“She was wild. Not afraid of anything. She’d climb on our wildest stallion and try to break him. She’d walk into the worst bar in Memphis and make friends.” He looks down at the page, his smile drooping into something more melancholy.
I’d envisioned his wife as a chubby ball of Southern hospitality, one with an apron on and Christian music softly playing. Instead, she sounds fascinating, the type of woman I want to get on paper, right away, before her vision fades, before he says another word and ruins her. “Is your daughter like her?”
“Not really. I think God looked at the two of us and picked out the better parts. Maggie is quieter. She thinks through things before she acts. And she doesn’t drink or smoke—has no interest in either.” I glance at the soda before him, knowing the answer but still wanting to voice the question.
“Who was the drinker?”
“Both of us. She with wine, me with liquor. Luckily, we were both friendly drunks.” He runs a hand over the knee of his jeans. “Ready to get back to work?”
It is an abrupt change, and I watch as he stands and stretches. “Sure.” I pick up the pen and eye the clean page before me. Part of me wants to go back to work. The other part of me wants to abandon the novel altogether, to run away from Simon and his crooked smile and all of the ways he used to make me feel.
We all have a Happily Ever After, each story just needs to pick the right time to claim it. And at this stage in the Simon and Helena story, this is as good as it got: his proposal, my carefully considered acceptance. After this? After our wedding?
It started to go downhill.
As Mark writes, I steal out of the office and down the hall. I stop at Bethany’s door, gulping at air, and I don’t know if I’m breathless from the exertion of movement or what I’m about to do. When I finally reach forward, my hands tremble, carefully pulling at the edges of the tape, undoing the handwritten piece of paper—one of her first lists—from the door.
“My rules!” When she screamed, I could feel it in my bones, brittle parts of me breaking inside. “You said that I could request reasonable things and that my feelings would be respected!”
“We can’t remember all of your rules, Bethany.” I turned to Simon helplessly. This is why I hadn’t wanted a child. I had fifteen hundred words left to write, and she was throwing a temper tantrum over me turning off her bedroom light.
“Why don’t you write them down?” Simon suggested, crouching down before her, his hands gently holding hers. “Write down your requests, and we’ll vote on them, as a family. If they are all reasonable, then you can keep them, and we will follow them.”
“You promise?” It wasn’t a request, but a threat, her eyes cutting to me, accusation in them. “You’ll follow the rules, Mommy?”
“Yes,” I said exasperated. “I’ll follow the rules.”
My rules had always been an unorganized set—lists I kept in my head, though I certainly vocalized them enough during my life. It wasn’t until Bethany created her own, her practiced script posted on that empty door, that I realized how much simpler it was when the rules were properly stated and communicated. Less than a week after we voted on Bethany’s rules, I began recording my own. Some, like Kate Rodant’s, I shared with the applicable parties. Others, like my Ten Rules for Dealing With My Mother, or my Five Rules of Sex, I kept to myself, in a notebook, frequently editing them, depending on my moods. I didn’t write a set for Simon. If I had, they would have drained my pens of ink. He was a walking pile of mess and disorganization, a man who enjoyed hangovers and dripping nachos, impromptu sex and a lack of retirement planning.
I may not have been a good mother. I may have been—as my attorney and mother believed—unfit, but I had followed Bethany’s rules. When music played, I danced with her—our arms swinging through the air, our hips bouncing in time to the beat. I didn’t touch her art. I brought cookies—Fudge Stripes, wrapped in a paper towel, and formally presented to her as if payment for passage.
I open her door and reverently carry the paper to her desk, softly setting it down, realizing the ridiculousness of my precautions as soon as it flops onto the surface. I am treating it as I would have before, back when I needed to preserve her things for the rest of my lifetime. Now, with that timeline chopped, I don’t need to use such care. It only needs to last another two and a half months.
When I close the door and twist the key in the lock, I can see the faint outline of where the list sat, sticky residue still present along the corners. Before my prognosis, I would have immediately cleaned it, unable to move away from the door until it sparkled. Today, I can barely stuff the key in my pocket, my lungs tight, my heart in pain as I move away from her room and toward the stairs.
I have to lock it up. I’m not ready for him to see it or hear about her. Not yet.
I grip the sides of the white granite counter, my breathing short and shallow, my vision spotting. I close my eyes, focus on my inhalations, the exercise doing little to calm the gallop of my heart. I turn away, leaning against the counter, and press my fingers on my eyelids in an attempt to stop the tears from falling.
There is a soft knock, and I am not fast enough to reach for the knob, to flip the lock. The door creaks open and Simon is there, those handsome features tight with concern. His gaze darts to the counter, to the white stick there. The word PREGNANT is stark and final, and there is a break in his expression, a moment of clear and uncontained joy. He gathers me against his chest and I sob, his happiness causing a fresh injection of panic. He whispers my name, wraps his arms tighter, his kiss soft against my forehead, my tears. “It will be okay,” he swears. “My beautiful, sweet, girl. I promise you, this will be the best thing that has ever happened to us.”
He was right, of course. She was the best thing that ever happened to me. The best, but also the worst.
The new medicine is turning me into a zombie. On Thursday, I hear the mail when it comes, the squeak of the vehicle’s brakes, and I lift my head off the recliner, considering the effort to get up, walk through the house, down the steps, and to the end of my drive. The doctor promises that next week will be better, that my body will adjust to the medicinal cocktail, and I’ll feel almost normal. In the meantime, he stresses, I need to have as much activity as possible, and drink lots of fluids.
Activity is a joke, unless moving a pen across a page counts. Drinking fluids has been an easy directive, the floor littered with empty bottles, my energy level too poor to pick them up, and I can feel my pristine environment slipping away with each pill I take.
It used to be that the clean and empty house calmed me. It was why I got rid of all of the furniture, all of the memories. It was too painful to look at the furniture, photos, and bits of our old life. I didn’t want to sit on the couch where Bethany lost her first tooth, or at the table Simon and I once made love on. I didn’t want the Peter Lik that I bought with my second bestseller, or the crockpot we got as a wedding present. I wanted it all gone, each item attached to a memory, each day an assault of What Used To Be. I wanted a fresh start, and it worked. The blank slate felt like a different house, one without secrets and death, one where I hadn’t been a fool, one where I had loved Bethany properly, and done everything right.