That night I looked up at those same stars, but I didn’t want any of those things. I didn’t want Egypt, or France, or far-flung destinations. I just wanted to go back to my life from my childhood, just to visit it, and to touch it, and to convince myself that yes, it had been real. Victor could tell I was upset, but I couldn’t find a way to describe it without sounding ridiculous. “It’s nothing,” I said. “It’s just that . . . Have you ever been homesick for someplace that doesn’t actually exist anymore? Someplace that exists only in your mind?”
He rocked with me on the front porch in silence, not knowing how to answer, and eventually he put his arm around me and told me everything would be all right, and then he went inside to get some sleep. He found me the next morning, still outside in the same rocking chair, and stared at me worriedly. He asked me gently, “Are you gonna be ready to go home this morning?”
I rocked in silence, and realized for the first time that “home” wasn’t this place anymore. It was wherever Victor was. It was both a terrifying and an enlightening realization, and I took a deep breath and thought carefully before I answered.
“Yes. I’m ready to go home.”
It was like saying hello and good-bye at the same time, and Victor stared out at the baseball field that had once been a cotton field. He quietly said (as if to himself) that the memories of the places we’d been before were always more golden-tinted in retrospect than they had ever been at the time, and I nodded, surprised that he’d known more than he’d let on. He was right, but I didn’t know if that made it better or worse. Was it worse to be homesick for a time that was once home, but now lived only in your own mind . . . or to be homesick for a place that never really existed at all? I couldn’t answer, so instead I went back inside the house to pack. For home.
A Series of Helpful Post-it Notes I Left Around the House for My Husband This Week
Dear Victor: This bath towel was wet and you left it on the floor and it was the last clean one in the house. I’m pretty sure this is how tuberculosis is spread. I’m writing all this in my blog in case I end up dead because of your carelessness.
Dear Victor: There is a pile of business suits for the dry cleaner’s that have been in the closet for five months. You work from home. The fuck, Victor?
Dear Victor: Why is cleaning up cat vomit always my job? Was I not here when we picked from the job jar? Is there a job jar at all? Because I’d like to redraw. Also, I’m aware that you always have to clean out the litter box, but that’s because at any moment my IUD could fail and I could accidentally get pregnant and then get that cat-poop pregnancy disease, and our baby would be born with no arms or legs. Is that what you want, Victor? For our baby not to have arms? You are so selfish.
Dear Victor: You make me sick. Why in God’s name wouldn’t you just throw away the empty pizza box when you were done with it? Are your arms broken? Do you have some sort of disease I don’t know about that makes you blind to empty pizza boxes?
Dear Victor: Okay, I just remembered I was the last one to make pizza, so I guess I left this box out. Still, I’m leaving out the note anyway so you can learn from it. Bad, bad Victor.
Dear Victor: I do not appreciate your leaving passive-aggressive addendums to my helpful Post-it notes. In fact, they are the opposite of helpful. They are just bitter.
Dear Victor: If you leave wet towels on the ground again I will stab you.
Dear Victor: You can’t take clothes out of the dryer without telling me and just dump them on the bed in a heap. When I find them they’ve usually cooled off, and then I have to put them all back in the dryer with a cup of water, and then rerun the dryer so all the wrinkles come out, and then sneak each article of clothing out one at a time and hang it up. It’s called “a method,” Victor. Stop judging me.
Dear Victor: No, actually, I don’t know how to use an iron. Because we don’t own one. How have you never noticed this before?! The dryer is our iron, Victor. Also, I would appreciate it if you would talk to me directly instead of yelling at me on a Post-it. These Post-its are for educational purposes. Not to draw lewd caricatures of hands pointing menacingly at me. Also, you’re supposed to point with your index finger. This is basic pointing etiquette.
Dear Victor: I’ve poisoned something in the fridge. Good luck with that.
Dear Victor: I’m sorry. I think I might have PMS. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.
Dear Victor: That was an apology, you asshole! Now there are two things poisoned in the fridge. Because you don’t know how to accept an apology.
Dear Victor: I am so sorry you are sick. I swear I was just kidding about poisoning shit in the fridge. I mean, I did leave the yogurt out for, like, a half a day, but that was really more by accident because I was so distracted by the wet towel on the floor. If anything, you brought this on yourself. Once again, I apologize.