Page 52 of The Family Across the Street
This morning he was having breakfast when she woke up. ‘We need to talk,’ she told him, when she walked into the kitchen. Maybe it was the end of their marriage, maybe it wasn’t, but she knew that it couldn’t continue. He didn’t want her to leave but he didn’t want to change, to reassure her as she needed to be reassured even when he knew her history with cheating husbands. And she wasn’t going to live that way. She had done that for years once before. Her marriage to John was a second chance, but she wouldn’t sacrifice the happiness of her children by staying in a bad marriage. She thought about her lost son, the one who would not speak to her, the one who had been estranged for years, and she knew that she couldn’t let that happen again. Better to divorce early and remain amicable than to let a situation descend into enmity and blame.
‘I can’t live like this, John, I mean it. Either we sort it out or we part.’
‘I agree,’ he said. He took a bite of his toast and chewed. A small dab of butter was on his lip and she watched him, remembering that at one time she would have kissed it off or wiped it off for him. The twins had been her full focus for a long time. They only had sex occasionally, laughed very little together. There was some distance between them that they needed to bridge, she thought. And it was getting bigger every day. And then he looked at his watch. ‘Oh shit, shit, the mechanic, I forgot about the mechanic. I thought I had more time… We’ll talk, I’ll call you from work. Wait, I have that conference today,’ he rubbed at his hair, messing it up and then smoothing it down again. He sighed. ‘It may end early… We can go for a walk later, or get a babysitter…’ He looked at his watch again. ‘Shit I’m so late.’
‘You’re not allowed to swear, Dad,’ said George, coming into the kitchen, his yellow shirt tucked neatly into his khaki-coloured shorts, his curly hair slicked down with water. He liked to look smart for school and her heart melted at the sight of her little man.
‘You’re right, George,’ she said, ‘Daddy shouldn’t swear,’ and he rewarded her with a smile.
John dashed out. She picked up his plate and took out a bowl for George to pour his cereal as she heard John’s car screeching off. And then she looked at the kitchen table and felt laughter bubble up inside her.
‘What’s funny?’ asked George.
‘He forgot his briefcase and his phone,’ she said. ‘He’ll be back soon enough.’
And he was. A few minutes later, he walked back in and said, ‘I—’
‘Here you go,’ she laughed and handed them to him, but she didn’t kiss him goodbye, stepping back just a fraction so he couldn’t kiss her either. And she saw the hurt that caused in the way his green eyes darkened. Green eyes like her ex-husband’s eyes but a different green. Anthony’s eyes were a pale green, light and touched with brown, but John’s eyes are deep and intense, almost emerald in colour, just like her children’s eyes.
Dismissing the hurt on his face because she needed to get on with her day, she went to the laundry to start the washing machine.
‘Mum… Mum… Mum, come here,’ George called.
‘What’s wrong, sweetheart?’ she said, following his tentative call. He was standing at the open front door.
At first, she hadn’t recognised him. His hair was longer and he was thinner than she remembered. But then he took off his red cap and smiled and she experienced a moment of delirious happiness, because she thought he was back, in her life, in her family – that he had come back. But then she saw the gun and her body felt cold in the morning heat, and fear made her silent.
She has never stopped contacting him. Pregnant at twenty, she had imagined that her hastily arranged marriage to Anthony would survive. They had both loved their only child, adored him and each other until marriage and a child began to stifle Anthony and he became secretive and sly. She hadn’t trusted her intuition about other women until money disappeared from the bank account and he couldn’t hide what he’d been doing.
Patrick was her only concern and she was willing to give everything to their relationship. But she hadn’t understood the level of manipulation her husband was employing against her as he worked to sever her relationship with her son.
Patrick has an email address that he has never changed, and all these years, every once in a while, so that it wouldn’t be too much, she has sent him a message.
Dear Patrick,
* * *
I miss you every day.
Each email is begun the same way, the same way for seven years now. And each time she has typed it, she has known it to be true. He rejected her. He moved in with his father and then cursed her for the man his father was. After Anthony died, after he killed himself with two packets of sleeping pills and a bottle of whisky, she had begged him to come home. But he wouldn’t. He blamed her and didn’t want to be anywhere near her.
The boarding school she sent him to was on a large piece of land where students were part of a working farm and completed their studies. She had thought he would love it. She had gone without to pay for it, taking on a second job doing cold-calling at the weekends just to keep him there, in addition to being a saleswoman in a department store. She hoped he would find friends and a purpose in life, but he had only grown angrier with each passing year.
Please don’t come to my graduation. I don’t want to see you there.
He had emailed the words as she got ready to get into her car to drive out to the rural property, imagining a reunion where they would be able to talk things through. She had gone anyway. And he had refused to get on stage or to see her.
‘I would give him some time,’ the headmaster of the school comforted her as she sat weeping in his office. ‘He’s struggled with discipline and he needs some time away from everything. He’s an adult now. Sometimes it’s best to set our children free so that they can return to us when they’re ready.’
But what if they never return? she wanted to ask the man whose glasses had slid down his nose as he tried to look capable of dealing with her tears.
But she had done that, as much as she could. She had pulled back, let go and tried to move on with her life. She kept emailing him and occasionally, rarely, sometimes not for months, he would reply. Terse missives that broke her heart.
I’m getting on with my life, you get on with yours.
When she married, she contacted him because she never wanted him to find out from anyone else but her. When she got pregnant, she did the same and she sent him pictures of the twins when they arrived. And she kept hoping that something, anything, would get through his anger at her. She always sent him a birthday message, and as he entered his twenties, she thought that there might be a shift in how he felt – that along with age-maturity, an ability to see her as a person would come.
She was wrong. She can see that now.
