The Push

There are days, like that one, that mark the moments in our life that change who we are. Was I the woman being cheated on? Were you the man who betrayed me? We were already the parents of a dead boy. Of a daughter I couldn’t love. We would become the couple that split. The husband who left. The wife who never got over any of it.



1972



There came a time when it was clear to everyone that Etta was slipping away. She’d stopped cooking and stopped eating. She’d stopped doing much of anything by then. The house had a rank smell to it, like damp towels that had been left too long in the washer. She wandered the second floor some days, but others she didn’t leave her bedroom.

It was a tough time for Cecilia as well. She was wasting away, swimming in the clothes that had fit her earlier that year. She’d lost her appetite and stopped caring for herself in the way other fifteen-year-old girls knew how to do. She didn’t want to ask Henry for money to buy sanitary pads, so she started stuffing her underwear with socks during her period. There was never laundry soap in the house, so she let them pile up under her bed. When Henry found them, Cecilia was humiliated. He asked his sister to move in for the time being. She lived overseas and as far as Cecilia could remember, Henry hadn’t spoken about her before, so she figured things were desperate. They kept their distance from one another as best they could—Henry’s sister understood that the situation was delicate. She cleaned the house and bought groceries for the fridge.

One day, Cecilia overheard Henry’s sister suggest that Cecilia should move away to a boarding school. She didn’t think it was safe for her to be living with her mother anymore. Henry’s fist rattled the silverware.

“She’s her daughter, for God’s sake. Etta needs to be with Cecilia.”

“Henry. She doesn’t want to be. She doesn’t love that girl.”

Cecilia peered around the corner and watched him. He covered his face with his hand for a minute. And then he shook his head. “You’re wrong. Love doesn’t have anything to do with it.”

A few days later, Etta hanged herself from an oak tree in the front yard using one of Henry’s belts. It was a Monday morning and the sun was just coming up. They lived on the same street as Cecilia’s school. Etta was thirty-two years old.



59



I wondered if the pain of spending my days imagining you fucking another woman would mean I’d start to miss Sam less. Surely there is a limit to how much sadness one person can hold. And so I thought if I just focused more attention on what you did to me, maybe the pain of Sam would start to feel less suffocating, less consuming.

But that never happened. I couldn’t find enough heartbreak in your betrayal. What happened with Sam had blunted me, knocked me so hard that I still couldn’t feel anything more deeply than his loss. You wanted another woman? Fine. You didn’t love me anymore? I understood.

The doctor at the hospital who spoke with us after Sam died said this before you left: “Be strong together. Many relationships don’t survive the death of a child. You have to be aware of this and work hard on your marriage.”

“What kind of thing is that to say to us?” you’d said to me later about her comment. “We have enough to worry about.”

I didn’t confront you for eight days about what I suspected. We went about life quietly so that Violet wouldn’t sense any tension. You were extra kind. Extra thoughtful. I didn’t want any of it. I never asked where you were going during the days because I didn’t much care. To see her, to find a new job? I didn’t know. I told you to cancel your parents’ visit for Christmas, although it seemed like a punishment for us both.

“Why don’t you call my mother?” you said. “You seem to enjoy keeping her up to date about me.”

She’d told you I’d called.

I don’t know what excuse you gave her when you canceled. I didn’t answer her calls after that, although it hurt each time I ignored her.

On the eighth night, I found you in the den cleaning up your desk. All of your projects were put away, handed off to the people taking over your clients. The long arm of your lamp was tucked against itself now, as though it would be put in bubble wrap and packed for a move. Maybe it would be. I looked for the tin of blades and didn’t see it anywhere.

“Where did you put all your things? Your modeling tools?” I held my breath and felt the shame of needing to know where the blades were. The anxiousness tickled in my chest, threatening me. You pointed to the closet while you sorted through a box of loose papers. I slid open the door and scanned the messy shelves. Old board games and stacked empty picture frames and dictionaries I’d saved from college. The tin was there, on the second shelf, between your architecture books and a bin of rulers and pens. I closed the door and turned to you. Your shoulders were starting to build the same hunch your father had. I wondered if she liked to run her hand against the bristles of hair on the nape of your neck, if she would one day shave them for you like I did every so often.

“What is she like?”

You lifted your head. The room felt so different without the shadows from your lamp that had always danced over the wall as you worked. You were so still. I held my breath again and wondered what you would say next. But you didn’t speak. I asked you again: “What is she like, Fox?”