Rise: How a House Built a Family(3)

I was so happy for the interruption of his damned “Fi-fah” that I welcomed the inevitable appearance of the straw. Even though my mind screamed the question, I knew better than to ask, “What was the last straw? What, exactly?” Because he didn’t know any more than I did. No one likes to face their own crazy, irrational anger—least of all a crazy, irrational person. I zipped my lips. Bit my tongue. Held my peace. I knew better than to apologize, agree, or make any move at all.

“Don’t you cry, Cara. You attention hound. Don’t play like a victim. Don’t. You. Cry.”

I hadn’t cried in years, at least no more than an eye-dabbing tear over a poignant movie. But I started crying anyhow. Not because I was scared; of course I was scared, but that wasn’t what made me cry. My neck hurt, too, but I’d been hurt a lot worse, and I rarely cried just because something hurt. I’d delivered babies with no medication and kept so eerily silent the doctors were afraid for me. No, these tears were for my old mantra, because it had finally failed. Most of the time he’s good. And I love him, I had always told myself. I love him enough to stay.

But for the first time, I didn’t love him. I didn’t love him enough to stay. I didn’t hate him, though I knew I would have if I’d been lucky enough to be born a pessimist; rather, I didn’t feel anything for him at all. He had become a big, emotionless, black hole in my core. A hole that didn’t even sting when I poked at it.

“Let’s talk outside,” I whispered, imagining that sparing the kids his yelling, his threats this one time was going to make them less damaged, less afraid. Imagining, too, that they wouldn’t know tomorrow’s turtleneck was out of necessity.

When we walked through the den, I angled my head just enough to check the balcony for little eyes peeking over, but saw none. Of course, the yelling hadn’t started yet. They didn’t know there was anything to be afraid of tonight. Why would they? Jada had sat on the rug during our movie, weaving a strand of yarn between Matt’s toes and around his ankle until he looked like a web-footed, living dream catcher. She’d tucked her long blond hair behind her ears and giggled the mischievous, bubbly giggle of an eleven-year-old who thinks she is making someone a fool and getting away with it. Jada was my little elf girl.

We had eaten ice cream together, sharing spoonfuls until a spot dribbled onto his shirt. That’s when he had changed into the baby-blue shirt, and I’d snuggled back in against it.

It was a wholly different man following me outside to talk about the nothingness that had happened to change everything. He saw me look up for the kids, and his breathing went through his teeth again.

The glass door rattled closed behind him, and I fell into a lounge chair before he had any new ideas of what to do with me. He stood statue-still and silent, either planning his next move or trying to remember, like I was, what we were doing outside in the middle of the night.

The Southern air smelled like school, or the way that always made me think of school in early September. I was from Wisconsin, and never completely comfortable with the food, manners, or habits just outside of Little Rock, Arkansas, even though I’d lived there longer than I’d lived in any other state.

Hershey, my chocolate Lab, flipped out through her doggy door and paced the porch perimeter from twenty feet out. It was cold, but I ignored the gooseflesh and imagined the chill sizzling against the heat inside his head.

That was my optimist showing, pretending cool air was a cure for madness. Some people think optimists and pessimists are created, but I’ve always known better. We’re born into these political parties and die with an unchanged, slanted mind-set. The optimist party is erroneously considered superior, but we should have been weeded out Darwinian-style hundreds of years ago. No matter how repeatedly life draws out her doom-and-gloom conclusions for us, we find reason to stay, hoping and wishing when the more survival-equipped pessimist would make the wise decision to run. Run like hell.

“Look at your feet,” he said, wrinkling his lip in distaste.

I bent my knees and rubbed my hands over my bare legs enough to look like I was warming them, but not enough to look like I was complaining about the cold; then I tucked my feet under the hem of my short nightshirt. His mother’s feet were a dainty size six. She tried on the tiny display models at the shoe store while I dug through mountains of boxes looking for an eight, even though I really needed a nine to be comfortable. I didn’t need to look at my feet to see how unpretty they were.

“You know how hard I work. And no one appreciates it. You know that, right?” His hands cupped the sides of his head again, pulling out and then pressing in, matching his breathing, pull on the inhale, push on the exhale. “You have to stop. You just have to stop making me so angry!” He waved out toward where my dog was still pacing, tail so low it almost dragged along the dry fall grass. I imagined it leaving a fire trail behind, and I couldn’t remember what fairy tale the image came from. Had it been a fox? A tiger? A tiger by the tail.

He wasn’t talking about the dog, though. She was invisible to him, exactly like she meant to be. He was talking about the ideas that made him as drunk as the vodka. They were Big. Always, big. He left the medium-size ideas and the small ideas for others to toy with. People like me.

“I understand how hard it is for you.” I looked behind the sadness to the wildness deep in his dark eyes. I could practically see the anxious neurons zipping around and could almost understand why he drowned them with vodka every couple of months.