29. James
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
James
NOW
It’s quiet in the house. I can hear the occasional dog bark in the distance, crickets chirping outside just past the sliding glass doors, and a trill of a car alarm.
The sounds of plastic wheels on concrete as someone drags their trash bin out to the curb.
I’m sitting on my couch, the TV off and the silence is drifting to the far corners of the kitchen and all the way up to our empty bedrooms.
It’s been about a week since Kendall left, and the only assurance I got of her safe arrival was a brief call that was eventually passed over to Sophia.
She raved about her first time on an airplane, giving the experience ten out of ten stars.
She gushed over the small TV screens behind each seat while she attempted to sit still through a two-and-a-half-hour flight and bragged about the flower crown she and Katy made together from a small bed of wildflowers.
I have my phone held between my hands, considering another awkward call to Kendall. I’ve been wanting to call them every day, just to see how they’re doing. Even just to say good night or good morning. I wish I didn’t have to think twice about doing something that used to be so second nature to me.
The center of my chest feels like someone punched a large crater into it.
I didn’t even get to drive them to the airport.
Kendall refused my offer, though I insisted, and that seemed to upset her.
Every time she had to tell me no, I saw how her control thinned.
I didn’t have the chance to pull up to departures, help Kendall with their luggage, or even stretch out a long, impassioned goodbye.
Instead, I loaded their suitcases in the trunk of the rideshare Kendall called for ahead of time, and I hugged Sophia while Kendall waved a morose goodbye in my direction.
And they took off, taking that scooped out chunk of my heart with them.
My phone flashes with a completely irrelevant alert—an email about a coupon for some store I probably gave my email to in the past—and it’s as if it’s taunting me.
I groan, giving in.
“Hello?” Kendall answers on the second ring.
“Hey.”
She doesn’t say anything for a while, and I wonder if she will. If she just answered to appease me, to keep what little peace remains in the balance, or if she’s actually willing to talk.
“I just called to see how you guys are doing.”
“Sophia’s asleep,” she tells me, her voice low and careful. “We went to the aquarium with Sylvia and Katy, and it really wore her down.”
“Sounds like she’s having a good time.”
“Told me it’s the best summer vacation she’s had in a decade.”
I chuckle. “Does she know what a decade is?”
“I don’t think so,” she says, a light laugh in her answer. “But I think she heard it somewhere, and she’s sticking with it.”
“How about you?” I ask, treading carefully. “Are you having a good time?”
She sighs into the phone. “I’m okay.” Another pause that’s amiable and considerate. “How…are you?”
With the way she left, I didn’t think this kind of conversation was possible. I thought every time I tried to talk to her I’d be met with a cold shoulder. But she’s talking to me. Prying open just enough for me to feel hopeful.
“I’m…okay.”
“Okay.”
There isn’t much else to say. We can’t really go into detail about other specifics.
Like what she had for lunch or me telling her about the garage door sensor going out this morning.
I had to get out to manually open and close it, and it made me a few minutes late to work.
Irrelevant niceties I don’t think she cares to know about at this moment.
“Well, I guess I’ll—”
“Can I ask you something?” Her question catches me off guard.
“Of course.”
“I don’t really know if this is the kind of stuff I’m allowed to talk to you about—”
“You can tell me anything.” I don’t mean to interrupt her but want her to know she can tell me anything.
She can tell me she’s committed murder, and she buried the body in our backyard.
She can tell me she’s really from an alien planet, and they’ve come to collect her after all these years.
I can’t imagine anything she tells me will change how I feel about her.
“I was thinking about…I-I don’t know,” she stammers.
“You know, I’m still doing my sessions here with my therapist. Not every week, but just when I can, and we’ve been figuring out different ways for me to organize my thoughts or whatever.
” She pauses to exhale a deep breath as if she’d been holding it in.
While her words were carefully spilling out, it’s obvious she’s holding back.
Like she’s worried it might overflow like a tidal wave when it should trickle like a leaky faucet.
“And we sort of discussed maybe journaling.”
My ears perk up. “Yeah?”
I know I can’t hear it, but I imagine her nodding. “Yeah, and…that doesn’t feel like a bad idea.”
I don’t mention that my own therapist mentioned the same, too aware she doesn’t even know I’ve sought out some form of help on my own, and that we’ve done something very similar in the past. Yet there’s a disconnect, because the emails were meant for someone else when what she’s talking about is meant to be for her.
And I don’t know how to tell her those two are one and the same.
Writing down her thoughts in whatever form all intersects, and there’s no one way to do it.
“No, it doesn’t,” I affirm. “I think it sounds like a good idea.”
She sighs again, but it’s short and sharp. The last of that breath she’s holding back. “Okay, I’m going to go.”
“Yeah.” I’m about to hang up, but then I have a thought. The memory of how unsure I was to call her just minutes ago makes me want to keep her on the line for longer. But I can’t. We’ve met our limit, so I add, “Would…it be okay for me to call you? Again?”
She doesn’t answer for some time, and I take it as my answer, but then with a few rustled sheets and her breathing filtering through the phone, she finally answers. “I don’t know. Maybe? Maybe not.”
I know she’s not trying to hurt me. She’s not withholding a part of herself and Sophia to punish me or to exercise some evil side of her out of spite. She’s being completely honest. She’s not sure. She doesn’t know about us, about me, about our future. She just doesn’t know.
“Okay. That’s okay. I just thought I’d ask.”
“Yeah,” she answers. “I guess…goodbye.”
“Good night.”
I stare at my phone in my hands. I do this thing where, once the screen locks, I tap my thumb on it to make it light it up again.
I stare at the picture of Kendall and Sophia on the lock screen until it goes black again, only to tap my thumb once more.
I keep doing this, not realizing why. All I know is that, while it’s painfully temporary, I get to see my family for those five seconds.
It’s a picture I took when we were at some local restaurant.
A diner that serves sodas in tumblers made of durable plastic and has metal napkin dispensers at each table next to the salt and pepper shakers.
Sophia’s chubby arms are wrapped around Kendall’s shoulders like she can’t get enough of her mommy, and Kendall’s smile isn’t just a smile.
It’s pure and simple joy. She isn’t posing for the camera, but she’s laughing.
I can see it in the vein that pops on her neck when she laughs so hard she can barely catch her breath.
I can see it in the extra sheen on her eyes from the tears that are just starting to form.
I remember Sophia took a sip of Kendall’s soda, and she burped the first three letters of the alphabet.
It wasn’t anything particularly funny, even a little gross depending on the audience, but it had us in tears.
Sophia basked in the pride of making us laugh until our stomachs hurt, and we couldn’t get over our adorable little comedian.
I don’t know how much longer I sit there before I reach for my laptop.
I had it charging at the end of the couch, something I don’t usually do.
Kendall doesn’t really like it when some of my electronics trickle from where they’re normally kept.
Like from our home office or off to the side in the kitchen.
I had left it there the night before without really thinking about putting it away, and she wasn’t here to remind me to.
Next thing I know, it’s open on my lap, and the bright screen illuminates the otherwise dark living room.
I hadn’t thought about the emails in years.
At least not until my therapy session reminded me of them.
They probably last flitted through my mind some time before Sophia was even born.
They came from a moment of desperation. I wanted to help Kendall somehow.
I didn’t really know what I was talking about, and it was the first thing that popped into my head.
We’d seen some variation of it in a movie, and…
I really wasn’t sure if it was going to help.
I know I stopped writing long before Kendall did, but I guess I never really thought about when she herself stopped.
She never did.
There are gaps between the letters. Some mere days, maybe weeks, even years, but she always managed to come back to them.
I’ve never read her emails, and this feels like a small violation of her privacy, but she knows I have access to these emails.
We both do. I don’t know if she’s read the ones I’ve sent, and a part of me has always wondered if she did.
I think it would offer some kind of peace knowing she can get a glimpse inside my head.
It could help her understand me, and maybe…
if I read hers, it can help me understand her.
It’s gradual, my transition from opening one letter to the next.
It starts off cautious, still unsure if I should be doing this.
I read each line unsure if I want to move on to the next, but by the fourth email, I start to understand that these letters aren’t just for our baby.
They’re for herself. They change over time.
In the beginning, they’re addressed to the baby.
Baby Girl Bean, like a little lima bean.
In a language meant for little ears. Then they shift.
They become letters to herself. Like she wrote them out to lay out her thoughts and look at them, just like my therapist said. Declutter.
The last one is dated to the day after she and Sophia left.
From: kmoreale@
To: babybeanC@
It feels like it’s been a long time since I sat down and wrote here, but for some reason, when there’s some kind of big change in my life, I seem to come back here.
Milestones or crossroads. Like an online scrapbook of my deepest darkest thoughts.
I feel like today is a milestone but not the good kind.
A watershed moment is what I think it’s called.
I left home. Not with the intention of never going back, but I left behind something I just didn’t want to face.
It felt absolutely cowardly and pathetic, but…
it almost felt like life or death. I don’t know how else to put it without sounding so dramatic.
But maybe dramatics are necessary. When something becomes a life-and-death matter, maybe we need to bring to light the severity of the situation instead of brushing it off as overreacting or being too sensitive.
It’s what’s gotten me here, believing my thoughts aren’t as scary as they actually are, and maybe I need to stop treating them like something that’ll just magically go away.
But maybe, hope against hope, they’ll turn into something I can carry around with me.
Something I can just toss in my purse rather than hook onto a chain and lock to my ankle.
Maybe, over time, I can learn what it’s like to not have my depression define me but rather be something that I’ve learned to live with.
With the good days and the bad days. With the help and support. Like from James.
I feel like the self-destructive behavior I put myself through should be enough to have me committed.
It’s almost enough for me to exist. Act like a normal human being, participate as a citizen in society.
I want to be able to tell James that I just want him to hold me and tell me everything’s going to be okay even though we don’t know if it will be.
I want to tell him my feelings, as inconsistent as they are, are something I really don’t know how to control.
They build and pile on top of each other until it’s too much.
But what happens after I decide it’s too much?
What if I start pushing him away again? He can only put up with so much.
And I can’t ask him to be more patient with me.
All of this, this crushing feeling like the pressure is going to vaporize me, makes me want to just disappear.
And I don’t mean that in a whimsical, magic trick-type of way.
Existing is so hard. It’s so fucking hard.
And how easy would it be if I just…didn’t.
If I could just go away and all of my problems would go with it. Wouldn’t that just be grand?
I don’t know when the tears started falling, but they’re falling off my chin and landing on my skin.
On the keyboard, on my lap, everywhere. She’s hurting so much, and all I’ve seen from her is anger and frustration and resentment because I couldn’t see her.
I couldn’t understand her. Instead, I pushed and pushed, wanting to know all these things without realizing I wasn’t ready to hear it.
But now I’ve read it, sorted and arranged it in front of me.
I’ve seen and felt it. I feel like she’s reached between her ribcage and squeezed out her heart through the small space just so she could show me the sides of it I wasn’t aware of.
All the sad parts and the dark parts and the hurting parts.
All turned away from me, leaving me so blind and stupid.
I go back to the inbox to confirm it’s the last one she sent.
The most recent among the sea of emails dating as far back as nine years ago.
She never addressed the last one to anyone like she did before.
She didn’t even sign off on it. It was written like a journal entry with no rhyme or reason, but it made complete sense to her.
She went through the motions of coming back to these emails and adding another entry.
It’s become a healing part of her journey without her even realizing it.
And maybe now, I can add more entries of my own.