Neighborly(17)

“Yet you care enough to be here. That’s huge.”

“It doesn’t feel huge.”

“How things feel isn’t necessarily how they are.”

“Are you always going to talk in riddles?”

“That wasn’t a riddle. That was as straightforward as it gets.”





CHAPTER 5

It’s 3:23 a.m. Doug hasn’t built my desk yet for the nook, so I’m huddled over the laptop, which is open on the coffee table. I’m studiously ignoring the affront to my sense of order: book boxes that still need unpacking, the pictures and coat hooks and mirror that haven’t yet been hung on the walls. And that’s just the living room.

Instead, I peer at my screen, where I’m logged into Homestore, and right next to it, our credit card. Homestore received my return three days ago, but the refund hasn’t shown up on our Visa yet. We could use that $107.46. I’ve turned off auto-pay on all our bills because I need to keep a strict eye on what’s going out right now. In more than ten years of having a joint checking account with Doug, our balance has never been anywhere close to this low. It frightens me to look at it.

So I stop looking.

I click on my “To Do To Build To Install” file, taking note of the satisfying check marks beside what’s already done, though I haven’t entered a new one in days. I also keep a tally of when backordered items should be arriving, as well as replacement parts. Every time I go into Sadie’s room, my eyes involuntarily travel to the half-built dresser. Doug can’t finish it without Part C.

I’m pretty much obsessed with Part C. It’s become a running joke with Doug and me. “When’s the messiah coming?” he asked the other morning. “You know, Part C?” I laughed, but he could never truly understand what it means to me. He grew up in comfort rather than chaos, in attention instead of disregard. Part C is a repository for all my anxiety, a symbol of my great desire for Sadie to have better than I had—for her to grow up in a home that’s childproofed in every sense of the word, with someone thinking of her well-being first, always. Things half-built, haphazard, disorganized, or dirty remind me of how I was raised. Doug certainly doesn’t know everything, but he knows that much.

I’d logged out of Visa, but I’m still logged into Homestore, and almost against my will I find myself clicking on my wish lists, room by room (though “Outside” isn’t technically a room). For such a small house, our yard is large, and it’s in need of mowing and weeding. That’s on the TD/TB/TI list, too. Someday, I’d like to be able to buy the child-safe fire pit I’ve saved to my list, and some furniture to surround it. A bistro table and chairs for the deck, for sure. A hammock. A papasan chair. That’s the life we’re going to have—where we relax, and we entertain legions, with kids and dogs running around, chasing bubbles until their satisfying pop.

Doug wanted us to have more people over when we still lived in our apartment. He has plenty of friends that he doesn’t get to see nearly enough. But I didn’t want to entertain; I just wanted to be with him, drinking fifteen-dollar cocktails in ambient bars and restaurants to put me in the mood. I didn’t even like the bartenders to recognize us, so we rotated. Not being known is one of the best parts of city life, as far as I’m concerned.

But that was then; this is now. Doug and I are no longer a couple. There are already three of us. So, the more the merrier, that’s supposed to be my new motto.

I keep trying to put my anxiety over the notes to rest, but it continues to surface. It’s probably because I have so much trouble resting, myself. If only I could sleep, the world would look so different.

I close my eyes, and I see the handwriting. It’s so neat. That’s a person who means what she says, who could wreak systematic havoc on someone, if she so chose.

There’s nothing overtly feminine in the handwriting. Yet I can’t help thinking that caring about violated garbage cans and writing catty anonymous messages is something only a woman would do, that it’s a particularly female strain of domestic passive-aggression. Maybe it’s because the professional world feels a million miles away right now, because I spend my days sweating what I know to be the small stuff, while Doug—i.e. men—is off immersing himself in masculine productivity. At least, that’s how it is in the AV, where it seems like Tennyson is the only one with a job outside the home.

Has motherhood paradoxically turned me sexist?

Consciously, I know Doug isn’t working harder than me. Being a stay-at-home mom is far more taxing than any other job I’ve held. And what’s more important for society than raising a child well? Somehow, though, my daily life feels insignificant, my tasks like that of a worker ant scurrying back and forth, holding a single crumb aloft.

The truth of it is, sometimes I don’t know who I am anymore. Without the accoutrements and accessories of my former life, without all that was automatic and assumed, without the tether of familiar routines, I’m unmoored. I grab on to Sadie and I hold her tight because otherwise, I might just drift off into open water.

I’m so tired of worrying—about being a good mom, about fitting in, about the stupid notes. I’d love to wake Doug up right now and have him reassure me that I’m doing a great job and it’ll all turn out fine. Better than fine. We’re AVers now.

I tell myself the things he might say, but they ring hollow. I head for the stairs. It’s time for me to ’fess up about the notes and be reassured.