Blame

by Nicole Trope

  Anna shakes her head. ‘You really do pick your moments don’t you, Keith? What would you know about how I felt about Maya? You didn’t want to know about anything except rainbows and sunshine. You never have. Even your own family find your incessant need to be positive about everything annoying.’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with wanting to see everything in the best possible way, Anna.’

  ‘So, how are you seeing this in the best possible way, Keith? What is the wonderful result of our daughter having been hit by a car?’

  ‘I’m not talking about that, Anna. I’m talking about our lives before this. I know what kind of a child she was but I loved her through it, and I’ve always loved you; no matter how angry you get, and how resentful you become, I will always love you.’

  Anna walks over to Keith and puts her hands on his face, looking for something, for anything, that makes her feel the way she is supposed to feel but there is nothing. Something has left her since Maya’s death and inside she is empty.

  ‘I don’t feel the same way, Keith,’ she says and then stops touching him.

  Keith’s eyes fill with tears. He had confronted her but Anna knows that he wasn’t looking for anything other than reassurance. He is shocked, horrified, at the answer she has given him. Bad marriages muddle along for years without anyone saying anything. Her own parents had been married for forty-five years until her father died, and now her mother rhapsodised about the trips they’d taken and the love they’d shared. In her father’s absence, her mother had rewritten their marriage and edited out the arguments, the weeks she took to her bed, the resentments and the loathing that had eventually been obvious to Anna and Peter.

  Anna hadn’t known what she was going to say to Keith, but now that the words are out there, she knows it was the right thing to have said them. She cannot live with him anymore, cannot pretend as her parents pretended. She is done. She feels some pity for Keith but mostly she is just irritated that he has pushed her now, in the middle of the night when she has her visit to the police station looming. She knows that she could have been kind, could have simply told him that she loved him, but she’s tired of trying to be someone she’s not. She’s obviously failed at being the mother of an autistic child, failed at being any kind of mother at all. There is no reason for her not to fail at being a good wife and she has no interest in pretending that she is one.

  ‘Do you want . . . do you want a divorce?’ says Keith, and Anna hears the hesitancy in his voice. He’s pulled out the big guns, hoping to shock her back into the role she is supposed to be playing. Some couples discuss divorce every week, but Anna and Keith have only ever talked about it when they really felt they couldn’t go on, and have always resolved to try again. Anna knows that Keith wants to be a good husband and that he wanted to be a good father, that he always thought they would find a way to make things better, but she has never felt the same way. Each time, over the years, that she has found herself locked in an emotionally draining conversation about the state of their marriage, Anna has steered things towards resolution. Not because she wanted to remain married to Keith, but because she had always been terrified of being left alone with Maya.

  ‘Do you, Anna?’ Keith says and this time his voice is stronger, as though he is sure she will reply in the negative.

  Anna feels something wash over her. For a moment, she isn’t sure what it is and then she recognises the feeling. It is relief. She is relieved.

  ‘Yes, Keith,’ she says, ‘I want a divorce.’

  ‘You can’t . . . Anna, what are you saying?’

  ‘I’m saying that I want a divorce, Keith. You asked, I answered. That’s what I want.’ Anna concentrates on dunking her teabag in and out of her mug of boiled water, so that she doesn’t have to look at him. He stands in the kitchen for a moment longer and she can feel him trying to find something to say but, for once, Keith only has his own words to rely on and Anna knows they are failing him.

  He turns away from her and she hears him heading back to their bedroom. The door closes.

  She will not go back to bed tonight. She will sleep on the couch.

  ‘It’s over,’ she thinks. ‘It’s all over,’ and again she has the sweet feeling but it is followed by a weight so heavy that she sinks to the kitchen floor.

  ‘It’s over,’ she thinks again. ‘All over.’

  Chapter Sixteen

  Caro walks into the police station with her head held high. ‘I got through the night,’ she thinks, and then she imagines firecrackers and banners and confetti because she got through the night.

  She has watched programs about addicts and always found their need to celebrate one hundred sober days a little premature, a little ridiculous, but she understands it now, because if she could, she would celebrate every passing minute, despite how awful she feels.

  She has not had a drink for twenty-four hours and she feels like . . . shit. But she is where she is supposed to be and, with a little help from Geoff, she has managed to shower and dress. Despite the blazing morning sun, she is dressed in jeans and a jumper because she is chilled and weak. ‘You should be in hospital,’ Geoff had said this morning as he helped her on with her pants.

  Yesterday, Caro knows, she had rejected this pair of jeans as too tight but today they are looser at the waist. There is nothing left for her to throw up.

  ‘I can tell them you’re sick,’ he said.

  ‘No, it has to be done. It needs to be finished today. You understand, don’t you?’

  ‘It can be done later, when you feel better, when you’ve recovered.’

  ‘I don’t think I can recover until it’s done, Geoff. The two are connected. Can you help me? Can you just help me?’

  ‘I’m frightened for you—for us.’

  ‘I know you are, and I know I should be, but . . .’

  ‘But?’

  ‘But I haven’t had a drink for twenty-four hours. If you’d asked me two days ago, I would have told you there was nothing more frightening than the thought of giving up drinking. Twenty-four hours ago, the thought of going a day without a drink was impossible and I still can’t quite believe I’ve done it. I thought I would feel better, but even though I don’t, I want to keep going. If I can do this, I don’t have to be afraid of anything else. I’ll get through today and whatever comes after that. We’ll get through whatever comes after that.’

  ‘I think you need a lawyer,’ he said again as he dropped her off.

  ‘I know I do. I know I will, but today I’m just going to tell them what happened and let them take it from there.’

  ‘Is there any chance that the test will come back and you were under the limit?’ Geoff said.

  Caro had looked at her husband and wanted to nod but she was through with lying about it. ‘I don’t think so,’ she had said, but as she said the words, she had realised that she does have some doubt about it . . . there’s something about her drinking that afternoon that’s nagging at her but she can’t remember what it is.

  ‘Okay,’ said Geoff. ‘We’ll deal with whatever happens. Tell them the story, make them understand.’

  ‘You believe me now, Geoff, don’t you?’

  Geoff had looked out of the car window and said nothing for a moment, and Caro had felt her heart sink. If he didn’t believe her, then how would she convince anyone else she was telling the truth?

  ‘I do believe you,’ he finally said. ‘I didn’t want to because it’s not something I’d ever have believed of Anna. I mean . . . it’s Anna.’

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘It’s Anna.’

  ‘Do you remember the time she invited us to a picnic in her garden?’ asked Geoff.

  ‘That was so long ago . . . it feels like forever.’

  ‘Yeah, but it was a good day . . . sort of. I know we had to have it at her house because she needed Maya to feel safe, but do you remember how she spent the whole day trying to get Maya to come outside? She kept putting those little carob buttons that Maya was allowed to eat
closer and closer to the door. She talked to her so softly that I couldn’t hear what she was saying but she was so calm, so patient.’

  ‘She was . . . she was a good mother, even though . . . Do you remember that when Maya did finally come outside, Anna was so happy, she was almost ecstatic. She kept laughing and then Maya started laughing too, and then we were all laughing at nothing more than a kid coming outside.

  ‘I remember looking at Keith and thinking, “Look at us, two family men.” I don’t know what to say to him now. I feel like I should call him but I don’t think he’d want to hear from me. I want to tell him that I’m . . . I’m so fucking sorry.’

  ‘He may want to hear from you. You weren’t driving. This had nothing to do with you,’ said Caro.

  ‘Don’t go back to thinking you’re alone, Caro. You’re not alone,’ said Geoff. ‘You never have been and this has everything to do with me because we’re a family—you and me and Lex and we’re in this together. I just don’t know how we’re ever going to get past this.’

  ‘We will,’ said Caro. ‘I hope we will. I have to believe we will,’ knowing as she spoke that she didn’t really mean it. She had no idea how she was going to get to the end of the day.

  ‘You think?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Okay then.’

  Caro had understood that Geoff was choosing to believe her because he loved her, because he needed her home and not in jail, but she also knew that she didn’t really deserve his belief in her. They had lost their way as a couple and, in doing so, had lost their faith in each other. Caro had not been able to believe in Geoff for years. She had not trusted him or talked to him or turned to him. They had basically become strangers to each other.

  But as she got out of the car to go into the police station, Caro knew that they had begun to find their way back to each other. The night before, they had both made a choice to begin that journey.

  Caro had chosen to tell Geoff about the interview, about the dreadful humiliation she felt after throwing up in front of the detectives, about her fear for her future, because she knew they didn’t believe her, and about the drinking. She had not minimised it or lied about it—she had told him everything. The words had come faster and faster, and gone all the way back to her clinging to her stillborn son in the hospital.

  And Geoff had chosen to listen. He had not looked at the mess of a human being Caro was at that moment and turned away. Instead, he had sat on the bed next to her and listened. More importantly, he had heard. And then he had joined her in that long-ago hospital room, and they had remembered Gideon’s small, perfect hands and the curls on his head.

  They had talked for hours, sitting next to each other while Caro’s body had thrown everything it had at her. She had felt like she was on fire one moment and immersed in ice the next. She had thrown up whatever Geoff gave her to eat or drink.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she had wailed as he helped her into the shower for a second time. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  Geoff had not left her side. In the moments she was able to breathe, they had also talked about her drinking, and when it had begun and why.

  ‘I wasn’t just heartbroken after he died,’ Caro had said, ‘I was soul broken. I felt like I had been punished for some unimaginable sin.’

  ‘But you seemed . . . you seemed like you were holding it together,’ said Geoff. ‘Once we came home from the hospital, you seemed . . . not happy but okay. You cleared out his room in a week. I couldn’t believe it.’

  ‘I couldn’t look at his things. I felt stupid for having gone ahead and bought anything at all. I thought I should have known that I was never going to be allowed to have another child, and I couldn’t look at my hope any longer. I thought I’d feel better once it was done but I just felt worse. One day after I’d dropped Lex at school, I took a whole bottle of vodka into the room, and cried and drank until I passed out. I was so scared when I woke up that I’d missed the end of school. I thought Lex would be standing out on the street.’

  ‘What did you do? You didn’t go and get her, did you? You didn’t drive drunk with her in the car?’

  ‘No,’ said Caro quickly, ‘I called my mum. She got her. I’ve never driven drunk with her in the car, Geoff. I promise.’ This is the one truth that Caro has clung to over the years—that she has always waited until she knew she was sober, or has called her mother or her sister for help. She has never driven drunk with Lex in the car, but she has driven drunk. It’s not a distinction she explained to Geoff.

  Sitting next to him with her hands over her stomach, she had realised she had been calling on others for help more and more. She has always had an excuse ready but it was possible that the sighs she has heard over the phone from her mother and her sister, and the few friends she has asked for assistance, were because it had begun to happen regularly. Too regularly.

  ‘Why didn’t they say anything?’ Caro had thought but then had to admit to herself that they had said things. She had just chosen not to hear them.

  ‘I took one of the teddy bears from the trash,’ Geoff had said quietly. ‘It was the one we took to the hospital for him. I couldn’t believe you’d thrown it away.’

  ‘I hated myself for that, I wanted it back so much, but I thought I would be better off if I got rid of everything. If I could simply pretend that he’d never happened.’

  ‘But you didn’t say anything to me? Why didn’t you say anything to me? I thought you’d found a way to put it all behind you. You got involved in Lex’s school. You always seemed to have something on the go, and when I got home at night, you were even kind of cheerful. I thought you were okay.’

  ‘Were you okay, Geoff? Can either of us ever really be okay?’

  ‘No, no, we can’t and . . . I didn’t want to say anything, because you were being so strong, but I felt a little . . . I don’t know . . . resentful that you were so okay. I used to sit at my desk for hours during the day and think about his face, and then I’d come home and you’d be printing flyers for the bake sale at school, and the television would be blasting some stupid program, and it’d feel like you’d found a way to move on. It took me months, years even, to stop thinking about him. The day I came home and his room was empty, I couldn’t believe it. I wanted to grab you and shake you, and make you tell me why you’d done it. I wanted to be able to see his stuff when I came home. I felt like having his room there the way we’d arranged it gave me more time to think about him, even though he’d never even made it through the front door.’

  ‘I should have asked you, we should have done it together,’ said Caro. She had stood up from the bed and made her way to the bathroom to throw up again.

  ‘Do you still have the teddy?’ she had asked when she returned to the bed.

  ‘I do,’ he said. ‘He sits on my desk at work.’

  She had taken Geoff’s hand in hers. ‘We missed each other,’ she said. ‘I got involved in Lex’s school because I knew I couldn’t sit at home and think about him. I didn’t talk to you when you came home because you seemed to be doing just fine. You’d made your mind up that there’d be no more kids and you were fine with it, but I was so far from fine, Geoff. The only reason I seemed happy when you came through the door at night was because I’d dulled the pain with a drink, or two or three. It made everything so easy to deal with. I was drinking at night, Geoff, every night, and I was drinking more and more. You saw it. Lex saw it.’

  ‘I saw it but I kept thinking I was being over cautious. No . . . that’s not true. I didn’t want to deal with it. I mean, I tried, but you were always so aggressive.’

  ‘What if I can’t stop?’ asked Caro.

  ‘I don’t know . . . there are places you can go . . . help you can get . . . but, look, it’s nearly twenty hours now.’

  ‘It feels like a lifetime,’ said Caro, and she allowed herself to imagine the clink and crack of ice cubes in her vodka.

  ‘You have to do this, Caro,’ said Geoff. ‘You have to do it for Lex.’

/>   Caro had felt her stomach turn over. Lex would be twelve soon. She was turning into a young woman, and her most significant memory of childhood would be of her mother with a wineglass in her hand. ‘I’ve really fucked things up,’ she said.

  ‘We both have,’ said Geoff. ‘I’m forty-two and I feel like a kid, like I have no control over anything. I should have pushed you to get help. I should have made you talk about it, made you go to therapy. We both should have gone. It was stupid to think that we could just get on with our lives.’

  ‘I wasn’t ready for therapy. I wanted to try again, and when you said that we couldn’t, it all felt so hopeless, and I felt locked into this life and this pain, like there was no way out.’

  ‘But you agreed that we wouldn’t try again. You agreed that it was too hard, and if you really wanted to give it another chance, why didn’t you push me?’

  Caro had made for the bathroom once again. When she’d finished throwing up, she climbed back onto the bed, and Geoff handed her a glass filled with water and lemon juice.

  ‘The sour taste used to help you when you had morning sickness with Lex,’ he said, and Caro had smiled and dutifully taken a sip. It was five o clock in the morning.

  ‘I haven’t had a drink for twenty-one hours,’ she said.

  ‘That’s a good start,’ said Geoff.

  ‘I think I’m going to try and sleep a little.’

  ‘Can I stay?’

  ‘You can.’

  Caro had rolled over onto her side and Geoff had done the same. She was surprised that their bodies still fitted together, that it still felt right.

  She tried to breathe slowly, matching her breathing to his. Geoff was right. She hadn’t pushed him because she had been terrified of another failed pregnancy, terrified that somehow she was being punished for some sin she couldn’t name, and that she would continue to be punished over and over. She had imagined that if Geoff said without prompting that they should try again, she would somehow be able to change the outcome. She had waited and waited for him to say something, and had occasionally tried to prod him in the right direction, but he had never said the words she wanted to hear. And every time he didn’t say them, every time he failed to do what she needed him to do, a drink made the situation bearable, and then another drink made it fine, and then another and another and another made everything black.