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dangerbunny does texas |
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02 In the Garden
Dear Vanessa,
Today is a Wednesday, I think. I just finished watching Oprah. They will be in soon to serve lunch and again later for my afternoon session. The food here is starchy. Not at all what I would cook for the b—myself, but I suppose I’m not in the position to argue much. Or to care, really.
How is Emily? And John? Tell them I think of them. I’m grateful to John for befriending Russ through all this.
Emily’s birthday will be here soon, won’t it? Is it next month? Next week? I cannot keep my thumb on time. The peonies are just in bloom outside my window — can that mean it’s already been a year?
I know I should have written sooner. I have mentally written you several times, but — I guess I just haven’t found an easy way to explain it. And you, as my very good friend, deserve an explanation. I’m sure you have all but given up on me. Your last letter arrived several weeks ago. You mentioned the New Year’s office party and I laughed with you at your description of Carolyn Moser gussied up like a sausage.
Funny, I remember my last day there with so much emotion. I did the right thing by taking the leave, I know that, but I can’t help wonder how things would’ve turned out if I’d just stayed in my cubicle all these months. Refused to acknowledge what had happened, and stubbornly ignored how our lives would have to change. God, what a selfish thing for a mother to say. But really, now, I must ask myself if it could have wound up any worse.
After it happened, the papers called Jason an American Hero. “Another of our fine young men and women of uniform was lost today...” After eight devastating months, his name was finally printed in the paper. If it had ended as the doctors first expected, would they even have noticed?
I was thinking that morning of our tragic circle of regression. The early struggle to make the mortgage, pay the utility bill, keep Jason in diapers. How suffocating some mornings would feel, as I looked forward to a full day in the company of an infant. Me, a woman who had fought so hard for her education, for her right to be ambitious and career-minded. Russ had to work late most nights, and oh the arguments we would have over who was contributing more. The months turned into years. Seven years, no resume experience, what sort of administrative role would await my return to the workforce?
Just look, I thought, at how far I had come. Back to the all-day, all-night monitoring. Back to feeding him. Turning him. Changing him. Constant worry. Fighting with Russ. Watching our retirement savings empty. Not knowing how much longer —
— I know you must think I am a monster. You’re thinking, this is your child! But, God, Vanessa, this was not — This wasn’t our shy little three-year-old who loved butter noodles, or our young teenager who had a pizza delivered to his grandma’s house, thinking of it as a gift, or our new addition to our insurance policy who wrecked his car on his second day of driving.
I thought that morning of how soft his skin had been when he was little. How good he smelled back then. Not of chemicals and dirtiness and spilled food. I can’t explain it, I know I sound mad saying this, but I wanted him to smell right. I wanted to remember the joy of washing his skin, of soaping his hair, of supporting his head in the tub as I gently rinsed the shampoo away from his eyes.
And so I — I pulled him into the bath. I turned the water on. I washed his hair and kissed his cheek, and I quietly closed the door.
I went outside, tended the posies, trimmed the ivy away from Ed and Betty’s fence, weeded the patch of tiger lilies which had grown up terribly in the months of neglect. All the while, upstairs, my Jason, winner of his eighth-grade science-fair contest, who wore braces until just last year and wanted to be a high-school music teacher, my precious, sweet-smelling little boy, finally became an American hero.
That’s all I can write for now. My lunch is here. Give my love to John and Emily. I hope you will write again, but if you do not, please know that your friendship has been so important to me.
My best. Your friend,
M
