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In the second half of the letter, she warned him that the sins of the father would be visited upon the son and urged him again to leave me, telling him I was truly calamitous, that my brothers were also my uncles.
The grotesqueness of the idea made me freeze. Surely, it wasn’t true. Then I remembered my mother, how her smiles had slowly faded and the woman herself began to disintegrate. But what about my father? Why hadn’t he protected her? And then I knew,I just knew. He couldn’t protect himself from my grandfather’s abuse; he couldn’t protect his wife.
Their drinking then wasn’t mere weakness but rather an attempt to cope with deep trauma and an inability to forget the unforgettable. The sin, the outrageousness, ended, theletter continued, the night my father pinned my grandfather’s scrotum to the immaculate tongue-and-groove pine flooring in his bedroom with a Laguiole penknife that had a rosewood handle, the night she and my father died. State troopers had discovered him tacked to the floor, bleeding and semi-conscious, when they came to tell him his only daughter and son-in-law had perished. While planning their funeral, my grandfather had found Reverend Jack and Jesus—in that order—and confessed his sin, pledging to stomp out sin wherever he found it as penance.
Reading then re-reading her letter, I realized that the feminine handwriting may have been Jackson’s mother’s, but the words were not. Then this thought intruded: had my parents really intended to abandon us—me?
Thursday, May 19, 2016, Janus—Our house sold far more quickly than I anticipated. I would have moved even if it hadn’t sold because I could no longer bear to live across the street from Jackson and…her.Kitt is probably due any day now, and I don’t want to see Jackson pushing a stroller around the neighborhood. He will get half the proceeds per our divorce agreement. And then, because he refused to accept alimony, he and I will be done.
The pre-settlement walk-through for the buyers was scheduled for an hour before closing. I arrived early because I wanted to visit our house one last time. As I walked through the empty house to the front door, I glanced up at the portraits of the unknown matriarchs and patriarchs who seemed to stare down at me unhappily from their lofty perches; they may not have approved of Jackson and me, I imagined, but they were surely more dismayed at being left in an empty house, the suit of armoron its pedestal nestled into the curve of the main stair their only remaining company. I bid them a silent adieu and whisperedI’m sorry, the failure of my marriage rubbing against my shoulders like a hair shirt.
As I drove down the driveway for the last time, I glanced across the street at Kitt’s house, I thought I glimpsed Jackson at the front window, watching me leave, shoulders quaking.
Saturday, June 18, 2016, St. Jude—Since our house sold, I’d been staying at Claude and Octavio’s shore house. I think it did me good, the weeks with just sand between my toes, the limitless ocean filling my eyes, and my own thoughts dancing in my head. In the mornings and afternoons, I walked on the beach; in the evenings, I sat with sorrow—until my feet hurt and the sorrow faded.
Today, I moved into my new house—I can’t think of it as home, not without Jackson in it. A low-slung modernist glass-enclosed rectangle, it is a far cry from our old house. The house seems to both cling to its fieldstone foundationandto soar above and free of it. It’s as conflicted as I am.
A ribbon of narrow windows, high up, run along the front of the house on both sides of a massive unadorned blackened steel door, while at the back, an expanse of floor-to-ceiling windows in the living room and bedrooms face the back lawn, which terminates at the edge of the wide canal that runs behind all the houses here. Between the canal and the house stands a row of mature cherry blossom trees.
A trellised patio stretches across the entire back of the house, wrapping around the left side where it meets a high stone garden wall that shields it from the street. Mature Japanese wisteria, infull bloom, threads through the slats of the trellis, bathing the entire house in soothing lavender tones.
Older, plainer, and smaller than its swollen McMansion neighbors, it had sat on the market for 192 days. I felt an instant affinity with its undesired state. The house, pared down, low to the ground, and modern, was as foreign to its neighbors as my uncoupled state was to me. And so, we claimed each other, house and owner, two strangers in a strange land, a lavender mist dancing in the breeze around us.
Friday, June 24, 2016, St. Jude—Today marks thirty-nine years since Jackson and I graduated from high school. I’d always believed our love was a circle. With neither beginning nor ending, we could not escape; we could not be banished or separated. I thought all that last night as I tried to fall asleep in this silent new house, so far from home.
I remembered the first night Jackson and I spent together—the first night I’d ever felt safe at home. Now, I struggle to sleep without his arms around me. Jackson sleeps like a starfish: moving to the middle of the bed, arms thrown open, his legs spread wide. In defense, the only way to sleep with him was to curl myself around him. Capturing one leg between my thighs, I rested my head on his chest. His arms and legs during the night would fold around me, a starfish shrinking in the sun. Thus, we were able to share a bed for more than thirty-nine years.
Now I find myself alone, unable to sleep: a starfish on a beach too large with too much room and no sun to comfortingly warm me, shrink me, wrap me up in love.
I’ve never lived alone before. I don’t know how to stand without Jackson. If he was a desert, I was his ocean. If he was hungry, I was his daily bread. How had we become uncoupled?
I will, I know, learn to live without him, but at this moment, I don’t want to. Until we’d moved in together, for me, home had always meant the sound of violence—chickens being slaughtered, days-old puppies being drowned, wood being chopped, doors slamming—the smell of blood, the gritty feel of dust.
Saturday, August 6, 2016, St. Jude—“What’s taking so long?” MJ called impatiently from the living room. We were going to lunch then an early movie. MJ anchors Monday through Friday and often hosts her network’s weekly news round-up on Sundays, so her free time is limited, and we try to do something together at least once a month, so I understood her impatience.
“I can’t find anything to wear,” I answered. “Every time I go to put something on, I discover Jackson took it.”
“What?” MJ asked. She was standing in the doorway to my bedroom surveying the mess of clothes on the bed.
“Jackson took half of our clothes.”
She snapped to attention. “Why would Jackson take halfyourclothes?”
“Well, they weren’t really mine. I mean, we didn’t have separate clothes. They were ours, but he took the stuff I like best.”
MJ held up her hand; I fell silent. “Wait. You didn’t have separate clothes?”
“Well, no. We wear the same size, and men’s clothes don’t have a lot of variety, so we just shared everything.”
“Including underwear.”
“Well, yeah. We shared pajamas too. I slept in the tops. He slept in the bottoms.” Now, for the first time, I wondered if our sharing clothes was odd. Did other male couples not share a wardrobe?
“I’ve never heard of such a thing,” MJ said.
I shrugged. “It’s not like we had role models or a couple’s roadmap to follow. We just did what felt right, making it up as we went along.”
She shook her head and stared out the windows at the purple wisteria shivering in the breeze.
