I’m forgetting something. I’m driving home and it’s 8:26 p.m. Friday and I know I’m ridiculously late but I was in a meeting with Sunrise’s lawyers and my boss Darren since five, and I know I should have called Kris but time kept passing and I kept thinking I’d leave soon – my new arriving-at-home time had gradually morphed to after six p.m. for the earliest.
But I didn’t leave soon and I didn’t call Kris and I just know I’m forgetting something. Something very important. What the hell is it?
Kris has been such a sweetheart lately… not bitching at me, not fighting me, just listening to me when I complain about the possible approaching lawsuit and not being mad when I get home late, and now that he’s home with the kids for awhile he’s handling things, like he always does, without me.
I feel guilty when I’m around him, guilty when I make love to him – which I admit is a first since I usually don’t have the presence of mind to feel anything except him inside me… But in the couple of times – well there was only that one time, actually, almost a whole three weeks ago – when we had sex, I felt like I was owing him something.
It’s not a comfortable feeling, and it sickens my soul to even think about it – the fact that I am sleeping with my husband as if I’m paying for his silence with my body.
I want him to not say anything, I want him to not notice – because until he does notice, then maybe it’s not so serious. Maybe my mind is exaggerating it.
Maybe I’m not such an absentee mom after all. Maybe I’m not like his parents after all. Maybe this little phase is short-lived – due to stress at work, which we all go through from time to time; he did, after all, have that Vidal Sassoon project a month or two ago.
Maybe he forgives me. As long as he doesn’t comment on it, as long as we don’t get in a fight about it, then maybe it’s not real. Maybe I’m still worth forgiving.
I’m forgetting something.
I’ve been missing my kids. Today, I glimpsed the picture of Darren and Luisa and their kids on his table… and I remember thinking about my own, about how I haven’t seen them, I mean really seen them in awhile.
Khailam’s more or less toilet-trained, Nikita’s still running around with that little critter Michael. His mother Carrina and I never actually got the chance to have that dinner, yet, but we will – soon. I keep promising.
And I do like her – in spite of the fact that she once held my naked son a little bit too comfortably for my liking. She’s a good mom. A better mom than me, if I dare to admit it. And she has it harder than I do – she’s doing it on her own. And she’s only twenty-three. And she has her own business to run.
I don’t know how she does it all. She amazes me. Maybe there’s just something wrong with me. Maybe I missed that motherly gene, maybe I’m just like my mother, who doesn’t know how to deal with kids above the age of two.
Nikita was an exception because she’s a genius child… since she was about two months old I had already lost the invisible umbilical cord that binds mother and daughter.
Maybe the reason I’ve always been closer to Khailam is because he’s a normal toddler; maybe when he gets a little older, maybe by next year or two, I would have already lost my motherly touch, already lost my little angel child who loves me best of all. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.
I’m forgetting something.
Something has to be seriously wrong with me. I mean, I have two amazing, beautiful, smart, adorable children waiting for me at home, and I’m stuck at work till after 8:00p.m. It doesn’t make any logical sense, yet it keeps looping over and over in my head: something’s wrong with me.
Today, tonight, forever, I just want to cross the threshold of my beautiful home and have my kids run up to hug me – like they often do to Kris. I don’t want to have to call out, I don’t want to have to go looking for them, I want them to come running to me, I want them to want me. And I’m forgetting something.
What the fuck am I forg—
My baby blue Mercedes Benz SL500 comes to a complete stop in the street with a ear-shattering screech, a metre or two away from my driveway. I feel nauseous. I can’t breathe. I’m seeing balloons.
Red, blue, green, yellow, purple, orange balloons. Streamers. Crepe paper. Goofy-looking clown decorations. Half a dozen remnants of a piñata. A Nemo piñata. From the dumb fish cartoon. A whole Nemo theme.
The porch door and walls are covered with cardboard cutouts of fishes. The tiles are covered with blue shredded pieces of paper. Painted cardboard shells. Green blobs of cotton designed to resemble seaweed.
Sticky, damp air almost blows me over. It’s going to rain. Soon. Very soon. My vision swims. Zombie-like fingers restart the engine of the Benz, numb palms spin the wheel of my beloved car to turn into the driveway. A cold, clammy fist slams my automatic gear-shift into park and yanks up the handbrakes.
On wobbly feet I step out of the car. I can’t feel my toes. All the blood is circulating rapidly inside my cranium. My heartbeat thuds in my ears. My stomach lurches. I reach for the house key on my key-ring, then realize that the front door by the porch is open.
I cross the threshold on feet I don’t feel. I walk through the kitchen. Smatterings of Nemo cake on the table, on the chair, on the floor, in the sink, empty plastic cups, smeared Styrofoam plates. A paper princess crown. Cardboard party hats.
Nausea averts my eyes. I walk through the living room. More balloons. More fish cutouts on the walls. Nemo. The dumb angelfish Dory. The stupid little turtles. A solitary Simba, The Lion King. Khai’s favourite. More swirling colours. More fuel for my sudden and staggering migraine.
Dead silence in the house. Alien feet carry me to the bedroom door.
A solitary tear gathers in my right eye, threatening to spill over onto my face to join the carnival of misery in the living room, in the kitchen, on the porch, in my heart, in my husband’s eyes.
My husband is sitting on our marital bed, his duffel bag packed next to him, his hands clasped between his parted legs.
He is wearing a blue polo t-shirt with Nemo on it, a glimpse of a plain white t-shirt visible beneath it. Faded blue jeans he’s owned since he was twenty. Watch on his left hand, a black-silver cufflink on his right that I gave him for his twenty-fourth birthday. Messed-up hair sticking out all over his head as if he now woke up… or had a rough day. He has never looked more beautiful.
His eyes rise to meet mine. They are sad.
“Kris…” The word comes out feebly. My voice sounds like I’m far away.
“The birthday girl and her little brother are spending the weekend with Carrina and Michael.”
“Kris…”
“Et moi?” He is mocking my French schtick with my boss Darren. “Chez ma soeur.” A pause. “Might stop by to see my parents too, if I’m in the mood to explain why you’re not with me and why I’m visiting them on my daughter’s birthday.”
“It’s almost nine o’ clock. A three hour drive would get you there around midnight,” I murmur.
“A three hour drive would get me three hours and a few hundred miles away from you.”
He stands, lifts his duffel bag off the bed, holds it at his side.
“Kris…”
Eyebrows rise in anticipation.
My mouth clamps shut.
“Yes?” he asks.
“Carrina…?”
“…Is young and doesn’t know us or the kids very well, but at least she has a kid, which I suppose would make her a better option than Victoria. I would have asked Bryan but I really don’t want him to ask any questions because I don’t have any answers for him yet. And then I took into consideration that Carrina owes me a favour. Not to mention Nikita will be easy to handle as long as Mickey’s around.”
My tongue feels heavy as I struggle to utter the words. I can’t ask him to stay. I can’t apologise. There is nothing that I can say, nothing I can do, to make this right.
“When are you coming back?”
Cocks his head to one side. “When are you coming back, Nicole? You’ve been gone for years.”
“As long as he doesn’t comment on it, as long as we don’t get in a fight about it, then maybe it’s not real. Maybe I’m still worth forgiving.” This line reminded me of something that I wrote once, “I was hoping that you would see the incongruities and ask me, really ask me, what was going on, who was I talking to? But in the end what happened between us is no one’s fault but my own”
Most of the times when situations like this (and others that are similar, but not quite) we recognize the signs and for whatever reason dismiss them. When the fallout comes we’re shocked, but not really. It’s really more disappointment that Nicole felt, isn’t it? Disappointment in herself because she knows exactly how they arrived at this moment. Knowing that you have no one else to blame is the hardest of all.
Nice work, my dear! so glad you finally have up your site! Yay! 🙂