The Perfect Child(84)

I nodded.

She pointed to the tape again and repeated herself like I still didn’t get it. “Patients can’t go past this line.”

I breathed a sigh of relief. I was safe now.





FIFTY-THREE

CHRISTOPHER BAUER

The smell of spoiled milk assaulted me when I walked in the front door of our house. Everything was exactly like we’d left it, including Janie’s cereal bowl from breakfast in the sink. I rinsed it out, but the place still smelled foul, so I walked through the house searching for other culprits. Our house wasn’t big, but it felt huge without my family.

I found the sippy cup Janie used each morning for her snack on the coffee table in the living room. The leftover milk was turning into cottage cheese. I didn’t bother to clean it but just threw it in the trash. I filled the dishwasher with the remaining dishes in the sink and added detergent before pressing start. I leaned against the counter, crossing my arms against my chest.

What had happened that morning?

It was the question that chased itself around and around like a snake trying to catch its tail. I’d spent the last three days racking my brain for anything I might have missed, but there wasn’t anything unusual. It had been a rough morning, but most of our mornings were difficult. That wasn’t anything out of the ordinary, so it never gave me any cause for concern, at least not any more than it did every day when I left for work.

I walked aimlessly through the house searching for clues as if they were hidden in the walls somewhere. I moved from room to room, picking up things as I went. I couldn’t remember the last time our house had been messy, and I missed when Hannah hadn’t cared so much about cleaning. Who was I kidding? I missed Hannah, period. But I missed the old Hannah. Not this new one who had taken her place. What if I never got her back?

I moved into the bedroom and sat on the edge of our bed. How would I fall asleep tonight? It didn’t feel right without them here—the kids at Allison’s and Hannah at the hospital in Columbus.

When the psychiatric response team had arrived at the hospital, I had begged them to take her to Worthington Presbyterian. It was twenty miles away from Clarksville, but she couldn’t stay at Northfield Memorial. There was no way her admission to the psychiatric ward would stay a secret, and she’d be mortified that she’d been institutionalized once she felt better. I had to protect her reputation and career. She would’ve done the same for me.

Our bedroom floor was covered with family photos and various albums. They were arranged in neat piles that Hannah had constantly gone through, getting just as worked up as she had the first time. She didn’t need them staring her in the face when she came home. I grabbed an empty box from the garage to store them in. I would go through them when things calmed down. Maybe there was a chance I could salvage a few, but for now I needed to get rid of them. They were the last thing she needed to see when she got home. I started sorting through the mess.

There were so many of them, all of them damaged, defaced in some awful way. They were too sad to look at. I began to toss them into the box, quickly moving through the piles. The fancy baby book Allison had given us at our baby shower was buried underneath the last pile. I hadn’t realized Hannah had been filling it out.

The cover was beautiful, with the telltale title “Your First Year” and a picture of Cole in the hospital in a see-through slipcover on the front. I thumbed through the first couple pages, the dates starting the day we had gotten home from the hospital. It was the usual stuff—weight, height, length—coupled with his little footprint from the hospital and the ID bracelet he’d worn. She’d written everything in swirly handwriting, and even that looked happy. She’d added notes and comments next to all the factual information: your hands were your biggest part, you didn’t like the hearing test, the nurse named Judy made you cry. The next page was a letter she’d written to Cole. It was one that only a new mother could write after she’d just fallen hopelessly in love with the life she had created.

But it wasn’t long before things turned. Her handwriting changed. The big spiral curls were gone, replaced with messy, hurried scrawls. Each page had a small spot to journal, and the space was too small for all her words, so she’d scribbled between and around the designs or fact sheets on the page. She’d made herself disjointed lists, writing the same things over and over again.

Pregnancy weight is all gone. Some women would be happy about this. Me? It’s just more proof that I’m wasting away. Today Christopher told me I need to be more loving toward Janie. I can’t. I just can’t anymore. I don’t have it in me. I’m depleted. So empty.

I am in the background of my head. How did I get here?

The next few entries were more of the same:

I’m a prisoner in my own home. I feel her watching me everywhere I go. She’s just waiting. She wants to hurt him. I know she does. I can see it in her eyes. Those black eyes. Today when he was crying she screamed at me to take him back. I wanted to slap her. Tell her she’s the one who needs to go back.

I never used to cry. Now? It’s all I do. It washes over me like an unwanted wave, flattening me. I don’t try to stop the tears anymore. There’s no point. I just let them come. Something is eating me up inside, telling me I’m not good enough. I fake smiles for him. Can he tell?

She told me she hated me today. It’s not the first time. It used to hurt. Not anymore.