22. James
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
James
NOW
There’s something about the mundane that feels like home.
Routine that feels conventional. I never used to appreciate or even notice the everyday that flitted through our home.
Simple things like a two-year stint in ballet class for Sophia with busy Saturday mornings and the occasional weeknight recitals.
Or pizza nights on Fridays as a way to wind down after a long week.
Even Sunday morning chai latte runs—Kendall’s request. Until it all stopped.
Fridays turned into nights spent reheating leftovers in separate corners of our home.
And on Sundays, Kendall and I started to do our own thing.
She might take Sophia to the park or on a quick trip to the drugstore for essentials, or I might be cleaning out the garage.
It didn’t matter. As long as we stayed out of each other’s way.
Today, on another regular Saturday, that routine seems to have returned, slowly and surely.
We had pizza last night, delivered to our door while Kendall and Sophia picked our movie for the evening.
We made ice cream sundaes for dessert—another part of our norm we’d forgotten about.
Dessert after greasy pizza topped with concave slices of pepperoni, and our house suddenly feels like home again.
And now, while Kendall drops off Sophia at my mom’s, I’m at the hardware store getting supplies to fix the broken sprinkler heads in our front yard.
We hadn’t talked about what happened in the garage last week.
We just let it fizzle until Kendall sort of…
came around. Things at home have been smoother.
Less askew and slanted, and I hope it’s not temporary.
A part of me worries it’s due to an inkling of guilt on Kendall’s end, for stopping a moment I would’ve given anything to see through.
Or maybe it has nothing to do with that.
Maybe all the therapy sessions and the changes in her medications and the time that’s passed has finally done something.
For now, I don’t want to question the whys.
I want to be a little selfish and relish in the now.
On the way to the store, I started to plan out the rest of our weekend.
Maybe Kendall and I can have lunch. Just us two with Sophia gone.
Then we can pick up Sophia together, bring her home where we can watch another movie—hopefully something grown-ups can semi-enjoy as well.
And on Sunday morning, maybe we can run some errands together.
Get groceries, test out the new sprinkler heads.
Maybe even revert back to our usual lasagna nights we reserve for Sunday dinner.
Maybe we can even talk about our summer.
Kendall will be off in just a week, and maybe I can take some time off too.
A week or two so we can go on vacation somewhere. Get away and just be a family.
I pay for my supplies, stopping by the display of flowers to pick up some daisies for Kendall. Her favorite. When I pull into the driveway, my chest spasms with excitement seeing Kendall’s car there too.
“Kendall?” I call as I walk through the door. Whatever supplies I picked up, I’d haphazardly thrown on my workbench in the garage. The only thing I have gripped in my hand are the flowers I plan on giving to Kendall. “Ken? Are you home?”
“I’m in the room,” she answers from upstairs. I take the steps, two at a time, and find her crouched in front of our dresser, a frustrated scowl on her face. My smile drops.
“Did my mom mention when she wanted us to pick up Sophia?”
She shrugs, her back turned to me. I can sense a shift in the air.
It’s tight and almost humid. I can feel it go in and out of my lungs.
Something doesn’t feel right. I place the flowers still clutched in my hand on the bed.
At the end where our turquoise throw blanket is neatly folded over and draped.
The one Kendall usually swaps out according to the season. Orange for fall, green for Christmas.
“Is everything okay?”
“Yeah,” she says, her tone clipped and abrupt. She’s obviously lying.
“Did something happen when you dropped off Soph?”
She stands, her eyes focused on the now-empty laundry basket. It looks like she has no plans to answer with the way she tries to breeze past me toward the door. I stop her, nudging my hand into her arm, and she looks at my fingers as if they’re diseased, covered in something contagious.
“What happened?”
Her eyes narrow, and I see her chest rise and fall.
I wish I could read her better, foresee what she’s going to say or do, but I’ve lost that touch.
I don’t know if she’s going to start yelling at me or continue to ignore me for the rest of the day.
She shakes her head almost as if she’s in disbelief, and her body sags at the same time her eyes catch the flowers on the bed.
“James,” she pleads, my name spoken through a sigh. A soft breath that’s equal parts painful and frustrated. “It’s nothing. Let’s just…move on.”
“How can I move on if I don’t know what I’m moving on from?”
“Don’t worry about it,” she insists. Annoyance coats her tone, and I should probably let it go. Move on like she’s suggesting. But my persistence pushes me forward.
“Is this about last week?” I bite, knowing I might be missing the mark completely, but I have nothing. And I’m starting to get desperate.
“What about last week?”
“Wha-what happened in…in the garage. I-I—” I stammer. I don’t know why I’m embarrassed. It’s not like I’m talking about our sex life with a close relative or something. This is my wife. We should be able to talk about these things.
“That shouldn’t have happened,” she cuts in as if it makes her just as uncomfortable. “I’m sorry about…I shouldn’t have let it get that far.”
“Why not? Why can’t we—”
“Because,” she cries.
“Then can you tell me what’s wrong?” I ask. “What did I do wrong?”
“It’s really nothing you need to concern yourself with.” She continues her exit, heading toward the laundry room to replace our laundry basket, and I follow close, my toes nearly hitting her heels.
“That’s not true,” I tell her, the urgency in my voice causing it to quiver. It’s riddled with anxiety and a temper I’m having difficulty controlling. “Everything that happens between us, I concern myself with. There’s nothing in my life that consumes me like me and you—”
“Then why are you so careless?” She’s lost the queasy control in her voice. She’s become shrill and accusatory.
“What the hell are you talking about?” I have her unintentionally caged between the dryer and the door, and I don’t have it in me to move aside.
To let her pass and act as if I’m completely okay with us going about our lives like this, cold and vacant.
We’re at an impasse, a moment where we can either say what we want to say or choose not to.
Making sure to pick out the words that need to be said instead of the ones that can—should—be held back.
Picking our battles, as she’s called it in the past, or to fight every single one like our lives depend on it.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” she says softly, fear laced in her voice. Like I’ll admonish her for all the thoughts in her head.
“Talk to me,” I beg. I reach for her, and she flinches. I wouldn’t hurt her. She knows that. I know she knows that. But her knee-jerk reaction scorches me like a hot brand.
“Why are you acting like I’d hurt you?”
“I don’t—” She looks to be on the verge of tears, and I reach for her again. But this time, she doesn’t flinch away.
“Baby, please.”
“James,” she cries. I can see the hesitation in her when she runs her hands through her hair and tugs at the roots. But she continues, vacillation and all. “I—I ran into Teeny when I was at your mom’s, and…she asked me how I was doing. If I was okay.”
“Why?”
She inhales a deep breath. A pause before this explodes into something we can’t come back from. “She was just wondering, and when I asked why, sh—she didn’t want to say at first, but when I kept asking, she told me you told her about what happened…with the baby.”
I sigh, frustrated that a simple moment of confidence between my sister and me blew up in my face.
I don’t blame Teeny, she was just concerned about Kendall, but I wasn’t prepared to be side-swiped by this.
All the complicated parts of my marriage I let trickle out without a second thought is now slathered into a mess.
As if I thought it was simply water—a slow drip from a crack in the ceiling—when in reality, it was oil. Greasy, slimy oil. “I’m so sorry.”
“She said she felt horrible about what happened and she wanted me to know that I can come to her if I ever need to talk,” she continues. “Why would you tell her?”
“I didn’t mean to,” I try to explain. “I mean, I wasn’t trying to just talk about you. I just felt so…”
“What?” she demands.
“I just needed someone to talk to.”
“Why?”
“Because, Kendall. I’m trying to figure this out. I’m trying to help you when I have no fucking idea what I’m doing. I’m scared to death that I’m going to lose you, and I needed someone to talk to.”
“So, you talk to your sister?” That accusation in her voice returns, and I panic. How dare she accuse me of anything but wanting to help her? Why doesn’t she understand how fucking helpless I feel?
“Yes,” I say firmly. My anger starts to match hers. “Is it that bad that I talk to my family about this?”
“Yes!”
“Why?” I’ve played the patient, stoic husband, and things are dire now. I can’t tiptoe anymore.
“Because.”
“No, Kendall,” I argue. “Tell me. Why is it so bad that I—”
“Because I don’t want them to know I’m like this!”
“I’m not going around telling everyone about us,” I tell her, my voice growing louder and more strained. “And even if they knew, they care about you just as much as I care about you. They would never judge you or think less of you because they know what happened.”
“That’s not the point.”
“Then what is it?” I ask, my voice cracking. “What is the point of you being this upset and angry that I confide in my own sister? Why is that so goddamn bad?”
“You don’t get it! You don’t understand what it’s like to already feel this way. And then to know someone else knows this side of me when I try so hard to hide it. Do you think I go around telling people about my fucking dead baby?”
“She just wants to make sure you’re okay,” I say, trying to convince her that what I did wasn’t done with malintent. “You know she cares about you.”
“I know that, but it doesn’t mean I want her to know this about me.” Her voice takes on a pleading tone, and desperation causes the crease between her brow to deepen.
“You know she doesn’t care.”
“I care!” she shrieks. “I care! Why doesn’t that fucking matter to you?”
“It does matter to me.”
“No, it doesn’t,” she continues to argue. “You wouldn’t be so damn careless if it mattered to you.”
“It does matter to me,” I tell her. “But sometimes, I just…I don’t know how to deal with all this, and when I find someone who listens to me, I want to know how these things sound out loud—”
“This isn’t what I want them to remember me as,” she finally confesses. “I don’t want them to know me as this broken thing. It’s enough that this is what I am and I just want to disappear—”
I groan, banging the side of my fist into the doorframe. “You can’t say things like that.”
“What? That I want to disappear?”
“Yes,” I answer desperately. “You can’t talk about—about you… I can’t just stand here and hear you say things like that. Do you realize how that makes me feel?”
“How it makes you feel?” Disbelief flushes her cheeks and I can tell we’re meeting our breaking point.
“Kendall, I can’t…” I don’t know how to tell her I can’t live without her.
I don’t know how to say the things I want to say without the assurance she can handle it.
Because the things I want to say are heavy.
They’re dense and difficult to carry, but we should be carrying them together.
As husband and wife. But we’ve lost that balance.
I don’t know what she can handle, and I don’t know what more I can take on.
“Look,” Kendall demands. “Just forget I said anything. It’s already done. You talked to Teeny about me, and you can’t undo that, so just forget about it.”
She pushes past me, and I hear the door close to our bedroom.
For a moment there, I felt like we were finally resurfacing.
Coming up from under a pile of rubble, hoping we can somehow dust it all off and be us again.
I was so stupid to actually believe that.
To even hope Kendall and I could go back to how things were, when our relationship thrived on trust and regard.
When our biggest hurdle was what we’d cook for dinner or whose turn it was to turn off the light before hopping into bed.
I don’t even know who that couple is anymore.