Thought I Knew You (9 page)

Chapter 12

A
mazingly enough, my body continued
to function even when my heart felt eviscerated. I could breathe. I could talk. I made dinner, did laundry, ran the vacuum. However, I didn’t think. I couldn’t feel.

Numbness overtook me, and I went through the days on autopilot. With Drew gone, the house resumed its hollow quality. Voices bounced off the walls like pool balls reverberating in the seemingly empty rooms. I grew impatient with the girls.

I noticed a change in Hannah’s behavior. She became selfish. Leah could no longer play with her toys. She would yell, “No, Leah. I
said
you can’t
touch that!
”
And Leah would cry. I would bang my hand on the counter out of frustration. I blamed Greg’s absence, but my reactions were also damaging, and I didn’t know how to change them. The days just progressed with the conclusion of hours, and end to end, those hours comprised the days.

I tried to take the girls to the library, toddler gym, and the playground. I wrote a semi-sincere apology note to Miss Katie. But mostly, those first few lonely weeks were colored by anger, intense, unmitigated fury. I slammed pots and pans in the kitchen, as if the cacophony would summon Greg home, if only to display annoyance at the racket and my need to slam things. At night, what kept me awake were the memories, specifically the good ones. I reconstructed happy events in our lives, looking for clues that would reveal the current ending.

On our first New Jersey date, after Greg returned from Rochester, we went to a distant cousin’s wedding, where I met Greg’s entire extended family. Greg drank too much champagne, an unusual occurrence as I later discovered, and I had to drive his car home. His car was manual transmission, and I had no idea how to drive it. I think I stayed in third gear the entire time, with the engine rev drowning out any conversation, while we giggled like kids. Greg tried to show me how to shift, but I kept grinding the gears. When we got to his apartment, he invited me to stay. I hesitated because it was our first real date, but I didn’t have a car, and I wasn’t about to try to drive Greg’s without the aid of passenger seat instruction. He led me into his bedroom and gave me a stack of clean towels and a chaste kiss on the cheek good night.

When I asked him what he was doing, he looked shocked. “I’ll sleep on the couch.” He looked at the floor and rubbed the back of his neck.

I pulled him toward me by his tie and covered his mouth with mine. “I think you should reconsider.” I led him onto his bed.

Another memory flashed of Greg with newborn Hannah in the hospital, holding her and looking at her face. He traced her nose and mouth with his finger, making sure she was real.

“I can’t believe we made her,” he said with tears in his eyes. “How did I ever do anything so perfect?”

Everything you do is perfect. But somehow, you’re the only one who can’t see that.

And another: Greg had been in the delivery room, my cheerleader, my champion. When the nurses took Hannah to clean and weigh her, he whispered in my ear, “You are so amazing, Claire Barnes. And I will love you until the day I die.”

Lying in my empty marital bed, all I could think was,
Is today that day? Was October first that day?

And another: Our first night in our new home, the one we bought together, we lay together on a mattress on the floor because we were too tired to put the bed together. We’d been married for two years, house shopping for one. Greg was particular; I was not. I considered any house we bought to be our starter home. Greg, fantastic with money, wanted to make sure the property had resale value. We talked for hours about all the improvements we could make, how we would make the house our home, fit for our family.

Greg confessed that he never believed he’d have anything in life. His father had died when he was five and his mother died shortly after we married. He had no brothers or sisters. He always believed he’d go through life alone, struggling the way his mother had. She had made ends meet, but not without worry and not with any joy, just fighting the demands and strain of everyday life. He confessed everything he’d ever feared: that he wouldn’t marry, and then when he did, that he would fail as a husband, as a provider. I came to understand that the need to provide for his family was his sole driving purpose, and so ingrained in him, it trumped all else. We talked for hours, like newlyweds, and I promised we wouldn’t fail, that together, failing wasn’t a possibility. I tried to make him understand that there was more than one meter stick to measure success—happiness, fulfillment, laughter, joy—and that simply making a mortgage payment every month shouldn’t be a life goal. To Greg, providing was all that mattered. Wherever Greg had gone, what was his meter stick? Did he think of himself as a failure? I couldn’t reconcile the image of Greg as I remembered him with Missing Greg, lounging on an island with another woman.

I wore Greg’s sweatshirts every day; only wrapped in Greg could I function again. Before, I would dress with care. I would take time with my hair, even apply some makeup, just to go to the library or the toddler gym. It used to be important that I looked composed, envied by other, more frazzled moms. But because coiffed hair and makeup looked clownish with oversized sweatshirts and yoga pants, I quit bothering. Since I also wouldn’t wash them, they took on an odd odor after the first month. I didn’t care. I felt swallowed by sadness.

Behind the sadness was a simmering anger. The anger would boil over unexpectedly. I must have started cursing more without realizing it because I would hear Hannah in the playroom, trying to put together a puzzle, and frustrated with the pieces, she’d say, “Oh, shit,” or “Damn it.” I made a mental note to watch my mouth, but since I had no control over my verbal tirades, either the language I used or who I directed it at, my efforts were kind of useless.
Everything
felt useless.

Mom brought me a book titled
On
Grief and Grieving
that was about grief having five stages. I started to read it, hoping that once I understood my emotions, I would be able to resolve them, or at least work toward pretending to be normal again. But the book talked about death, divorce, and infertility. There was no chapter on lost husbands. Everyone in the book had a label: a widower, a divorcee, an orphan. I was label-less.

The book explained the stages of grief, but my heartache was more than building blocks to be piled one on top of the other until I could bridge the gap between my two lives. My existence was a complicated tapestry: red for anger, blue for intense sadness, green for happiness. Yes, happiness existed, not much, but some, particularly in the early morning, in the place between sleep and awake when I’d think Greg was lying next to me in bed, and imagine us talking softly, deciding who would get up first and who should get coffee in bed on Sundays. Then Leah would cry, awake and wanting out of her crib. When I opened my eyes to the bare sheets, cool in the early morning light, I’d weave a thick, ugly braid of red and blue into my blanket of sorrow.

I searched each memory for signs. Was Greg unhappy? Did he really up and leave us? That one day a few months ago, he had said he didn’t mind if I took the day off and went shopping while he stayed with the girls; was he really angry instead? How about the time I washed a few of his white work shirts with one of Hannah’s red T-shirts and turned his pink? Had that been the final straw? For his birthday last year, I’d gotten him an expensive watch he claimed to want. When he opened it, he looked almost disappointed. Why?

No memory was safe from my scrutiny. I went through photo albums, studying Greg’s face, his expressions, running my hands over the plastic-protected pictures. When he scowled at the camera last year on the Outer Banks because I insisted on taking a picture of him covered in zinc oxide, was that disdain in his eyes? I had waved off his protests, showing him the picture.
You just look so ridiculous! Like one of those old men with the white noses!
He picked me up, threw me over his shoulder, and marched down to the ocean.
It’s not white, it’s blue!
he yelled, mockingly shaking his fist from the shore after he tossed me into the water. When I came up for air, he stood with Hannah and Leah, all three of them laughing. Had he been genuine that day, or had I missed the signs all along? Those were my fears, that I’d missed the signs all along. That our happily ever after was a sham was the fear that would settle in my stomach, twisting my insides.

I felt sick all the time and even trudged into the CVS one day while the girls were at Mom and Dad’s to buy a pregnancy test.
Wouldn’t that be a bitch?
It had been a few months, but stranger things had happened. The nausea was so reminiscent of my pregnancy with Hannah. When I studied the readout, my hands shaking, and saw the one pink line instead of two, I collapsed on the toilet with relief. And then, inexplicably, overwhelming sadness.

I began to think of my life as divided: my before life, with Greg, and my after life, without him. The deep chasm that separated those two lives was my current purgatory, as deep and dark as it was wide. I didn’t believe I’d feel so lost forever, and I frequently hoped that my life afterward would be sunnier, and maybe I’d legitimately laugh again one day. But Leah, Hannah, and I passed our days at the bottom of a black gorge, blindly feeling for the rope that would save us.

My parents called every day. My mom came over at least three times a week, sometimes more. She would come in the door, a flurry of movement, such a stark contrast to the stillness of our lives that I would cringe. She had bags of activities, small toys, or stickers for the girls and always a bottle of wine for me. She had apparently skipped the chapter in the grief book on the dangers of self-medication. Some days, she would take the kids to the park if it wasn’t too cold, or to the aquarium or on some other outing where they could be the loud, unruly kids they should be, but selfishly, I limited those days. I needed Leah and Hannah. Without them, I was alone with my despair and had no reason to get off the couch or out of bed.

At night, after my mom would bring the kids home and help me put them to bed, I would drink wine until my vision wavered. I’d call Sarah, drunk and rambling, and day or night, she’d stay on the phone as long as I needed. She lived in California and asked more than once if she could come visit, but I kept denying her. She had a life—dating, drinking, single—a life I longed for some nights. I loved my girls; they were my life’s meaning, especially now. But the anonymity of a single life, of meeting men in bars and not knowing their names or their secrets, of not carrying someone else’s burden, sounded heavenly. But I couldn’t have Sarah with me, another person to witness my sorrow, to look at me with pitying eyes. I didn’t want her to ask if she could do something, maybe some laundry. She didn’t need to witness the dishes that piled in the sink or the long stretches between vacuumings. She might actually notice and cringe when Leah found Goldfish crackers on the floor and ate one.

Chapter 13

T
en days before Christmas, the
house was still not decorated. I hadn’t put up a tree or done any Christmas shopping. I couldn’t seem to find the motivation to face the crowds, the malls with their hauntingly happy music, or the laughter of families as they waited in line for their children to sit on Santa’s lap.

Dad showed up with a small four-foot Christmas tree in tow. The tree was the smallest we’d ever had, and my first instinct was to scorn the gesture.

“Your mother said you needed a tree,” he grunted. He carefully laid out a piece of plywood and set up the tree stand. The tree looked silly in the usual corner, like a pretend tree.
For a make-believe Christmas.
Before he left, he stood in front of me, shifting from one foot to the other and finally reached out, putting his large hand on my head, as though I were Cody. “The girls need a Christmas, is all.”

“I know, Dad.”

“You’re on your own to decorate it.” He looked over at the wilting, skinny tree and then back at me. His eyes looked wet and sad. We’d never had much conversation outside of
how’s the car running,
and the sudden reaching out felt stridently out of place.

I kissed his cheek. “Thanks.”

He left with a final grunt and another pat on my head, hunched and lumbering down the walk to his car.

My mother came later and picked up the girls. She took them back to her house to bake cookies like “everyone else.” “You
are
going to get them presents, right?” Mom asked.

I gave her a withering glare. “What am I? A terrible person? Of course. That’s a stupid question.”

“Please wear something normal and go to the mall. Spend this on presents.” Mom countered my spitefulness with patience, and I felt a small pang of guilt.

I gaped when she handed me three crisp one-hundred-dollar bills. She put up her hand, as if I would try to argue. I had no idea of the condition of my finances, but they couldn’t have been good. Still unable to make myself go into the study and figure out Greg’s system, I had paid the November bills with the checks I carried in my purse. I had no idea if they would clear or not.

For the first time in over a month, I went to my closet and pulled on one of my own shirts. It hung on me, draping over bony shoulders and sunken breasts. The diet of the grieving—the latest fad. I got out my straight iron and pulled my dark hair through the hot plates. I applied some mascara, foundation, and lip gloss. My reflection in the mirror appeared almost ordinary, like my previous self, but skinnier, sadder, with bigger eyes. I tried to will my lips into a smile, baring my teeth. The expression looked grotesque, a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

I steered the van into the mall parking lot and surveyed the crowd, heavy for a Wednesday, but Christmas shoppers didn’t differentiate. I felt a dull ache under my breastbone, dreading the music and the shoppers, which would both be irritating and cheerful. I forced myself out of the car, for my kids. They needed a Christmas. For that matter, they needed a mother.
They needed a father
. The walk from the car to the front of the mall seemed interminably long. When I opened the large glass door, I was assaulted by the smell of soft pretzels and cinnamon, and the sounds of Christmas music and Santa.
There are five fucking entrances in this mall, and seriously, I pick the Santa one?

I kept my head down and made a beeline to Toys R Us at the far end of the mall. I had no idea what to buy. I certainly hadn’t been paying attention to television commercials. I walked the aisles, pushing an empty cart, trapped by indecision. Electronics? Too old. Polly Pocket? Too overdone. We had about a hundred. Dolls? Too babyish. Disney princesses? Hannah was past that phase. I needed help. I needed Greg. Every day, I thought that at least once.