by Cara Mentzel
“Perfect timing,” I said to him.
“How’s it goin’?” he asked me as he kissed Jacob on top of his head, then sat down at the table.
“Pretty good. It was a long day, but a good one.” I set the veggies on the table, then continued. “The boys had no interest in naps so our field trip to the grocery store was a little ambitious, but we had fun at the park.”
I noticed Avery still hadn’t made it to the table and called to him again, “Avery, dinner’s ready,” this time a little louder than before. I didn’t want to yell at him. Avery was distractible, but rarely defiant, and in this instance he was probably deep in imaginary play on Sodor Island with Sir Topham Hatt and his steam engines.
I set a full plate on the table in front of Jon and walked around to the other side to set down Avery’s plate. Avery’s chair was still empty. “Avery! Dinner. Is. Ready!” I yelled.
The rest happened in an instant—and yet it seemed in slow-motion. In a volume that exceeded my own, Jon shouted, “I just want to get home, sit down, and relax!” Then he set both his hands flat on the table in front of him, pushed all six feet two inches of himself straight out of his chair, and added, “For once!”
When I saw Jon turn toward Avery I was still standing on the opposite side of the table, too far away to intercept him. I felt a dark hole open in my stomach as he shot toward Avery in two big steps, grabbed him just beneath his shoulders as if his arms were the lifeless rails of a chair and not the soft limbs of a child. He quickly carried him partially up the stairs and then slammed Avery’s tiny bum down on one. Gravity would have been more gentle than Jon had been. Avery froze, his eyes wide, vacant at first, like his spirit had been ejected on impact.
“Jon!” I shouted and slipped in between them with my back to him like a fortress. I knelt in front of Avery and placed my hands on his knees. Life returned to his eyes in the form of fear, and he tried to breathe, but he couldn’t. And briefly, neither could I. I was certain his back was broken and that he couldn’t feel my hands.
“Look at Mommy, baby. Mommy’s here. Breathe.” Avery tried, but it seemed as if fear itself were lodged in his airway. A necessary calm fell over me. I realized he’d had the wind knocked out of him. I placed a few fingertips under his chin and leaned toward him until he could see nothing but my eyes and the world was just us. Avery watched as I took a deep breath and coached him to do the same. Then he took a short series of staccato breaths that finally led to one big inhalation and on his exhale he started to cry.
“Can you stand up, Avery?” I asked, and I held his hand as he came to his feet on a step. He can stand, I thought and breathed a sigh of relief. Kids blame themselves, I thought, something I’d heard about children who knows when, maybe from Oprah, that was suddenly relevant in a way I’d never imagined it would be.
“Avery,” I said, still looking at him. “That wasn’t your fault. Daddy made a mistake.” I turned around and looked at Jon, whose temper was already a thing of the past. “Jon. Tell him. Apologize.”
“You okay, bud?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Avery answered in a whimper.
“Daddy lost his temper, buddy. I’m sorry.” Jon choked up midsentence and started to cry.
“It’s okay, Daddy,” Avery told him.
“No,” I interrupted. “It’s not. It’s Daddy’s job to protect you, not hurt you.”
I turned to Jon. “I’m gonna go run him a hot bath,” I said, then carried Avery up the stairs, away from his dad. From dinner. From a stove that might or might not still have been on. From a fridge that might or might not still have been open. From a baby who might or might not have been scared. And from a man suddenly more stranger than lover.
The bathwater rushed into the tub. It was loud, but I wished it were louder. I wanted to drown out the voices of my guilt. I was the one yelling at Avery. I’d triggered Jon. It’s my fault Avery got hurt. I was smart enough to know those were the thoughts of a victim, but they felt true nonetheless, and no amount of psychobabble would assuage my sense of failure. It was my job to protect my son and I hadn’t. For a minute I was obsessed with assigning blame—to myself, to Jon; so long as I was ruminating, I could avoid replaying the events in my head. But in front of me waited a wounded five-year-old, so I forced my attention back to the little boy who needed it.
Avery stood on the navy bathmat and set a hand on my shoulder. He lifted one foot and then the other as I pulled his socks over his heels and off his feet, then slid his nylon shorts and Blues Clues underwear down to his ankles. He took one foot out, then the other.
We knew the bath routine well. It was a routine Avery usually loved. But that night, the mood was subdued, not silly. I tested the water with my hand, then gave Avery a gentle smooch on his tush. It was blotchy in places. As I raised him into the tub, his skin slid slightly over his ribs.
“It’s gonna be hot,” I warned in a singsongy voice ill fitted to the circumstances, then set his feet down into the water. “Let your feet get used to it before you sit down,” I added. A wave of nausea fell over me when I heard myself say “get used to it.” Was Avery getting used to being pushed around by his dad, used to his dad’s unpredictability? I remembered a time a little over a year earlier when Avery had accidentally hit Jon on the bridge of his nose during a Sunday-morning pillow fight. Jon reacted by biting him on the shoulder. I remembered how quickly it happened. How stunned I’d been, the way Avery’s joy disappeared from his face in an instant. The shock and hurt I watched fill his eyes. And the walnut-shaped mark that formed on his once-flawless skin.
Avery sat in the tub, dunking his plastic red boat in the water.
“Look at me, boo,” I said. “What happened downstairs wasn’t your fault. Daddy’s a grown-up. Daddy needs to control his temper.” Avery quickly changed the subject and showed me how he could make his boat jump out of the water.
When the bathwater began to cool I held out an oversize blue towel. Avery stood up and swung his leg over onto the bathmat. I wrapped the towel around his body a couple of times and then sat on the toilet seat with him bundled on my lap, his pruney feet dangling out the bottom. I ran my hands quickly up and down his sides to warm him up the way my mom used to do for me when I got out of the swimming pool. Then I gave him a big squeeze and kissed him on top of his head.
“I love you, Avery.”
“I love you, Mommy,” he said, and with his back damp against me, I rested my head over his and let a few secret tears fall.
Later that night my tears were no longer a secret—at least not from Jon. Speechless, he spooned me in bed as I sobbed into the down comforter so the boys wouldn’t hear me. Maybe it was strange that Jon could comfort me, strange that he was still comforting after what he’d done, but for six years Jon had been the man to hold me, and I needed to be held. I considered pushing him away, but I was too emotional to be decisive, and too tired to act. I lay there in an unsettling duality. In Jon’s arms I felt both loved and trapped.
Hours had passed when I felt Jon pull his arm out from under me and turn over in bed. I folded the blanket back and sat up, then headed toward the light that shone through the crack in our door. I entered Jacob’s room, leaned over his crib, and listened to him breathe for a few minutes. Then I entered Avery’s room through the Jack and Jill bathroom they shared. Avery was asleep in his undies, sprawled out in bed with his head where his feet should have been. I liked to joke that he slept like the hands of a clock, making circles in his bed all night. I knelt down and smelled his breath like I was breathing life itself.
When I slipped back into my bed, Jon woke up a little and asked if I was okay.
“I will be,” I told him.
I drifted through the next few days in a dissociated fog. I pulled into the driveway with no memory of the turns I’d made or the exit I’d taken to get home. I took the kids to the park and pushed the swings out of habit, and emptied the dishwasher as if nothing had changed. Shock, I imagine. And perhaps I was distancing myself from realit
y as a stall tactic; I didn’t know my next move so I didn’t make one at all.
I wanted to call Dee and I didn’t want to call Dee. She offered me a sense of safety. I knew I’d never fall too far without her catching me. When it came to me, she carried an air of I won’t let anyone fuck with you. And she’d fly across the country to put Jon in his place if I asked her to. But she was also judgmental. No misstep of mine went unnoticed. Whether she chose to acknowledge my mistakes aloud or to let her criticism percolate beneath the surface, I could detect her irritation in a sigh, an awkward pause, a change of subject, or a question: “Why didn’t you just…?”
Before that night, I’d rarely called Dee with marriage complaints and concerns the way I imagine a lot of close sisters would have. If I disclosed that anything was wrong in my marriage, Dee would worry, and I didn’t want her to worry. I had the sense that with her, I was either happy or I was a burden. And when it came to the marriage she doubted, I was either happy or I was wrong. Part of me wanted to stay with Jon so that I wouldn’t have to be wrong. Another part of me—admittedly a disgusting part—was relieved that he’d fucked up. It gave me an excuse to leave him. It meant our failed marriage could be more his fault than mine, and that people—my sister especially—could be angry with him instead of disappointed in me. Finally, there was the part of me, the part that yearned to be closer to Dee, that wanted to confess every little thing I’d ever withheld from her. I wanted her to know it all. But there were too many parts of me. I was in pieces.
As it turned out, I didn’t have to decide whether to call Dee or not. Mom had filled her in and she called me.
“How’s Avery?” Dee asked over the phone.
“He’s doing okay.” I was picking up toys in the living room and looked over at the stairs where Avery had sat for those few scary minutes a few days earlier.
“I’m worried about his back and neck, but at least for now he appears to be fine.” I took a seat on the couch.
“Do you want me to come out and talk to Jon, see what his deal is, see if there’s anything I can do?”
“I love that you’d do that, Dee, but it’s not necessary. And besides, I know how hard it would be for you to leave New York right now.” Dee was in rehearsals for a new show called Wicked and she’d piss off a lot of people if she took a few days off. “I don’t want you to worry. I’ll figure this mess out.”
“Like I’m not gonna worry.”
“I know, sorry.” I paused and then asked, “Do I leave Jon?” I wanted her permission. I didn’t want to make the decision alone and then have to justify it to her.
“I don’t know, Cara. You haven’t been happy for a while, right?” I guess I hadn’t withheld as much from her as I’d thought.
“It’s all a matter of perspective, I suppose. Sometimes he’s great—he taught Avery how to remove the stamen from a honeysuckle, for Christ’s sake. But then sometimes he’s not and we know what that looks like. But I’m not perfect either. I lose my temper, too.”
“Stop it. Who doesn’t? We’re not talking about perfect here. You’d never put Avery in danger. You always put your kids first.”
“I think that’s what bothers Jon. I put them first and not him. It’s awful, but sometimes I wish Jon was more stereotypical, straight out of an after-school special or something. I mean if he were the kind of guy that came home drunk, said ‘where’s my dinner, woman,’ and then gave me a black eye when I didn’t bring him his beer fast enough, I wouldn’t question myself. I’d leave him. But he’s not, and it’s all his shades of gray that screw with me.”
The line was quiet for a moment and I wished I knew what she was thinking. “I don’t want to overreact,” I finally added. “I know you think I’m impulsive sometimes.” Then I started to cry, which was nothing new. For days my tears had been on their own schedule, showing up unannounced on line at the grocery store or on the phone with a rude customer-service representative.
“That’s not this,” Dee said. “And who cares what I think?”
“I do.”
“I know.”
“What about Mommy and Daddy?” I said. “Did they try hard enough?”
“Maybe not, but who the hell knows? And your situation is different, Cara.”
“There’s no way to do right by my boys now,” I explained. “If I stay with their dad, I run the risk of them thinking their dad’s behavior is okay—not to mention, I think I’ll lose my mind. But if I leave him, then they’ll be alone with him more often and have divorced parents. I’ll never be able to give them the kind of family they deserve … I just don’t trust myself to make the right decision anymore—” Then she cut me off.
“I trust you,” she said. I trust you meant she saw me as a competent grown-up and I had her respect. I trust you meant there was no wrong move for me to make, just a next move. It meant that she wasn’t going to fly out and solve my problems for me (though she was tempted), because she knew I was capable of solving them myself.
“And there’s no rush,” Dee added. “If you’re not ready to make a decision, don’t make one yet.” She waited for my crying to subside and then said, “But please don’t stay with Jon because you’re worried about money. If that time comes, Taye and I will help you. Mom and Dad will help you. You’ll be fine.”
“I know you guys would help, and that’s a huge relief, but I don’t think I could stand to be a charity case.”
“You’re gonna have to get over that. If the time comes, let me help you. It makes me feel good to help you.”
“I know. Thank you. Really, that’s peace of mind.”
Before she could say goodbye I realized we hadn’t talked about her at all.
“Shit,” I said. “I’m so self-involved I haven’t even asked how the show is going.”
She sighed. “That’s a whole other story. They’re still throwing new pages at me. I’m an emotional wreck. But I don’t want to talk about it right now. I’ll fill you in later.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah.”
“I miss you.”
“Miss you too. I’ll be up late. Call me if you need anything.”
“’K. You too.”
Mom took the boys to dinner a few nights later. Jon was out back, meticulously working on the new patio. His focus on the project struck me as odd given the tenuous circumstances of the week. The patio was a diversion, and each Home Depot paver symbolized Jon’s denial. I could almost hear him saying, “I’m going to put this thing together even though everything else is falling apart,” or maybe because everything else is falling apart. But to me, building that patio was like whitening a rotting tooth, or watering a dead plant.
It was dusk when I popped my head out the sliding back doors where Jon was still working.
“Can we talk about the other night?” I asked.
“What about the other night?” How could he not know what I’m referring to?
“You know, with Avery.”
“Sure,” he said. “Give me twenty minutes.”
After an hour he finally came inside. He grabbed the drawings of the backyard plans, sat down at the kitchen table, and unrolled the large sheet of paper in front of him. I set two glasses of water on the table for us and then took a seat catty-corner to him. But he stared at those plans like I didn’t exist, and I watched for a few minutes as he reworked the sketches with a pencil and ruler, never once looking up at me.
“Jon,” I said. But he remained speechless, as if my voice had been muted and he was in the kitchen alone. “Jon,” I repeated as my pulse quickened and my body trembled. I was awash with adrenaline.
“Jon!” I yelled finally. “Why are you ignoring me?” He didn’t budge. “I’m scared. I’m sad. You hurt our son.”
And still nothing. He didn’t even lift his head.
“Where is my husband?” I asked him. “Who are you?” I stood up, pushed in my chair, and grabbed my water. I’d only made it up a couple of stairs before I turned around. His body stil
l in the chair, transmitting a cold of Antarctic proportion. He seemed impervious to my feelings and I was desperate to be heard. “Jon!” I shouted one last time, and then, with his back still to me, he said three words I’ll never forget.
“You psychotic bitch.”
I didn’t recognize his voice. It was cold and hateful. He’d never said anything like that to me before. I was afraid of him and infuriated at the same time. I looked down at the pint glass in my hand. I held my breath and walked toward him. He didn’t see me coming. I emptied the glass of water over his head. He stood up immediately and turned to me with water dripping onto his shoulders and the same ferocity he’d directed at Avery earlier that week. I finally had his attention. He was taller than me, but he wasn’t overly muscular. His power didn’t come from a broad chest and cut biceps, but from rage. I dropped the glass on the carpet and stopped breathing.
He reached across the short distance between us and grabbed me hard above the elbows. I looked into his dilated pupils for the man I thought I knew, but he was gone. Before I could react, he took hold of my wrist and twisted my arm behind my back until my knees buckled and he shoved me onto the floor. I turned to face him, but was too afraid of what might happen if I stood back up so I stayed put. I just lay there on my back beneath his glare.
“Don’t. You. Ever. Do. That. Again.” There could be no doubt he was threatening me. Then he walked away. When I heard the groan of the garage door opening I knew he was leaving. I remained on the floor, supine, and alone. Then I screamed into the emptiness.
Jon returned hours later. He was sullen and quiet. The boys were already asleep.
“You can’t be here anymore,” I said with surprising directness. I was no longer angry or scared. I was barely sad. I said it as the matter of fact that it was.
“I know,” he replied and started to cry.
His anger had often been a gateway to his tenderness and I loved when he was tender. He looked different to me, like the lines on his face had softened. I could still feel his hot hands tight around my arms, but I was suddenly worried that in his tears I’d lose my nerve to leave him. In those few seconds I worried that my caretaking impulse would kick in and I’d tell him to stay. Because maybe he’d never lay an angry hand on us again. Maybe he’d get help and everything would get better—ultimately, he would. But I couldn’t know that then. I couldn’t be sure that the following day or week or year he wouldn’t do something else to one of the boys and what if I no longer had the clarity or strength that I had right then? I couldn’t risk it. Tears or no tears, we had to be over.
