Chapter 15
Hellie
The boys have gone crazy.
Hearing them all shout and jump around Doug should be funny but it feels cruel, like they’re celebrating to mock him, even
though I know they’re not. It makes me want to cry; then again, everything makes me want to cry these days.
I think my hormones are still going crazy from losing my baby. I named him Theo, even though they never told me if it was
a boy or a girl. I was just eleven weeks. I just really liked the name Theo. It made him sound like the kind of boy who would
wear glasses and read books and be nerdy and sweet. A boy who would love his mommy more than your average ten-year-old and
fourteen-year-old and thirty-year-old. Who would text me when he had a date. A boy that would have been mine, all mine.
I’ve worked so hard, so many jobs, for so long. For myself—obviously I need to eat too—but mostly for Doug, because he’s so
fragile, which I saw when no one else saw, because he needs me to be strong. With trying for the babies, I knew we weren’t
in a great financial position or whatever, I knew it would be tough, but none of that scared me. I wanted something for myself.
I wanted something of my own.
I watch him jump in tandem with his friends like they’re seventeen instead of thirty-five and I miss the babies that left us and I wonder if those babies would’ve been the catalyst for him to change.
I’m not stupid. I knew that my ultimatum would probably only work temporarily . . . but I hoped. Maybe that’s my major flaw.
That I always hope.
Tonight, some final part of me is breaking, and every time Doug jumps in their improvised mosh pit, every time the floor shakes
slightly under his feet, is one more strike of the hammer.
I want to scream, Stop pretending everything is okay! But I hold it in. I’m really used to holding it in, but this is the hardest thing to keep to myself:
Doug was fired this morning.
He has no idea that I know, of course.
I followed the blue dot to the Windsor Tavern. I saw him, through the window, talking to the bartender. Taking a shot. Leaning
his head down on the bar. I almost went in—and then I wised up. I can never get the straight story from Doug, so I turned
around, crossed the street, and marched straight into EdgeTech Gutters. To my surprise, everything was as Doug had described
it. The ugly fluorescent lights, the nature photography calendar on the wall, the tiny Christmas tree on the counter, and
John’s wife up front at the reception desk, though not as ugly as Doug had described her. She just looked stressed.
“I need to talk to John,” I said.
“And you are . . .” she said.
“Helen, Doug’s wife.”
She hesitated, and I could tell right away something was up. Her look was evaluating me. Scanning to see if I was a safe presence.
Or a risk.
“I’ll just be a minute,” I said gently, and smiled in that soft way that always makes people respond.
“Go right back, honey,” she said with compassion, and it was then I knew I was right. Doug had lost his job.
John was very kind. He showed me the fax. I took a picture of it.
“Thank you for your time,” I said.
“Of course,” John said. “I’m just sorry for the way things worked out. And if this is false information, in any way, please . . .
tell Doug that he can reapply.”
“I will,” I said.
But even though it wasn’t Doug’s fault that he was fired, it doesn’t change the reality that instead of confiding in me, Doug
chose to lie. Again.
I love my husband. I have since I first laid eyes on him. I was his server at Denny’s, and he wrote his number on a napkin.
We were just seventeen. On our first date, we listened to the Smashing Pumpkins and lay on the roof of his car and looked
at the stars and he told me how music is poetry to him, how when he listens to Billy’s lyrics about being so damn angry but
at the end of the day being nothing more than a rat in a cage, he feels like he’s not alone in the universe, that there’s
some common bond running like an electric line through all humans, and if we can just tap into it, hang on to it, we’ll be
saved. I held his hand and felt that electricity he was describing, that buzz of life, that mad pinball energy like a thousand
shooting stars pinging through our connected hands, and I imagined a life that propelled me forward instead of stalling out
like my mom’s life had, like I sometimes felt my life had, and I thought, We’ll go places together. From that night forward, I never wanted to let go, and I never have.
I love my husband, but he’s like a little kid during hide-and-seek, pulling a blanket over himself with no concept that his
parents can see the shape his body makes. He still thinks he can trick me about his drug use, like I can’t see how high he
is right now. Like I didn’t realize why he had to go to the bathroom the second we got here. Like we haven’t been doing this
dance from the beginning.
Oh, Doug. I can see our past without your lies, and it looks so good.
It’s like hope in reverse, imagining this life we could have had.
Him, working as a personal trainer like he wanted to five or six years ago, right before he relapsed again.
I know he started the certification process, and for a while it felt like that really could be our future.
Me, at home with some adorable babies, making cozy casseroles for dinner and addressing envelopes for our yearly Christmas card.
Not rich by any standards, but happy, because we would have each other.
Oh, Doug. It could have been different.