My Biggest Mistake

by Leddy Harper

  I decided to spend the rest of my day being proactive. I went to the library, knowing they were only open for a few hours on Saturdays, and used the computers to look things up. I needed to know how divorce worked and what I needed to do to ensure I would get custody of the kids. I didn’t seek full custody, but I wouldn’t settle for anything less than half of their time. I just needed to make sure I had all of my ducks in a row so that he wouldn’t blindside me and take them away.

  * * *

  At five till eight, I grabbed the same book that all three kids loved from the night before and headed across the street. I had looked forward to it all day, knowing I would get to read to them, tuck them in, and give them kisses before they fell asleep. I would be the last thing they saw before they closed their little eyes and it sent a wave of contentment though me.

  Donnie opened the door after I knocked but didn’t look at me. Instead, he led me up the stairs and then walked down the long hallway to his bedroom, leaving me behind. I could tell he wasn’t happy about any of it, but I didn’t really care. It wasn’t about him being happy…it was about the kids being happy. And the smiles on the boys’ faces as I walked into their room proved of that.

  Gavin climbed into Mikey’s bed and curled into my side as I read the book. I had one on each side of me, tucked under my arms, and it was heaven. Mikey helped turn the pages for me while Gavin laughed at my animated voice. They made me read it three times before agreeing to go to sleep. I would have read it a hundred times, but I knew I had a little girl across the hall that needed my time as well.

  I kissed their little foreheads and pulled the blankets up to their necks. “I love you bunches and bunches and more and more,” I said as I turned the lamp off and headed to Livvy’s room.

  I worried Livvy would be asleep by the time I made it in there, but she wasn’t. She lay in bed with her bedside lamp on, curled under the covers, waiting for me. A smile covered her face as I drew closer.

  “Can you tell me a story instead of reading?” she asked me, catching me off guard.

  “Of course. What kind of story do you want?”

  “Tell me the story of how I got my name.”

  I smiled as I thought back to that time in my life. We snuggled into the bed and I began my story. “When you were in my tummy, I liked to eat a lot of olives. Didn’t matter what color or kind, I ate them. And you loved them. You’d dance around inside my belly every time I’d eat them. Daddy thought we should name you Olive, but I told him it was a silly name,” I said, speaking as animatedly as I had when reading to the boys.

  Livvy’s eyes grew wide in humor as she listened to me.

  “So Daddy and I decided to name you Olivia. One morning, when you were a teenie tiny little baby, I walked in on Daddy rocking you. He was talking to you in a baby voice, and I heard him say, ‘I wuv you Wivvy.’ And that’s why we started calling you Livvy.”

  My mind had drifted back to that early morning only four and a half years earlier, yet it felt like a lifetime ago. I could still vividly remember the look on Donnie’s face as he sat in the rocker and held his tiny baby girl, not even realizing I had been standing in the doorway, watching it all. The smile on his face seemed to have been plastered there, and I was sure I would never see it fade away. Realizing the things that had happened since then brought me crashing back down to earth as I stared into the mixture of green and blue of Livvy’s eyes in the barely lit room.

  She giggled against me at the voices I used when repeating Donnie’s words. Then she turned quiet, pulling her small body even closer to me. I ran my fingers through her hair and tilted her hair back so I could see her face.

  “Why can’t you live here? I want you to tuck me in every night.”

  Her question cut me deep and I had to fight back the melancholy that seemed to invade me. I took in a deep breath and smiled. “It doesn’t matter where I live, Livvy girl, I’ll tuck you in anytime you want me to. Just ask and I’ll be here. We don’t have to always live in the same house for me to tuck you in or for us to talk.”

  “Can I call you? Daddy used to let me use his phone to talk to Beth.”

  “Of course. You can call me anytime you want. I’d love that.”

  Her smile fell and a worried expression covered her small features.

  “What’s wrong, Livvy?”

  “What if Daddy tells me I can’t call you anymore? Like he did with Beth.”

  “What do you mean? Why can’t you call Beth anymore?”

  She let out a tiny sigh and then said something I don’t think I was prepared to hear. “Daddy says Beth won’t be around for a while. He says we won’t see her for a while. I like Beth; she’s nice. But he says we need to spend time with you.”

  I shook my head, trying to understand what she meant. It didn’t make any sense. Why would Donnie tell the kids they had to choose between Beth and me? Why would he tell them they couldn’t talk to her anymore? I chose to ignore the obvious, needing to block it out of my mind.

  “I’m sure you’ll still be able to talk to her. A lot is going on right now, big people things. But I’m sure once everything is settled, you can see and talk to her.”

  “But that would mean I wouldn’t get to see and talk to you,” she cried.

  “No. No, baby. That’s not what that means. I’m always going to be here. I’m not going anywhere.” I paused, needing to find my words and organizing them before I continued. “Do you want to hear another story?”

  Livvy nodded eagerly, replacing her frown with a smile.

  “When Mommy and Daddy asked God for a baby, He took a piece of my heart and a piece of Daddy’s heart and made yours. So my heart beats inside of you, which means I’m always with you. Even if you’re here with Daddy and I’m across the street or in whatever house I live in…my heart beats inside of you.”

  “Does my heart beat inside of you, too?” she asked in excitement.

  “Even better than that…when you were in my tummy, my heart would beat for you, and it never stopped. Every time my heart beats, it’s beating for you and your brothers.” I leaned down and kissed her nose.

  “Goodnight, Mommy,” she whispered.

  “Goodnight, Livvy. I love you bunches and bunches and more—”

  “And more,” she finished it with me.

  I cocked my head to the side. “You remember that?” I asked, surprised. I had said it to the kids every night before bed. It was my special saying to them, knowing it would be the last things they heard before dreaming. There was no way she would have remembered me saying that to her.

  “Daddy says it,” she answered.

  My heart filled with love yet sank to the pit of my stomach at the same time. A mix of emotions flooded me. I was happy he had continued the tradition, but sad that it was no longer my special phrase with my kids. Someone had taken over it.

  I smiled at her and gave her one last kiss before turning off the light and heading out of her room. I stopped outside of her door and leaned my head against the wall. My feet wouldn’t move and my heart wouldn’t calm down.

  As I looked up, I noticed the light beneath the door of Donnie’s room shining into the dark hallway. I didn’t think…I didn’t put any thought into my actions. I just started walking, letting my feet lead me in the direction of his room. I paused for one second outside of the door before turning the handle and walking in.

  The sight in front of me stole my breath from my lungs. My nerves were on overload and left me shaking. I felt like I could collapse onto the floor at any moment, and right then, I didn’t care. Ever since coming back, I hadn’t felt that kind of grief.

  Donnie sat on the bed with his back against the headboard. His jean-clad legs were perched on the bed and his elbows rested against his knees as he cradled his face in his hands. This was a private moment I wasn’t supposed to see. But now that I had, there was no way to erase it from my memory.

  The hopelessness and despair that radiated from his shirtless body was felt through
out the entire room. I had gone in there with a few things to say to him, but watching him as he looked so lost, all thought vanished from my mind.

  He slowly pulled his face away, revealing his bloodshot eyes. It looked as if he had been crying, but I couldn’t find a tear on his face. Maybe he was just tired and stressed. Maybe my return had pushed him into an emotional overload. I wasn’t sure what it was, but he looked drained. He looked like a man holding desperately onto his last thread of sanity.

  Slowly, pieces of the things I had wanted to say began to come back, and I started talking before I had them all back in place. “What is your mother telling our children? What kinds of things is she saying about me to them?”

  “What are you talking about, Edie?” he asked, sounding as if he had officially given up the fight. His crackling voice held no anger, only confusion.

  “Mikey told me this morning that Nana explained to them that I left because they were bad. What kinds of things is she telling them? Why would she say that? What would possess her to tell my children I left them because they were bad?”

  Donnie shook his head and looked to the ceiling as he exhaled slowly, puffing out his cheeks. It was what he did when he needed a moment to organize his thoughts. It was his way of gaining an extra few seconds before saying something.

  “Nana is your mom, Edie. They call my mom Gammy. So if Mikey told you that, he was talking about your mom. Trust me, my mom was sick to her stomach when you left, and she has done everything she could to help us out, but she would have never told them that. No matter what she felt for you after you left.”

  I was shocked and confused. “My mom? Why is she seeing them? I thought we decided a long time ago that we didn’t want the kids subjected to her negativity. You know what it was like for me with her. Why would you let her be around the kids and let her fill their minds with that?”

  “I didn’t have much of a choice, Edie. There were a few times I had to give in and let her watch them for me so I could go to work. So I could…deal with things. They don’t see her much, but she does call once a week to talk to them. And she has come around a few times. She was very adamant about helping out once you took off. I didn’t have much of a choice,” he explained in a harsh, desperate tone.

  I understood what he meant. I didn’t like it, but I understood it. And I couldn’t do anything about it. I had no right to judge him or to condemn him for the actions he was forced to take. My issues with my mother were mine, and they would be addressed with her and only her. I couldn’t take them out on Donnie for doing what he needed to in order to survive.

  Again, with my thoughts just floating around in my brain, shifting in no particular order, I decided to keep talking in order to prevent the silence from growing too large. “Livvy told me about Beth…well, kind of. I can assume you two broke up. If it’s because of me, trust me when I say I’m going to back away and let you be happy. I will be here for the kids, but you won’t have to worry about me getting in the middle of your relationship. You know…if that’s why you guys split up or something.” I rambled like an idiot, but stopped once Donnie started to laugh.

  “You say this while you’re standing in my bedroom. You realize this, don’t you? The irony of it all…you say you are only here for the kids, yet you’re standing in my room and the kids are asleep.”

  I opened my mouth to refute his argument, but the words wouldn’t come. I had no rebuttal to that; he was right. I could only shake my head and laugh with him, accepting the humor in it all.

  Donnie leaned forward and let his legs fall to the side. That was when I noticed the journal I had left in his mailbox, open next to him. I turned my head to look away, and found myself focusing on the cards and letters, opened on the table next to the door where I stood. Not only had he gotten them, but he’d also read them. I no longer had to wonder if he’d thrown them away without even looking at them.

  “Can we talk?” His deep voice cut through the stiff air, startling me.

  I looked back at him and noticed the desperate look on his face. He was no longer smiling or laughing; no humor was left in his expression. His eyes were dark, highlighted by the broken blood vessels that surrounded the deep blue. I wasn’t sure if I was ready to discuss the things I had written. I didn’t know if I had the strength to live through those dark days and come back out alive, knowing he was seeing everything as I had.

  I started to shake my head, letting him know that I wasn’t ready to talk, but he leaned closer and looked at me with pleading eyes, silently begging me to concede. The guilt made me give in, made me cave to the anguish that had consumed his expression. I moved closer and sat at the end of the bed. With the way his body leaned in, we were only about a foot apart, yet it seemed so much closer. Part of me regretted sitting on the bed, but I knew my legs wouldn’t hold me up much longer.

  With a long sigh, he began. “I wasn’t going to read it…any of it. But after this morning, I guess curiosity got the better of me. I wanted to see what you wrote about after leaving. But when I opened the journal, I realized it started ten months after you left.”

  “I started the first one about two months after…that one is locked away. No one needs to see the things in that one. The one you have is when I started healing. It’s when the fog began to lift.”

  “Healing?” he asked with a slightly higher voice. “This was you healing, Edie? Because what I read isn’t from a healing person. It’s from a very sad, lonely, depressed person. It’s from…not you. The person that wrote this isn’t the person I remembered you being.”

  I shrugged, not sure of what to say to that. “Then you really don’t want to see the first one. Because I look at the one you have, and I see a brighter person than the one that left here. I see a person that finally understands the implications of her actions. That was me healing. You don’t want to see me broken.”

  He opened the book, flipped a few pages, and started reading out loud. “I saw a family today at the store. A woman with her husband and three children. She was beautiful and strong—everything I wanted to be. Everything I want to be. I watched the way her husband looked at her, so much love in his eyes. I couldn’t help but wonder if that’s the way Donnie used to look at me when I wasn’t paying attention. She was so kind and patient with her kids, listening to them every time they spoke to her. It didn’t matter that they were rambling about candy bars and cheese, she paid attention to every spoken word and then answered them with more than a head nod. I teared up, worried that I had lost that with Livvy and the boys. The way the kids looked at her like she was their queen brought the storm cloud back, shadowing me with pain.

  “That was what I had always wanted. I never had that growing up. My dad couldn’t care less about my mom, and because of that, he was hardly around. I used to blame myself, thinking it was my fault he was absent, but I no longer do. Leaving made me realize it wasn’t my fault. It was his fault. It was something in him that caused him to turn his back on us. My mom? Lost in the grief of losing my dad and feeling as if she had given up her youth for a man that no longer loved her, she decided to rewind time and recapture the years she had lost. I hated her for that. Fucked up, right? I blamed myself for the one that left, but hated the one that stayed. But she hadn’t stayed, had she? She was there physically, most of the time, but in her head, she was long gone. I think that had a direct impact on me. I think that was worse than turning her back on me. But it created a determination within me. It caused me to set goals and dream big. It was the reason I craved a family…love. It was the reason I was so determined to find a man that would love me with his whole heart, to have lots of kids and love them with my whole heart. I wouldn’t do to them what my parents did to me.

  “But I did. I turned my back on them. I gave up. And it was the first time I finally understood my parents. Not that it made any of it right, but it allowed me to understand them. I understood clearly that my dad left because of him, and not because of me. I learned that because when I decide
d to leave, it was because of me. It was because of the emptiness I felt inside. I didn’t want my kids to see that. I didn’t want Donnie to see that and think I loved him any less than the day I met him. Because that wasn’t the truth. The truth was…I loved all of them more than life itself. The issue was…I didn’t care much about life at that time. I didn’t care if I was breathing, if I was dead or alive. I didn’t feel alive anymore. I felt dead. Empty. Suffocated and cold. I didn’t want to chance my children seeing me the way I had seen my mom. I refused to turn into her. REFUSED! And if I had to turn into my dad to keep from being my mother, then so be it.

  “The one thing I hadn’t expected when leaving was how I would feel now. How I would feel when I looked at a happy family and hated myself for what I did. When I left, I hadn’t anticipated the sun coming back out or the clouds moving away. I was so deep into depression that the thought of being normal again was so foreign to me. I didn’t even remember what normal felt like. And I still don’t. But at least I can reflect back on the days when Donnie and I were together, the first months and years of marriage, the day I found out I was pregnant with Livvy, and the day we brought her home and kind of remember what normal had felt like. I can think back to those days, when things were bright and happy and good, and it felt warm. It felt like the first day of spring, when winter was so harsh you couldn’t imagine what the heat of the sun felt like anymore. That’s what I hadn’t expected. And once I realized that, I realized it was too late to change anything.

  “So I rang up the family’s groceries and cried to myself. I’m sure they thought they chose the wrong line as I sniffled while scanning their items. I’m sure they didn’t believe me when I talked about my allergies and how they were acting up. But I didn’t really care. It wasn’t like they were the first family to see me cry and they won’t be the last.” He stopped reading, but I knew that wasn’t the end of that passage.