Fix You (33 page)

He stops for a second, gathering his thoughts maybe.

“Anyway, for whatever reason, I finally got why you like that story.”

I’m lost for a second, and then I realize. “The Hemingway?”

He nods. “Yeah, ‘Big Two-Hearted River.’ It was pretty basic, at first. Then I read the whole book of short stories, and I liked them, so then I read it again. And I appreciated it more for the way Hemingway writes. It’s simple and spare. I like that.”

Tears stream down my face, but my strategy is to ignore them. They land in little plops on my clothes.

He goes on. “I liked it, but I still don’t think I got it. And then, walking on the beach as the sun rose, it struck me.”

“What?”

“So the soldier fishes, and he doesn’t do it for a reason except that it’s quiet, it’s a good routine. He’s so wrecked by the war that it’s the only thing that holds him together. He can’t think about what’s happened to him, what he’s seen, what the trauma is.”

He threads his fingers together, stares at them intently while he thinks. I try to continue to breathe.

“And then when he thinks about fishing the swamp—you know, when I first read it, it just struck me as, okay, don’t fish there, fine. But then I realized: that’s his memories, his mess. He can’t delve into it that day. He chooses to hold to his routine, not go there, and that’s how he copes. That’s how he’s keeping it together, keeping himself in one piece after all the shit he’s been through.”

He’s quiet as he looks up into my eyes. “Kelly, the thing I realized? That guy is you. You’re holding it all together, you run—but those dreams you have, the nightmares? You can’t think about Peter, what happened, because you’re afraid. You stick with the routine because you need to keep it together. You can’t fish the swamp.”

I suck in a breath between my teeth. I never thought he’d figure it out from my perspective. I thought he’d see the symbolism, but not how I applied it to myself.

He’s up on his feet. His hands go back to his pockets, and he walks to the other side of the room before he turns around to face me.

I’m suddenly mad. “Why are we talking about me? I’m not the one who’s been trying to kill myself.”

His eyes go wide. “No, there’s a point to this, I swear. Damn it, I don’t want to hurt you more. The point is, I figured out that story, what it meant to you, and all I wanted to do was get to a place where I could help you instead of hurt you. I knew I wanted to help you, and I needed to be whole for you if I wanted to be part of your life. So I called Tucker the next day, and we started all of this.”

He smiles now. It’s all clear to him. He thinks he’s figured everything out.

“I can’t. I can’t do this, Andrew.” I get up and walk out the door.

I resist the urge to run down the hall, but I do duck through the next door, into a conference room, and cover my eyes. This may be a throwback to my toddler days when if I covered my eyes, I believed I was invisible.

The door swings open. “Kelly, please.”

Well, that didn’t work. He sees me.

He takes me by the shoulders. “Kelly.”

I’m sobbing now. Who knows if he can even understand what tumbles out of my mouth. “You’re right, but you don’t even know, Andrew. You don’t even know.”

He searches my face for a clue. “What? What don’t I know?”

“Andrew, I am so beyond fixing. I can’t fix you, and you can’t fix me.”

He still holds my shoulders. “Kelly, we don’t have to be fixed. We can help each other. I finally wanted to get better.
Me
, no one else. I was the one who wanted to change. I want this.”

I close my eyes again. Maybe I can will it all go away. I feel faint.

“Sit down. Tell me.” He steers me to a chair around the conference table.

It comes out as half-crying, half-yelling. “Peter was an alcoholic. I left him for a year when the boys were little. He sobered up, and things were good, but then he got sick…” I can’t even finish. I bury my face in my hands, double over in my seat.

I hear his chair push away. “Jesus.” He’s silent for a minute. “Oh, Kelly.”

“After everything, he promised me we were through the worst of it. And then I was alone again.”

“I wouldn’t leave you.”

“You can’t promise me that, not really. I’m a broken person. I barely survived the last time. I can’t go any more to pieces than I already am. I’m not strong enough for this.” I inhale as deeply as I can, sit up, and wipe my face with the sleeve of my shirt. I’ve got to get out of here.

He stands, looks out the conference room window, but he turns to look at me before I walk out the door. I don’t know what the expression on his face means, and I don’t give him a chance to say anything else. This time, I do run—all the way to the car. Tucker is waiting for me. I suspect he heard some of what transpired, because he offers a Kleenex and wordlessly drives me to my mom’s house.

When I get out, I come around to the driver’s window. It opens. “Tucker, take care of him for me. You’re a good friend.” I want to kiss him on the cheek, like people do in movies, but instead, I just turn and walk into the house.

39: My Truth

I
F
I W
AS
B
EING
F
LIPPANT
, which is certainly not appropriate for the moment, I’d quote Ricky of
I Love Lucy
and admit that I have some splainin’ to do. I’ve never been good at handling ugly truths in anything but a roundabout way.

I very rarely wade back through all of this, but now it seems I’d better. It’s out in the open, and I feel like I’ve had my chest cracked open, so I don’t know how it could get any worse. I sit down to write Andrew a letter. He deserves the whole story. I want him to get well, and I certainly don’t want my mess to be the reason he can’t.

The letter is hard. All this was hard to live, but it’s almost harder to replay it in my mind another painful time. This is why I leave it be. It is my swamp, and no, I don’t fish it. I can’t.

The memories all come back to me as I try to think what to write. Peter and I met at school. I was instantly smitten. He was curly-headed, charismatic, funny. He had a way of running his hands through his hair when he was excited about an idea. I just loved it.

We dated a little, but he lived in the crew house, a big, rambling mess of an old, white farmhouse with a bunch of his rowing teammates. They had wild parties—really wild parties.

I was never much on drinking. I watched him out of control at more than a couple parties, and I was distinctly uncomfortable. So the next time he called to see if I wanted to meet him somewhere, I had other plans. And that was it in college.

Then the dinner party. Here we were, all grown-up. I was newly teaching; he was working on a PhD in public policy. He seemed different. We dated for a year before we got engaged. Life was good. We got married, Hunter came along, and Peter got a job teaching at a community college. Beau was born.

Then we moved west. Peter had a new job teaching at Boise State. That’s when the drinking started again.

I guess it had never stopped altogether. When we lived in Virginia, more than a few nights each year, old college buddies of Peter’s would call up and meet him for a drink. He’d call and let me know at the end of the day, say he’d be home a little late. He’d come home at two. But when the boys were babies, he kept it limited to a few nights a year. He just couldn’t step away when the opportunity was presented.

Out west, though, it didn’t matter. First it was when the department had tailgate parties. Then it was when people invited him out after classes. Then it was always. More nights than not ended with me putting the kids to bed and him not home yet.

When I found out he was drinking during the day too, I left. I found an apartment close to the school where I taught, and I moved out. The boys were three and six. We were separated for a year. The depth of my depression was one of the scariest things I’ve ever lived through. The only reason I survived was the boys. If they hadn’t needed me, I wouldn’t have fought to get better.

Peter came to me on our anniversary that year and told me about rehab, and his sobriety. We bought a new house, the one where the boys and I live now, and moved in after a year apart. He never had another drink.

Three years later, he got sick. And five months after that, he died. I was more ready for the way I felt then than the way I’d felt when Peter was drinking, but it didn’t hurt any less. I had a lot of support after he died. But when he was drinking, I felt a lot of shame and didn’t tell very many people what was going on. It hurt too much.

I pour all of this into my letter to Andrew. I don’t know if he’ll understand, but I try to explain. It comes down to this: Yes, I have been here before, but I am not personally strong enough to do it again. What if rehab doesn’t work this time? Or what if it does? It did last time, and I lost Peter anyway. I can’t bear that again. Also, I have the boys. They’ve been there, done that as well, and though we can tell ourselves they were too little to remember, I think children are like wet clay—everything makes an impression on them somewhere. I will not put them through any of that again. I will not risk it. I will not risk them. I know he thinks he won’t leave, but what if he’s not the one who gets to decide?

Anyway, I tell him again that I love him, and that I know he can find strength in his family, his friends, and himself to get through this fight.

What I leave out—but what I’m ultimately saying—is that he can’t find strength in me. I don’t have any to spare. If this is another moment for a skiing metaphor, this is a chute I won’t go down again. I’m not a good enough skier.

I write about half a dozen drafts, trying for the right tone and throwing away the ones that are too wet from tears. Everything with Peter is back up at the surface again, and then there’s the look I keep remembering in Andrew’s eyes. His face as he told me about the sunrise, and how he knew he could help me, and how he was going to get past this. There was so much optimism. And I stomped on it because I’m a coward.

I get in my car and drive to the nearest mailbox. I send the letter. That’s my weakest moment. This is my surrender. I’d rather stay safe, take the long way around—or the lonely way, in this case—than risk loving someone again. Instead of joining Andrew in the fight, I have run as far away as I can.

40: A Running Partner

I W
AKE
U
P
—or actually, I decide to stop trying to sleep and get up. The dawn is still gray. I feel gray. The inside of my mouth tastes gray.

I’m fairly confident I will not be able to run this morning without a little caffeine. I’m hardly ever able to in the weeks since I fled LA. At least the weather is calming down a bit. There’s no snow. It’s late May, but that doesn’t matter in Boise. Until the end of June, anything can happen.

This morning the gray air is calm. I look out the window. Maybe I’m brooding, or thinking. Or just staring.

“Mom.” I jump, startled. It’s Hunter.

He doesn’t need to be up. It’s Saturday. “Go back to bed, hon. I’m going running. It’s a day off.”

He pulls the kettle off the burner. “Your tea was boiling.”

I give him a big hug. He’s always been a sweet kid. He takes care of people by managing little things.

“What are you doing up?” He’s in the T-shirt and pajama bottoms he’s slept in all year. Next Christmas I will give him a new set, and he will wear holes in those too. Or outgrow them ridiculously fast, like he and Beau always do.

“I thought I’d run with you today.”

Seriously, I am stunned. My jaw’s probably on the floor. But delightedly stunned. It never occurred to me that Hunter might want to come. “Really?”

He blushes a little. The freckles on his nose stand out on the pink. “Geez, Mom, it’s not a big deal.”

I try not to screw this up by being overly mother-dorky, which I know he despises. “Go get changed. I’ve still got to get my shoes on and have a little tea.”

He comes back down a few minutes later, so cute I can’t stand it. My little boy has a sweatband, Bjorn Bjorg-style, around the mop of sandy blond hair he’s started to grow out. He’s wearing his soccer sweats and running shoes.

“Let’s go.” I bounce out the door.

Ditto’s ecstatic. The boy is going too? The dog hops back and forth, then off the top step of the back stoop.

We lope around to the quiet street. I’ll run a short loop today, down the street to the cul-de-sac and along the little flat trail into the hollow below. I want Hunter to like this. Who knows, maybe he’ll come out with me another time…

We jog to the cul-de-sac. Hunter seems fine. He’s played soccer since he was little, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen him voluntarily do any exercise outside of practice. He’s an easy athlete—a great skier like his father—so he tends not to work too hard at what comes easily.

When we come to the dirt trail, he pulls up. “Can we walk a little?”

“Sure.” He doesn’t seem particularly out of breath, but I’m doing things his way. Ditto’s happy not to run. He can’t cheat on this route and sit somewhere till we pick him back up.