65
claire
“Mom?”
I struggle to open my eyes.
Josh is standing beside my bed, dressed in his pajamas. “Aren’t we supposed to be up by now?” he asks.
The clock on the nightstand reads 7:34. I was still awake at 3:00 this morning, despite my repeated attempts to fall asleep. I tried everything: reading, watching a boring TV show, lying in the dark trying to empty my mind. Nothing worked. I hate not knowing how Daniel is doing, and Chris is responding to my texts with short, terse replies. The tension, the anxiety of it all, keeps building and I feel constantly on edge, mind whirring with possibilities, none of them positive. Finally, at a little before 4:00 A.M., when I couldn’t take it anymore, I took a dose of Benadryl, which worked very well. Too well, it seems.
My heart races when I realize how late we’re running, and I fling back the covers. “Go get dressed, Josh. I’m going to wake up your sister.”
“Okay,” he says, hurrying off to do what I asked.
I rouse a sleepy Jordan from her bed and tell her to get ready, then hurry to the kitchen to make breakfast. Cereal bars, bananas, and juice are all we have time for this morning.
Josh sits down at the table and starts eating while Jordan wanders in, sharing none of her brother’s sense of urgency.
“Come on, Jordan,” I say. “Pick up the pace a little, okay?”
My eyes burn, my head pounds, and my feet feel like cement blocks as we walk to the corner, reaching it a scant fifteen seconds before the big yellow bus pulls up. Elisa and Travis are the only ones there and I’m grateful that Julia and Bridget are absent this morning. In the vague recesses of my mind I remember that Julia is still in rehab and that Bridget’s house is now empty.
“How are you doing today?” Elisa asks.
I take comfort in her soothing tone and sympathetic expression. “I’m okay,” I say. “Just really tired. Chris still isn’t really talking to me. We’re communicating mostly through texts.”
“Do you want some company? I can skip yoga.”
“No,” I say. “Thanks. I think I’ll go back to bed.”
She squeezes my hand. “Okay.”
When I return home I drop a slice of bread in the toaster and when it pops up I spread a thin layer of peanut butter on it. I don’t want to eat it, don’t know if I can eat it, but I have no choice so I do. I gag on the third bite and hold it down by sheer will, then finish the rest. There are dirty dishes in the sink and fingerprints cover every inch of the granite countertops, but I leave everything the way it is. I’ll pull myself—and the house—together later. Chris will be flying home tonight, which means we’ll have to give Oscar-worthy performances if we hope to get through dinner without the kids picking up on the tension. It’s something we know all too well how to do, but I’m exhausted just thinking about it.
Tucker waits patiently next to his empty food and water bowls and I fill the metal containers with fresh, cold water and his kibble.
“Sorry, boy,” I say, reaching down to scoop him up. I hug him, burying my face in his soft fur.
Upstairs, I strip down to my tank top and underwear and crawl back into bed, pulling the covers over my head. Anything to temper the sunlight that filters in through the bedroom curtains. I suddenly understand why people like blackout shades. I need a break from the TV, from my life. I toss and turn, but I’m so tired that my mind eventually stops spinning.
I close my eyes and soon the sleep returns.
• • •
“Claire, wake up.” Chris opens the curtains, and the simultaneous assault of his voice and the blinding sunlight has me squinting and wishing I could put my hands over my ears like a child. His voice is so loud, or maybe it just seems that way because the room was so blissfully quiet. I have no idea why he’s here and one glance at the clock doesn’t make it any clearer. It’s noon on Friday. Chris should be getting ready to fly home, not standing in our bedroom looking down at me.
“Why are you here?” I ask.
“I wanted to talk to you. I caught the first flight out this morning.”
“Give me a minute.” Slowly, I sit up and swing my legs over the side of the bed because I really need to pee. After I pull on my yoga pants I walk into the bathroom to relieve my close-to-bursting bladder. When I’m washing my hands I look in the mirror.
I do not look good.
My skin is ashen and there are dark circles under my eyes. I brush my teeth and then pull my hair back into a sloppy bun. When I come out of the bathroom Chris is waiting for me.
“Let’s go downstairs.”
“Okay,” I say.
“Okay,” he echoes, and follows me out of the room.
“Why were you sleeping?” he asks when we sit down on the couch. “You hardly ever nap during the day.”
“I was sleeping because I’m tired. I’m tired of you shutting me out whenever we hit a rough patch. I’m tired of worrying about whether Daniel is okay.”
Chris flinches, as though the very mention of Daniel’s name has caused him a fresh wave of pain.
“I’m tired of everything, Chris.” I can’t look at him. I’m afraid I’ll start crying again, and I’m tired of doing that, too. Swallowing the lump in my throat and looking at the clock on the wall over his shoulder, I wait for him to say whatever it is he flew home early to say so we can clear the air, once and for all.
“I know I didn’t handle things very well the other night, Claire. I just never expected you to tell me something like that.”
“I didn’t have to tell you at all,” I say.
“Yeah, well. I almost wish you hadn’t.”
Neither of us says anything for a minute, but then we both try to talk at once.
“Go ahead,” he says.
“When I got out of the hospital I told Daniel I couldn’t see him anymore. Even though nothing physical ever happened between us, we came close.”
Chris’s jaw clenches and he looks as if he’d rather hear anything other than the words that are coming out of my mouth.
“But I felt like you were finally going to fight for me instead of letting me slip away. And I was slipping away, Chris. A little more every day.”
“Why did you spend so much time with him?”
He looks as though he might not really want to hear the answer, but he asked, so I tell him the truth. “I was lonely, Chris. Lonely and sad and frustrated. I spent time with him because he gave it to me.” I angle my body toward his. “I wanted you to be the one I turned to, but you weren’t there.”
“I know. I’m sorry,” Chris says. “For everything.”
“You were doing what you thought you had to do,” I say. “What you thought was best for this family.”
He shrugs and shakes his head, runs his fingers through his hair. “At what cost?” he asks.
I think I’ve already given him the answer to that question. “I’m sorry, too,” I say.
Chris stares out the window at the backyard and doesn’t say anything for a minute. He turns back around and looks me in the eye. “How close did I come?” he asks. “To losing you.”
“Not as close as you think,” I say, because there are some things that a man never needs to hear.
Chris reaches over and pulls me into his arms. He doesn’t speak, but he strokes my hair and holds me tight, like he’ll never let me go. We stay like that for a long time. And I think to myself that maybe Chris talks to me the loudest when he says nothing at all.