The Break(48)

I was so glad he loved that bar so much; I was so glad when he was gone. It wasn’t only because I hated him, it was because I loved my mother so intensely.

“Oh yes. Those things he used to hide,” my mom says slowly, shaking her head. “He’d turned into such a bastard. He wasn’t like that when we got married. He drank too much then, but he was still hopeful.”

It feels like such a trick: that someone could turn this way. And not like the tricks and twists you prepare for in a marriage—infidelity, sickness, financial ruin, and the like—but something more insidious: a turn of the tide, an angry pot on the stovetop boiling over, a well-timed slap hurtling toward your neck.

“I remember how drunk he’d get,” I say, “and how he’d come home and then he’d . . .” I look down at Lila. I’m not sure any of us are ready to go where I’m about to. “I think, what I remember,” I start, unable to meet my mom’s eyes. What I remember is everything I could hear through the walls: his moans and rhythmic thuds, the sound of the headboard, the bedsprings. I remembered all the things you put together as an adult when you start making those same sounds, and I remember her protests.

“I think he always came home and made you have sex with him,” I blurt. I look up to meet her eyes. They’re bright blue and icy cold. “Mom?” I plead, and then I reach for her hand. It’s hard to cradle Lila in just one arm while she nurses, and my mom squeezes my hand and lets it go again. “You couldn’t have wanted that,” I say. “Right? I just, I can’t imagine any universe in which you’d want to sleep with him when he was drunk like that, but if you did, you know I don’t judge you. He was your husband.”

My mother starts to cry. Tiny sobs that shake her frail frame.

“Oh, Mom,” I say, “I’m so sorry. We don’t have to do this.”

She waves her skinny fingers and says, “No. We can. God, Rowan, especially if it would help you now. We can go there, of course we can. I just, sometimes I can’t really believe that was our life, that those were the first five years of your life. I can’t believe I put you through that.”

I shrug like it’s nothing, which she and I both know isn’t true. But I can surely understand it—she was married at twenty-two. How was she to know what was coming?

“He was filled with so much anger,” I say, because that’s what I always come back to when I think of him.

“That’s for sure,” my mother says, straightening. “He never hit you, I always console myself with that.”

“Never,” I say, and it’s the truth.

“You’re right that I didn’t want to have sex with him,” she says, and my heart sinks somewhere lower than even the past few weeks have sent it. “Perhaps the trauma of that night he died, Rowan, perhaps the things you don’t remember . . .” She trails off, and then says, “I worry your therapist is right. She’s good, isn’t she? Supposed to be the best?”

I nod. Lila starts to suck again, and I encourage her with a circular rub on her back.

“Perhaps that night has been buried so deep,” my mother says, growing agitated, hands trembling. “Perhaps it’s causing you to forget other things.”

“About what happened to Dad?”

“That, and . . . Rowan, I don’t know. I’m confused about some of what I do know, what I’ve heard, what I remember . . . I’m worried I’m not the one to help you with this because of my mind going, but then I’m your mother, so, who else?” Her eyes go to her rosary beads.

My cell buzzes. It’s Gabe. I’m sure he’s worried—he barely wanted me to come here today, and he’s going to be really annoyed that I canceled his mom driving Lila and me at the last minute so I could come here by myself. I almost don’t answer the phone, but that feels unfair, so I do.

“Hey,” I say. “I’m with my mom. She just met Lila.” There’s a smile in my voice, curling the words and lifting them higher.



“Rowan,” Gabe says, and then he clears his throat. “You should head home soon. There will be cops coming by to talk to us about June. They found . . .”

His words stop. I can hear him breathing.

“Gabe? Are you there? They found what?” I ask. Lila stirs, finally waking. She clamps down too hard on my nipple and I squeal. I don’t know how, but her gums feel like daggers even though she doesn’t have teeth.

“They found a spot of blood on the floor outside of our apartment,” he says. I feel dizzy even though we’re sitting. I put a hand to my mouth like I want to stop myself from throwing up. Gabe goes on: “Mrs. Davis called the cops, convinced she saw a tiny spot of blood by the elevator, and she was right. I don’t know if they really think it’s June’s blood, or if they’re telling me about the blood to freak me out, but they’re coming by to question us at five p.m.,” Gabe says. He clears his throat again. “Because the neighbors told them about you, about what you did to June.”

My hands tighten on the phone. “I didn’t do anything to her,” I say, my words accelerating. “I just accused her of something. I had a mental break or something! I just yelled at her, Gabe, you know that.”

“Yeah, but our neighbors heard everything,” Gabe says. “How bad it was . . . your screaming.”