Where We Went Wrong

by Andi Holloway

  It’s as if my arrival is undetectable.

  Your voice booms from the living room. You’re not much for television or music, and with zero ambient noise, it’s almost too easy to overhear.

  “It’s five goddamn chapters!” Your voice trembles. “Read it again!”

  I won’t say this is the first tantrum I’ve witnessed over a bad manuscript review, but it might be the worst. Maybe it’s because you’re already late on delivering it. Maybe it’s because you have been filtering two grand a month to Ansley and are finally—justifiably—worried about money. Maybe Tim hit you in your pride, and you’ll defend your creative work to the death, whether or not it’s riddled with errors.

  I set my keys on the counter, waiting for you to hang up and yell at me next, but I might as well be invisible.

  For once, this is a good thing.

  “Tim, I swear to fucking God! Send me notes, then.” You hammer at him as if you can change his opinion with expletives. “I will. I absolutely will!”

  You won’t.

  What Tim’s likely proposing are broad, sweeping changes that you’re incapable of making. To you, a request for a substantial rewrite is the ultimate insult.

  “I already told you why I can’t!” You finally look at me as I fix a cup of tea in the kitchen and pretend not to notice your meltdown.

  More than anything, your reaction clues me in that you’re saying things you’d rather I not hear.

  Tim, too, has become aggravated and raises his voice loud enough that I hear what sounds like, “This isn’t what we agreed to.”

  You cup your hand over the mouthpiece and move away. “It’s going to have to do,” you say, and when you stop shouting I know you’ve hung up.

  My stomach twists.

  It’s my turn.

  The smart thing to do would be to grab my laptop, lock myself in the bedroom, and refuse to talk to you until tomorrow, but I stick around, waiting for you to demand that I tell you where I’ve been. I debate how I’ll answer. I could tell you I’ve spoken to Deon and opened a line of communication to help save your ass, but I can’t have you interfering. I might explain why I went to see Ansley, but asking you about the blackmail theory and the Key Bank account will only tip you off. Whatever you’re hiding isn’t only from the police, but from me as well. I might tell you I’ve seen Vern, and that he’s working to force a wedge between us, recruiting me for a campaign against you.

  But you don’t ask.

  Something’s more wrong than the mounting evidence against you. I sense whatever deal you’ve made with Tim, someone who has called far more often than you would admit—I know, I’ve seen the phone bill—is yet another thing I don’t know enough about. You collapse onto the couch, holding your head in your shaking hands. Your right knee pumps up and down. You’re coming unglued.

  “Bert?”

  You don’t do vulnerable, which makes this display of weakness hard to watch.

  I sit next to you, set my hand on your forearm, and cringe when you push it away. I’ve endured inordinate stress and humiliation on your behalf, and the worst might be yet to come. Still, I compartmentalize in this moment to support you. That you refuse me makes everything I’ve done and still have to do that much harder.

  “Tim hates the book,” you say. “He hates the plot, the characters. He even called the dialogue ‘shit.’ The publishers are claiming breach of contract, and demanding that I return the advance.”

  Money that’s long spent.

  You hadn’t told me you sent him anything, or I’d have insisted that I give it at least a single pass first. Everything you think is finished reads like a rough draft, and you’re too proud to see it. You’d hate to credit my sharp editorial eye for your success, but we both know better.

  “Did he have anything positive to say?” I sensed from the tense banter the extent to which Tim is displeased, but not whether there is any hope of salvaging this secret project of yours.

  “It’s a good book.”

  That you’d defend it, even to me, indicates how strongly you believe in it. I feel bad for you because I know how easily a writer can fall for their own work. “Good books get bad reviews all the time.”

  “This isn’t that,” you say, and I sense you’re conflicted.

  “I could read it, maybe see if there’s something—”

  “There’s nothing you can do.” You cut me off harshly.

  I won’t react. I won’t react. I won’t react. I refuse to start a fight when I’m already holding back a deluge of information I’d rather not spill, details that are about to breach the floodgate. “What are we going to do, then?” I ask. You and I are still “we” because at this moment, without you, I’m an unemployable housewife with nothing but debt to her name—a burden I expect you to get us out of in spite of Tim’s criticism.

  “About what?”

  “About everything. The book. The advance. The investigation.” I need reassurance that you’re committed to doing what needs to be done. To giving Tim whatever will make him happy, to coming clean with Vern, and to telling Ansley that whatever is going on is over; that there are no more payments. It’s a lot of concessions, I know, but now’s the time to make them. To start over.

  “There’s nothing to be done,” you say. “It’s coming apart.” Your word choice alludes to the fact that something had been holding us together all of these years. The only thing missing is Matthew. Accepting he’s the glue means that I’ve been right from the beginning—if I’m not pretending to be a mother, you have no purpose for me as your wife.

  “What is?” I ask.

  “Everything. All of it.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  THINGS ARE WORSE THAN you know. With Deon working on why that is, I can only wait. Wait, and work on something to clear my head, such as the manuscript I’ve started and stopped at least a dozen times over the past two years. One that’s helped me cope with the changes since Matthew left, the disappointments, and our marital void.

  Writing is therapeutic, and I could use a little healing.

  Anything to distract me from the fact that you’ve, again, shut me out. Gone to bed of all things—I can’t imagine how you can possibly sleep—leaving me with an impossible mess.

  “Breach of contract.” These aren’t words to be taken lightly, and I can’t see how it’s so cut and dried if you have, in fact, turned in some body of work.

  I hear Tim’s words—“this isn’t what we agreed to”—and wonder what kind of fast one you’ve pulled. Maybe it isn’t only me you manipulate, but your publishers as well. I wish I had your connections to take advantage of.

  Staring at the stack of abandoned notebooks, which sit next to a laptop that has been used for little more than social networking and domestic spying, I reflect on wasted time, on missed opportunities, and on what could and should have been.

  You wanted a literary partner, but you wanted a housewife, too. Unable to be both, I allowed you the limelight I so desperately wanted—and still want, though bestseller status seems unreachable at this point. It does me no good to think in hindsight, and I’ll never let you know how burning is the pain of failure, of having never become anything, for your sake. You’d refuse blame. Tell me I had choices to make, and remind me that you provided so much for me over the years. You’d expect me to be grateful, and you wouldn’t be wrong.

  You wouldn’t be right, either.

  Looking at the spiral-bound pages fills me with dread. Like every novel before this one, I’ve not only fallen out of love with the original idea, but I hate it, and the only way to fix this manuscript is to go back to the beginning.

  To rip this story apart at the seams and reassemble it.

  It’s a daunting task, but a welcome diversion.

  I power up my computer and open the Word document that represents half a body of completely stalled work. I need a refresher of what I’ve written so far, to get back into a creative mindset.

  The working title is Estrange
d, and it’s the story of a young man who, after years away from his parents, faces possible reconciliation in the wake of tragedy. Only as far as two chapters back I can see why it isn’t working. The mother and father I so carefully crafted to be good parents, something I’m not sure we are or were, piss me off. They come across as weak. They’ve accepted too much blame, too much mistreatment, and I can’t get into their headspace. They’re willing to concede too much in order to have their son back, and true reconciliation seems impossible from any angle. I imbued Estranged with the heartache of our loss, not Matthew’s death but his leaving, with none of the anger or betrayal that makes what happened to us—what’s still happening—sting.

  I held back from making the son a believable bastard, diluting his role in the estrangement to the point that even I don’t buy it.

  I have to let go of the fear if this is going to work.

  Popular wisdom says to write the story that only you can write. Maybe exploring our suffering will help me let go. Unlikeable main characters are on-trend, and it’s with that in mind that I dig deep and open a new document, preparing for the drastic revision. As much as I’d like to, I don’t see a happy ending in our future.

  I don’t see one for my characters, either.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  THERE’S A PICTURE ON your desk of Matthew at eleven years old, gangly, all limbs and teeth, his fingers making bunny ears over my head. Me with my arm around him, teary-eyed from laughter as the scrambler slows to a stop. You had signed a contract that morning that came with a six-figure advance at a time when we were already flush with cash.

  In the timeline of our life, I’d pin this as our happiest day, a sun spot in an otherwise-overexposed photo. It’s bright and hopeful, angst free, and with none of the financial problems that came later. There were no other women, no extended trips to the loft, no overdue bills, and only white lies between us. None of the secrecy we have now lurks in that photo, and there’s no indication of it coming.

  We were a normal family. Matthew fearlessly tackling even the most thrilling rides and playing ring toss to win a stuffed bear, which is now tucked into one of several abandoned boxes in his former closet. He’d hugged us both after a long day before falling asleep with his head pressed against the side window of the car, drool dripping from his soft chin, which had not yet imitated the hard line of yours.

  You want, and maybe need, to remember Matthew this way, but refusing to change your desk photo doesn’t change what came afterwards.

  I’ve struggled to make peace with what happened. There are things you know and some you don’t, details which affect not only my characters’ grief, but mine, too.

  Somewhere between two and ten thousand words, I wonder if what I’m writing isn’t a novel, but a confession of every deeply felt emotion from the past decade, a collection of things I could never say without sending our marriage into a long-overdue tailspin about what it is to raise a child in fear, to be the victim of circumstances that were never yours.

  My feelings about Matthew are complicated. It’s as if he were two people: a boy I loved and a teen I came to fear. I can’t say I hated him, because I never did, not even at his worst. I invested too much time, too much effort, trying to make right for him all the wrongs he’d endured before our marriage of convenience—at least on your part—inserted me into his life.

  I didn’t know how to live for someone else then.

  I wasn’t sure I wanted to, but in the time since his leaving, more than my writing has changed.

  I don’t know how to live for myself now. My already-small world has shrunk, and I find myself facing diminishing purpose. There’s you, there’s always you, but you don’t need me, not really, and you don’t seem to want me anymore, either. I fulfilled an obligation, assumed the responsibility you only ever partially shouldered, and little has changed in your world with Matthew gone, just as nothing changed when he had entered it.

  Until you’re a full-time parent, you don’t realize the work that goes into it. The commitment and the toll it takes, no matter how rewarding. Rides to and from school, packed lunches, clean uniforms, extracurricular activities that were more than drop-off and pickup but involved hours of watching, supporting, cheering from the sidelines alone, as I had been in doing all of these things. There were dental and doctor’s appointments, where I detailed medical histories that weren’t mine to give. Overlooking, because I had no choice, the way the pediatrician silently but completely judged me, the poor woman charged with the care of a child she didn’t birth. But Matthew was mine in my heart. I deluded myself into assuming that love was reciprocal, until angst set in and Matthew resented all the things about me he once secretly enjoyed. He hadn’t yet left, but we were no longer us, the pair on the scrambler with bellies full of fried dough and lemonade, daring each other not to puke; laughing as we staggered down the stairs into your waiting arms.

  If only life could freeze, like it does in pictures.

  Tears burn my eyes as I picture that Matthew in the box we so indifferently buried, the headstone not yet placed, and the lingering suspicion enveloping you. There’s so much Vern doesn’t know. None of it would change his mind about you if he did. To someone who’s never raised children, who’s investigating a homicide, there’s only the black and white: dead and alive. Right now, I’m living in the gray, irreparably torn, mourning Matthew while sleeping more soundly than I have in years, secure in the knowledge that when I awake, it won’t be at gunpoint.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  THE WRITING CALMS ME. It’s not the act itself so much as the compartmentalizing, reworking the best and worst of us into characters that have nothing real at stake. These folks don’t exist, and it’s comforting to know that I can always go back and change what I need to in order to make theirs the story I want to tell. Unlike in real life, nothing is permanent.

  I get down a clean fifteen thousand words, falling asleep at my desk before sunup when I promised myself just one more chapter after resting my eyes—a promise I was too exhausted to keep.

  I wake to find the fleece lap blanket that normally hangs folded over the back of the couch draped over me. This isn’t an apology, but it’s the closest thing to tenderness you’ve shown in some time. You are sorry, and there’s hope of you developing a conscience yet.

  There’s also the likelihood you sense I am up to something, that I’ve been coming and going more often recently and without explanation. You’ll wonder what’s reinvigorated my interest in writing, and I’d hate to admit your predicament has me inspired. I panic for a second that you’ve read my work, that perhaps you took a peek over my sleeping shoulder at something I’m not ready for you to see.

  I move my mouse and a password-protected lock screen provides an air of relief. You couldn’t have.

  I won’t let you until I’ve had the chance to explain what of this is real and not. To promise that these characters who have fallen out of love are not us, and the boy isn’t Matthew. Not exactly.

  I stand and stretch, my back and knees locked up from too many hours in a chair designed for form rather than function. The tap-tap-tapping of fingers on a keyboard comes from within your office. I am as confused as I am relieved by how quickly you’ve recovered from Tim’s criticism. Proud of you for how accepting you’ve been, and sure whatever setback that warranted a late-night earful has renewed your drive. Either that, or me resuming my work-in-progress has fueled some competitive fire within you. I don’t care the reason, just that you’re driven the way I need you to be. You’ll prove Tim wrong. Show him this book of yours is good. Better than good. You’ll do exactly as promised, no breach of contract here, and at least this part of our lives can get back on track.

  I can and will help you.

  Only as soon as the moment I look into your office, I realize you’re beyond help. I’d imagined you’d slept off whatever issues you’ve been having, but it appears you haven’t caught a wink. Your hair is unwashed. You’re wearing yest
erday’s clothes, wrinkled beyond belief, and your wide-eyed stare makes you look feral. I have never seen you look worse.

  Several coffee mugs sit on your desk next to a paper plate covered in orange peel, which offers little relief. Whatever you’re tangled up in, you aren’t so lost that you’ve forgotten to eat.

  I’ve seen that Bert, driven nearly mad from obsession. He’s cranky and irrational. Not at all the kind of man I need you to be right now, when I’m working so hard to gain traction in an unwinnable situation—working to keep Vern at bay, with you doing everything possible to thwart that.

  A pile of folders and notebooks I haven’t seen in years surrounds you, representing months’ of investigation; interviews and research to bolster Matthew’s innocence. I don’t know where this renewed interest springs from, but apparently Vern isn’t the only one concerned with Hannah.

  “Bert?”

  You startle, nearly launching yourself out of your chair and knocking one of the mugs onto the hardwood floor in the process. The ceramic cracks into pieces that scatter to all four corners of the room. Rather than cleaning the mess like any sane person would, you try and hide the paperwork.

  “Harper, Jesus! Why are you sneaking around?”

  I’m not sure how long you thought I’d stay asleep for or how loudly I was supposed to announce that I’m awake, but I assure you, I wasn’t sneaking, which makes exactly one of us. Your reaction is all the proof I need that I’ve again caught you in something you’d rather I not.

  Hannah fucking Harman.

  I’ve tip-toed around this particular subject enough. Your agent is the last person you’ve spoken with, and to my knowledge Vern hasn’t reached out to you, only me. For Hannah Harman to be suddenly on your mind, enough that you’ve exhumed this old crap, Tim, too, has to be somehow involved. Really, how many people can be in on whatever this is? This isn’t so much an accusation as a request for a clue when I say, “What does Tim have to do with Hannah?”