What’s going on?” I ask, casually, wondering if he can hear in my voice that I’ve left my family.
“Same old, same old, you know, same shit, different day.”
“How’s Ma?” I ask as his TV gets louder in the background. He’s turned up the volume during this call so he doesn’t miss anything they’re saying, instead of turning it down so he can hear me.
“She came out of the room to eat lunch today, so, you know, that’s better, I guess.”
I say, “It’s getting close to Frankie’s time.” That’s what we call it because that’s the easiest way to say it.
“Yeah, it is. She did this on his birthday too.”
“How long’s she been in the room?” I ask, surprised at the steadiness of my voice.
“A few days, I don’t know, since Saturday.”
“Is she saying anything?”
“Nah. What’s she gonna say?” We don’t speak for a while. I listen to the voices change on his TV while he flips through the channels.
I say, “OK, you need money? You need anything?”
“Nah, sweetheart, we’re fine. We’re saving on food now that your mother’s stopped eating.”
“Dad…”
“What? It’s true. She eats too much anyway. We’re fine, don’t worry.”
“Wait, Dad, did you try the soup? The cream of chicken? She likes that one.”
“Yeah, I forgot about that, your trick. OK, I’ll get some later. Anyway, you OK?”
“Yeah, you know, busy, the kids. I’m thinking about Frankie too. I got a lot to—”
He cuts me off: “OK, so take care, tell Harry I said hi. Oh, the baby, how’s the baby?”
“He’s, he’s fine. He’s good. So’s Johnny.”
“Yeah, OK, I gotta go. They got the old Columbo on.”
“OK…” But he hangs up before I can say bye.
Ma and I are both sitting in rooms drinking alone, silent in our parallel pain. There are a thousand ways that she hurt me but I forgive her every time because there are a thousand ways that I’m like her. There are things I do because she did them. Because I saw her do them. I did them with her. She did them to me. I don’t know how not to do them to my kids.
I thought it would end with me. I thought if I left her behind then it ended with me and my kids would never have to know. That they would grow up without knowing this feeling that’s put me in this room alone, the same room she sits in alone across the ocean. But trying to leave Ma is like trying to leave my own skin. So maybe I should go before they learn any of this from me, before they get too old to forget it. Maybe if I go while they’re young they’ll unlearn me and undo everything that me being their mother has done to them already. I’ll melt away from their little lives, like frost in spring, before they can remember what I’ve done.
Staten Island, March 2002
I could barely open the door and I thought it was because they hadn’t been picking up their mail and it was built up behind the slot, but it was Ma, slumped in the corner between the door and the shoe rack.
“Ma.” I slide in through as much of the door as I can open. “Ma,” I say gently, so I don’t startle her. She snorts in her sleep. I get down on the floor, pick up her hand to stroke the back of her palm. “Ma, you gotta get up, you can’t sleep here.” Alcohol fumes and cigarette smoke emanate from her crumpled body. The grief and toxins like a vapor almost visible in the air. She’s awake enough that I can get her to her feet, lift her up by putting her arms over my shoulders. She doesn’t weigh as much as she did when Frankie was alive.
“Eugenia, my head, my head,” she slurs, her head rolling back on her shoulders. The living room has been dark ever since Dad covered the windows with black garbage bags so that they wouldn’
t have to look at the hole in Manhattan. But a ray of sunlight comes through the kitchen window and I can see the dust thick in the air. I put Ma in her chair. “Eugenia!” She shouts my name, then mumbles, just before her head hits the headrest of the La-Z-Boy and she falls asleep. She snores. I cover her with a fleece blanket. The one with the three white kittens in a basket on the front.
I pick up the beer cans and half empty boxes of chicken wings, Chinese food containers thick with mold. Dad is doing the best he can but he can’t keep up with driving the bus and taking care of Ma. So it’s the housework that he’s let go. He says the driving is therapeutic. By which he means it gets him out of the house so he doesn’t have to be with her all day. I can’t blame him, for not wanting to be here, for not being able to carry her grief when he’s got so much of his own. He drives his around all day. She drinks hers. I cry on public transportation, sometimes without noticing until I catch my reflection in the glass of the subway doors as they close.
I clean the house like Ma taught me. I do things how she likes them, vinegar and baking soda to get the crap off the stovetop, the cheap vodka she keeps under the bathroom sink to make the faucet shiny and to disinfect the bottom of the tub. I wash the dishes, remember why they’re all melamine and not ceramic.
I dust the frame of Frankie’s high school graduation picture. She was never one for keeping our childhood things, but since he died she’s been combing through the house, finding any artifact he once handled and taping it around his picture in the kitchen. A forgotten half pack of cigarettes he kept under his mattress. A Domino’s menu where he wrote down a phone number without a name. A letter to Santa, God knows where she found that, asking for a bike that he never got. An expired MetroCard she found in one of his jacket pockets.
When everything is clean I make soup. Her favorite, Campbell’s Cream of Chicken. I open the can, turn it upside down, add water, heat, stir. The solid block of soup indented with the ridges of the tin can eventually melts into liquid.
When I Ran Away Page 25