Miles didn’t need to see this, but it felt wrong to make him leave the room. I decided to let him watch cartoons on my iPad, which I try not to do very often.
It was a solution. Not a great solution, but a solution. Even Nicky calmed down a little. As I settled Miles in the comfortable chair, his dad’s old chair which I still have, and set him up with the cartoon, I could feel Sean watching me and liking what he saw. Knowing that he was admiring my skills as a mom was weirdly hot, but the truth was that—given the way I felt about Sean, no matter how much I tried to overcome those feelings—anything would have been hot.
Nicky was exhausted. He passed out in Sean’s arms. Sean held him sleeping for a while and then carried him to Miles’s room and lowered him into the bottom bunk bed and gently tucked him in.
“It’s bedtime,” I told Miles.
“Not for another half hour.”
“Now,” I said. “We’re tired. Nicky’s having a hard time.”
“We all are,” said Miles.
Sean and I exchanged glances that said, Miles is a beautiful kid.
Miles was right. We were all tired, all having a hard time. Nicky’s meltdown had stripped us bare and left us raw and defenseless.
I put Miles to bed and made sure both boys were all right. Then Sean and I slumped onto the couch and collapsed, and Sean searched for the next episode of Breaking Bad. We’d stopped watching it after we’d gotten the news about Emily’s death—the violence and the darkness were too much for us—but we’d recently started again.
Just our luck, it was the sexiest episode, maybe the only romantic segment in the series. Jesse Pinkman and his girlfriend are falling in love. It was like a date movie in the midst of all that meth-cooking and gore and murder, except that his girlfriend’s a junkie.
I sat close to Sean. He put his arm around me. I leaned my head on his shoulder.
We were trembling. We both could feel it, though it was unclear which of us was shuddering.
We started kissing. He kissed my neck, then my shoulders, then lifted my shirt and kissed my breasts.
That was how it began.
There were so many questions we should have asked, questions we needed to ask. But during those first weeks, we were so happy to be together and do what we (or anyway, I) had been dreaming about for so long that we didn’t ask any questions that weren’t about sex and what felt good.
We were careful. The boys never knew. We agreed that we would do it only when the boys were in school. Sean slept over less often than before. Having him in the house and not being with him was torture.
We didn’t have a name or words for what we were doing. We didn’t ask if it would last or what we planned to do next. We didn’t ask, What about Emily? Are we betraying her memory? We hardly spoke. Even though the house was empty, we tried not to make any noise.
Did I worry that Sean was thinking of Emily when he was with me? No, I didn’t. He couldn’t have been. I would have known. No one is that good.
Now, at night, alone in my bed, I don’t sleep well. As soon as I lie down, I fall into a slumber so heavy I feel drugged, but after three or four hours I wake up and lie awake until the light comes up and it’s time to get Miles (or Miles and Nicky) ready for school.
There’s something so ecstatic about the present moment—about my affair with Sean. But what about the future? Can the four of us go on living together like this, as an unofficial family?
Sean could go back to his office. I could drive the boys to school and pick them up every day. Nicky will get over his grief. Everyone does, sooner or later. Even if they never forget the pain, they don’t feel it every minute.
Sometimes I think that the affair is totally sinful and wrong. I torment myself. I think, Sean and I have to stop. But one thing I’ve learned about myself is that I’m not good at stopping something I want to do, especially when that something involves sex. And besides, who are we hurting?
God knows what Sean is feeling. Does he feel guilty about having sex with his wife’s best friend so soon after his wife’s death? Or does he think it doesn’t matter because Emily’s dead and she can’t know or care what he does anymore? Or is he doing it to get back at Emily? Does he secretly wonder if she killed herself? I’ve been reading a lot about suicide, and I know how often the survivors are enraged at the person who died, furious in ways they can’t admit to themselves or even understand.
I would hate to think that Sean was sleeping with me because he’s angry at Emily. Whenever that thought creeps into my mind, I push it away by reminding myself that we were attracted to each other before we knew she was dead.
And then I feel guiltier than ever.
16
Stephanie's Blog
Draft Post (never posted)
Emily’s ghost follows Sean from his house to mine. She is always there, watching and listening. She knows when we meet for breakfast in the diner after we’ve spent nights at our own houses.
We concentrate on Nicky. That’s what Emily would have wanted, though you might ask why someone who cared so deeply about her child would take massive doses of pills, wash them down with alcohol, and go for a swim in the lake.
17
Stephanie's Blog
Everyday Grief
Miles knew when Nicky and his dad were going to scatter Nicky’s mom’s ashes. Though Nicky might not have understood, Miles did. Maybe because he had more experience with death. He said that he and I, in our own backyard, should have a quiet moment on the afternoon when Nicky and his dad were giving Nicky’s mom’s spirit back to the woods.
For a long time Miles and I stood with our heads bowed and our eyes closed. I crouched down and leaned over so we could put our arms around each other.
You moms all know how strange it is, our children growing up. Just yesterday Miles was a baby in my arms. Now he is still a child, but he’s also a little man I can lean on. I would never put that sort of burden on him, but he is my little rock. We’ve had practice dealing with grief. We’ve learned that it will pass. Maybe Miles told Nicky that. Maybe it made their bond stronger.
For months after my husband and brother were killed, I cried every day. Sometimes I cried on and off all day. I remember looking at strangers and thinking they were suffering and I couldn’t see it, just as they couldn’t tell what agony I was enduring. But if there were some version of luminol, the stuff they use to find blood at crime scenes, to detect the presence of grief, half the people we pass on the street would light up like Christmas trees.
I don’t remember when the constant suffering eased up. But it did. I can’t remember how I first got through the day without tears. I can’t remember the first morning I awoke without wanting to go straight back to bed. Forgetfulness is kind.
I miss my husband and brother and now my best friend. Sometimes the pain is so sharp that I groan out loud. I hear myself, and I think that someone else must have made that heart-wrenching noise. But there is never a day when I’m afraid that I can’t live through it.
Having Miles means everything. I’ve learned to put myself aside and live for my son. Which isn’t to say I’ve forgotten, or that I don’t remember every second of the day when my husband and brother died. Every minute of that afternoon is seared into my brain.
My husband and my half brother always disliked each other, though they pretended not to. They were both proud and decent and kind, and it was important to them both that they appear to get along. But that was impossible. Both were alpha males: Chris in his street-macho way, and Davis in his equally hard-headed old-family WASP way.