9. Anders
Anders
It takes forty minutes to get Becca calm enough to drive.
I put Milo in his car seat. I check the buckle twice because my hands are shaking and I want something to do with them.
Becca sits in the driver's seat with the door open, breathing like I taught her in the kitchen.
In through the nose and out through the mouth.
She says she's sorry, she's so sorry, she doesn't know what came over her, and I say I know, I know, I say it about fifty times.
She finally asks, "Is Margot okay?"
I say, “You don’t worry about her, I’ll check in a minute.”
She drives off. I stand in the driveway until the taillights are gone, and then I go inside, and the house is quiet in a way that doesn't sound right.
"Mar?"
Nothing.
I check the living room. The study. Her laptop's not on the desk. I go up the front stairs and the bedroom door is open and the bed's made and the closet light is on.
The wedding photograph is where it always is, leaning against the wall on the dresser. She keeps saying she'll hang it. I've offered to do it four times and she says she wants to pick the spot herself.
Next to it, on the wood, is her ring.
I look at it for a while. It's a plain band. I wanted to get her something with a stone and she said she works with her hands and didn't want to catch it on anything, and I said fine, and I've never once wished it were bigger until right now, looking at how small it is on the dresser.
I pick it up. I don't know why. It's warm from the lamp.
The floor goes slanted.
Not literally. I'm standing on it. But something underneath me that I didn't know I was standing on is suddenly not there, and I sit down on the edge of the bed with my wife's ring in my hand and my ears ringing.
I call her. It goes to voicemail. I call again. It goes to voicemail again after one ring, which means she's turned it off.
I check the closet. The small suitcase is gone. The one she takes to the coast for site visits. Her vitamins are gone from the bathroom. The wedge pillow's gone off the bed. She packed. She stood in this room and packed while I was downstairs with my arms around Becca, and I didn't hear her.
Fifty minutes. I do the math and it comes out to fifty minutes between Becca's hand and me walking up the stairs.
I put the ring in my pocket.
Diane's house is twelve minutes away. I make it in eight.
She's on the porch before I've turned the truck off. Arms folded. She's a small woman and she's never once looked small to me.
"She's asleep."
"I need to see her."
"No."
"Diane."
"You can stand there and say my name all night. She's asleep, and she asked me not to let you in, and I'm not going to."
"Is she okay? Is the baby okay?"
"The baby's fine. Your wife has a handprint on her face. She had a bleeding nose.”
I put my hand over my mouth.
"I didn’t…” I don't know how to end that sentence. "I didn't see it happen. I came in and they were already."
"You saw it after." Diane doesn't move. "You looked right at it. She told me. You looked at her face and you told her to give you a minute."
I stand at the bottom of her porch steps with nothing to say.
"Go home, Anders."
"Please tell her I'm sorry."
"I'll tell her you came." She goes inside. The porch light stays on. That's the only thing she gives me.
I sit in the truck in her driveway and type.
I know tonight got out of control. I'm so sorry. Please call me. I need to know you're okay.
I read it three times. It's true. Every word of it is true. I hit send.
The dots come up fast. She's awake and has unblocked me briefly. I hold the phone with both hands.
She hit me in the face and you comforted her. Nothing "got out of control." You made a choice.
I read it. I read it again. I start to type, and the screen changes, and the little icon next to her name goes gray.
I’m blocked.
I sit there with the engine off until the windows fog.
The house at midnight is the worst place I've ever been.
The highchair is still siting at the end of the island. I stand and look at it for a long time and I think, I should take it out, and I don't, because taking it out means something and I don't know what yet. Besides, should I sell it or fold it away for later?
I go upstairs. I stand in the nursery. The crib I built. The glider she cries in. There's a stroller box in the corner I didn't know she'd ordered, still taped shut.
I sit on the floor with my back against the crib and I try to work it out, like a job. Where the fault line is. Where the load went wrong.
I get about halfway.
I know Becca shouldn't have hit her. I know that. I know I should have gone to Margot first. I know the money should have been a conversation. I know I've been saying temporary like a prayer. I get all of that, sitting on the floor, and I feel it like a hand on my throat.
But I still think it's a bad night. That's what I keep landing on.
A bad night at the end of a bad month. She's eight months pregnant and exhausted and Becca lost her head and I handled it wrong, and if I can just get in front of Margot and say all of that, we can get back to the crib and the curtains and the thing we were doing before the phone rang.
I don't understand yet that the night is the whole marriage with the volume up. That every choice I made in that kitchen was a choice I'd already made ten times, smaller, quieter, and she'd seen every one.
I write her a letter on the back of a lumber invoice. Two pages. I don't send it. It's mostly about how much I love her, which is true and which is not the point, and I fold it and put it in the drawer where she keeps the petty cash, and I notice the drawer is light, and I don't put it together.
My phone buzzes at 12:14.
Becca.
I can't stop shaking. Milo won't settle. I know I don't have the right to ask. I just don't have anyone else.
I look at it.
I look at the ring on the nightstand where I've set it.
I think: Margot's safe. She's at her mother's. She's blocked me and she's asleep and there's nothing I can do tonight.
I think: there's a baby who might be mine crying in a two-bedroom over a laundromat.
God help me, I get my keys.
Her building is over the laundromat on Cullen.
The stairwell smells like dryer sheets and something mildewy under the dryer sheets.
Becca opens the door in a T-shirt with her hair down and her eyes swollen and Milo on her hip, red-faced, hiccupping, and she says, "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I didn't know who else to call.”
I take him.
He settles in a couple of minutes. He just needed someone new. I walk him around her living room, past the beige couch and the crocheted throw and the stack of unopened mail on the table, and Becca sits on the arm of the couch and watches me with her arms wrapped around herself.
"Is she okay?"
"She's at her mother's."
"I didn't mean to do it. You have to know that. I've never hit anyone in my life. She just kept saying get out like I was, like I was nothing, like Milo was nothing."
"She asked you about the bracelet?”
"I don't have it or her money."
I don't answer. Milo's gone heavy on my shoulder. I put him down in the crib in the corner, the one I bought, and he sighs and rolls over.
"Anders." She's crying again. "I'll apologize. I'll go to her mother's tomorrow and I'll apologize. I'll do whatever you want. I just can't do this by myself. I've been doing it by myself for a year and I can't anymore."
I stand there. I've got my wife's ring in my pocket. I can feel it against my leg.
"I have to go," I say.
"Please stay. Just till he's really down. Please. I'm scared he'll wake up."
He won't. I know he won't. I stay anyway, on the far end of the beige couch with my hands between my knees, for forty minutes, while she talks and cries and thanks me, and I drive home at two in the morning down Cullen with the ring in my pocket and I don't put it together.
I won't understand until understanding cannot save me.
I'm that far from it. I'm that far, with the ring against my leg.