The Last Exhale (13 page)

I'll just have to deal with that after dinner.

•  •  •

I watch as a mother looks at her child with vacant eyes. She looks at her as if she doesn't exist. Her son is normal. Her daughter is not.

She watches her four-year-old child terrorize their section in Olive Garden with such a numbing emotion I feel for the child more than the mother. The kid kicks at her chair, screams as four crayons fall to the floor. No one at the table moves to pick up the crayons, no one even moves to calm her from her tantrum.

A mom and her unwanted child. The father digs into his ravioli and sausage like this is an everyday occurrence. The mother's food is untouched. She continues looking at her child as she runs circles around the table with her napkin folded around her head. For a second, our eyes connect. When I look deep into her blue eyes, I see she desperately has regrets. Wishes that night she had just told her husband she had a headache. Deciding not to forgo her hormones and oblige her lover, she ended up pregnant. Had she known she'd end up with a child whose energy was never-ending, she would've ran to the kitchen and stuck a turkey baster inside her womb and sucked out every abnormal sperm before it contaminated her normal egg.

“Mommy.” EJ pats at my leg.

I'm so caught up in this woman and her life that I forget I have my own kids and life to worry about. “Yes, EJ?”

“I gotta pee.”

Grateful for the break from Terror at Olive Garden, I take my son's hand and lead him to the restroom. My reflection in the mirror catches me off-guard as EJ does his thing in the stall. A look of regret stains my irises. Other than a few minor issues with the kids, they haven't been a burden on me. So why am I regretting their existence? Why do I feel as hopeless as that woman in the dining room looked?

The toilet flushes, brings me back to reality. “Did you shake?”

He nods as he comes out of the stall pulling on his shirt instead of stuffing it back in his jeans.

“Stop wiping your hands on your shirt and wash your hands,” I tell him and hand him a paper towel to cut the faucet off with, then dry his hands on another one.

Back at the table, I'm relieved to see the family is gone. From
the faces of the surrounding patrons, they're glad to be able to enjoy their unlimited salad and breadsticks in peace and quiet. Kennedy tells me she's ready to go home. For once we're on the same page. I flag the waiter to bring a to-go box for my barely-touched lasagna.

Apparently, the kids caught a little of the rambunctious child's spirit, because as soon as we get in the car, they start bickering over mint-flavored chocolate.

At the red light, I turn around, tell the two, “Knock it off.” The car behind me lays on his horn. By the time I turn my attention back to the traffic, the light is yellow. Mr. Anxious skids around me while still laying on his horn and gives me a look that says I made him miss the last call for alcohol. “Get a life,” I mumble in his direction. All of my energy for foolishness has been zapped.

My mind drifts back to the regretful mother at the restaurant. The way her husband just sat there void of words reminded me of Eric. No, he wouldn't have let the kids cut up like that little girl, but when it comes to dinnertime or any time conversation is expected, he usually just sits there and has a one-on-one conversation with his food. It's those moments when I wish I had cut things short after our first date, and definitely wish I had given him the letter when it was fresh in my hand. Wish I had listened to my instinct to keep it moving where he was concerned.

Not listening to my gut has me here.

I
dropped the kids off at my mom's house before heading home. It's been at least eight hours since I've heard from or laid eyes on my husband. This would not be a battle the kids need to be a part of. It's a battle I'm sure I don't want to be a part of.

“But all is changed with time, the future none can see. The road you leave behind, ahead lies mystery.”

The words of Stevie Wonder slap me in the face when I walk through the door to my home. Volume is on one hundred. There's no denying I'm being sent a message.

It's dark in the house. My sight's diminished, other senses heightened. I smell a madman on the loose. A movie scene pops in my head and all I can see is Wesley Snipes taking a hammer to anything within reach in Sanaa Lathan's brownstone in
Disappearing Acts.
I knew I wasn't ready for war, but this takes it to a different level.

No fear, Sydney. No. Fear.

A flicker of light leads me to the living room. I can see a bundle of fur nestled by the unlit fireplace. Forrester. Can always depend on him to be where he's supposed to be. That makes me smile in the midst of all of the above.

A large shadow moves on the wall. I look over by the speaker, see Eric standing by the stereo. The lit candle on the mantle helps me see everything clearly.

I walk over, cut the music down. “Can we talk?”

“Should've done that years ago.” He cuts the music back up.

I hit the power button. “Let's be adult about this, Eric.”

“Be adult about this?”
My husband turns around, his face contorted like I've disrespected him in the worst way. “Let me get this straight. You wrote me a damn letter to call off our wedding less than twelve hours away because you couldn't face me like a woman and you want to be adult about this now?”

Instead of defending my actions, I turn around and bolt out of the living room and up the stairs.

•  •  •

Eric is standing in the room against the dresser when I walk out of the bathroom. I ran up here to take a shower. Needed the water to help soothe my thoughts. Needed to give him time to cool down from his.

I toss my robe on the bed, grab a T-shirt from my dresser and put it on without a bra. Can feel my husband's eyes pouring over my body with every move I make. I pull up a pair of boxer shorts before this conversation goes in another direction.

“Why did you marry me?”

“I don't know,” I say too fast.

Eric tosses a seven-year-old letter in my direction.

I pick it up, flip it, remove the papers from the envelope with anxiousness as if I don't know what it says.

“You knew a lot when you wrote that,” he says, pain etched in his voice.

I stuff the letter back in the envelope, wishing I could stuff the words back into Neverland just as easily. “It felt like the right thing to do at the time.”

“The right thing to do?”
My husband glares at me, yet his voice holds more intensity than his eyes. “For who? 'Cause the way I see it right now, you've messed up life for four people.”

I think about EJ and Kennedy and how their lives will never be the same.

“You had a lot to say in that letter, but you're not saying much of nothing now.”

It's obvious to me that the time I took in the shower did nothing to calm his anger. He's just as mad now as he was when Stevie Wonder was instigating our situation. “What do you want me to say, Eric?”

“Something. Anything. But don't sit there and act like a mute.”

The letter's still in my hand. I rip it in half without giving it any thought. Get off the bed and toss my feelings in the trash. Should've done that years ago. “I'm sorry,” falls from my lips.

“Sorry won't give me back the ten years you wasted.”

“Wasted?
Wow.”

“What else would you call it?”

“Well, if you hadn't spent so much time ‘getting to know' me, it wouldn't be ten years I wasted.”

“Obviously, I didn't get to know you at all.”

“I'm not going to do this, Eric.”

He's leaning on the dresser with his arms folded across his chest. A scowl on his face that would cause the Bloods and Crips to call truce. “You know, I would've been able to take being rejected on our first date, but this is beyond comprehension. I would've rather you cheated.”

“Be careful what you wish for.”

He unfolds his arms, pushes off the dresser. Comes closer to me. “What was that?”

I step back, go around him. Walk out of our bedroom.

Adamant footsteps follow me down the hall and down the stairs. “Why. Did. You. Marry. Me?”

I stop at the bottom of the stairs, turn around and look into his eyes the same way I did as I repeated my vows on our wedding day. “Tell me something. How could you not know I wasn't happy?”

He brushes past me, leaves me hanging like a person at the end of a bungee cord.

I dangle in this emptiness for a moment, not long enough for it to take over, though, and join him in the living room. Fall victim to the sofa's cushion right along with him.

Eric moves over to the fireplace, stands in front of a picture we took on our first wedding anniversary. Kennedy was only a month old. “You've wasted almost ten years of my life.”

This time it doesn't sting as much as it did the first time he said it. “I'm sorry,” is all I can say.

“That's not something you can apologize for.”

“Well, what do you want me to do, Eric? I can't give you those years back.” Lord knows if I could, I would, because I've wasted the same amount of time.

“I'm not asking you to.” He turns to face me with such fury I feel like I'm in the room with Bruce Lee. “Every day, I put my life on the line for this family. I risk not coming home and leaving my kids without a father, and you without a husband. I put that uniform on knowing I'm making a major sacrifice to keep this family afloat. All this time, I thought it was a mutual effort. Now I see things so differently.”

We're here, at this place of no return. I've held my tongue long enough, spared everyone's feelings but my own. “Eric, do you think going to work is enough to keep a home together?”

“Obviously not. According to your words I'm boring, lack drive, and let's not forget bad in bed.”

I open my mouth too quickly, feel my jaw pop. “I didn't say it like that.”

“Doesn't matter
how
you said it. You said it.”

He's right. The truth is the truth, no matter how it's said. “It's not like I hadn't told you those things before, Eric.”

“Maybe you did, Sydney, but things are a lot different when they're staring you in the face.” He scratches his hairless face as if visualizing my words makes him itch. “What were you thinking when you wrote the letter?”

As I rewind time in my head, I sit down on the sofa. Feel like I've been on my feet all day. My legs thank me immediately. “You really want to know?”

“I asked.”

Now's my chance to finally tell him how I've felt all these years. For some reason, it doesn't feel right. I twist my wedding ring around my finger several times before my lips move. “I was thinking about how much I wanted out. My feelings were never stable in our relationship. One minute, you'd have me smiling from here to Kansas, the next, I wondered if you even knew me or wanted to be with me. I questioned if I even knew me or knew what I wanted. You made me feel invalid, made me feel confused. Felt like I didn't have a mind of my own.”

“Invalid? Wow.” He sits down slowly in the chair by the computer desk like he's having a bad episode with hemorrhoids. “You never said anything.”

I let out an exasperated sigh. “I've lost count of how many times I've told you that. You never listen, Eric. It's about how you feel and if you feel like everything's okay in your world, everything's okay in the rest of the world. But you're not in this world alone.”

“That's not true. I don't know how you can say that.”

“You asked me how I felt. There you have it.”

Confusion intoxicated with anger stains his face like a cup of cherry Kool-Aid spilled on a white carpet. “I don't get you.”

“Bingo.” I clap my hands. “That's the problem. You stopped getting me after you felt you knew me, but I've grown since we first started dating. Hell, I've grown since we've been married.”

“I'm not going to let you sit up here and say I don't listen. I've lost count of how many times I set the DVR for your favorite shows, or how I spend time with the kids because I can hear the tiredness in your voice. And let's not forget the times I rub your feet after you've had a long day just by the way you toss your keys on the counter. I do listen, Sydney. Even when you haven't said anything.”

He's right. Damn it, he's right.

“I just don't know what you want from me.”

I get up from the sofa and stand next to the chair he's sitting in. I wrap my fingers around his jaw, raise his face up toward mine. Need him to face me, need to see if his irises and tongue speak the same language when I ask the question he diverted earlier. “Did you really think I was happy?”

He stares at me so long I swear he was born without the need to blink. “No.”

My hand falls from his face. I lick my lips, then cough. Struggle with what to say. “Does that mean you've been unhappy as well?”

“Yes.”

I walk back over to the sofa and drop. His one word replies have me feeling like I've jumped out of an airplane with no parachute.

We're staring at the final moments of our marriage.

We can't go back to before this moment. Can't go back to the end of our first date and rewrite our relationship. All we can do from here is face the truth and make changes accordingly.

I'm not happy.

He's not happy.

Never did I think a confession would boil down to this. Never did I think my husband could possibly feel just as suffocated in this marriage as I have been. All these years, he's been putting on the same fake smile as me. Neither one of us acknowledging the other's misery. What kind of man is he? What kind of woman am I?