[2017] What We Lose Page 10

  SOURCE: CDC/NCHS, Health, United States, 2011, Table 22. Data from the National Vital Statistics System (NVSS).

  As soon as I got the news, I called Aminah. She told me about the hospital, the smells, and the stages and the compassionate-but-removed care and it was all too familiar. I heard Aminah’s voice break. Dammit! I said into the phone. M got into the cupboard under the sink. I have to go. I’ll call you right when I’m done, I promise. I hung up the phone. Peter and M were on a walk. Only the television in the living room looked back at me. I told the television that it couldn’t possibly know the pain in my belly, which began to resemble that of losing my mother, not so long ago.

  Love and marriage are completely unrelated enterprises. Marriage bears as little resemblance to love as competing in the Olympics does to your afternoon jog. Sometimes I think with regret of how our love might have grown if we hadn’t driven a pregnancy, then a marriage—like two speeding 18-wheelers—straight into it.

  Peter tells me he wants to lose weight. I accuse him of fishing. What he really wants is for me to say that he doesn’t need to lose weight. I have noticed the extra ring of skin around his chin, the ring of flesh that hangs over his belt when he bends down. It’s like the man I married has been swallowed by another man who seems embarrassed by this fact. I have put on the extra pound or so, but I don’t let it change the way I walk, the things I wear. As so many self-help books have said, I wear the fat; it doesn’t wear me. I can’t bring myself to say that he still looks the same to me. He doesn’t. “I still love you,” I say, with all the sincerity I can muster.

  The next morning, a Sunday, I awaken to the sound of metal on wood; in the backyard, Peter is splitting firewood with the ax that I gave him for Christmas, which had lain unopened for months next to our fireplace. Peter’s Blazers sweatshirt is ringed with sweat under the armpits, his hair wet, his brow glinting, the unmistakable look of fury on his face.

  Peter wakes me in the middle of the night. His face hangs over me and he is snarling, baby bottle in one hand, M in the other. He’s shaken me awake, and from the look on his face, it’s taken him a while to do so.

  “You take him for fucking once!” he screams as he pulls my hands from under the blankets and wraps the baby in them. I struggle to sit up before the baby can fall. The bottle rolls to the floor and M’s head falls out of my grasp. He starts screaming.

  “What are you doing?” I scream. “You’ll hurt him!”

  “He’s not made of china,” Peter says, sniffing as he lies back down in bed, pulling the covers over his shoulder and switching off his bedside lamp.

  I place M on my lap so that he’s looking at me and mime some funny faces at him. Soon he stops screaming. I hold him in the air so that his feet bounce on my legs, his favorite game. He starts to coo softly.

  “I can’t do anything right,” I hear Peter grumble from underneath the covers.

  I gather M, his bottle, and his blanket, and move to the armchair in the living room, where we watch the sunrise together. Peter snores from the bedroom.

  Peter, M, and I attend the funeral of Aminah’s father, which is held at the small Episcopalian chapel on the college’s campus. The entire administration is there, plus students, and work colleagues of Aminah’s mother, and our fathers’ mutual friends.

  We dress M in little black trousers and a navy blue polo shirt. He wrestles out of his tiny socks and shoes and lies sideways in his carrier during the service, but he doesn’t cry and he doesn’t fall out, so we leave him there, cooing and smiling like a drunk uncle about to fall out of his chair.

  I cry openly, freely, from the third pew of the chapel. I snort and sniffle like a maniac. At first, Peter drapes an arm on my shoulder, but then he just looks at me confused and tends to M. The man next to me offers his handkerchief and a smile. I recognize him as Keith, a friendly boy from our childhood. He is older, with more bulk to his shoulders and legs, but his smile and smooth olive skin are still the same. On my other side, M burps and starts laughing. Peter sighs, reaches for the pacifier, and pops it nervously into M’s mouth, as if our child is a bottle of champagne threatening to explode.

  At the end of the service, I find Aminah and hold her close. We cry long and hard on each other’s shoulders.

  “I’m so sorry.” I use Keith’s handkerchief to wipe my tears from her impeccable black peplum dress.

  She laughs. “It’s fine.”

  “At least you don’t have to worry about mine,” I say. My cotton shift is wrinkled and stained by M’s throw-up.

  “It’s not a problem at all.” Aminah rubs my back, and I am unsettled as I realize that she is, even at this moment, the one reassuring me.

  That night, as has become our norm, Peter falls asleep in front of the television in the living room, and I in our bed with a book. I dream of Keith, and nothing happens in the dream except that he hugs me, strong and with his whole body, and he whispers in my ear that everything is going to be all right. Just like that, in that soft, buttery voice of his that I heard a million times in the classroom and out on the football field, You’re all right, Thandi, everything’s gonna be okay.

  M’s first word is “shit,” though we will later tell people it is “shoot.” He got it from Peter, who curses all the time, while cutting the lawn, while cooking dinner, while changing diapers, and, more than me, while storming out of a room in frustration. He is convinced that he will be fired from his job, but when I suggest he look for something else, he gets angry. It’s fine for him to suggest things aren’t going well, but for me to voice the obvious is too much for him. I never realized before how much pride he had.

  My boss decides that I should be the one to go to a vaccines conference in San Diego. I protest as much as I can, but I’m not in good graces after my maternity leave. Peter insists too that I go, and I know it’s because he needs time away from me. I don’t want to leave M. I plead with him, but he won’t hear it. After the trip is decided and my airline tickets show up in my in-box, I feel a sense of palpable dread.

  Peter drives me to the airport with M in the backseat; M screeches the entire way. “Shit!” he cries when we drive over potholes. When we arrive at the airport, Peter zips past the parking lot entrance. “Where are you going?” I ask. I remember when he met me in baggage claim during our first visits, how he seemed so nervous he could fall over. He stops in front of the passenger drop-off, gives me a hurried kiss as the car idles. M starts crying when I kiss him goodbye, sensing correctly that I am leaving him, and Peter comforts our son as I lug my suitcase from the trunk. An elderly skycap takes my bag from me. “That’s too big for a lady,” he says, smiling. I catch him glancing at my husband in the car, and I grab my bag from him and storm toward the departure gate.

  The sun sets as we cross the country. Somewhere over Nevada, I see a full moon descend, and something tugs at me. I recognize I am growing away from Peter, have been for a while, but now the truth stares at me, plain and bare. I’ve been afraid of being left alone with these feelings.

  I check into the hotel at eight Pacific time. As soon as I set my bags down in my room, I call Peter to tell him that I’ve arrived safely. He puts M up to the phone, but he is tired so he only whimpers. It’s nighttime in New York. “I love you,” I tell Peter, and after I hang up, I lie down in bed with the TV on for white noise. I doze off, and when I wake at midnight I can’t fall back asleep.

  Down in the hotel bar, I order a red wine, hoping it will make me drowsy, but it does the opposite. I haven’t felt the buzz of alcohol in many months. I want more. I order a dirty martini with top-shelf liquor, and something yellow that comes in a champagne flute. Soon I feel as if I am flying, though I am still sitting on a plastic bar stool, my behind slowly becoming sore.

  He is sitting at the opposite end of the bar—tall, with dark eyes and dark skin. Broad shoulders knotted with muscles that make him hunch over the bar top. He is familiar to me, like someone
I would have dated years ago. Between my second and third drink, he ends up next to me. I learn he works in one of the faceless buildings in midtown Manhattan, making deals for more money than Peter and I make in a month. I find myself repulsed by the canniness of his lines, but high on the fact that they are being used on me. This hasn’t happened in so very long.

  When we are walking up the stairs, I tell myself I will only let him walk me to my door. When he asks to use the bathroom, I tell myself I will ask him to leave after he emerges. When he touches me, I tell myself I will not let him kiss me.

  He leans over me the same way he leaned over the bar, and I feel excited and terrified at once. He pushes me onto the bed and keeps his fingers wrapped around my throat as he pulls off my clothes. I tell myself that I shouldn’t enjoy this, but I do.

  Is that it?

  All this time, I have been tabulating all Peter’s little faults, trying to discern which combination of them has added up to my unhappiness. But could it actually be this one simple thing—that I just need to be fucked?

  He spends the night in my room, and it’s not until he’s left the next morning, and I’m alone, that I’m paralyzed by the thought that what I’ve done can’t possibly stay in this room. This will follow me wherever I go.

  An object at rest remains at rest, or continues to move at a constant velocity, unless acted upon by an external force.

  By the time I ask Peter to move out for a while, we have not gone a single week without fighting since Mahpee’s birth. I wait for one of our two-day armistices when I approach him with the proposition. He is sitting in his white armchair in the living room, reading a magazine, when I sit on the armrest and put my computer on his lap. The ad for the temporary rental is on the screen, a one-bedroom apartment in the next neighborhood.

  He bristles at first. I can see the fight welling up inside him, but then he sighs, a weary look spreading over his face. “All right,” he says.

  We make it through the next week without any major fights. On a Monday morning before leaving for work, in addition to preparing his briefcase and coffee, Peter packs one suitcase and leaves it by the door. He calls me into the living room.

  I always loved how he traveled light, how he needed nothing more than two outfits, a toothbrush, and a razor to live in the world. Before he leaves, he squeezes M for a long time. He weeps openly, clutching our son’s chubby head to his face.

  “Okay,” he says as he hands the baby to me. He looks like he’s on the high dive, staring into icy water fifty feet below. He gives me one last kiss on the forehead, one last hug, and I fight every instinct telling me to apologize, to get him to stay, just this one last time. But I know what I have to do. He straightens his plaid shirt, blotting the wet spot on his shoulder, and walks out the door.

  That evening, after I come home from work and pick M up from the sitter, my mind turns from tonight to two weeks from now, to next month, to years from now. I envision, with resignation, my life as a single parent. I cry without pause, even while recognizing that I have done the right thing. The first three days, I barely sleep between anxiety and M, and I nap sitting up, eyes closed, at my desk, until the minute the clock strikes five and I rush out the door.

  My favorite television show involves people implausibly redecorating their friends’ houses while they’re out for dinner. It’s the ridiculous premise that roped me in. The results are often slipshod, the contestants’ reactions strained. If one of my friends ever did this to me, I would be furious. It’s probably the artificiality of the show that I find so amusing, and of course Peter never appreciated kitsch. Peter never took to irony, detesting hipsters. It was one of the reasons I was attracted to him and, predictably, it is one of the things that now irritates me most about him.

  “Why can’t you just laugh?” I’ve told him more times than I can count.

  By Thursday, I can scarcely imagine another week like the one that’s just passed. I’ve stopped all pretenses of normality. I put M’s crib in the living room. I order Chinese food and eat it straight from the container. I have a glass of wine and turn the TV up so that it tunes out M’s gurgling and occasional crying. M sits next to me on the couch, and crawls dangerously close to the edge. I push him back over with my ankle. I watch all three reruns of my show until Mahpee starts to wail, then I feed him and wash his little body in the sink. We both fall asleep in the living room that night, and when I wake up, it’s 6:00 a.m. and the TV is still on, blaring an infomercial for a mop that looks like every other mop in stores. It’s the first time I’ve slept through the night in as long as I can remember.

  —

  Before long, it’s Sunday and time for Peter to take Mahpee. I am more than ready to be relieved of my duties. We decide that we will alternate weeks with him while we are living apart.

  After M is gone, along with his mini suitcase full of tiny clothes and bath products and half of his toys, the house is quiet. Snow is melting off tree branches outside and falls to earth with an occasional plop! This is a sound I’ve come to associate with late winter and the beginning of spring, of emerging from a long, dark, and cold period.

  I call a therapist and arrange an appointment. When I walk into the waiting room at her office, I suddenly feel very aware of how disheveled I look. I am wearing Peter’s old flannel shirt. Its front pocket has ripped off, and I’ve been using the sleeve as a handkerchief for the past few days.

  The therapist starts with the usual background-gathering, thumbing through the paperwork I filled out in the lobby just minutes before. “No addictions, no psychiatric history. Africa, that’s interesting.”

  “South Africa,” I correct her. She looks up from the papers briefly, frowns slightly at me, and lowers her eyes again.

  “And you’re going through a divorce,” she says. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “Yeah, well.”

  “It’s quite a common thing for people who have recently experienced loss to rush into relationships,” she says robotically. She looks up at me again, reading my expression.

  “Oh,” I say. “It’s that simple.”

  The therapist smirks, raises her pen in the air, and turns the page. “Well, I can’t say that.”

  “Of course you can’t,” I mutter.

  It takes the rest of the session for her to review the paperwork. At the end of the session, she shakes my hand and says “I look forward to working with you” in a very businesslike manner before ushering me out the front door.

  As soon as I get home, I call Aminah and tell her what the therapist said.

  “Can you believe how glib she was?” I ask. “Aren’t I paying her for something a bit deeper than that?”

  “Well . . .” Aminah trails off.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Thandi, you know how much I like Peter.”

  “Yeah?”

  “But you guys did get married very fast.”

  “My parents got married after two months.”

  “But do you really think you would’ve done it if you hadn’t gotten pregnant?”

  I’ve had that exact thought so many times, in the depths of arguments with my husband, in my loneliest moments. I’ve never actually failed anything in my life; even when I was irresponsible, I still managed to earn decent grades by most standards. But throughout our time together, I’ve had the uncomfortable feeling that with Peter, I’d somehow done everything wrong.

  “You know I love you. Maybe it’s worth thinking about.”

  I pause, look again out the window, where the branches are bare and wet and the sun is now shining with full strength. If not for the frost on the window, it would look like spring.

  “Well, not all of us are lucky enough to fall in love with our high school sweetheart, who also happens to be rich.”

  “I thought we were talking about you, not me.”

  “I meant what I said, Amin
ah. Your life has been pretty fucking charmed, all right? You can’t exactly identify with what I’ve been going through . . .”

  “Look,” Aminah says, breezing past me with her usual resolve, “I know this is really hard, and I wish I could be closer to you right now. Why don’t you bring M down for a weekend so that we can watch him, okay? And take it easy, try to get some rest. Thandi?”

  “Yeah,” I say.

  “Everything will be all right, I promise.”

  I dream that I am in my middle school cafeteria. There is an assembly at which I am supposed to speak. My mother is standing over in the corner, wearing her pajamas, turban, and slippers. She is as thin as she was just before she died. She tries to pull me to the corner to give me advice, but she can’t speak. She becomes more frustrated and starts weeping. I try to hug her but I can’t get my arms around her. The more I try, the more translucent she becomes. I realize that she is a ghost, a hologram, and eventually she disappears, and I am left with nothing but the feeling of emptiness that I knew so long ago.

  Sometimes, my dreams of my mother are pleasant. They are peaceful dreams. In them, I barely register her presence, but her presence is what colors them with warmth and comfort. It is enough to make me still feel warm and nurtured after I wake up.

  My father marries Elma, who, I realize with time, is a kind and practical woman. My father sells the house in South Africa. The VW he gives to my mother’s brother whose car was totaled in an accident. He says he can’t afford to keep it up anymore, but I know it’s because his new wife has given him new interests. He retires from his job and they travel to South America together. They send M and me postcards from Brazil, Panama, and Chile. Once in a while, a box wrapped in brown paper and colorful stamps arrives containing a rag doll or sugar candy. My father does his adventuring through women, I realize.