Push(96)

And now I am trapped in this acidic life from which I see no escape. Only sameness and hurt and guilt. Guilt for bringing this little boy into a world where he wasn’t welcome. For my own inability to make it a better place for him. For my ineptitude at motherhood. I am ashamed of myself and I hate myself for not being able to love my bright little bird the way that I should.
I walk back over to the car and look inside the window. David is asleep in the back seat. Curled into himself, his chest rising and falling softly. Sometimes he looks so grown up, and yet here he is looking so very small. He is growing into a very self-sufficient boy. Now that he is eight, he gets himself off to school every day. He’s does his own laundry—and mine, too. He keeps the apartment neat and tidy so that when Shep comes home, there is not a single thing out of place. David does all of this while I sit in my room listening to my mind splinter into pieces.
But because he is already capable of so much, I know that my bright little bird will be fine, despite the incompetence of his mother. Of that I am sure. He is old enough now to look after himself, and as long as he keeps staying out of Shep’s way, they’ll be fine together. David will be happier not having to think about me, and maybe, just maybe, Shep will find someone else. Someone who makes him breakfast in the morning and makes love to him at night. Someone who can take care of him. Maybe, if they’re lucky, it will be someone who can love David the way I never could. She’ll love them both, and they’ll forget all about me. Everything left inside me hopes that it comes true.
I pop open the trunk of the car and lift out a pair of sandbags, setting them on the ground beside me. It is a quiet night, and I haven’t seen a single car cross the bridge since we got here. I will do this quickly, and when David wakes up in the morning, he will see the note I pinned to his shirt. When he reads it, he will believe that I loved him, and he will want to love me back, even though I don’t deserve it. I need him to live the rest of his life believing that I loved him and that all those things Shep and I said in the kitchen weren’t true. If he believes these things, then maybe, for just one moment, I was a good mother. Maybe I didn’t fail him entirely. Maybe I did something right.
I drag the sandbags to the edge of the bridge and slide them under the guardrail. I climb over the top and begin to tie them to my ankles with two pieces of rope. I tie the knots as tightly and as quickly as I can. When I stand back up, I hear the car door close. The sound of it causes me to still, and after I take a breath, I turn my head around and see David standing right next to me. He is looking down at the bags, and the envelope pinned to his shirt is flapping in the wind. One of his hands is on top of the guardrail and the other is reaching for my arm, but I pull away before he can touch me. His hand drops to his side. When he asks me what I am doing, I tell him to get back into the car and go back to sleep. But he doesn’t move. He just stands there, watching me. I put my hand on his cheek and smile at him.
He shouldn’t be here.
But he is.
I crouch down and slide the sandbags off the bridge. Their weight pulls my feet over the edge, and I lean my body forward. As I drop through the air, I hear David’s voice. I hear him yelling, but I can’t hear what he is saying. And then I hit the water.
As the sandbags pull me down through the darkness, I look up to the surface. At the center of a circle of white cast by one of the bridge lights, I see the bottom of David’s shoes. He is kicking in the water above me. I see his hands swirling around, probing the water, feeling for a part of me. And then, as I sink, I see his face. I see the face of my bright little bird. His cheeks are puffed with a breath of air, and his eyes are searching the water. He is swimming down, toward me, with his hands out and his eyes wide open. I feel a rush of air leave my lungs and see the bubbles rise toward him. And then I am gone.



chapter Forty

Emma—Present Day

When I hear the alarm go off, I am lying on my side, and David’s body is nestled behind me. His arm is draped over my waist, and I can feel his breath on my neck. I switch off the clock, trying hard not to wake him. I want to lie here with his quiet body for a few minutes before I have to peel myself out of bed and get ready for work.
I don’t smell whisky or stale cigarettes. I just smell David. For some reason, his “sleepy smell” reminds me of honey—mellow and earthy. I’m reminded of how, as a small child, I used to enjoy the scent of our little dog when she uncurled herself from a nap. Her “sleepy smell” was reminiscent of a newly opened bag of corn chips, and when my father died and my mother sent her to live with another family, I missed that smell more than anything else about her. She was a little rough around the edges. I smile at the silly comparison between David Calgaro and Sasha the Sheltie: intoxicating “sleepy smells” and a little rough around the edges.
As I inhale David and think of my childhood, I wonder about his. I wonder if he had a pet. I wonder if he liked school. I wonder what his mother was like. I hope she loved her bright little bird. I hope she protected him from his alcoholic father better than my mother protected me. It brings me a little comfort knowing that, even though all of David’s girlfriends have somehow failed him, perhaps she didn’t. Perhaps, when she was still alive, he felt loved. Perhaps she hugged him and ruffled his hair and kissed him on the cheek before he stepped onto the school bus every morning. Perhaps she made him dinner and laid out a pair of freshly washed pajamas every night. Perhaps she took him to the movies and out for ice cream and did all the beautiful, loving things a mother is supposed to do. All the things my own mother did before my father died. I hope David was happy then. But somehow I doubt it. He told me a few days after we met that he didn’t believe his parents wanted the child they already had. Still...maybe he was loved and just didn’t know it.