The Burning Side(81)
I ask, “How does someone even get help with that?”
He traces my arm. “Therapy? Movement? Friends? Rest?” He pauses. “A week at a nude beach?” The levity earns him a laugh.
“Between the babies and isolation, it was a perfect storm, wasn’t it?”
“I don’t know, I think it’s just life.” He takes a breath and adds quietly, “I won’t do this again if there’s another Cody. The only thing harder than divorcing you is trusting you again.”
His words settle on my body. A body that, he’s right, I don’t value. When I think of that day with Cody, I feel removed. But if I imagine walking in on Leo with someone else, I can’t breathe. Sick with regret, I watch a ray of sun stretch through the window and land on him. It lands, even, on me.
“Yeah,” I say. “We do need help.”
He threads his fingers through mine. A long love has seasons of glaring uncertainty, and we haven’t known what to do with those. We mistook the ends of chapters for the end of the story.
“You know,” I say. “Mom thinks therapists aren’t worth their salt.”
“Well, don’t tell her this, but the woman can be wrong.” He considers. “Or maybe she’s right—but shouldn’t we try?”
I nod. Depression and joy can both be uncomfortable, yet we have to allow for them in their turns.
“What about you?” I ask. “You say we need help, but we’re just talking about my issues.”
Leo inhales. “I thought I wasn’t impacted by my childhood, but of course I was. I believed my parents’ abandonment was about me and would happen again.” He clears his throat. “I know it’s small, but I actually saw my dad this morning.”
My mouth falls open. “What? How?”
“I went to Waco.”
“Oh my gosh, what happened?”
“I had questions, so we got breakfast and talked.” Leo looks at the table. “I’m embarrassed to say that I got in my car and cried like a baby afterward.”
This undoes something in me, some kind of brewing storm. Underneath my seeming apathy is a powerlessness that feels like a black hole. I could not stop the fire from consuming our house. I cannot keep my children from flames or divorce or the hundred other terrors to come. I cannot stop my dad’s brain from shrinking. And I cannot erase my husband’s childhood abandonment. I can’t stop him from seeing his father and crying alone in his car.
I shake my head. “I’m so sorry.”
“No, it was good. And it’s good you found him. Sorry I acted like it wasn’t. I always thought my parents just didn’t want me, but there was so much else going on. I wouldn’t have known.”
Leo scoots our lunch trash into a pile, and I add a stray fry.
After a beat, we move to the living room and lie on our backs on the floor. I close one eye. “Think we can make shapes out of the ceiling popcorn?”
He plays along. We see animals and books. A tea kettle. The Eiffel Tower.
“I have a question.” Leo props himself on an elbow, facing me. “Want to write to other former students like we’re writing to Jonathan?”
“Yes,” I tell him. “I do.”
It’s like a new vow not to forget ourselves. It can be easier to lay a life down than to hold on to it, and losing ourselves was the first step toward losing each other. I match Leo’s elbow-prop and say, “But first I want to hear about this morning with your dad. What did he say? How do you feel? Tell me everything.”
He slides a hand beneath the hem of my shirt. “I will.” But then he’s kissing the curve of my neck, his fingers on my skin, leaving me to guess whether he’ll travel up or down, because either way—
Otto is suddenly at our feet, and we jump apart. He pops his thumb out of his mouth and asks sleepily, “What you do?”
We laugh, lifting him up with his bedhead curls. What you do is his all-purpose catchphrase. If he drops a banana: what you do. If Sadie bumps into him: what you do. If Grandpa B gives him a shiny new toy: oh, what you do!
Sadie hears the commotion and is upon us with a dive-bomb.
Leo and I smile over their heads. What you do. We don’t know. Where we’ll live. How it will end. How to find a therapist, or if Mom will roll her eyes at that, or if Dad will turn on us when he runs out of memories. If Leo’s family will have any place in his life. We know so little.
But we do know that we can see the shape of a dog in the ceiling popcorn. A ball cap, if we angle left. A refrigerator, or so Sadie claims as she contorts herself. Otto has no clue what we’re pointing at, yet he joins right in, grinning ear to ear.
And in this way, we lie scrunched together on an apartment floor, shifting our perspectives.
DEB
A Few Months Later
I TURN LEFT INSTEAD OF right out of the parking lot, and I don’t realize my mistake until I’m southbound on 75. Driving into the heart of the city for some Christmas shopping is a luxury afforded to me by the robust care at Greenwood Hills, and I don’t take the independence for granted. I do, however, briefly forget where I live.
Or rather, I remember wrong, muscle memory taking over. Nearing the turn for Lexington Avenue, I think, Oh, what the heck. I’m already almost there.