Page 12 of Say Something
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“Dinner’s ready if you want to eat,” Mom called through the closed door of my bedroom. I didn’t answer her and soon heard her soft footsteps moving away. I knew I was hurting her, but I needed to have some time to myself.
I didn’t say anything to her on the way home from The Diner. I was too upset that she left me alone with Danny. I just sat quietly, wiping the tears I couldn’t get to stop spilling from my eyes. When we’d returned home, I retreated to my room to be alone and to meditate. Mindfulness and meditation were something that helped me when I felt myself getting lost in my emotions or anxiety.
About two months after our divorce was finalized—six months after Danny walked out—one of the senior partners at my law firm, Janet, staged an intervention. Well, it wasn’t so much an intervention as it was her telling me that I’d better get my shit together or else. Not exactly the softest approach, but the fear of losing my job had caught my attention. It was all I had left, even if I didn’t enjoy it all that much.
I started therapy and was diagnosed with major depressive disorder as a result of my infertility. No surprise there. I was prescribed antidepressants and saw a shrink for therapy twice a week for several months. Eventually I moved to weekly sessions, then every other week, and now I just checked in on occasion if I felt like I needed to. I’d shown marked improvement after about nine months, and eventually weaned myself off the medication, having never wanted to be on it in the first place, but I wasn’t cured, and I still had triggers. Danny was obviously a big one, but I was armed with tools and techniques to get myself through difficult times.
At that moment, I was laying on my bed, practicing one of the meditation techniques I enjoyed which involved clenching and releasing my muscles from head to toe. For the most part it was working, and I was finding my happy place: a pink sand beach with clear blue water and palm trees dotting the shoreline. Long ago, I promised myself I would visit this place one day. I had escaped there in my head frequently, but I had no idea where it existed outside of my imagination.
After a few more minutes of deep breaths and some muscle tightening, I felt a little more human. I rolled off of my childhood bed and checked my appearance in the mirror, all around the edges were photographs of Melissa and I as tweens. I eyed the silver infinity keychain Danny had given me for our one-month anniversary before taking in my appearance. The puffiness under my brown eyes had dissipated some, and they were no longer bloodshot from the tears. I made a quick trip to the bathroom to wash my face, before heading down to the kitchen to have dinner with my parents.
Growing up, the six of us always ate dinner around the large, formal dining room table. Since it was just me and my folks, dinner was at the smaller kitchen table.
“Don’t be too hard on your mom,” Dad whispered as I walked by his seat at the table. “She feels awful about what happened this afternoon.”
I squeezed his shoulder and offered a small smile. “It’s all right. It wasn’t a big deal.” He gave me a look that said he knew I was lying but returned the smile all the same.
I sidled up to my mother who was standing at the counter moving mixed vegetables from a pot into a serving bowl and rested my head on her shoulder. “I’m sorry if I upset you,” I told her.
Distancing myself from my family over the years meant they never saw me at my lowest. This afternoon’s crying episode was not my lowest by far, but it rendered my loving parents speechless and at a loss as to what they could do to help me. They’d just never seen me so upset. And my mom was a fixer, so it couldn’t have been easy staying downstairs while one of her children was so upset.
“No,” Mom started, setting the now empty pot back down on the stovetop. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking about what seeing Danny after all this time would do to you. I thought you two could use a minute to talk. I didn’t think it would upset you. I was wrong, sweetheart.”
I lifted my head from her shoulder and shook it. “You didn’t do anything wrong, Mom. I just…”have issues, “...wasn’t prepared to see him is all. I haven’t seen him since the divorce. It brought back a lot of memories.”
It wasn’t a lie. Seeing Dannyhadbrought back a lot of memories. Some good and some bad. None of which I had been ready for.Thinkingabout him was one of my triggers. Seeing him…well, I wasn’t really sure if there was a rating on the SUDS scale—subjective units of distress, according to my shrink—for that. Externally, I thought I’d handled myself pretty well. Internally, I was a puddle of mush.
But Mom didn’t need to feel the guilt of that. It wasn’t her fault; it was mine. I’d handled things so poorly near the end of our marriage, and in the years that followed. It was my fault our marriage crumbled, and it was my fault I shrunk into myself and never got appropriate closure. Danny had been my best friend, my high school sweetheart, my boyfriend, my lover, and my husband. There was never any animosity between us. Not one time. Not even at the worst of times. We just loved, and then loved harder. It was my absolute indifference in the end that split us up. I’d become numb, lost in my own head.
Mom gave me a small nod, but I knew she saw right through me. She and my dad were too good at reading their kids.
I carried the vegetables and rice to the table while Mom carried a large platter of baked chicken. There were only three of us eating tonight, but she cooked for a small army. She had always done that, never knowing when one of us would unexpectedly have a friend over for dinner. We set everything down, took our seats, and began the ritual of passing each of the dishes around so everyone could get their helping. Even though we were sitting at the smaller table and everything could be accessed easily from the middle, we still passed the dishes to one another. The familiarity of the routine was comforting.
Mom and I told Dad about the condition of the house, and I told him what I’d like to do with it. He made some suggestions and assured me that Michael and his team would do a great job. He pointed out that Michael had done the renovations to their kitchen, and I looked at the room in a new light, proud of my brother. The appliances were all brand new, as were the cabinets and floors, all done in a dark stain. The new window above the sink that looked over the backyard was larger than the previous one; I’d noticed that when washing dishes with Melissa the night before. Despite the rich tones of the walls and floors, the room seemed brighter.
“That was his idea,” Dad said, noticing my attention was on the window.
“Looks like it lets in a lot more light,” I observed. Dad nodded as he chewed his food.
“It does,” Mom said. “Michael and your dad were concerned about the dark colors in the room, but I told them I just had to have the green walls. When I saw that hunter green in the hardware store, I just loved it.”
“It was the only thing she refused to budge on,” Dad added.
“It’s a beautiful color,” I commented in between bites.
Mom smiled, truly pleased. “I’m glad you like it.”
“The room looks great, really. I can’t believe Michael did all this.”
It wasn’t that I thought my brother was incapable of doing good work, I knew he was brilliant, but I recalled many a time when he went all Godzilla on mine and Melissa’s doll houses. It was nice to see that he could build and not just destroy, granted his demo years were long before he’d even hit puberty.
“He’ll do a great job at your place, too,” Dad assured me.
“I might even have him expand some of the windows, since they need to be replaced anyway.”
After seeing Michael’s work on my parents’ kitchen, I was confident my father was right and that Michael would do a fantastic job. He would make my cottage something beautiful, a place where I would feel at home. It’d been a long time since I had a place like that, and I was looking forward to the fresh start.
