Sleep wasn’t anywhere close to coming. Fear tiptoed in and settled around her, stealing her breath away. Fear sat like a cat on her chest sucking the air from her lips. She knew she was breathing, but she couldn’t feel the air. She took deep breaths and held them. She breathed in through her nose and out through her mouth, and still there wasn’t enough air. Death was coming in a heartbeat too many and a breath too shallow. She lay there in the dark, still, with her hand pressed to her chest trying to hold in her heart, but it pounded against her rib cage as though she had run a mile; she, who had never run a block before. Her heart pounded so hard that she could feel it scrape against her sternum.
Stricken, she jumped from the bed in the quiet dark and felt her way into the bathroom to find the blood pressure monitor she kept in the third drawer on her side. Her side. It was all her side now, she guessed, but she still thought of those other empty drawers as his. She sat on the side of the tub and wrapped it around her wrist and waited for the beep. It was always normal. How could it be normal when her heart felt so wrong?
The bathroom floor felt cool against her feet. She paced through the house, checking the doors again, making sure the alarm was set, kissing her children's faces. She was always careful when kissing her son. She remembered her brother’s nightmares, how he kicked and punched, so she air-kissed her own boy and stayed far away from those strong arms.
Walking through the familiar house settled her nerves. So many changes had happened. Every life has changes; she knew that. People are born. People die. People move out. People move in. It wasn’t the change that bothered her, so much as the abruptness of change. Change she knew about; she could plan for. Planning was important. She wasn’t obsessive about planning. Her psychiatrist didn’t seem to think so, nothing like that, but she wanted to have an agenda for whatever event was taking place. Even when she was pregnant, she could plan the room, the bed, the hospital. She packed a bag and wrote a plan of action for Jack at work or Jack at home. She knew whom to call to care for the other children. It was planned. Knowing where she had a plan made her feel safe.
But this? Jack’s divorcing her wasn’t in her plan. That’s part of what made her angry. He could have at least warned her instead of announcing that he’d filed for divorce a month before he told her. But she was through with that. Thinking about it didn’t change it. But now she felt like she was dying.
. Walking through the rooms reminded her just how much there was to do. She didn’t have time to die. Everything in the house had to be touched and decided about. Everything needed to be packed up or given away or sold. Decisions had to be made.
She stood at the counter making a list. At least she wouldn’t have all that china to wrap. She had slammed all one hundred and forty seven pieces of wedding china against a brick wall the day after he left, then turned around and looked for more things to break. But now, she had four thousand square feet of furniture and memories to go through. What were the most important things? The cherry chest with the glass top, she’d take that. It would be an heirloom her kids could fight over after she really did die. Probably none of the kids would want it, but still, it was valuable. They could sell it and fight over the money. She’d keep the cherry side table and the little cherry desk her parents gave her when she was sixteen.
Interesting how a piece of furniture could follow someone for the rest of her life. She never used the desk, but she carried it along because it was a gift from her parents, and it was solid cherry. Her father thought solid cherry was historically important. The colonists made furniture out of cherry trees. And once it was in her house, she was obliged to oil it, dust it, and carry it along even though she didn’t want it any longer. She never really wanted it.
She glanced over her shoulder through the window. The pool looked black in the moonlight. She remembered swimming in the pool at night, how its glassy darkness terrified her even though she knew that during the day the pool was clean and empty and brilliant blue.
Beyond the pool lay the landscape she had planned. She’d poured her love and sweat into the footprint of this place. It was easy for him to leave. He didn’t build a life here. He came home to one. He built his life in his office where the employees were his family. He knew their kids’ names and their family histories. He had birthday parties at the office and brought home leftover cake while the dinner Mary Ann had fixed dried out on the countertop while they waited for him to come home so they could eat.
We are better off without him. She knew that. But the fallout from his decision to leave her and abandon the children was bitter. It was more than his divorcing her. He said that he was tired of living with sick and crazy people. She wouldn’t let the children know it, but he was tired of being a father, too. He didn’t want to hear about doctors’ appointments. He didn’t care about their schooling. He just wanted out.
She stood with her hands on the counter staring into the pool. For well over half her lifetime she had been married, and every single day her main concern was keeping him happy. It would be nice to think she did it simply because she loved him, but the truth was, she tried hard to make everything perfect because she was afraid of him. What has she been afraid of? That he would leave? Well, he’d already done that. And all the trying to keep him happy hadn’t made a difference. She didn’t have to be afraid of him leaving anymore or making him angry. She was tired of being afraid, tired of saying the wrong thing, of making the wrong decision and having it thrown back into her face. She refused to be afraid anymore.
She walked outside to the pool. A slight wind tickled the water. At its deepest, the pool was twelve feet. She made sure it was dug deep enough for the kids to dive. She knew they would even if they were told not to, but at night the dark, deep waters looked like an ocean depth.
She stared at the water, then slipped off her gown. The wind grabbed it and carried it up the hill. If I die