The Year I Left Read online

  “You helped a lot.”

  Our orders arrived shortly after, and Charlie spoke animatedly about the new game—the graphics, and the fact that he was going to beat his friends at all the levels. He told me he would show me the new microphone he wanted for his birthday so that he could record his voice while gaming on YouTube. Half of the things he mentioned were foreign to me, but the light in his eyes and the lilt in his childlike voice filled me with so much joy.

  “Gosh, Char, you are so smart.”

  “They tease me at school all the time. My friends say they don’t understand what I’m talking about half the time. They talk about baby-ish things and sometimes I get bored, Mom.”

  “Well, you won’t feel that way anymore in your new school.”

  A swift nod of his head. “I guess.”

  We’d been called to the school office before. Some kid complained about Charlie’s analogy of the asbestos in toys made in China.

  “Well, what did we tell you about trying not to alarm the other kids about things they don’t know about?”

  “I know,” he said, looking at his plate. “It’s just that they should know those things. I was trying to help them.”

  I reached for his hand. “You are. But those kids don’t have older cousins like you do. They also don’t hang out with adults like you do, so you are a little bit too advanced.”

  “Like the time I told Mrs. Meyers about Brexit? She actually liked it, Mom. She said I taught her so much about it.”

  “You taught all of us about Brexit.” I laughed. “And the DACA, and immigration. You’re just way ahead of your time, monkey.”

  He smiled and sipped the rest of his shake. I pushed a napkin toward him before standing and making my way around to sit next to him. He scooted close, placing the weight of his body against mine. He relaxed his head against my shoulder. I could tell he was getting tired.

  “Char, you know you don’t need to get into trouble at school just so I can leave work to come and get you, right?”

  He didn’t answer. Instead, he began to peel the nail off his little finger. It was his nervous tick—a habit he’d always had ever since he was three years old.

  “Are you scared about transferring schools?”

  “Nope.”

  “About living in a dorm? Away from home?”

  He buried his nose on my shoulder, sniffed me once or twice. “Not really. I know you and Dad will be there every other week.”

  “We will.”

  “And I’ll have all my games.” He smiled. “And you have Life 360, Mom. You can track me anytime.”

  The truth behind a child’s wisdom. He was assuring me instead. “Do you know how much I love you?” I asked.

  “More than anything.”

  “Do you feel that way, baby? Do you feel loved by Dad and me and Auntie Trish?”

  “And Grandma,” he interjected.

  “And Grandma.” I laid my head on top of his thick, coarse hair.

  “Mom, you’re not okay, right?” His voice was markedly low, almost a whisper.

  “I haven’t been well lately, honey. And I’m so sorry. I’m trying so hard. I’ll try harder.”

  “Like you’ve been sleeping a lot lately. And you don’t like talking to Daddy. Once, I saw tears on your pillow. You’re still sad about Grandma?”

  “It has nothing to do with you, baby. I need you to know that.”

  “I do, Mom.” A slight pause, and then, “Mom?”

  “Yes, Bubba.”

  He laughed. “Am I the boy with ten thousand names?”

  “You know it!”

  “Mom?”

  “Uh-huh?”

  “Do you still love Daddy?” he croaked.

  My heart broke for him because I knew the answer.

  “He’s my best friend.” This was true. This was the truth of the matter. I loved him like a friend, a part of my life I would never give up. It would kill me to lose Jack’s love. It would eviscerate me, blow me up into pieces. For many years, my marriage had defined who I was. It spelled out my future, characterized exactly how things would turn out in years to come. If I lost Jack, I would lose my old self. Even if I didn’t know what my new self was all about, I knew I had to hold on to the good parts of the old me.

  He continued, “When I have a wife, I want to be the one working. I don’t want to stay home all day like Dad. It looks boring.”

  “Hmm. Char, you don’t know what Dad does while you’re at school. He’s working too, trading stocks and doing things around our house. Remember the shelves he made for us? And how he finished the entire basement and built your computer? Mommy couldn’t do that. And your games! He’s been to every game and every school activity! He takes care of you and us, so well. Don’t you think?”

  “Yes, he does,” Charlie agreed. “But you try really hard too. We have all these nice things because of you.”

  “Things aren’t as important as love and a home and the happy times we have when we’re all together.” And then I realized. The important things were gone. At least in my head, all the things that mattered to me were no longer of any value. This instance further solidified my resolve to let Jack know. Let him know that everything that had mattered to me no longer did. And that this wasn’t the life I wanted to live.

  How ironic. I’d worked so hard to gain his love. And now that I had it, I didn’t know what to do with it.

  Charlie stayed quiet, processing everything in that spent little head of his. “I’m getting tired.”

  I gestured to the server to bring us our check. Charlie stifled a yawn and looked up at me. “Love you, Mom.”

  “I love you, Mookie. You have to know that my life is nothing without you. You are the light of my life. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Remember the song we used to sing when you were two or three?”

  “Nope,” he said, nervously picking at the one fry left on his plate. “I don’t.”

  I laughed. “Okay, it was a long time ago.” I left cash on the table and we both slid off the booth to head back to the car.

  Just as I unlocked the doors, I sang at the top of my lungs a song I’d made up when he was younger—a toneless, tuneless profession of my love for him. It was our goodnight song, sung as I tucked him in each night.

  “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine. You’re my buddy too.”

  And just as loud and raucous, he answered.

  “And I love you.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Love

  When the universe aligns, it does so with a vengeance.

  The day I decided to speak to Jack was the day I received your note.

  I clutched it in my hand, its sharp edges digging into my skin and the world falling apart around me. I had no doubt who it was from. I just didn’t know what to do with it. I barely had ten minutes to react when Jack unexpectedly arrived home.

  “Hey babe,” he called excitedly from the kitchen.

  I slipped the note in the back pocket of my jeans, wishing I’d had more time to collect myself. “Hey.”

  I lived that way in the months after I met you, functioning when called for and retreating inside myself when I wasn’t needed. My shoulders hunched and my head jolted when the back door slammed shut. I wondered why he was home early. He was supposed to be gone for a few more hours, meeting with a contractor for the prospective vacation house he wanted to build in Michigan.

  “Why do this in the middle of winter?” I’d asked him.

  Jack felt it would be good to get a head-start so we could break ground in the spring.

  He knew. He felt it too. He knew we were pulling away from each other. How could he not?

  He tried to distract us from the inevitable, moving around constantly, afraid that if he stood still, the obvious would tear past the walls he’d built and force him to confront the truth. I knew this, because for the past ten years, winter had been his retreat. This particular season came with a vengeance—freezing the roads,
train tracks, and each body of water around us. School had been called off a few times due to the extreme cold.

  And yet, there was Jack. Working in the garage to build me a shelf I hadn’t asked for, taking cooking lessons, going crazy on his exercise bike. Instead of slowing down, he fought like hell to keep changing things up, allowing a constant flurry of activity to invade our home every single day.

  I’d hardly spoken to him for weeks, especially after our trip to New York. When I said goodbye to you, I came to resent him even more.

  Even before you sent me that note, it was over.

  That night, I had started on dinner when Jane stopped over to drop off my mail. I was taking more days off in that time than I ever had before. The walls of the office felt toxic, suffocating. Everywhere I looked, all I could see was you.

  “How was your day, Car?” Jack asked in between dipping and munching on a piece of celery.

  “Uneventful,” I answered. “Jane just left. I just woke up when she stopped by.”

  “Yeah. That,” he muttered, looking away. “You’ve been doing a lot of that lately. Sleeping.”

  “And?” I asked, irritated with his passive-aggressive way of bringing it up.

  “And nothing. Just making a comment. It’s been ongoing for months.”

  “You’re still blaming me for what happened to Charlie,” I said, stepping in front of him, trying to confront this, make it real and concrete.

  “Being in the principal’s office three times in a row is a call for help, Carin. You still haven’t cut down on your traveling. We need you here with us, not in New York or Paris. Not sleeping but awake.”

  “I know that.”

  “Then, if you do, let’s move on. I don’t really want to get into a discussion with you right now,” he said.

  “I just haven’t been feeling too hot.” Ask me why I’m sleeping so much, I screamed in my head.

  I could always predict what his response would be. I didn’t know why, but I could. His demeanor changed. I could tell he was trying to save the night, find a way to detour the conversation back into joviality.

  “What do you mean?” he asked, his lips upturned into a sly smile—a total change from the strain of a few minutes before. “You’re always hot.”

  “Ha,” I said with a smirk.

  It was his standard peace offering. It used to work every single time. It didn’t anymore, and it made me so sad.

  I was in no mood for any of this, but I laughed anyway. “Go change into your comfy clothes and I’ll have dinner in about fifteen minutes.”

  He turned around to do so, but not before grabbing the remote and turning all three televisions on. They had to be on—all of them—the one above the fireplace, the one in the family room and the built-in mirror one right in front of the kitchen table.

  All this excess. It bloats you up like a balloon flying aimlessly for a few short-lived hours.

  You can’t choose who to love.

  That’s what your note said, in barely legible handwriting, ink smeared flat across the yellow paper. You were trying to be funny, I supposed, slipping it in between the pages of your report—the one you’d asked Jane to give me right before you left for the airport. I never saw you after that night in New York, although you surfaced in emails, in conference calls, in conversations with peers. It was a game we played, you and I. The push, the pull, and the excruciating silence. When I didn’t hear from you, I felt insignificant and unsure. It was like I only existed to be chased by you. And so your note to me was in many ways, a victory. A vindication that what happened between us hadn’t been imagined. You see, I spent half that time going through the motions of my ten-year-life; I was never really sure what was real and what was perceived. And right there, in an unmarked envelope addressed to me was the note that threw my world off kilter.

  Because if I could, I would choose you.

  Chapter Twenty

  Divorce

  By the time I received your note, I had already planned to end this vicious cycle. I had to find a way to get better. I didn’t have a plan, nor did I know what saying those words would mean. But I knew that if I didn’t take a step forward, remove myself from the place that triggered my distress, I would take my family on this downward spiral right along with me.

  Jack’s mood had shifted back into his safety zone. Sometimes I thought he tried too hard, but I never faulted him for that. That night, he was overly solicitous, and it broke my heart. He talked nonstop about his day, asked me about mine, tried to get me to tell him about the latest deals, asked about each of the people he knew at my office.

  I tried to act as normal as possible, filled him in with what he wanted to hear.

  After putting away the dishes and clearing the sink, I knocked on the door of his study and asked if we could talk.

  “Of course.” He smiled. “What’s up?”

  I sat on the chair directly facing his desk. “I need help, Jack.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I haven’t been well for months.”

  “I know, Car. First your mom and then Brutus. It’s been a tough year. Maybe we need to go away. Take a break or something.”

  “No, no.” I shook my head furiously, choking back a sob. “I haven’t been well for a while. I think I need to leave.”

  “Leave?” He winced and jerked his head back. His eyes were so narrow, the lines on his forehead were so pronounced, they looked like ridges on a piece of potato chip. “For where?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Leave for where?” he asked again.

  “Anywhere, actually. Anywhere but here.”

  “Aren’t you being a bit too rash? I know things have been difficult for you but we have to go on. We have a son, we have a life. How are you just going to get up and leave?”

  “I don’t know,” I whispered. “All I know is that I’m suffocating. I can hardly make it through the day.”

  “We can go to counseling or something. Is that what you mean? How do we make this work?”

  “Jack, please listen to me,” I stressed again.

  “I’m trying, Carin. You’re not making any sense.”

  “All these months, did you even notice this?” I opened my right hand and placed it in front of him, palm up. Scabs and mottled pink patches streaked the skin.

  “Oh, my god! Carin! What—” He staggered back and leaned on his desk.

  I’d been suffering from so much anxiety I’d scratched the skin on my hands until they bled. Late one night the previous week, I’d played a game with myself, tried to etch new lines on my palms, disconnect the old ones—hoping my fate would change. If it did, would you be in it? Would you be my new future, Matias?

  Tears began to form. I raised my voice, strained to make myself heard. This newfound strength that came with accepting the truth. “Last week, when we were in New York, I actually thought of throwing myself over the balcony. I was thinking that you and Charlie would be better off without me. I haven’t been present. I’ve stopped wanting to function as a mother and a wife.”

  “You’re depressed, maybe?” he said, still in denial. “Or is it the Porsche? Is it the new house? Is it stressing you out? Because I can—”

  “Jack! Please, please, listen to me!” I cried. “That’s all you ever want to talk about. Things! Material things! I don’t care about those fucking things!” My tears were flowing, my words squeaked out between deep breaths and sobs. “I want a divorce.”

  “You don’t know what you’re saying. Let’s call Trish.” He stood and leaned over to pick up his phone. “She can help us figure this out.”

  I grabbed the phone and threw it on the ground. “No!”

  “Goddamn it, Carin! You are being so unreasonable. You have a son. You have a family. What the hell are you telling me?”

  “This has nothing to do with Charlie.”

  “Of course it does. He knows that his life means two parents living in the same house,” Jack defended.

 
“And he will always have two parents. A divorce doesn’t change that.”

  “A divorce.” His eyes grew dark. Anger manifested itself in many ways with Jack. Normally he would clam up, turn silent and then walk away. I remember the early years when I would chase after him, challenge him to fight back. He would turn his back on me and leave.

  “You didn’t really pursue me.”

  “And we are revisiting this why?” Jack clenched his fists and began to pound on his lap.

  There was no turning back. I threw the first dagger and buried it in his heart.

  “I got pregnant two months after we met and you married me out of responsibility. You didn’t even return my calls, never tried to contact me. My mother had to chase you down, hold you to your obligation.”

  “Bullshit. I loved you.”

  “No. We didn’t love each other. Raising a child doesn’t constitute love.”

  “Okay. So, let’s say we got married too quickly. I’ve learned to love you since then. And for the past years, I’ve been faithful. I’ve been a good husband and a father. I don’t know what else you want from me!” He slammed his fist on the table. “Let’s forget this conversation ever happened!”

  “You also said I was average-looking, made me feel as if I was beneath you when we were newly married.”

  Truth be told, for years I had lacked confidence. Thought I was plain looking until I’d made enough money to adorn myself with exceptional things. Turned out I didn’t have to do that because eventually, this average duckling had turned into an average swan.

  “Oh, my god! How many times during our marriage have I told you how beautiful you’d grown over the years?”

  “And that makes it better?” I asked. “And my mom!”

  “What about your mom?” he asked through clenched teeth and bright red cheeks.

  “When she died. You never really talked to me about it!”

  “I was giving you space!”

  “YOU GOLFED THAT WEEK!” I yelled.

  “Carin! It’s not like you’ve ever asked me for help!” he roared back.

  “I didn’t need space!” I sobbed, trying hard to form my words. “I needed you, your love, your assurances.”