I’M FEELING BAD, THAT BAD feeling again. The very bad one. I just can’t shake it.
I haven’t felt like this in more than twenty-eight years. When I’d just given birth for the second time, and was breastfeeding and changing diapers in the middle of the night while caring for a hyperactive toddler during the day. My husband was off at the Odditorium, and doing extra shifts on construction sites whenever he could get the work. We needed the money. The suffocation of the soul. That shortness of breath. That heavy feeling, as though some beast was sitting on my chest. The urge to disappear, to get on the road and go was ultimately strong enough to make me move across the country.
Of course some of it was sleep deprivation. And part of it was utter, brutal boredom. Most of my friends were in similar situations, so we’d get together with our babies at the playground, or for coffee at someone’s house, and that eased the feeling somewhat. I understood back then why certain women turn on their children. The urge to smack the little whining behind, to direct a blow to the head, anything to stop the noise and the demands.
I made the mistake of telling some of this to my husband. It was after one of the night feedings, I was exhausted and murderous and could have killed them all while they slept, my small family; I had a fantasy of turning on the gas and leaving the apartment. That scared me enough to wake up my husband. What I said was, “I’m having some trouble with the kids.”
He was tired himself, spent because of his job, but he tried to listen, and heard enough to be alarmed, because in the morning he talked me into phoning one of Gatlinburg’s five therapists. The therapist’s advice—or rather, lecture—was that everyone went through this when their children were young, and how I needed to basically put up and shut up and be thankful I had healthy kids.
I nodded, but my heart was growing murderous again. I left the office and drove to the nearest gas station, bought a map of the country, and began plotting my escape. That map saved me in the months it took to steel my nerves and gather resources for the trip. I put aside a little out of the paychecks every week, in a special account in my name only. I got myself a credit card. I used a magic marker to chart my way on the map from Tennessee to LA. I envisioned freedom.
Without that map to inspire me, I’d likely be in some female penitentiary. God help me, I was so close. I was a madwoman. But once on the road, the kids strapped into car seats and the windows open and road clear before me, I became the doting mom that everyone thought I should be.
But the heavy feeling, the shortness of breath, has returned. I can’t shake it this time. And there’s no map, no guide to my future. My children are grown and largely self-sufficient, my husband gone. There’s Thomas, of course. In fact, he was the only person I told of my plans to leave Tennessee, and I’ll always remember his white face when he realized I was really going without him. But he can’t save me this time. No one can.
60
MJ’s Note to Her Brother
Dearest Thomas,
So this is it. This is how life has narrowed to one path and only one path for me to follow. The heaviness has returned and it has proven too great a weight for me to bear after all.
I know you will take this hard, after all we’ve been through, both apart and together, but mostly together. You’ve been my life’s true companion, and for this I am eternally grateful. I have no regrets. You mustn’t either. Life is what it is, that unit of existence we are allotted, and I shaped mine the best way I knew how. But I only had so much to give it. I found myself praying to St. Jude the other night. Just like Mom would in times of stress. Patron saint of lost causes. Will you implore him to intercede for me? That’s all I ask. And that my ashes are buried in my garden, which is now yours. Everything I always had was always yours. You knew that. Take care of the garden. Please.
Tell the boys I’m sorry. And I am sorry—sorrier than I ever could have imagined. It is wrong to take a life, no matter how much one is owed.
Love,
MJ
61
Samantha
PETER PICKED UP THE PHONE when it started ringing at 3 AM, then handed it wordlessly to me. The Los Gatos police had been on the scene since midnight, when MJ Taylor’s brother, Thomas, had called them. Unable to reach his sister for two days, he finally drove down from the city. He readily admitted he was drunk when he found MJ, and delayed calling the police until the alcohol wore off.