Off the Deep End (6)
He lets out a tiny laugh. It’s the first time he’s shown any real emotion, and it stops my story midstride. I like his smile. He should do it more often. I force myself to focus. “Anyway, we were both newly married, and neither of us had kids yet, but we were on the same track, you know? Marriage. House. Baby. That’s how it went. It’s how you did things if you wanted to set them up right, and I did. I’ve always been a perfectionist and a planner. So it made sense that we’d be two of those super close families who practically did everything together, but the timing was never right.”
“What do you mean?”
The light in the corner won’t stop giving off an annoying buzz, and it’s starting to give me one of my headaches. I don’t know how much longer I’m going to be able to keep it together for this interview. “Despite the similarities between us and living on the same street, we never became friends. Our paths rarely crossed unless it was in the grocery store or in our respective cars at the intersection at the end of the block. Amber worked as a flight attendant, so she was gone for weeks at a time, and Mark worked in the city, so he was rarely around either. Those were the days before kids, so me and Shane were still really into going out on the weekends, and they preferred staying in whenever they got a chance to actually be home.” He nods like he’s genuinely interested, and I can’t tell if it’s real or not, but it’s the first time in a long time that anyone has really seemed like they were listening to me and not just looking at me like they felt sorry for me or like I was some kind of unknown crazy they’d never met before. It’s easy to keep going even though the prick has started at my temples. “Every time we ran into each other, it was always the same thing: ‘We should get together for drinks! Let’s have dinner soon.’ But we never did. It was just something we said to each other. Part of our routine. And then we had kids. Well, they had kids. We just had Gabe. Not that we didn’t want more kids,” I quickly explain like I do every time people find out Gabe is an only child and I feel the need to apologize for it. People act like it’s child abuse not giving him a sibling. “Anyway, from the very beginning, our kids were on different routines. Gabe was up shortly after five every morning, which meant we were part of the early-morning crew, and we did all our activities before eleven. Isaac was the total opposite. He was up half the night and slept most of the morning. By the time they were getting out of the house, our day was more than halfway over. Then, she ended up not going back to work after her maternity leave was over, and I went back to work full time before mine ended because Shane lost his job.” I shudder at the memory. Those were hard days. Juggling a baby and work on top of Shane’s depressed mood. Doesn’t seem so bad now, though. I’d give anything for one of those rough days. I bet Shane would too.
Grief hasn’t torn our small family apart. It’s shredded it to pieces. When you have only one child, your entire world revolves around them. And Gabe was our life. We both wanted other kids, and we’d tried really hard to get pregnant again, but for whatever reason, we never could, and once I hit early menopause at thirty-seven—that was it. We didn’t bother trying anymore. We both secretly hoped we’d be one of those couples we’d heard about so many times in our fertility groups who got pregnant after they’d given up all hope and stopped trying. Sadly, that didn’t happen either.
I wonder if Shane will visit me today after what happened yesterday. I’ve never seen him so angry. He acted like I was committing some kind of cardinal sin showing up on the doorstep of my own house.
“What are you doing here?” He whipped open the front door and raced down the sidewalk to catch me in the driveway before I was even halfway to the walk. I hadn’t expected him to be home. He was supposed to be at work. I didn’t want to see him any more than he wanted to see me.
“What are you doing here?” I fired back, instantly defensive too.
“I just decided to come home on my lunch break.” He ran his hands through his hair. His shirt was unbuttoned at the top and untucked. He wasn’t wearing shoes.
“It’s almost two.” I rolled my eyes. He’d probably called in sick again. “You’re going to lose your job if you’re not careful.” I stepped around him and headed toward the house.
He quickly grabbed my arm and pulled me back, trying to stop me. “I’m not sure you should go in there right now. Do your counselors know you’re here?” he asked, doing his best to sound concerned. But he didn’t seem concerned at all to me. Just nervous as his eyes darted around me and behind me at the house.
“Of course they know I’m here,” I snapped, doing my best to sound convincing, but I was lying. I wasn’t allowed on home visits unless they were scheduled in advance and preapproved by my primary therapist, but I’d woken up that morning obsessed with Gabe’s old baby blanket. I couldn’t get it out of my head that all his things were losing his smell, and then I spun into a panic about what would happen if I forgot what he smelled like. That’s why I had to go home for the blanket no matter what. He’d had it since he was a baby, and it was laden with his scent. I wanted to put it in a sealed bag to keep it inside. That’s all I wanted to do. I wasn’t trying to cause any trouble. This wasn’t like last time. “Look, I just want to grab something out of Gabe’s room. I’ll make it really fast. I know exactly where it is.”