Chapter 9
CHAPTER 9
SATURDAY, AUGUST 19
I had to convince Tim we belonged together. It may not be the best thing for us as a couple, but I must keep the family intact, for Emmy’s sake. I’d have to make inroads on that goal now before he discovered what I’d witnessed on Pine Hill Road and used it against me. I needed to buy time—time to prove to him I had remorse over the incident with Muzzy. Once again I decided that if Muzzy and I could rekindle our friendship, it might also strengthen his opinion of me. Emmy needed both parents continuously in her life, and I needed Emmy. Every day. I couldn’t risk the part-time parenting of holidays and weekends. I reached for my cell phone next to the cup of cold, untouched morning coffee.
His line rang three times and went to voice mail. I disconnected and tried again. This time the call went directly to his prerecorded message.
Thinking about Matt’s distracted wave when I’d pass by his house, I pressed Tim’s name in my contact list again. “ You don’t have the luxury of ignoring me.”
This time he picked up. “What do you want?”
“I want to talk to you, of course. About us, and Emmy.”
“Keep Emmy out of this, Caroline.”
I took a deep breath to control the hot rage that filled my entire torso like someone had opened a door in my chest and dumped a load of burning coals around my heart. He was acting even more callous than usual.
“Fine, I’ll focus on us. I thought we could discuss when you want to come home. Your apartment must be expensive, and we don’t have the money to pay for?—”
“How much do you need?”
“How much?” I sputtered. “This isn’t about money . I’m calling about our family.”
Tim said nothing for a beat. When he finally spoke his voice was quiet, controlled. “We aren’t a family anymore, Caroline. You know that.”
“We’re only separated, not divorced. Remember you said we’d try it and if being apart didn’t work for us?—”
“It works for me.”
“But not me. Or Emmy. How can you do this to us? To her?”
“That’s low, even for you,” he said, the anger in his voice notching up. “We’ve been over this a hundred times, Caroline. I’m not going to rehash it again.”
“I’m sorry. Is that what you want to hear?”
“No, it’s not. We’re beyond that now, and you know it.”
“Please, let’s just meet somewhere. Talk.” I cursed my wobbly voice.
“Talk about what?” he snapped. “Your emotions? How you are handling things?”
I paused in the face of his sudden anger. “We can talk about you. How you are doing...”
He laughed, a humorless grating sound. “That’s rich, Caroline. When has anything in our marriage ever been about me?”
“That’s not fair!”
“If I’m treating you unfairly, feel free to stop calling me. And don’t drive by my apartment either.”
“I only did that a few times, so you could see?—”
“Stop it right now,” he interrupted. “This is getting out of control, okay? I refuse to be responsible for everything you’re feeling.”
“I know, I know,” I said quickly. “But it’s hard, Tim. It’s so hard and it seems so easy for you.”
He sighed. “It’s not. I’ve suffered. But our time together is done, and you know it. Too much has happened.”
“We could rebuild things, Tim. If we started slowly.”
“No, Caroline. You need to know something—something important.”
“Tell me, please. Tell me anything.”
“I’m seeing someone else.”
My body went cold as my brain tried to compute this new information. “No, we’re only separated?—”
“My lawyer drew up the divorce papers this week. They’re on their way to you. I suggest you sign them. If you refuse, I’ll have no choice but to cut back on the money I send you. I don’t have to give you as much as I do.”
“You’re so cold,” I said, feeling my body shiver as if in agreement with my words, despite the day’s heat and humidity. “You weren’t always this way.”
“We’ve both changed a lot. Either way, it doesn’t matter anymore. I’ll still hold up my end, Caroline. You’ll get your money.”
“But Emmy,” I wailed into the phone even as it slipped from my suddenly stiff, cramped fingers. I reached down and snatched it up, hearing his words warble through the phone line.
“...so, you know I can see Emmy anytime I want to.”
My face flushed as my emotions surged upward from my chest. “I’d never keep her from you,” I snapped, but my voice echoed into dead air space. Tim had already disconnected.
I threw the phone onto the couch and huffed. Why had I married the most obstinate man on the planet?
But you won’t be married much longer .
I slunk onto the sofa as the truth hit me. He was cutting me loose and tossing me away, just like that overused hammock from all those years ago. The comfort and enjoyment worn away as he eagerly anticipated new experiences.
* * *
I stewed over Tim’s indifference all day, worried it would turn into wariness—maybe even distrust—if he discovered what I’d witnessed at Pine Hill Road. Worse still, he’d have reason to be skeptical of my story. One call to the police would blast apart my tale and make me seem delusional. Not an ideal quality in the mother of his child.
Taking panicked breaths that left me unable to get enough oxygen in my lungs, I tried to remember the events of that awful night at Melanie and Matt’s house, but my mind refused to release any more hints. Panting through my chores, mixing together the nighttime formula, feeding Emmy, and giving her a sponge bath, my anxiety mounted. Needing release, I strapped on my running shoes, settled Emmy in the babyzen , and headed toward Deer Crossing in the waning light. Maybe the Pine Hill house held answers to my many questions about that night. Answers that would become evident to me once I was standing before it.
I entered the neighborhood and made a quick pass up Pine Hill, glancing into the many homes that had blinds up and occupants on display. The only passingly interesting activity was in an oversized Colonial. Its spacious living room was the scene of a strenuous mat Pilates class. Women in form-fitting tanks and leggings holding the impossible poses I’d seen on exercise segments of Good Morning America . I suppressed a sigh and pushed on, pausing at Matt and Melanie’s house. It was completely dark inside. Were they really gone for good? If they’d indeed moved out, why had I seen Melanie that fateful night? Shaking my head, I stood there for a long time, staring at the dark building. It revealed nothing other than the suspicion I was truly losing my mind. Eventually, I looked away and turned toward Muzzy’s house.
Reaching in my pocket to clutch the small canister of mace Tim had given me a few years earlier and I’d decided to carry every evening, I studied Muzzy’s place. Only one light on in its center. I scanned left, my reluctant gaze settling on the pond, twenty yards ahead. My nemesis. I had to ignore the damned hole in the ground, and all the misery it encapsulated. My mind flashed back to the other night, and how I’d ended up in the water. My breathing turned shaky, and my body trembled. I backed up. I couldn’t take even one step in that direction. I glanced back at the Pine Hill house—and saw a flickering light in the upstairs bedroom. I blinked, convincing myself what I was witnessing wasn’t real. The light flashed again, almost like a signal. I whipped my head around, scrutinizing the shadows surrounding an enormous split-level across the street. That house also had a light on somewhere deep within its center, but no outside lantern. I could discern no movement in the yard, yet I had the eerie feeling someone was watching me. Keeping Matt and Melanie’s place to my left and the split-level on my right, I began backing up the road.
Don’t be ridiculous. There’s nothing to see here.
I stood tall. There was absolutely no reason to cower. I couldn’t let my overactive imagination fool me into feeling vulnerable. I pivoted until I was once again facing 21 Pine Hill. I settled my gaze on the window I’d seen Melanie fall against, my eyes unwavering. No light greeted me this time, but a rustling behind me made me flinch. I whipped my head once more to the shadowy behemoth of a house facing Matt and Melanie’s. Silence. But when I turned away, I heard it: a voice as soft as the stirring of leaves, but the message not so benign. Go away, go away .
I turned on my heel and shoved Emmy’s carriage forward, running up the street as fast as I could, but a quick exit was impossible. Each time I veered off an outcrop of Pine Hill looking for a shortcut, I’d dead-end in the center of a cul-de-sac. Feeling like a mouse in a maze, I pushed back onto Pine Hill and ran straight down the road, the baby carriage in front of me, breath coming in uneven gasps. Emmy began to howl.
I raced across Route 55 and into my neighborhood. As I passed the ever-present dogs who never seemed to get inside their owners’ houses, their piercing barks joined Emmy’s wails in a horrid chorus of misery that made me want to scream. Tell the world to shut the hell up.
I reached my ranch as the baby worked herself into a frenzy, her little limbs pumping like pistons, her tiny mouth emitting a baleful yowl that echoed my agony every time I thought of a bloody Melanie pressed against the window on Pine Hill Road.
No! Mustn’t think of that now!
Instead, I thought of Muzzy, and how things might be different if our friendship had been allowed to develop. Had she created an alliance with Tim? Against me? I grimaced. Perhaps alliance wasn’t the right word for the kind of intimacy between them. Tim’s voice from earlier in the day boomeranged in my head, telling me he was seeing someone else.
As soon as I made it into the house, I shoved Emmy into the chest carrier I found cast across the back of the sofa. Corralling her flailing legs until her little body was pressed snugly against mine, I crossed from room to room in a crazy-eight pattern. From coffee table to kitchen, then back. Losing track of how many times I’d paced the same area, I focused on calming Emmy. I couldn’t think when she was screaming. I had to get her to stop. Taking deep breaths to still my jangling nerves, I slowed my pace, and Emmy, always adept at tapping into my moods, eventually quieted.
I stopped in the center of the room and began rocking back and forth, feeling guilty for exposing Emmy to my anxiety. It was difficult enough that she was going to be raised by a single mom, just like I had been. I dimmed the lights and pulled the curtains closed, making sure nobody could peer in. Prying eyes could judge. Who knew that better than I?
I hummed the tune Daddy often sang to me when I was little, a Led Zeppelin song about love transcending all odds—even tumbling mountains and a world without sunshine. It still made me tear up. And it always soothed Emmy into sleep. Eventually, her fuzzy head nestled against my chest, and the deep, even breaths of her slumber signaled the opportunity to transport her, ever so gently, to her crib.
As I was tiptoeing out of her room, the baby suddenly wailed. I whipped around in the doorway, watching her limbs jerking like tiny ghosts, popping in and out of the shadows. I rushed back to the crib, gently rubbed her belly and legs until they eventually stilled. I backed out of the room, afraid to breathe.
Emmy’s sleep was often riddled with wakeful moments, as though she never wanted to fully surrender to slumber. I, on the other hand, had always eagerly anticipated a languorous reprieve. Lounging in bed watching a movie and dozing off, no matter what time of day it was. I’d been a voracious sleeper before we had Emmy, except for the first months after Tim and I met. I squeezed my eyes shut, not wanting to recall how much time we’d spent in bed not sleeping. I remembered one night: we’d made love three times in the span of two hours and wanted to keep going, despite our fatigue.
“Just lie on top of me,” I’d whispered, not wanting to sever the sensual bonds securing us to one another. “We’ll just doze a bit.”
“Five minutes,” Tim whispered back, settling himself so we were both comfortable, skin on skin, breath mingling.
We’d awoken the next morning in the same position. I’d felt dull aching around my knees and elbows. After I’d gently dislodged him (we were so tender with each other in those days!) I sat up, noticing the darkening bruises on my lower thighs, just above my knees where his kneecaps had lodged all night. I studied the unintentional injuries in wonder before inspecting the same blossoming discolorations above each elbow. I swallowed the lump in my throat at the memory.
It had taken two weeks for the bruises to fade. Oh, how I’d enjoyed the affliction. How I’d reveled in his marks on me, fool that I was. Had I known anything even remotely wise about human nature then, I’d have realized it was the constant pressure of love and longing that ensnared us. The weight of expectation—outwardly expressed or even hidden in our minds. Expanding exponentially. It burst the very stuff we were made of. How we wandered through life bruised and broken. Waiting for the wounds to heal, even as we cherished them.