Still Life with Tornado(74)

When I peek in, she’s curled on her bed with a box of tissues in her arms. A thousand scenarios go through my head.

“Is everything okay?”

She looks up, nods, and beckons me inside while she blows her nose.

“I’m sorry, Sarah.”

“For what?”

“I’m sorry we’re getting a divorce.”

“It’s not like anybody died or anything,” I say.

She laugh-cries at that. A little bubble of snot forms and pops under her nose.

“Well, it’s not,” I say. “Dad can move out. We can stay here. Everything will be fine. Plus, he won’t ever hurt you again.”

At this, she cries a little because it must be hard living a lie for so long and having the person you were trying to save, save you instead. Not like I can take credit. I’m pretty sure it was ten-year-old Sarah who saved us both.

? ? ?

At dinner, I wear my tinfoil headpiece—seven sturdy rings intertwined with colorful additions from all the Sarahs. Twenty-three-year-old Sarah added a small rubber cupcake. Bruce used tape to secure a small pterodactyl toy. Forty-year-old Sarah went outside and found a feather from a pigeon and placed it long ways. Ten-year-old Sarah insisted on a unicorn sticker for the front. I am the queen of unicorns, cupcakes, pterodactyls, and feathers. I’m not sure over whom I rule, but I have a feeling it’s me.





HELEN’S QUIET



I’m a goddamn ER night nurse. Do you know what I’ve seen in my life? I’ve seen a thousand ways to die. I’ve met every kind of person you can imagine. I’ve met murderers and child molesters and people who starve their mothers to death.

I’ve met men who killed their ex-wives. I’ve met the dead ex-wife. I’ve recorded her time of death on her chart. I’ve seen me in her.

I’ve met the nicest people, too. Kids and moms and dads and uncles and nephews and grandmothers who are simple and kind.

I’ve met Earl and a hundred more like him.

I’ve met Rose and a hundred more like her.

Every night there’s a drunk—sometimes a big one, sometimes a small one. Sometimes they swing but I know how to duck after living with Chet for twenty-eight years. I know how to duck.

? ? ?

It’s quiet in the house without Chet. It’s a quiet I wished for a million times but never got. When he left today, I wanted to feel relief but I didn’t feel it. I don’t think I’ll feel it until the papers are signed, the lawyers are paid, and the whole thing is over.

I will never understand why he didn’t change. We could have had such a great life. We could have had some fun. Once he was gone there were no bottles hidden in the garage or the toilet cisterns. No pills or bags of smack or weed or anything. All that meanness was inside of him. Not a bottle. Not a pill. Not a needle. It was him.

Nineteen years old. At nineteen years old I knew what he was. I stayed with him anyway. Make a note: You can’t change people with love. It doesn’t work that way.

I’m forty-seven. I’m not going to sit here and tell you I wasted all those years because I didn’t. I made a name for myself at work and helped thousands of people. I raised two excellent children. I know how to cook a decent Sunday roast. But the love I wasted on a man who couldn’t love himself is lost with those years. Lost as my twenty-twenty eyesight, lost as my beach body, lost as my hair color, lost as my ability to do a cartwheel.

It’s like tossing a gourmet meal into a sewer.

? ? ?

I’m giving my middle fingers a rest.

I’m not singing that song anymore and I’m not lying.

That’s going to be the hardest part.

I never thought I’d be a liar. Not to my own kids. Not to myself. I’m a goddamn ER night nurse. I tell the truth in dark twelve-hour shifts. Harsh truth. Maybe I needed one place in my life to not be an emergency. Maybe lying to myself was the only way I could sleep.

I wanted quiet for so long.

Now I can have it.

You have no idea how much I want you to be careful. You have no idea how much I want to save you from what happened to me. Listen closely.





Thick Skin



I’m not sure what comes next. I don’t know where to find my future.

I wake up in my room and ten-year-old Sarah is playing with my old Legos on my floor. Today is the day Mom meets with the lawyer. Today is the day Dad probably comes home to get his stuff.

Up until now, I wasn’t nervous.

As I lie in bed, I visit scenarios I shouldn’t visit. I think about Dad coming home and shooting us all. All four Sarahs, Bruce, and Mom. And probably himself. I shake the thought out of my head. I think about Dad coming home and not leaving ever again. Locking himself into his room. Barricading the door. I decide to get up and take a shower before the other Sarahs use all the hot water.

How does this work?

How do so many Sarahs exist in one place at one time?

Does the answer matter when all the answers so far have been lies and windmills and half-truths and get-on-with-its?

Thick skin is a fallacy. The skin is an organ. It isn’t just about pimples and freckles and sunburn and wrinkles. All skin is thick skin.

I hear Mom and ten-year-old Sarah giggling and my skin absorbs the sound. The feeling. The idea of giggling. Skin lets things in and lets things out. It’s a two-way system. Right now, in the shower, I let out the art club.