Chapter 7

The merry-go-round goes round and round.  A few years ago we had another baby and bought another house.  The new baby, Lily, is a perfect angel.  She is everything I had hoped she would be. When we found out it was another girl, he pouted for days and blamed me.  I was so sad because he was so sad.  Secretly, I was happy she was healthy, but I was afraid to be content and happy when he was so angry, so I stayed invisible for days, like a whisper in my own house, saying and doing nothing until the mood passed.

 Lily is growing so fast I can hardly stand it. She looks just like Lucy and it makes me ache and hurt from the realization of how quickly time is passing.  I want to freeze them both in time.   I love every second of belonging to them, walking through life hand-in-hand together with them, the three girls on a grand adventure.  We do our normal day to day things like playing, eating, taking a walk, taking naps, reading books, and taking baths.  I love it all.  These small moments often take my breath away. I can remember every second.   

We’ve had holidays and vacations, dinners, and birthdays.  It’s funny how I can remember the small stuff, but the bigger events blur together.  I seem to remember laughing and having fun.  I can’t remember what it was about, exactly, but I can feel it all the same.   The curious thing is that my memories of childhood are vivid, like movies.  My memories of my children are just as brilliant….but everything with him is dull and murky.

   I am lying in my bed trying to sift through the ashes to find one perfect memory.  I have a lot of memories that start out great and then turn sour.  I have memories that are burned around the edges or that are tarnished by the back story.  In the merry-go-round of my life, I can’t pick apart anything.  It is just a blur of colors and curse words, anger and despising. In the blur of the spinning, the good and the bad blend so closely that they become one. 

  It’s early in the morning, 3:48am to be exact. I have been awake for hours, searching for those good times.  I don’t have a need to find the good times anymore to prove something to myself or convince myself.   I am just curious about why I can’t find one good thing.  In the past, this chore would have sent me into fits of sadness for days.  Now, it’s just curious.   I can’t sleep anyway.  I am too excited about what the morning brings. 

      He has just come to bed.  He reeks of wine and chewing tobacco and six days of unwashed funk.  He rolls over and breathes on the back of my neck and I can smell his putrid breath.  It smells of decay.  He should have gotten his fillings and cavities fixed years ago. The smell gets worse as the rot spreads through his teeth.  I hold my breath in fear that I might puke on him.  I used to lay in this bed and cry. I used to lay in this bed and dream. I used to lay in this bed and sleep.  I don’t do any of those things anymore.  I am nothing but skin and hair, hollowed out and rotted away, stinking from my own rot, like his damn teeth.  Or rather, I was…. until earlier today.  He flops his arm over the dip between my hips and my ribcage like a dead fish.  I throw it back.  He issues a sad complaint in a small, childlike voice.   He knows things are different and he has resorted to childlike behaviors.  Earlier, he was crying and begging, holding onto my leg like my children do when they want to be held.  It was so pathetic and disgusting.  I imagined kicking him in the teeth while he was on the floor.  I didn’t, but the visual was just as satisfying.  He whimpers again and starts to cry softly.  I ignore him.

  For years, I have walked the Earth, every day looking at the wavy horizon for happier days to come.  I could see them and so I thought they existed and so I kept walking forward.  After years of circles, I realized the Earth was round and there would be no end, just years and the good times to come were nothing more than a fantasy.  I had resigned myself to my fate.  I would die, circling the Earth, trying to catch the horizon.    Although the world being round is a pretty common piece of knowledge, I don’t trust myself to know anything.  My life is full of bad decisions based on things I thought to be truths.  Everything I believe in and built my life around is nothing more than a mirage caused by heat.  I thought I knew the world was round.  You can imagine my surprise when I fell off the face of the Earth earlier today. 

 

***

The morning was the same morning I have had for three years.  Get up early, get the kids breakfast, run some errands.  It’s Saturday, which means my husband has been up until 4am the night before playing online video games and won’t be rising until the mid-afternoon.  Our job is to stay quiet until he stirs.  This morning he rose early, at the crack of 11:30am.  It’s pouring outside. He hates the rain.  He gets bored when it’s raining.  The kids are plopped in front of the television, watching a movie. They also get bored when it’s raining.  With everyone settled and quiet, I decide to run to the grocery store.  I usually go to one of two stores.  One store is close and is great for the simple purchases.  The other store is further away, but has more gourmet foods that I need now that I am on a specialized diet.  Six months ago my insides stopped accepting food.   I dropped thirty pounds quickly and always felt weak and sick.  I went to three doctors.  Two told me it was stress.  I thought they were condescending idiots.  One told me to change my diet.  The diet thing seems to be working, sometimes.  Today, I decide to go to the gourmet store because I need more food.

      When I leave the house, no one notices.  I ask if anyone has any special requests.  I get no response.  I drive to the store in silence.  The rain beats on the car and the swoosh swoosh of the windshield wipers is calming and peaceful.  I am caught in my thoughts of nothing in particular.  By the time I get to the grocery store, the rain has stopped.  As I walk into the store, I look for the rainbow. It is an act that always annoys my husband.  I shop. I load the cart with everyone’s favorite foods.  I am full of myself, pleased and smiling.  I haven’t said which store I was going to and everyone will be so happy when I come home with all these goodies, especially on such a dreary day.  As I am finishing up, I pull out my cell phone and call home.  The grunt on the other end lets me know I have made the connection.  I ask if there was anything else special he wants while I am at the gourmet grocery store.  What happens next is like the big lever on a railroad track that unexplainably trips, sending the cars spiraling off course.

      I can’t remember exactly what he says, but there is a lot of yelling from the other end of the phone.  Something about not telling him which store I was going to and now his day was ruined.  In the background one of the kids is crying, I can’t tell which one.  My hand hangs up the phone.   I stare at my hand like it has been transplanted from another body.  I don’t think I hung up, but the phone has gone quiet from the actions of this strange hand.  Time stands still, waiting for me to sort out what is happening with my hand.  Around me, things continue bustle, undisturbed by my sudden lack of bodily control.  In the background things buzz and beep.  A baby cries. Someone calls for something over the loudspeaker.  I stand holding the cell phone-still perched mid air in my foreign hand- for I don’t know how long.  Somewhere in the hollows of the deep, down, dark space, the king wakes from his sixteen year slumber.  ‘I’m finished.’ I hear.  I think it’s my voice, but I can’t be quiet sure.  Then the voice comes stronger, filling my head. ‘I’m finished.’ It says again.  Not mad or angry, just strong and definitive. ‘It’s done.’  A smile creeps across my face.  I am free.  I want to run through the grocery store and kiss that crying baby and hug every person I see.  There is light that fills the air. My skin becomes tight and my bones become strong. I can feel myself filling up with fresh air like a blow-up lawn decoration.  I am larger than life.  I am full.  I spin around slowly and take in the grocery store as if I have never seen it before.  It looks different, brighter somehow.  Only after several minutes am I ready to move from this point in time.  In this space of silence and noise in the grocery store, I know it is over. 

      I just fell off the face of the Earth and into the land of possibility.   

Reviews

[Callista-Jade]

I love this! I think you should get this published, I honestly think it`s amazing.