by Kelly Rimmer
I hurt my children today—not with the knife, but with the threat of it. My frustration and irritability and this pervasive misery drowned me in that moment and I was hopelessly out of control. Even after all these years, I don’t actually know what those moments are...the moments when I can’t outrun the bad thoughts. I don’t see images with my eyes, more with my mind, but they swamp me anyway. Are they hallucinations? Visions? Prophecies? Whatever those thoughts are, they are vivid and real and worst of all, they are stronger than I am.
I set the knife down on the cracked white vinyl of the table and I stepped away from it. I spoke to my children in a voice that had become artificially high with panic, and I called them “my darlings” because I always call them that when I’m well, and I gently ushered them out to play. Once they were all in the yard, I locked the back door and sank to the linoleum and curled up in a little ball—my back pressed heavily against the door as if the kids could push hard enough to break the lock.
They were fine out there at first, climbing the pear tree and riding their tricycles, but the hours went on and I just kept thinking about the knife and the frustration and their scared little faces, and I couldn’t convince myself to get up. Soon, Beth was crying at the door because she was hungry again. My fear and my rage had faded, but a paralyzing guilt and numbness had taken their place. I stayed on the floor, and when I didn’t answer their increasingly insistent knocks and calls, Tim climbed through a window, fetched some bread from the kitchen and ferried it out to his siblings. He’s such a good boy. He deserves so much better than the life I give him.
What scared me wasn’t the vision or my rage or the mood I was in. It was how unexpected the resurgence of the madness was. I’ve walked this journey before—twice before, and the end doesn’t go like this. With my first two births, as soon as I felt better, I really was better—there was no sinking in and out of funks once the babies were toddlers and the darkness had cleared. So was this just a one-off bad day, or is it a sign that I’ll never truly be able to trust in my stability, not ever again? How exactly is a person supposed to live if she can never trust in her sanity?
That’s why I’m sitting down with this notepad tonight. I’m hoping and praying that once these thoughts are on paper, they will break the endless echo chamber of my own mind. Left to my own devices my thoughts get louder and louder and louder, until I can’t eat or sleep or do anything except think.
I need to prevent the spiral that leads to the quicksand thoughts, because once I’m submerged, I don’t know how to climb out.
THREE
Beth
1996
The next morning I park my car in Chiara and Wallace’s driveway on Yarrow Point. A few years ago they sold the family home in Bellevue where Hunter and his brother, Rowan, grew up, and we all thought the plan was to downsize. Instead, they bought this place—two magnificent, opulent stories on the shores of Lake Washington.
I have no idea how long they’ll live here—it’s hardly the most practical house for an aging couple. The house is beautiful and glamorous, but it’s certainly not child friendly. Rowan’s girls are old enough to navigate the various hazards, old enough to stay away from the unfenced waterfront when they play in the backyard. It’ll be years before Noah reaches that level of maturity—how will we keep him safe?
This is one of the many things I’ve been worrying about that I didn’t yet need to worry about, and also, one of the many things I’ve been worrying about over the past few months that might just be worked out in a two-minute conversation—if I could only motivate myself to start it.
“Good morning, you two!” Chiara calls as I let myself in with my key. Chiara’s house always smells amazing—there’s a lingering scent of vanilla and coffee in the air. She rises from her overstuffed leather chair to greet us, and my gaze skims over the roaring fire on the open hearth, and the steaming cup that sits on the edge of her coffee table.
Yep. Babyproofing this house is definitely going to be impossible.
“Hi, Chiara,” I say as I sit the diaper bag down by the hall table. “Thanks again for doing this.”
“It’s nothing,” she says, waving a hand toward me. Chiara retired a few years back and sold her restaurant, but Wallace will have left for work hours ago. He’s a lawyer who works in Seattle just like Hunter, except Hunter works in family law at a very small firm, and Wallace is a partner at one of the big commercial firms...hence the multimillion-dollar home. “I love spending time with our little man. Did you bring milk?”
“There’s enough for the whole day,” I say, motioning toward the baby bag. Chiara looks from the bag to Noah in my arms, then offers a cautious smile.
“Beth, I just have to ask you. How on earth will you keep up with pumping milk if you’re busy at your father’s place all day?”
“I’ve managed fine so far when you’ve babysat in the past.” I shrug.
“Yes, but that was only here and there... Hunter said you’re planning on spending a lot of time at your dad’s over the next few weeks. I’m just worried about you, sweetheart. You’re making all of this so much harder than it has to be.”
“It’s just better this way. I’ve got the pump in the car. I’ll just stop to express the milk while I’m at Dad’s, then bring it here for you for the next day. It’ll be easy.”
“Not nearly as easy as just weaning him. He’s five months old now. That’s plenty long enough. No one breastfed back in my day, and look, your generation turned out just fine.”
“I’ll think about it,” I say, even though I’ve already made up my mind. The only part of parenting I’ve mastered so far is breastfeeding. It’s the one thing that’s working, the only way to get Noah to sleep sometimes...the only reason I remember to hold him some days. The reality is, breastfeeding is providing all the structure to my parenting at the moment and I’m pretty sure if I remove that, the entire operation is going to collapse.
“But we could pick up a can of formula at the supermarket, and it will just make your life so much easier—”
“I said I’d think about it, Chiara. That’s the best I can do.” I cut her off, and her face falls. She closes her mouth delicately, then offers me a weak smile and motions to take Noah from my arms. I hand him over, then turn to leave.
“Aren’t you going to say goodbye to your son?” Chiara prompts me, pointedly but not unkindly. I squeeze my eyes closed, take a deep breath, then turn back to her, smile fixed in place.
“Of course. Silly me. Goodbye, Noah,” I say, then I brush a quick kiss on his forehead before I escape out the front door, into the safe silence of my car. As I reverse into the street, I don’t look back. I know Chiara will be sitting by that fire, toasty and warm with Noah on her lap, staring down at him with adoration, cooing and talking and generally just loving on him.
When my friends meet Chiara, they inevitably tell me I’ve hit the mother-in-law jackpot. She’s caught up in a passionate love affair with cooking so she’s constantly preparing the most amazing food. Even so, she’s humble about her culinary skills and is always enthusiastic at my own cooking attempts, even when I inevitably under or overcook the dish. Chiara is generous and gentle and kind, even if she can be just a little overbearing sometimes. She’s patient and sweet, and she seems to genuinely like me, which I find to be very strange, considering I’m still not sure how I’m supposed to relate to the woman. Is your mother-in-law supposed to be a friend? Like a close aunt, if your aunts had a vested interest in your spouse? A parental figure...a second mother?
I think that last one is why I’m still so confused. While I hold a handful of precious memories of Grace Walsh, I hardly had the chance to know her. I do have a few memories of Dad’s aunt Nina, who helped care for us for a few years after Grace died, but she was old and frail and distant—often caring for us with the help of one of the babysitters Dad hired.
I’ve never really had a mother
figure, and if the dynamic that exists between Chiara and me is what a motherly relationship should feel like, it’s bewilderingly alien to me, even after a decade.
In all those years Hunter and I spent desperately trying to achieve parenthood, I just wish we’d stopped even once to consider the possibility that a motherless woman might not know how to be a mother.
I stop off for some packing and cleaning supplies, then head straight to the house. I park in the drive, and as I begin to walk toward the front door, I take a trip down memory lane. I remember the way that Tim and Jeremy dumped their bikes on the path as they ran. I remember sitting on the steps with Ruth eating Popcicles late on hot July nights. I remember kissing Jason White, right on the stoop after our first date.
I remember opening the front door after that kiss, and finding Dad standing in the hallway, lurking just where he thought I wouldn’t notice him. And when I ran to the toilet and threw up, he was right on my heels, making sure I was okay. I’ve always been a nervous vomiter. That night with Jason was probably one of the most terrifying nights of my life—he was the student council president, popular and handsome, creative and clever... And there I was—pale, quiet, way out of my depth. It was a great kiss as far as first kisses go, but it’s not all that surprising that I lost my dinner afterward.
Dad and I sat in the kitchen after I emerged from the bathroom. He’d perfected a recipe for apple cake that summer, and every time we ate our way through a cake, he’d immediately whip up another. That was one of Dad’s quirks—he wasn’t the world’s greatest cook, so when he got the hang of a dish, we’d eat it ad nauseam until he found a new recipe. That night he’d just finished baking, so the kitchen air was heavy with cinnamon and apple and I perched beside Dad at the breakfast bar for a talk. I nibbled at my cake and sipped the overly sweet tea he liked to make in times of crisis, and in his subtle way, Dad made sure I was okay. He was a man ahead of his time when it came to parenting. He made sure that Ruth and I understood that we were our own people—he taught us to stand up for ourselves and to make decisions that we could be proud of.
As I step into the house now, I open my mouth to call out to greet him—then I remember that he’s gone. I feel that knowledge right in my chest—a dull ache that I know I’ll have to adjust to because Dad isn’t coming home, and the pain is going to get much, much worse before it gets better.
I walk along the hallway, peering into the rec room on the left, the study on the right, and then the massive, window-lined living area at the back of the house looms before me. It’s as tidy as it always is. I can’t ever remember seeing this space messy, except on Christmas mornings. Especially since Dad retired, he liked to run a tight ship. He baked his own bread, made his own beer, grew an extensive garden in the backyard...and everything always had a place, and everything was always in its place. Even this past year when language began to deteriorate, he only became more regimented—almost compulsive. On the one hand, that was going to make packing up the house a lot easier.
On the other hand, moving those things from their special place, putting them into boxes and giving them to charity or distributing them to my siblings...that is going to feel all kinds of wrong.
But it has to be done. So I make myself a hot cocoa, I set up some boxes and then begin the task of dismantling my childhood home.
It’s not long before I have a plan in place to pack up Dad’s house. I’ll work through the bedrooms and the attic over the next few days, then deal with the living areas after Christmas.
I start with the main bathroom because it’s the least nostalgic place in the house. I imagine the real estate listing as I clear out the extra shelves Dad installed over the years. Unique and much loved family home on a quiet, leafy street. Five generously sized bedrooms and three large living areas. Generous storage. Actually, so much storage, it’s bordering on ludicrous.
In the end, I pack every movable item in that bathroom into boxes, and then marker in hand, I take a deep breath and write Trash on every single one. I have to be ruthless with this process, or my siblings and I are going to drown in needless memorabilia and maybe nostalgia, too.
One room down already, I decide I’ll reward myself by wandering through the rest of the house and daydreaming a little. My bedroom was the closest to Dad’s, probably because I was the youngest and likely still waking up at night when we moved in. There are posters of The Monkees curled and yellowed but still fixed to the wall, and the duvet cover on the bed is a ghastly orange, green and aqua pattern that I remember falling headlong in love with when I was fifteen. My shelves are all full of what I suspect will be intensely dusty books.
I wander into Ruth’s old bedroom next. Her walls are bare—she was never one for obsessing over bands or movie stars. There aren’t any books in Ruth’s room—instead, there are half-finished wooden creations. Dad was nervous about a teenage girl taking on a carpentry apprenticeship in the seventies, but Ruth being Ruth there was no deterring her, and it turned out she didn’t care one bit about being the only woman on the team for most of her career.
Jeremy’s bedroom is by far the most chaotic. His shelves are lined with rocks and gemstones, and even a few vials of dust he’d deemed necessary to keep after research trips. Jeremy lived at home far longer than any of the rest of us because he commuted right up until he finished his undergraduate degree. He had no interest in supporting himself with a part-time job as the rest of us did during college. Instead, he was content to live with Dad for free and use the hour-long commute each way for reading time. Dad always said that if Jeremy hadn’t fallen in love with science, he’d probably have wound up in jail. Jez had made something of a career of mischief until he belatedly found some ambition when he reached his sophomore year of high school. It’s fair to say that the only discipline my brother has ever taken to is of the academic variety.
Tim’s bedroom is going to be the easiest to clean out. Much like Tim himself, it’s orderly and neat. He’s the oldest, and he’s always taken a somewhat parental role over the rest of us. I can remember him threatening to ground me when I was nine or ten because I hadn’t taken my dirty clothes to the laundry room so he could wash them. My parents had us in quick succession, and Tim is only three years older than I am, but he always related to us as if he were the adult in the group.
I don’t go into Dad’s bedroom. I’m not ready to think about that room being empty. Instead, I head to the stairs that lead to the attic.
The massive attic was one of the most unique features of our family home. It was unfinished storage space when we moved in, but Dad converted it into a huge, usable room that runs the entire length and breadth of the house. There are peaked windows all along the walls, a high cathedral ceiling, and highly polished floorboards on the floor, dotted with several mismatched rugs that had been purchased over time in attempts to reduce the echo in the room. When he retired, Dad converted this space into his art studio, but as his heart function faded, so did his ability to walk up the stairs, and I’m pretty sure he hasn’t painted in over a year. As I mount the final steps, I wonder if I should take some brushes and paints with me when I visit him tomorrow.
I put my hand on the doorknob and turn it, then bump into the door—completely caught off guard when it doesn’t budge at all. I twist the handle hard, and push my shoulder against the door, but when this makes absolutely no difference, I look down at the lock and frown. This is a new handle—and it sports a seriously heavy-duty deadlock.
But why would he need to lock the attic? Dad must have installed this lock when he lived alone—otherwise we would have noticed. Was he locking himself in, or locking the world out? It was almost certainly during the period when we didn’t realize he was developing dementia. I can’t stand the thought that Dad might have been afraid of something and completely alone with that fear.
There’s no avoiding Dad’s bedroom now—it’s the logical place to find the key. I wander back down t
he stairs to his room but I pause at the door, then take a deep breath and force myself to go inside.
Here, more than anywhere, I feel his absence. The room smells like Dad—his aftershave and deodorant linger in the air. This scent is warm hugs on sad days, and laughter over the breakfast bar, and suffering through the sheer boredom of the old black-and-white movie marathons he so loved to inflict upon us on rainy weekends.
Dad. Oh, God, Dad, how am I ever going to survive without you?
My sadness swells again, but I can’t let it distract me—I have to focus on finding the key. Dad’s furnishings have always been about function and comfort, with no consideration for style, and that’s never been more evident than when I consider his bedroom. The dresser doesn’t match the bed frame; the curtains are the tattered remains of a coarse, cream-and-brown gauze.
I pull the curtains open to let some sunshine in and turn to survey the room. Every surface is pristine; not a speck of dust can be found. I open drawers and find perfectly folded clothes, exactly in the right place, but I looked through these same drawers last week when I was packing for Dad and I didn’t notice any loose keys. Then again, I wasn’t actually looking for a key, so I’ll have to search again.
My efforts become steadily more vigorous, but I’m trying not to make a mess, as if Dad might find me rifling through his things. After a while, though, the reality sinks in that Dad is likely never coming back to this room, and I begin to take clothes and objects out of drawers and shelves and to rest them haphazardly on his bed. When I’ve searched his entire room, I shift my attentions to the rest of the house.
