I'm Glad About You(95)

The whole situation was already a mess. The girls knew that Mommy was no longer theirs; she drifted by them with the kind of self-contained indifference she previously had reserved only for Kyle. She still tended to their snacks and crayons and diapers and dresses, but a weary impatience had set in. Neither one of them was Mommy’s beloved anymore. That was reserved for the baby in her belly, and the man who had put it there. Increasingly, Kyle found himself trapped in an unrelenting worry for these small strangers. He started sneaking little treats into the house for them—Waffle Crisp cereal, apple juice, those long squishy Go-Gurt things. Maggie somberly tried to tell him that she wasn’t allowed to eat Go-Gurt, and then she burst into tears. He held her on his lap and the two of them, together, figured out how to open the plastic tube and squeeze out the sugar-hyped goo. Van was out somewhere; who knew where. It was easy these days to sneak such nutritional outrages into the home. Her attention was not there.

“I feel worried about the girls,” Kyle asserted clearly at their next session.

“Van, how do you respond to that?” queried their guide to marital communication.

“That’s hilarious, is how I respond to that.”

“What I’d really like you to do, Van, is repeat what you hear Kyle say—”

“I am aware. Kyle, what I hear you saying is that you are worried about the girls.”

“Is that what you said, Kyle?”

“Yes, that is what I said.”

“And Van—”

“Yes, I know what comes next,” she informed him, suddenly deciding to behave. “This is how I feel about what you have said, Kyle. I feel frustrated that it has taken you so long to express any interest whatsoever in the well-being of your children.”

“Kyle—”

“Thanks, I think I have this, Roger. Van, I hear you say that you are frustrated because you feel that it has taken me a long time to express interest in the well-being of our girls. Is that what you said?”

“Yes, that’s what I said.” No matter how much you distilled this stuff down, there was still so much attitude attached that there was no way not to know that she held him in the highest contempt for his neglect of the children.

“I feel frustrated that you feel that way. I feel that you have deliberately, over the years, held them away from me. I feel—”

“Kyle—”

“Why don’t you just let me finish the thought here, Roger; I promise you this really is only one thought. I feel that there were many times, Van, when you wouldn’t let me love them. And that made me sad.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Van—”

“Okay.” She was pissed now, but like a trapped bird she was learning to acclimate to the rules of the cage. “I hear, Kyle, that you are frustrated with my frustration. I hear that you wanted to be a good father and somehow I stopped that from happening.”

A disappointed silence drifted over all of them. For a moment Kyle thought that Roger had fallen asleep; his eyes were shut and he was utterly still. The silence continued. Kyle decided to close his eyes as well. And for a moment, for the first time in months, the unbearable tension of utter disappointment lifted just the tiniest bit.

God is in the silence, Merton informed him. But Merton had told him a lot of things. He had read and reread those journals and books, hoping against hope that at some point the great, confused monk’s wisdom would kick-start something in his own soul. Why did it never happen? The hours and days he spent wandering around that monastery, wondering how so many men could find so much peace and he could find none at all. Praying and suffering and begging God not to let his meager little life drift away, yearning for a renewal of passion and connection but unable to even remember what those feelings might attach themselves to. And now here he was, fighting to the death for a marriage nobody ever believed in. Except, maybe, his parents, his forlorn, hopeful parents, who had been treated so badly by Van, year after year, cut out from the lives of their grandchildren and estranged from their only son by his own willful determination that they would never know the depth of his psychic exhaustion. He was so desperate to appear happy he held them at bay and told them nothing.

His body started shaking, and he realized that he was sobbing; his body was sobbing. He could not bring himself to open his eyes, wet with tears; he didn’t want to see Van’s horror-stricken and pitiless dismissal of his broken heart. He wanted to simply feel what he was feeling, until he was through feeling it. Which wasn’t easy. The sobs moved through him violently, but he could barely understand why. Only briefly was there a moment when his grief passed through some barrier in his throat and into his brain. There was a sudden rush of sparks behind his eyelids, and he heard himself gasp, and then a deep silence which was held in some sort of darker wound. There was something there with him, in the sadness. His mind stopped wandering and waited. It was very quiet.

“Kyle, do you want to tell Van what you’re feeling?” Roger’s voice was soothing but a little too hopeful. Kyle wanted to hold up his hand, to try to keep him from saying anything else—he wanted to wait in the quiet just a moment more. But the world was rushing in.

“I think it’s my turn to say what I’m feeling.” Van’s voice was completely exasperated. Kyle could not yet bring himself to open his eyes.