A Family Matter

by Claire Lynch

His family teases him about it, his strange inflexibilities.

Still, she will do it, keep them all moving forward. Keep them all on track.

There ought to be more to life than washing machines and emails and remembering to put out the recycling on the right day. But life is also this. It is all of this.

The mornings are ridiculous and they are ordinary. This is the life of a normal family, she tells herself. All of this is normal.

She sets out her objectives for this quarter and people nod their heads, complicit in the idea that this is a legitimate way for grown adults to spend their time.

He has not done enough, that is the trouble. He has not lived in all the ways available. He should have met more people. Tried things.

He wants to say, you will be so many people in your lifetime that you’ll look back one day and not even recognize some of the people you have been.

Maggie will live with this now, the anticipation of grief, for all the months and years it will take. The time before has already gone. The time when everything was simply fine. Her life, her work, her family. All of it ticking over.

This is real love, she is sure, practical and safe.

Maggie feels it in her jaw, the ache of keeping her mouth closed with the effort of not screaming at her husband. For being so naive. For being so unremittingly thoughtful.

She would, if she was really honest, like to know if they have anything in common. If there is something in the way she tucks her hair behind her ear when concentrating. If they both have the feeling of being at home when walking into a library.

And all day long, she keeps it in. Maggie sets out plates and does not throw them at the wall. She carves and serves and slices and does not brandish any cutlery with intent. She keeps it in.

She could howl, I am sad beyond all normal sadness. Some essential part of me has crumbled in on itself.

Maggie has not confronted Heron because she cannot imagine where to begin or how to end.

Maggie squeezes shampoo into the palm of her hand and thinks of all that is already lost. Her own childhood is so far away now, was it even worth it, going back in time like this?

The logic of saying nothing, of waiting for her to move past it all. Was that Heron’s plan, just waiting for her to grow up into a person who didn’t miss her mother? Maybe it was easy enough in the end.

“It’s not division,” she had tried to explain to her daughter, “it’s multiplication. I don’t love you any less because I love Daddy and Tom too.”

She thinks of all the energy wasted, the years of hating her mother and mourning her. She wonders if she even has it in her now, the time and strength it will take to reimagine a person she is so used to being without.

Having the address changed things, and Maggie saw that she was the one who would have to thaw.

She breathes through this new agony of learning things she should know already.

“I didn’t want to leave you. I need you to understand that.” And Maggie says, before she can think of a way to do otherwise, “But you did. You did leave me.”

It is all overwhelming, of course it is. It is vertigo and regret and plain cold sadness. Maggie is dizzy with all the new ways to feel angry at the world, and at herself. She feels it then, a kind of homesickness for her life before,