It’s called “sniveling” in the Navy when you put in a request not to be on the schedule for a particular time slot for whatever reason—a doctor’s appointment, family needs. When it came to marriage counseling neither of us was ready to “snivel,” to make the necessary logistical sacrifices for a sitter and time off work. We both believed that time could still make things better—my pregnancy, his work situation, Sam getting a bit older—maybe it would all look different in a couple of months if we just gritted our teeth and toughed it out. For my part, the horror of exposure still held on from my boarding school days. After being kicked out of St. Stephen’s and barely finishing up my tenth grade year in public school, I’d made one last, brief trip to Saudi Arabia, where my brother was still finishing up the ninth grade. I’d spent most of my two-week trip afraid everyone was talking about me and staying mostly in my room, either reading or hanging out with Larry. I had just about convinced myself that I was being paranoid, and had agreed to spend an afternoon with Larry and some other friends at the company pool, when a girl, young enough to still be a little swaybacked, walked over to my lounge chair and said flatly, “I heard you got kicked out of school.” I was too stunned to answer. Fallon in general, and TOPGUN in particular, felt like communities just small enough to be similarly aware of, and interested in, scandal.
Added to the load we were carrying was Ross’s father’s rapidly failing health. I was close to my father-in-law, and the long, slow road of his battle with Alzheimer’s had been devastating. Ross and I had different ways of dealing with Danny’s illness—I wanted to talk about it, go home at every opportunity, and try with every visit to believe in a plateau in the disease’s course or some flash of recognition that may or may not have been real. Ross wanted to preserve, whole and unaltered, his much more extensive memories of his father in the prime of his life, the many camping trips they’d taken together, the deep and abiding connection he’d established at a time in his teenage years when I was actively shoving my own parents away. Key to the success of his strategy was not talking about Danny, unless it was a brief story from before his diagnosis, some fond and funny recollection that always broke off short with a long silence in its wake. From the beginning of our relationship, I had worried that the death of his father, especially if we continued to not talk about it, would trigger some sort of breakdown in him. To Ross, who was about to be a new father twice over in rapid succession, and who was learning to fill the role while working the most demanding job of his life, discussing his feelings about losing his dad was pointless and cruel.
So we both grieved, and this also made it easy for me to lose track of the line between legitimate sadness and my diagnosed illness. I started thinking that maybe “depression” was just shorthand for “a removal from all things and all people, and a certainty that if there is a God, He is far from me and cannot help.” I knew better, but in the moments where I couldn’t find the old standbys that had gotten me through before, the phrases “this is not permanent” and “this is not all I am,” along with the new one, “I am someone’s mother,” an idea was beginning to form about how strong the garage door tracks might be, and how easily the nylon ropes we used to tie down furniture in the pickup for moves might be repurposed.
By the first week in March I had stopped sleeping. On March 5, I walked into my OB’s office without an appointment and with Sam on my hip and said flatly to the woman at the window, “I need help.” I must have looked as awful as I felt because she didn’t even ask me to sit down, and instead kept her eyes on me as she called out down the hall behind her, “Doc?” My doctor reviewed the risks of antidepressants in pregnancy with me, but also said that by the third trimester, “most of the major structures are already in place.” Then, perhaps trying to lighten the mood a bit as he got out his prescription pad, he asked, “You’re not thinking of jumping off a bridge, are you?” “No good ones in town,” I said, and watched as his hand paused.
I remember the date because I was seven months pregnant and about to see a jet crash.
CHAPTER 20
It’s the thing we all think about but don’t say. It’s the reason wives’ clubs have call trees and everyone fills out paperwork on how to get in touch quickly through multiple avenues. It’s the reason there are so many documented and explicit emergency procedures to memorize and follow. I would argue that it’s the shadow that lies right under the whole idea of aviation, which is itself a cunning and temporary suspension of the rules of physics. A crash is the bottom line I am thinking of when I worry that Ross hasn’t had enough sleep, or that I’m distracting him from more important things if we have a fight, or it’s past the time he should be home and I haven’t heard from him. It’s what I think of when the phone rings when I’m not expecting it, or there’s a knock at the door and a car I don’t recognize in my driveway, or there’s a bunch of sirens and a column of smoke in the sky outside. In other words, I think about it often and automatically, but it’s a compromise I made so long ago that it blends into the background of life, like the ever-present jet noise.