Justin Blaney's Blog, page 44

Last Night’s Farewell, Chapter 16

good morning emptiness

i slept in again

this lost soul of mine unable to rise

for fear of the dark pools that lay at the foot of my bed and stretch out as far as i have traveled

i am scorched and alone

sending a letter out

a beacon

a flare among the stars

above forsaken earth

to call you, i hope 

another lost one

if you are out there

half buried in graves

not sure what is worth fighting for

<>

When I woke, I was in my bed. My head pulsed with the worst migraine I’d ever had. I squeezed it tight with my hands to try to stop some of the pain. My hands moved to the back of my skull, finding a lump the size of a swollen orange. It felt sticky, and I found blood on my fingers. The white pillow case was smeared with patches of dark brown. I went to the washroom and swallowed four Aleve without water. I ran the shower to heat the water while I sat on the toilet.

Steam began to roll over the shower curtain as I grabbed my phone and messaged Elliot.

I need to see you.

Stepping into the shower, I winced at the pain of the water on the back of my head. I did my best to get my body completely wet under the trickling stream of scalding water. It wasn’t enough to just leave Lysander now. Both of them were going to pay, if it was the last thing I did on this earth, they were going to pay for this. I needed time though. I needed to be patient. To make sure I had time to plan my payback. I would get full custody of the girls. I’d get alimony. I’d get whatever the fuck I wanted. But should I go to the police?

I turned off the shower and dried myself.

No, the police would just get in the way. I inspected the bruise in the mirror as best as I could. Grabbing my phone, I snapped a few photos, holding my hair out of the way as best as I could. Fuck it stung.

Wrapped in a towel, I took some photos of the girls room. It was exactly like I’d found it last night. They must have left after knocking me out. It wouldn’t be good for the girls to be around for this. I should take them to stay with their Auntie Bettie. She could take them to school and have Camp Bettie with them in the evenings for a week or so. The girls loved Camp Bettie. I packed bags for Sophie and Pimm, stuffing in a few of their favorite animals and dolls and some early reader books I’d been encouraging them to try. Frog and Toad, and the Bernstein Bears. I called Dylan’s mom and said I’d be over in a few minutes to pick up the girls. She said they had fun and were just eating Lucky Charms and watching cartoons.

Elliot messaged me while I was hanging up the phone.

When?

Pick me up in an hour? I responded.

How long do I get you?

As long as you want.

I found a loose fitting hat to hide the bruise and took the girls’ bags to Dylan’s house. The girls rushed out before I even rung the bell.

“Mommy!” Their hugs never felt so good.

“I missed you so much.”

“We were waiting by the window, watching for you.”

“Do you want to go to Auntie Bettie’s house?”

They squealed.

“Ok, let’s get in the van.” I handed them each their bags. They yelled goodbye to Dylan through the screen door.

“Say thinks to Miss Parker too.”

They did, and dashed across the street to the garage. The two guys in lawn chairs were outside again, smoking and staring at me as I opened the sliding door. I pulled out into the street, tires screeching as I rolled past them, trying not to look. I called Bettie on the way to her house, begged the favor and she was happy to oblige. She loved Sophie and Pimm, sometimes I think even more than I did. But she didn’t have to put up with the whining and chores, just had the fun. That was ok with me. I’m glad we knew her. Bettie was a seventy years old widow who lived in a big house with a huge yard that her husband built after WWII. He did really well at Boeing and retired a decade ago with his name on several patents for the 777. He died a few summers ago, and Bettie was always willing to spend time with the girls, not having any children of her own. She said her husband and her had always been so busy, they’d never made time for kids.

I dropped the kids off and thanked Bettie. She must have seen something in my eye and gave me the nicest, longest hug. I thanked her again and waved to the kids. Then, back to my house. Turning the corner to my street I saw Elliot, sitting on his motorcycle, helmet under his arm, talking to the two guys on lawn chairs. I pulled the van into the garage. Elliot rode over to me, revving the engine a few times while I shut the sliding door.

“Fuck, I missed you.” I hugged Elliot tightly.

He wobbled on the bike. “You’re going to make me fall.” He smiled.

“I needed you. So badly.

“Me too. I have something fun planned for us.”

I glanced over at the guys in lawn chairs, finding them staring at me. “Do you know them?”

“We were just talking bikes.”

“They seem a little too interested in me.”

Elliot looked, but they had resumed talking. One gestured with his hands like he was describing his latest female conquest. The other guy laughed.

I thought about telling Elliot about last night, but the timing wasn’t right. I thought of how he punched the guy just for talking shit to me. What would he do to Lysander when he found out about this? I had to think of a plan first, then give Elliot a way to help me take Lysander and Huma down. I turned his face to mine and kissed him. “I was kind of hoping to stay with you for a while. Do you mind?”

“Of course not. Do you need to pack?”

I showed him a small black leather backpack. A bottle of pills fell out. I snatched them up quickly, and shoved them back into the bag. He looked concerned, perhaps because of my over-reaction to him seeing them. I don’t even know why I reacted that way. They were just depression meds, but I took them for anxiety. Lysander insisted. They didn’t seem to make much of a difference, but I took them to make him stop nagging me. I guess I’d gotten so used to them, I felt uneasy about stopping now. And I didn’t want Elliot to think I had a depression problem or something. I should probably just go off of them.

He ignored the pills. “You pack light?”

“I can get whatever I need when Lysander is at work Monday.”

“And the kids?”

“Staying with a friend for a while.”

Elliot’s phone rang. He turned it off.

“I thought you had an iPhone.”

His hand shook as he put the phone away. “No, just this old Android.”

I spotted a phone sticking out of his pocket and grabbed it. “What’s this then?”

“Oh shit. I forgot about that.”

“You forgot you have two phones?”

“I’m keeping this one for a friend for a while.”

I wondered why he would have two phones and why he would have lied about it to me. Or maybe he really did just forget. I decided to shrug it off. Whatever Elliot was, he was better than Lysander. I didn’t even care. Maybe that was reckless of me. Maybe I should have thought more about who this man was that I was throwing myself into a tangled life with. But I just didn’t care enough to stop. I needed this. I needed a distraction. I needed happiness. I needed to be held by someone who wanted me as much as I wanted him.

He exchanged my hat for a helmet. I climbed on back and we took off down the street. The trees still had their leaves, and every gust of wind was full of them, floating down over us, large and small, twirling and soft. Piles of orange and red and yellow and brown paved the streets and sidewalks. I looked up at the the limbs waving over us, feeling as though I was passing through a paper mache jungle of caramel red apples and orange peels. A group of kids in knit hats and coats in the yard of a big white centennial were throwing armfuls of leaves on top of each other. A couple jogged past us with a small white dog that seemed barely able to keep up. We passed under the stone arches over Lake Washington Blvd through the Arboretum and turned onto the floating bridge across the lake. The smell of crisp sky and cool water seeped into my bones. I breathed in as much as I could hold inside me. The sun was bright, dancing on the cresting waves that collected against the bridge when the wind blew across the surface of the lake. On the horizon, Mount Rainer’s perennial snowy slopes lit with fiery white, beyond a sea of sails and ski boats and party cruisers heading to watch the Huskies play from the water below the big screen by the stadium.

Slowly the city gave way to taller trees and slower highway corners and one lane roads up into the hills following log trucks and vintage cars with the top down, scarfs flowing in the wind behind. My hands enjoyed the feel of Elliot’s chest through his leather jacket. I slipped them into his coat pocket and along his side and up to his shoulders, reminding me of his body entangled with mine wrapped in white sheets and soft skin and softer kisses wherever they could find a welcoming arch and longing touch.

Elliot shifted down to a lower gear, pulling me from my dream. He slowed as we came around a corner and pulled into the gravel along the road’s shoulder.

“Where are we?” I said.

“It’s a surprise.”

I felt the smallest nag of my stomach, a pin prick of fear that I should not have come. But it was too late to go back. I followed him down further into the bushes and tangles of blackberries.

<>

Complete list of chapters here: Last Night’s Farewell

I’m hoping this is an interactive experience. Comments, ideas, and feedback are welcome.

The best way to get each new chapter is to subscribe to email updates below

220 tomorrow will come

220
tomorrow will come
and you’ll say you must go
but i’ll hold you tighter
finding my way deeper into your embrace
my lips beckoning you to stay
and my hands moving over you
making you forget what you were leaving for

All my books are free forever including, Where Whispers Willow, a collection of 100 reverie, musings and lingering dreams.

 

219 sometimes i confess i don’t know what you see in me

219

sometimes i confess i don’t know what you see in me
but then you say you don’t know what i see in you
i suppose we could meet in the middle
and argue about who is more lovely
when we’re more alone
and for every way i adore you, i’ll kiss you somewhere new
until i cover all of you

All my books are free forever including, Where Whispers Willow, a collection of 100 reverie, musings and lingering dreams.

 

22 i sit on these rocks in the salty spray of midnight waves

22

i sit on these rocks in the salty spray of midnight waves
staring into pitched fog pierced only by venus and airplane lights
the silence beyond the white crest calls to me
all that i cannot take i leave on the rocks and wade into the icy foam as all the forces of my nature conspire to crush me
a lifetime seems to pass as i fight against the tide
my lungs and muscles burn
my mind begs me to give in
until at last i find myself treading the deep
distant shore lists as i catch my breath
the world falls into silence and the pain in my heart tells me it’s time
i whisper the words for only you to hear
they hover over the still water then sink into the deep beneath
i feel the rumbling before it reaches my ears
the leviathan rising
around me it surges, snaking down the shore frothing white in the dim until the great wave crests and falls pulling me down in the the mouth of the beast
first thoughts turn to reconsidered seconds
i grasp for words so carelessly given but they are no more
and so i die, fingers frozen and empty
and above me the waves continue crashing on the rocks like they always have
and always will
as long as we must say farewell

All my books are free forever including, Where Whispers Willow, a collection of 100 reverie, musings and lingering dreams.

 

169 i will think of you when i see the moon

169
…i will think of you when i see the moon
gliding on the backs of falling aspen leaves,
and when i see flowers blinking bright at the sun after a week long rain,
and when i breathe…

All my books are free forever including, Where Whispers Willow, a collection of 100 reverie, musings and lingering dreams.

 

103 where is the river large enough

103
where is the river large enough
that all the people of this world
could slip into its current
leaving clothes and silver and guns on the shore
and in there get lost in splashing and laughter fights
arguing mostly over who gets to wash caroline’s hair
or whether the smooth stones under our feet
are better compared
to rain soaked grass or melting ice
show me the path
and let us come down
from these hills we’ve been dying on

All my books are free forever including, Where Whispers Willow, a collection of 100 reverie, musings and lingering dreams.

 

148 i know little of your lips

148
…i know little of your lips,
far less than i should like…

All my books are free forever including, Where Whispers Willow, a collection of 100 reverie, musings and lingering dreams.

 

Last Night’s Farewell, Chapter 15

just as we cannot make someone love us

we cannot make someone hate uswe assume actions or words toward us are a reflection of who we are or what we have done

but they are really just showing us

who they are

<>

Huma smiled painfully as she sat at the dinner table with us, moving with birdlike hesitations, as if checking for approval before each action. Lysander seemed to buy the facade of caring. Or he was just playing along. I stared at him, hoping he could sense the full weight of my hurt at him inviting her in. But he seemed oblivious. Huma whispered something in his ear and he nodded. I realized with a sickness that caught in my throat that this must have been planned, their moment to reveal the affair to me. They were running away together, and I was to be a single mom. I was going to have to get a job. I’d have to work minimum wage as a waitress or receptionist. I’d given up my career to take care of our kids, how could he do this to me? I’d have to take money from my parents to survive, and their gifts were never without strings.

“I invited Huma over,” Lysander said, glancing at her. “I think you should hear her out.”

I stared at wallpaper, where it curled away from the wall just above the trim running along the floor.

Huma scooter her chair toward me. “I’m worried about you. We both are.”

“Who the fuck are you to worry about me?”

She leaned back in her chair. “I thought we were friends.”

“You hate me. I hate you. What’s with the act.”

“Adela,” Lysander said, “try to not be so dramatic.”

“Dramatic?” I pointed at her. “She ruined my life.”

“You don’t think that’s being dramatic?” he said.

“How can you take her side? She spread the worst sort of rumors about me at St. Martins. She’s stolen my friends. She’s made sure I’ll never get to volunteer there again. You don’t even get it. That was all I had.”

“You’re confused.” Huma put her hand on my arm. “None of those things are true.”

I pulled away. “Don’t touch me.”

My phone buzzed, a message from the neighbors asking if the girls could spend the night. I typed out a quick reply and told Lysander. He and Huma exchanged a look.

“Not now,” Lysander said to her quietly.

“Why not now?” I said. “Why don’t you just come out and say it.”

“Say what?”

“That she’s the one you’ve been fucking in my bed.”

Huma squirmed. “I would never do such a thing.” Despite her obvious guilt, she managed a tone that dripped with righteousness, as if she were sitting at the feet of God tasked with passing his judgements on a disobedient world.

“What are you doing here then?” I said.

“I’m here to help.”

I scoffed.

“I want you to be restored,” she said.

“What for?”

“So you can be a part of St. Martins again.”

“You came here to restore me? What about you? What makes you so perfect?”

“No one is perfect. Me least of all.”

What sickened me most about her false humility was how Lysander seemed to accept it, admire it even. Why is it that the worst people on the planet seem to so easily ensnare worshipers? Why do all the good people get trampled on? The light hanging above the table buzzed louder than usual, as if each beam of light was crawling inside my head and splitting me open.

“Just leave,” I said.

“Please,” Lysander said. “Adela—”

“You want me to sit here and listen to this shit?”

“I don’t know why you’re so angry.”

“Haven’t you been listening? How can you know me so badly? How can you not know that this bitch is the last person in the world I’d want in my home.”

“Adela.” Huma folded her arms. “I demand you hear me out.”

I stared at her in disbelief, unable to respond to such audacity. She seemed to take my silence for an invitation.

“I’ve heard some disturbing news. From your friend Danny.”

“Why would Danny talk to you?”

“We are friends, as you well know. We were all there, remember? In your backyard when it happened.”

My drunken dream flashed through my mind, looking for the girls, the garage door shut, turning the handle. “When what happened?”

Huma looked at Lysander. He shook his head, almost imperceptively.

“Never mind,” Huma said. “Let’s not get side tracked.”

“Are you talking about the miscarriage?”

Huma looked down her nose at me. “I saw the bill from Planned Parenthood. We tried to talk to you about it, Danny and I, that afternoon.” She began counting off fingers on her hand, like an attorney submitting evidence to the court. “You confessed how much you disliked being a mom. You said you were ashamed of the thoughts in your head. How you didn’t think you could handle being a mom anymore. You even said—”

“That’s a lie.” I looked at Lysander, begging him for support. “Tell her Lysander.”

He took my hand. “You’ve always been a wonderful mom.”

I began to cry. “What’s so wrong with what I did? Who cares if it was an abortion or not. It’s my life.”

“I’m not here to judge you,” Huma said.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“You can’t move into restoration until you confront the truth.”

“I don’t think this is helpful,” Lysander said to Huma. “Maybe we made a mistake having you come.”

“Fuck,” I said. “You think?”

“Adela,” Huma said. “I see you as a sister. I want the best for you.”

“What does that even mean?”

“I’d like to be around more,” she said. “To help you sort things out.”

Lysander looked at his tightly clasped fingers. “She needs a place to stay for a while.”

“What are you saying?” I said.

“It will just be for a few weeks,” Huma said. “My remodelers are driving me crazy. I have to get out of the house for a while.”

“You’re asking me to live with your fucking mistress?” I was filled, surprisingly, suddenly, with an image of her body bleeding in the shower. Her dead eyes staring up at me. I shook the thought away.

“We’re not having an affair Adela,” Lysander said.

“I know you are.”

“You’re confused—“

I cut her off. “I swear if you say that one more time I’m going to knock your head off.”

“I don’t think violence is a good idea Adela.”

“Fuck you Huma.” I turned to Lysander. “How is this a good thing for me?”

“You really want me to spell it out?” Lysander said.

“We’re very concerned about the drinking,” Huma said.

“Oh, so if I have a few drinks to help me sleep I’m need looking after? Let’s see how you’d feel if you found out your husband was fucking the woman who ruined your life.”

“So you’re completely innocent?” Huma said, “That’s the thing. I came here so you and Lysander could have an honest conversation about what I heard from Danny.”

My stomach twisted into a rock.

Huma looked me in the eye. “She told me you’ve been seeing another man. Are you having an affair Adela?”

“It’s him that had the affair.”

“Don’t change the subject.”

“I can’t believe this. You’re going to confront me and let him off?”

“I don’t know what he’s done or not done. I’m here for you. You’re the one engaging in self destructive behaviors. I’m afraid for your health.”

“How can you let her say these things to me?”

Lysander took a turn staring at the wallpaper. He might have been crying, I thought I saw tears on his check, but his head was turned away from me. I realized the pain he must be going through, how it didn’t matter that he’d cheated on me first. Now he was feeling the betrayal. I didn’t even have the heart to deny it. I did want it all out, I did want the truth, just not how Huma was doing it. Not with her here.

“Please,” I said, “If you’ve ever been my friend, please give me and Lysander space right now.”

Huma got to her feet. “You’re right, I should leave.”

“Where will you go?”

“I can get a hotel.”

“We have a spare room,” Lysander said.

“That’s the girls room,” I said, finding myself unable to even process the shock at him offering it to her.

“It’s just for one night. You said they were sleeping over at the neighbors anyways.”

Huma looked at the door. “I’m not sure I should stay.”

“Adela and I can talk more in our room.”

“Well, I can be out before you see me in the morning,” she said. “I’ll find a mother place to stay tomorrow. Would that be alright with you Adela?”

I wondered if it was all a ruse. She pretended to want to go so Lysander could insist she stay. But I didn’t have the energy to fight anymore. I said something, I’m not sure what. She thanked me. Feeling a rush of tiredness, I moved to our bedroom, hovering like a shadow over black waters. Their voices mingled somewhere behind me, soft voices full of concern for my wellbeing I’m sure. I fell into the bed and found sleep almost immediately.

The street lamp glowed yellow through the window when I woke in the middle of the night. I reached for Lysander, but was alone in the bed. A faint noise came from somewhere in the house. A moan. Then a few creaking bedsprings, one, two, three. Then silence. I sat up, expecting to wake from the dream. The nightmare. But the bed was still empty. The sheets on Lysander’s side were tucked in, the pillows straight and untouched. Two more creaks floated through the walls. Blood flushed my face, filling my head, burning inside my veins and behind my eyes. My vision blurred, my head spun. I shook the spinning away, then I wept. I put my face down into my pillow and wept so loud inside me, muffled by the bedsheets. But the weeping didn’t last long. I wasn’t a fucking victim. I’d had enough. I reached into the bedside drawer, but the gun wasn’t there. Where did he hide it? Where did that little fucker hide the gun? I tore the pillows aside, felt under the mattress, and searched under his socks in the dresser. My fingers found something hard. The barrel of the Sig Sauer.

Cold steel never felt so good. I pulled it out and stared in the yellow lamplight. Rising, I moved into the hall.

My hand shook, pointing the gun in front of me, heading toward the sound of the creaking. The girls room, down the hall. The door was shut. Soft light danced under it. I heard laughter, a women. And a man shushing her. I approached the door and listened to them, stopping to dry my eyes with my wrist as two huge tears rolled down my cheek. Next to my face, along the wall was a photo of Lysander and I pushing Sophie on a swing outside St. Martins. And all four of us dressed up for Easter mass. Lysander shoving cake in my face at the wedding. I wanted to smash it with the butt of the gun, but resisted for fear of giving myself away. I put my hand on the door handle and the voices and creaking bed and moaning on the other side of the door went silent. As if they knew judgement was near. I imagined them dressing quickly and quietly, hoping they could hide time to put away their sins before I discovered them. They didn’t know my state of mind. That I wasn’t going to put up with my husband fucking Huma in our own kid’s twin bed with princess sheets and American Girl dolls looking down on them from the shelf above their vanity. I had fucking had enough. You should make sure you know the state of mind of the wife before you fuck the husband, or you just might wake a slumbering nightmare, a dark thing hidden behind a mask of minivans and children’s lessons and PTA boards.

I wiped another tear from my face, and pushed the door open. The bed was empty. The sheets twisted, half rolled onto he floor with the pillows. Two candles flickered on the window sill from a gust of wind that rushed past my feet. The window was open. Could they have left through it? Were they running to Lysander’s car, half dressed, laughing about how they’d almost been caught, how they’d escaped the crazy wife, the fucked-in-the-head-loser who drinks too much, who smokes too many Virgina Slims, who cusses too much. Huma didn’t know that I’d go to jail for him. She didn’t know I’d kill for him.

I moved the sheets around with my feet, wondering if they’d try hiding under the bed. But they’d never fit under there, or even be able to try in the time I walked down the hall. I turned to the closet. I found the door cracked open. I crept forward. I held the gun straight out. It wobbled in my shaking hands. I thought about just emptying the clip through the closet door. Whoever was in there, getting blasted with bullets and chips of wood and paint spraying in their faces smeared with lipstick. But I had to be sure. I had to see their eyes. I wanted them to know they fucked with the wrong unstable housewife. I pulled the handle. I pulled it slow.

I heard movement behind me. But I couldn’t spin fast enough to see who was there before I felt something hit me in the back of the head. My skull split in the worst pain I’d ever experienced. And I collapsed in a blacked out heap.

<>

Complete list of chapters here: Last Night’s Farewell

I’m hoping this is an interactive experience. Comments, ideas, and feedback are welcome.

The best way to get each new chapter is to subscribe to email updates below

133 you and i have one dance with life

133
you and i have one dance with life
what matters most is who we’re holding
when the music stops

All my books are free forever including, Where Whispers Willow, a collection of 100 reverie, musings and lingering dreams.

 

Last Night’s Farewell, Chapter 14

i feel you slipping away

and wish i could read your mind

or find just the right way to say

i didn’t mean to fall in love

you must have known for a while now

if i could figure out exactly what you need

to be the best kind of friend

i’ll be that for you instead

and we can just pretend 

that you don’t make me perfectly happy

and we can pretend 

that i’m not ready this very minute

to turn my life upside down

just to make you smile

over and again 

until the blissful moments we collect fade into forever

<>

I stopped in a seven eleven, bought a pack of Virginia Slims and the biggest Mike’s Hard Lemonade I could find. By the time I’d walked the 20 blocks down Pine and found my van where I’d parked it the night before, I was buzzed on a cocktail of spiked lemon juice, sugar, and nicotine. Shivering and drenched, I found another parking ticket waiting, this one in a plastic bag. I put out my cigarette on it, tossed it into the gutter and climbed into the driver seat. Lighting another cigarette, I drove over the curb and pulled into traffic, sipping my Mike’s at every red light all the way home.

Our apartment was a no smoking building, but try and stop me today. I stumbled down the hall, through the door, and fell into the bed with a half bottle of Merlot on the night stand and my half empty pack of cigarettes on the pillow beside me and numb from my head to my heart. I didn’t have to pick up the kids until 3:30, enough time to get drunk and sleep it off before driving over to St. Martins, but I’d have to work quick.

I drank the rest of the wine straight from the bottle and nestled into the pillows. A fly buzzed by the window. I shut my eyes and let my pain slosh around inside me. But the buzzing made it impossible to brood. I threw a shoe at the window. It crashed into the blinds. But the fly didn’t seem to notice. I rolled face first into a pillow and held another over my head. Maybe I could suffocate myself, or just cry. I wanted to weep, but no tears came. The numbness pulled me down into the mattress, with it my aching body, sifted through sheets and down under the floorboards where I hid away the memories—in the dark space below my bed. I thought about how Sophie and Pimm used to get so scared of monsters at bedtime, how I’d comfort them by lifting up the mattress to show them the only things hiding under there were dusty candy wrappers and broken pencils and a lost stuffed kitten named Milo. Lucky for them they never asked to see under my mattress. That’s where the real monsters hide.

It was not a restful sleep. Drunk never is.

First I dreamed of my night with Elliot. I replayed every moment, every touch, I felt his hunger for me again and I felt my body weep for the loss of him. These thoughts gave way to tucking Sophie and Pimm in for bed, me showing them under the mattress. They cried about the monsters. I held them close and sang softly until they fell asleep. Then it was lunch time, a sunny Saturday afternoon. We were in our old house, the one with the backyard under those huge maple trees. I was enjoying some day drinking with my friends, back when they used to be. Huma and I were laughing as Danny told blowjob jokes. She claimed to have an endless supply.

Sophie and Pimm begged me to play hide and seek, while Danny held her breath mid punchline.

I told them I was with my friends and they should go entertain themselves.

They said they were bored.

I suggested they find some old toys in the garage.

Finally they left, and Danny, forgetting what she was talking about, was telling us how blowjobs make great last minute gift ideas when the scene jumped forward. Huma and Danny had just left. I realized with a rising panic I hadn’t seen the girls since I told them to play in the garage. I called through the house. I felt a lump growing inside me. The kind only a mother would ever understand. A sixth sense that something was wrong. The front door was open. Sophie’s bike was laying on the sidewalk. I rolled it toward the garage. I turned the handle to the side door. The door creaked open. I knew something terrible waited for me from the way my hairs stood up on my arm. I hesitated to enter. Then the dream ended.

It was dark when I woke. I realized the time and lurched. The wine, sour and roiling inside my belly didn’t agree with the sudden motion. I grabbed the trash just as it came up, then frowned down at the brown fluid mixed with floating tampon wrapper and half covered toilet paper cardboard roll. Those cardboard rolls always make me think of art class at the school, the kids gleefully turning them into animals or towers or miniature cities. The sight of this one would have caused me to throw up again, except nothing was left inside me. I heard voices on the other side of my closed bedroom door. Lysander laughing with the kids. The door handle turned and Sophia and Pimm crept in, as if they’d just been warned to let me sleep. Seeing I was awaked the jumped on me.

“Mommy, you smell like poop,” Pimm said.

“Thanks.” I tickled her in retaliation.

“Daddy picked us up and told us to not wake you.”

“Why are you sleeping mommy?”

“I’m not feeling well sweetheart.”

“Can we play at Dylan’s house tonight?”

“If it’s OK with your father.”

They ran from the room yipping and hollering. I fell back into the pillows. Lysander appeared beside me. He took the trash can and the bottle of wine and the nearly empty pack of cigarettes and a few scattered kleenex and leaned over to kiss me on the forehead. “I’m worried about you.”

I rolled over and moaned. My stomach felt empty of everything but acid.

“I wish you weren’t doing this to yourself,” he said.

I didn’t answer. Lysander took the trash from the room. I heard him talking to the kids in the hall. They yelled goodbye to me and were gone with the slam of a door.

He sat on the bed.

“Why don’t you take a shower, and if you’re feeling up for it, we can talk some over dinner.”

“I don’t ever want to eat again.”

“Well you might be hungry later. I’ll make us something light while you get cleaned up.”

I did feel better after the shower and after getting into clean comfy clothes. I smelled the dress I wore with Elliot. It carried his scent. I sat for a moment on the side of the bed, breathing him in. Wishing I was going to see him instead of my husband. Thinking of never seeing him again made my eyes burn. I rubbed the tears away before they began.

“Dinner is almost ready,” Lysander yelled from the kitchen.

I found him setting the table and sat with my back to the window. I felt drained of everything, good or bad, all gone as far gone can be. But I did feel hungry, dammit. Sizzling green beans popped in the wok and a romaine filled my plate, sprinkled with croutons and grated cheese and drizzled with dressing. A bowl of hot bread was covered with a towel. I cut the lettuce and stabbed a crouton as Lysander served me a dozen blackened green beans. Coarse salt crystals shimmered in the oil and vinegar beside the bread bowl.

The door buzzed. Lysander, who didn’t seem surprised by the ring, went to the intercom as I tore a slice of bread and dipped it in the vinegar.

“Hello?” he said.

“It’s Huma. Can I come in?”

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Complete list of chapters here: Last Night’s Farewell

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