If I Break

by Portia Moore

  “Excuse me,” he says. I nod, and he walks a few feet away and answers it. “Hello? Yeah, I know, something came up,” I can tell by his tone of voice it’s her. “I’m on my way right now… I’ll see you then… I love you too.”

  I can’t help but feel a twinge of jealousy… well… more than a twinge, a lot more, more like someone just kicked me in the stomach and is standing on my chest. The man I love, well, this man who resembles the man I love, in the exact same voice is professing his love to another woman. Knowing that it’s her he holds in his arms, her lips he kisses… oh, God I have to stop thinking like this.

  “About the other day..I-I’m not usually like that,” I rub the back of my neck.

  “No, it’s forgotten,” he says sincerely.

  “Does she know about all of this?” I ask as he hangs up, but my focus is on the ceiling fan.

  “About some things,” he says letting out a deep sigh. I nod. I don’t know what kind of answer that is, but I decide not to push any further.

  “… I, uh… I have to-” he begins to explain. I smile weakly, letting him know it isn’t needed.

  I walk with him to the door.

  “My mom says you’re from Chicago. How long are you going to stay here?” he asks hesitantly.

  “Well. I’m from Saginaw, but I live in Chicago,” I correct him as we walk the small distance to the door. I scratch my head and I realize that I only have enough money with me to pay for another day at the Inn and I left my credit cards.

  “I have to get back to Caylen, most likely tomorrow morning,” I say when we reach the door.

  “Oh,” he frowns slightly, as if he thought I would be staying longer.

  “I have some things to take care of back home. It’ll take me a couple of days, but I can come back, and… let you see her. We can start to work something out,” I say almost incoherently due this unwonted situation we are in.

  “That would be good. I’d like that since we have a lot to work out,” he says. I’m not sure if he’s joking or not.

  “Um, let me give you my cell phone number,” he says.

  I turn to get my phone and hand it to him; after a few second he puts it in. He hands me his, and I do the same.

  “You have my home number too,” he says after I’m done, and we exchange phones awkwardly, almost as if we’re trying to avoid touching one another.

  He opens the door and steps outside. It’s an awkward moment, and we both laugh at our obvious discomfort.

  “I just realized that we never got a chance to really… uh…” I look at him confused as he extends his hand.

  “I’m Chris,” he says with a soft smile. I let out a small laugh, realizing we never really did get a chance to properly introduce ourselves.

  “I’m Lauren,” I say, taking his hand.

  March 10th 2013

  It’s funny how one day can change the whole course of your life. Not even a day really, just a few seconds. The moment you find out you’re having a child or the day you receive a bad medical report. Those life altering moments when you know that your life will never again be how it was before those few seconds happened.

  I’ve walked through the door to the penthouse over a thousand times. Each time secretly hoping he’d be there, sitting on the couch, his eyes giving away so much and so little. And then time would freeze and in that moment it wouldn’t matter where he’d been, or who he’d been with just that he was home, and that he loved me and couldn’t stay away. I hoped that, of course, there would be a reasonable explanation -circumstances that were beyond his control that kept him from me, from us, our family.

  Each scenario I imagined played out differently and vaguely, deep down I never cared what the explanation was, just that he was home, and that my family would be complete again. That longing feeling of missing him so much that I felt a part of me was missing, gone. That part of me would be returned in pieces, but not quite broken.

  I think back to the days in the house alone when I returned after finding out I was pregnant. Even then I was trying to run away from the memory of him, hating him with every fiber of my being. Yet each day my stomach grew larger as a part of him grew inside of me. Love and hate crashing together in a never ending battle that I fought within myself. I wanted to erase his existence from my mind but each and every day I walked through the door returning home from some mundane task, I still secretly hoped he’d be there.

  I know how ridiculous an idea it was to try and keep my hope a secret - even from myself. The thought of wanting a man back who walked out on his pregnant wife was too pathetic for my own subconscious to comprehend. Well he didn't know but still, why I was trying to hold on to something quixotic hope, unwarranted almost incomprehensible? But I did; I still had hope for Cal and me. Now there is no hope. It’s the first time that I know for a fact he won’t be there. That the man I’ve loved and loathed all of these years is a mere figment of the imagination of a man named Chris…or not, my mind is too exhausted to cope with the logistics of this entire situation.

  I had imagined this all going differently on my drive back from Madison. After all the convincing I did to myself that this is an opportunity for me to start anew and to leave the past where it was, making myself see this as a freeing experience. I pictured myself walking through the door taking a deep breath and a weight being lifted.

  All of the days which went before, when I was left not knowing if he was alive or not, if he was hurt, who was he with, if he thought about me, if he knew about Caylen ... the burden of all that was gone – liberated from me.

  But now as I actually walk through this door the feeling is overwhelming, almost as overwhelming as the day he left. I thought I had convinced myself on the long drive back home that I could exorcise him from my life, from my mind and my thoughts. I convinced myself that I could deal with this and that the reality I have now has given me the closure I needed to move on. But walking through this door now, in real time, I feel like I’ve been punched in the chest, the wind gone from my body and I can’t breathe.

  The true reality of this situation hits me likes a ton of bricks, and I can’t help but make my way to the floor to prevent from falling. I’m trying to stop myself from crying but the more I try, the more I can’t breathe. I reach back to try to push the door closed behind me and rest my head on it. I promised myself that I would cry my last tear over him back in Madison and that I would walk through this door stronger not weaker and would be ready to close this chapter of my life ready to begin afresh.

  Now I realize that I was an idiot thinking I could just will myself to be prepared for this; I’m not. I’m so tired of feeling like this; I don’t know what I did to deserve this. To fall in love and wrap my life around a man who doesn’t even exist, and now sharing a child with someone who doesn’t even know who I am. How do I explain this to anyone? I’m barely coming to terms with this myself. And now I’m supposed to pretend like this all didn’t happen, while staring at the face of the man I’ve felt bound to?

  “Lauren, Lauren honey, what’s wrong?”

  I see through my cloud of tears, a fuzzy vision of Raven and Angela. I try to get a hold of myself but their touch seems to make my emotions pour out even more. Raven kneels down and wraps her arms around me, rubbing my back. I know I have to pull myself together; her seeing me like this is going to cause her to think the worst. What could be worse than this though?

  “Lauren, what happened? Did you find him? Lauren talk to me,” she says, her tone calm but growing more frantic.

  I try to catch my breath, feeling that I might as well get it over with, when I see Hillary hurry to my other side near Angela. I make another attempt: this is not how I wanted things to go. Nothing is going how I wanted it to.

  “Where’s Caylen,” I say bewildered, knowing that one of the only things that can calm me down is her in my arms.

  “Caylen’s fine honey, she’s sleeping,” Raven assures me.

  “Lauren it’s 11.00 p.m. at night. You h
aven’t answered your phone in two days. We’ve been so worried about you! What’s wrong ... what happened? Did you find him?” Angela asks frantically.

  “I-I want to see her,” I whimper.

  “Lauren, no, not like this - you’ll upset her terribly,” Raven scolds me.

  I realize waking up to her mom crying hysterically isn’t the best idea for my daughter at all and I relent.

  “H-he’s not real,” I stutter pathetically, trying to calm down.

  But I think all of this hugging and coddling they are doing is making it worse.

  “What? Who’s not real honey? Cal ... he was really Chris?” Hillary tries to infer. She’s part right at least. How do I even begin to explain this to them?

  “That fucking son of a bitch bastard! I knew it, I knew it all along!” she continues. Her voice grows from uncertain to angry in a matter of nanoseconds.

  “No-no, it’s not what you think, its worse,” I say in between sniffles.

  “Come on honey, let’s get you up and cooled down with a glass of water so you can tell us all about it,” Raven says authoritatively.

  They help me get off of the floor. We head towards the kitchen where Hillary and I sit down. Angela paces the floor nervously. Raven grabs a pitcher of lemonade out of the fridge and pours a glass for me, herself and Hillary. I quickly take a few sips and try to think of how I can explain it. They both look at me full of anxious curiosity.

  “I don’t really know where to start. It’s ... it’s all so ... so surreal is the only way I can explain it,” I say, staring into the cold glass of lemonade.

  “Take your time L,” Hillary says reassuringly. Raven nods in agreement.

  For the next hour I give them a play by play of the events that transpired over the past two days. I tell them everything from discovering ‘Chris’out his mental illness, then to me and Chris coming to an agreement for him to be in Caylen’s life and finally me basically giving him a pardon on the obligation Cal had to me besides Caylen. Not once during the entire story do any of them interrupt. They’ve all been silent since I finished and the silence is almost scary.

  “Please say something,” I urge nervously trying to cut the thick tension in the room.

  I’m sitting in between three of the most opinionated women that I’ve ever met and I think for once they are speechless.

  “I, I don’t know what to say,” Raven says. She looks unsure and then I look to Hillary who looks angry - I was sure she’d have a mouthful to say.

  “Hillary?” I ask, almost afraid to hear her opinion, but today can’t get any worse.

  “I don’t know what to say either. I ...I mean what can I say to something like this? I mean, basically... “

  She stops and clasps her hands together as if she’s actually pondering the right words to say. I’ve never known Hillary to edit her words before speaking them and I’m touched at the fact she’s trying to be thoughtful, but at this moment whatever she has for me, I’d rather her dump it on me now so that after today I can try to leave this feeling behind.

  “Hillary, whatever you have to say, just say it,” I urge her. Out the corner of my eye I see Angela shoot her warning glare.

  “The last time I did that, you ended up fainting,” she chuckles dryly.

  “It wasn’t what you said, it’s what you didn’t say,” I assure her.

  Words hurt, but she didn’t have to use any. She wasn’t spouting knowledge I had been hiding from; she just pulled out a newspaper with my husband’s picture on it under a different name.

  “Well, I think this is a load of bullshit,” she says brashly, and for the first time in days I laugh.

  It starts out as a small giggle and grows; Raven looks at me strangely and then begins to laugh too. Hillary folds her arms and then joins in. Angela looks at us as if we've all lost our mind but I can’t explain what a wonderful feeling it is to laugh - truly laugh and not cry.

  “I mean I don’t have a degree in Psychology or anything so I could just be misinformed but ... what? Multiple Personality Disorder? Give me a break! Do you know how many guys will be using this excuse if you let this slide L? It’ll catch on like wild fire. “‘Honey, it wasn’t me fucking that other chic it was my alter ego.’”

  She explains this in between her laughter and then it subsides and the seriousness of the situation creeps back into the room.

  “What do you think of this Raven, you’re the old-most mature of us all?” She jokes lightly. Raven lets out what seems to be a much needed sigh and nods her head.

  “Well, I know this may be telling of my age but, I remember seeing an episode on Oprah about this psychologist who interviewed this woman who said she had 15 ... umm ... I forgot what she called them ... not personalities, it was another word. Oh gosh, it’s slipped my mind.”

  I watch her brow furrow as she seems in deep thought.

  “Alters?” Hillary offers.

  “Yes that’s it!” Raven says excitedly, like she’s won a prize on a game show. I turn surprised eyes to Hillary.

  “I watch a lot of soap operas,” she shrugs

  “Well Ang, you’re the one who’s spending all of your daddy’s money on that degree of yours. You took a couple of psych courses, right? Let’s see how much they were worth,” Hillary jokes.

  “Well I admit I know a little. In a course I took, this was one of the disorders that we went over and from what my Professor said, it’s a diagnosis that’s still highly debatable in the mental health community. There are doctors who swear that it’s real and others that think it’s something that’s “therapist induced” - a misdiagnosis of a number of what could be several other disorders including schizophrenia, bipolar disorder...”

  “Okay, so is it real or not?” Hillary interrupts.

  “Like I said, there isn’t a general consensus yet. There was one study, however, that recorded neurological changes when the alleged ‘alters’ or ‘changes’ were said to take place. However, it could have been due to a number of factors...”

  “Well regardless of whether this ‘condition’ exists or not, the question is - does he have it? Let’s face it, the chances of him having this are ... what?” Hillary exclaims.

  “Hillary, I don’t know. I’m not his psychiatrist. But some of the behaviours that Cal exhibited, from what Lauren has shared with me ... I wouldn’t completely rule it out as a possibility,”

  “Give me a break,” Hillary mumbles under her breath.

  “Hey, you asked for my opinion and this is how you respond?” Angela retorts sharply.

  I rub my fingers in soothing circles on my temples. This conversation is starting to be overwhelming.

  “Ladies!”

  Raven interrupts the two of them and they immediately become silent, having obviously sensing my stress level rising.

  “I don’t think any of us here are qualified to agree or disagree with Angela’s comment on the validity of this illness,” she says eyeing Hillary, who looks away from her gaze.

  Her attention focuses back on Angela.

  “And I think Angela would agree, without knowing the specifics of Cal or... Chris’s condition, she can’t be certain whether he does in fact have this condition.”

  Angela nods in agreement.

  “The most important thing right now, is to support Lauren in what she believes and in how she decides to move forward from now on.”

  I glance up and notice that all of their gazes are on me. Raven reaches for my hand and I hold it. She squeezes it, giving me a bit of encouragement. The gesture letting me know whatever my answer is, she’s behind me, which means so much at this point.

  “I didn’t want to believe them. I didn’t want to believe any of this, but when it was him and I alone. It wasn’t him. It wasn’t Cal.”

  “Well honey, if that is your decision, I stand behind you one hundred percent, and I will be there to support you on it,” Raven smiles and squeezes my hand, reassuringly.

  “We all will, Lauren,” says Angela
, hugging me from behind. We all look at Hillary and she takes a deep breath and for a moment it looks like she’s contemplating.

  “You and Caylen mean the world to me, and I’m sure this is hard enough for you without me bitching about the situation. If you can deal with all of this, I’m not going to be the one to make this harder on you,” Hillary says.

  She comes over and wraps her arms around me. I sigh, a huge sigh of relief. Just knowing that I have the support of the people around me makes things not seem as bad. Certainly not as bad as when I walked through the door an hour ago but I’m so afraid. I’ve held onto the past for so long ... not knowing what happened to Cal was like having a crutch to lean on - and now it’s been taken away.

  “How do I pretend the last few years of my life didn’t happen?” I say frantically.

  Angela gently grabs my face and lifts it up, so that I’m looking directly at her.

  “You don’t. You don’t pretend that the past didn’t happen, but you don’t dwell on it. You accept the past but you don’t live there anymore,” she says, in an affectionate tone but her words are stern.

  “You’ve chosen to look forward, and to let go, and you can do it. You’ve been through so much, and you’ve bent a few times but never broken. We won’t let you now!” Angela says and squeezes me a little tighter.

  “Okay?” she asks, the authority disappearing from her face and the warm smile I know returning.

  “Okay,” I nod, calming down.

  She’s right. As much as I’ve talked about moving on and forward - I haven’t. It’s the reason I’m still here. Everywhere I look, I see a memory of Cal: enrapturing, comforting, and appeasing me. And now I can’t rest in memories - in false hope. I have to let go. I have to let him go and believe that the future can take the place of my past.

  March 23rd 2013

  It’s been two weeks since the catastrophe of a lifetime happened to me; since I found out about, met, and, well, almost fought with Cal…Chris and the woman he loves. The woman who, unfortunately, in some bizarre, unimaginable way, will be my daughter's stepmom. I try not to think about that, or how I’m supposed to accept it. I said I would accept it, and my mind says I must, but my heart and mind have never been able to agree on anything. But since tomorrow I’ve agreed I’ll head back to Madison, so that Caylen can meet Chris and his parents, I’ve found myself thinking about it more and more. Today, I worked up the confidence to try to start moving forward. Still, it’s funny how when you try to move on, some habits from the past creep in and wrap around you.