He's Gone (26 page)

Wouldn’t it be great if that really were true—
final
? But the kids never stop quarreling, even behind their own doors.
Final
is wishful thinking.

It was strange to have those papers signed. Like any big project or crisis that takes every waking and non-waking moment of your life, it was odd to have it concluded. A move, a college degree, a wedding—something long-strived-for is completed, whatever the outcome, and there is a huge space where it all once was. All that open time now, and a continuing nagging sense that there’s something you need to be doing.

Still, it was shocking, freeing, fabulous. I was new. Yeah. Exhausted and weather-beaten, but new. I loved my bare, ring-less hand. I loved that so much, because it felt like my very own hand then. Just Abby and me eating dinner—whatever we wanted for dinner, whenever we wanted it—it was as close to joy as I’ve ever felt. Impromptu takeout brought a soaring sense of independence and liberation. My clothes breathed and expanded in all that new closet space. I could fix the damn vacuum-cleaner belt myself. Mark had always handled that job before, leading me to believe it involved some mechanical proficiency beyond my abilities. Well, look there. It was inanely simple. The vacuum-cleaner belt was a glorious fuck-you. So was barbecuing. So was starting the gas mower. Even when my finances were keeping me up at night in fear, the vacuum-cleaner belt felt like victory.

There was triumph, but there was also crushing sadness. There were all the things that were gone now, and all the things that had been left behind or abandoned. Not only family vacations and silver anniversaries, but objects. The crappy garden tools he didn’t want because their wooden handles had become worn after being left outside in the rain—they were in the garage. The oil stain from his car was still stubbornly there, too. The wedding album (yes, Abby, hats were in then; stop laughing)
was moved to the back of the closet. That extra-large cellphone, our glorious, exciting first (which he’d bought even though we couldn’t afford it), had been dumped in the garbage with the coffee grounds and old lettuce. It had been my job to pack up the last of the clothes he’d left behind when he moved out. I stuffed them into large green plastic bags, the kind you use for grass clippings and garden trash. I handed them over to him in a parking lot, eyes averted, as if it were a sordid, illegal exchange.

There was no question that it was a necessary divorce, but that didn’t make it less painful. You don’t think it will hurt, leaving a marriage like that, do you? But it’s the same misguided thinking that makes people ask, after your mother dies, how old she was. If she was ninety, the bereavement isn’t supposed to be as crushing. But of course it is. Of course. There’s no equation for loss.

The thing is, there was all that hope once. That’s at the beating center of what’s gone. Hope for the life the two of you might have had together, sure, but for me, even more, the hope that I would have given my child something whole; at least, something so much
better
than this. That’s what tore me up the most. The childhood I was giving her. Now that she lived in two places, Abby always kept her bag packed. Clothes spilled from it, but still. Every other weekend she had to remember the shoes that went with the outfit, the books that went with the homework, the gear that went with the sport. It was such an effortful endeavor to move between houses that she left the stuff in that bag, like a tired salesman waiting to leave on his next, wearying trip.

Somewhere in there it sinks in, the ways that it’s over but never over. Divorce is a chronic illness. After the diagnosis, you live with it your whole life long.

Ian had moved into a furnished apartment after he and Mary finally separated. I hated that place. It was newly built, and it smelled temporary. I tried to see its finer points when I visited, but its narrow living room seemed confined and claustrophobic, even with its large windows. There was a loft with a bed. His children stared out at me from photos on his nightstand after we made love.

And Bethy and Kristen refused to see him. Fifteen and thirteen now, they were not easily forced. There was a court order, but they would visit only at their own home with Mary there, insisting on old family nights where the four of them had dinner and watched movies and made popcorn. Mary shrugged her shoulders about it. There was nothing
she
could do.

I felt squeezed in that narrow apartment. I waited in the hall once while Ian talked to Mary about a crisis Bethy was having at school. There was always a crisis, an illness that was sure to turn life-threatening, an emotional outburst that undoubtedly meant a psychological calamity. I looked out at the lights of the city and wished myself anyplace else. The game was getting tiring, but it was a game I’d put in motion. I hadn’t stopped it, for my own selfish reasons, and now look. He was talking to his wife on the phone—a woman who’d just sent him a topless photo to lure him back; oh, the lengths she would go to that I never would. She wanted or needed him more, I guess, and now his children wouldn’t get in his car without her, wouldn’t see him in his new narrow apartment, wouldn’t hug him or meet his eyes kindly without their mother present. That bed next to the staring photos—I wanted out of it, but it was the one I had made.

How do you make a life that is really yours? How do you identify it when you see it? First, you don’t take one that doesn’t belong to you. You’re dead in the water from day one if you do that. In addition, though, I imagine you have to look inside yourself
and listen without fear. You can’t see clearly otherwise. I’ve learned that, at least. I loved those ring-less, independent hands. I hated the small ways in which Ian was beginning to criticize me, ever since he left Mary for good. But I shut my eyes and saw no red flags, and I focused instead on his beautiful profile and the times we’d drive in the car with the windows down, singing loudly along with the songs we both loved. I told myself these things: He knows the names of trees. He thinks my third-grade picture—loud, plaid dress, huge teeth—is adorable. He freely confesses to crying at movies where the lovers are separated by death or war. He made me a bracelet out of Red Vines. He will never abruptly quit a job because he fought with his boss. He is generous with Abby, and they have fun together. He will never strike me. Back then one of his finest and most reassuring qualities was that he wasn’t Mark. Another was that he wasn’t
no one
.

You’re everything to me
, he’d say.

I heard it in his voice, the clutching. And so I treaded water, rescuing the rescuer.
I’m here
, I’d say.
I’m not going anywhere
.

Some people have a blind, undying optimism. I, for one. I do. Did. It’s dangerous. It’s naïve. Maybe optimism is partly a desire to not face facts, because facing facts might require action. Facing facts might mean admitting how powerless you are. Maybe facing facts, too, would mean acknowledging failure and then another failure, and so you keep “trying.” You keep seeing the positives because you’re a coward.

I don’t know.

I once visited my sister in Santa Barbara, just after my nephew, Justin, was born. As I’ve said before, it’s strange the things you remember. We ordered a pizza. I even remember what kind. All-meat, part of a “Family Feast,” one of those stomach-churning
combos that come with the same pizza dough in various forms—breadsticks, cinnamon rolls; dear God, you vow afterward to do broccoli penance.

Who wants to cook, though, right? Because, here we are: The baby is a week old, and my niece is a toddler, and everything is wet. Along with wet diapers and laundry, my sister’s shirts are wet, Nick’s shirts are wet, and I’ve got those damp splotches on my shoulders. There are spilled cups and tipped bottles and leaking bodies. Amy’s and Nick’s eyes—they’re intermittently vacant and love-filled. I’d forgotten how exhausting all that was, but, oh, oh, oh, that wrinkled back of a baby’s neck, those milky folds. Those tiny T-shirts that snap at the sides.

Anyway, Buck, Amy and Nick’s dog, hears the pizza delivery guy drive up. Actually, I swear, Buck hears him start up his car at the pizza place, because he begins to pace as soon as we get the paper plates out and set them and the roll of paper towels on the coffee table. Buck’s a sweet boy, but God help the UPS guy who passes through their gate. The mailman is his archenemy. He sees himself in the starring role—his family against the kidnappers, the fate of the world on his furry shoulders. It’s all up to him and he won’t let anyone down. Probably livens up his day a great deal.

The enemy is a pizza guy getting out of his car; he’s about twenty-one, with a thin build and shaggy hair, forced to wear that humiliating red vest and collect the dollar-off coupons. He goes home smelling like charred crust and red sauce, poor kid. But Buck starts to growl at the slam of the car door, and Amy can’t lunge, because she’s holding the baby, and Nick is unaware, because he’s hunting around for his wallet.

The doorbell rings. It’s the enemy’s first mistake. Buck is a weapon unleashed; he brings all he’s got. He flings his meaty
German shepherd body against the door. It’s a side of him I’ve never seen. His teeth look huge in that snarl, capable of doing real harm. He’s standing on two legs and is taller than you’d imagine; he’s looking eye-to-eye with that pizza guy through the door’s three triangles of glass. He’s barking and leaping furiously, and if that pizza boy had any thought of pushing the red button to release the nuclear bomb on a major city in the United States of America, well, he’d be thinking twice now.

Buck—wow. It’s impressive, but it’s scaring the shit out of me. I get up and knock over Stephanie, my two-year-old niece, who’s walking around with some hard plastic toy piano; they clatter to the ground with dramatic C notes. I’m trying to reach Buck’s collar, then Nick appears, and he grabs Buck and manhandles him down from the door with some effort. Buck is still trying to leap and Nick is yelling at him, and Nick shoves his wallet at me. Buck is drooling with protective fury.

Whew. I open the door. The delivery boy’s face is kind. He’s just trying to make beer-and-rent money.

“Sorry,” I say. I think we’re sharing a moment of nerves and mutual shock. I imagine that he can’t wait to get the hell out of there. Behind us, Buck is frothing at the mouth as if he’s become possessed by the devil.

And this is when the pizza delivery guy says: “Oh, look at your dog. He’s excited to see me!”

Poor, poor soul. Poor, innocent sucker. It stuck with me, the way that boy tore off the credit-card receipt and handed over the goods, smiling. Buck was rumbling a low warning in the back of his throat. But the boy only said a cheery thank-you. He strode down the path; he might as well have been whistling.

What could have accounted for this, his ignorance of the obvious, his lack of insight? Was he, too, nearsighted? Was there any
part of him that
did
see what he should have been seeing, I wonder? Did he not read that look in Buck’s eyes that said that Buck would gladly sink his teeth into his thin, very white throat? There had to be a part of him that saw those fangs and the damage they could do. I believe that. We know the truth. Whether we want to admit it to ourselves or not, we know.

12

I once counted up how many days of Abby’s life I didn’t spend with her because of shared custody. Don’t do this. It hurts too much, first of all. Second of all, as I’ve tried to say before, you can’t count loss. Mark took Abby skiing for the first time, and I never saw it. They went camping, and she caught a fish that I never witnessed her catching. She sprained her ankle when they were on a hike, and I didn’t know they’d been to the emergency room until after they’d returned home. If a child falls in a forest and you aren’t there to see it, do you feel like shit for years after? She goes away for a weekend and comes back with a new haircut. She rides a horse for the first time, away from you. Put a number to that.

Sometime after I first met Ian, I had taken Abby to our suburban neighborhood pool. I had just parked in the busy lot. I was collecting my bag and our towels and was searching for my book, which had slid under the seat, when I looked up and saw Ian there, with Bethy and Kristen. It was unplanned, but it felt like especially good luck, the kind of good luck that makes you secretly believe in fate.

“Look who’s here! Guys! It’s Abby and her mom!” Ian had
said. His smile was bright against his summer tan. His sunglasses were on his head. I could tell even from there that he smelled like suntan lotion. I was so happy to see that man.

We hugged hello. Just the day before, we’d spent a few illicit hours wrapped in each other’s arms on a blanket on the university campus. We were secretly in love and I was buoyant with it.

We walked as a group from the parking lot to the pool entrance, Abby and Bethy talking shyly, Kristen dragging a snorkel against the sidewalk. We parted ways as soon as we got in, because Ian was meeting Neal and his kids. But for those few moments, during that walk, as Ian and I each held a stack of towels and toted a bag, I imagined us as a family. A restructured family but still whole. The three girls and us, heading to the pool for a day of fun. This was what it could be like.