8 I Was Screaming for Help

8

i was screaming for help

Danielle

We no longer have to pretend in front of friends and family that we’re trying to stay together. I can stop feeling like I’m victimizing myself, and I can put an end to the internal dialogue about a possible divorce. It’s the reality now.

Today is moving day and I’m the first to go, take my things, spend the night in the nesting apartment…alone. Secretly, I made a deal with myself to avoid calling it the “nesting apartment” out loud, it gives the implication that we are expecting a baby, and boy if that’s not off the mark. I don’t completely understand why sharing an apartment and going to and from the family home during the divorce process is called “bird nesting,” but I bet there’s some anthropological reason for the name, one I don’t even care to look up.

The idea was the first suggestion our therapist had proposed that actually made sense to me. Up until that point, she was always pushing us more toward staying together than divorcing. She had gotten irritated with me at our last counseling session four months ago, telling me, “Dani, I’m a marriage counselor, not a divorce counselor. You guys need to get a mediator. Try separating physically—get an apartment and go from there.”

It was the moment when both Alex and I finally showed some sign of surrender. We looked at each other, he blinked, and I said, “I guess that’s what we’ll do.” Of course we found ways to prolong that process as well, but here we are now, finally.

As I get dressed to head downstairs, I can hear the boys chatting with their dad in the kitchen. I’m dreading walking into the scene and interrupting their conversation, but I’m also anxious to get this whole process over with.

We had sat down with Noah and Ethan numerous times over the last two weeks to explain the looming divorce, to discuss their feelings, and to reassure them that it was not their fault, that we would always be a team for them. Throughout those conversations, I had done most of the talking, of course, while Alex sat back and nodded in agreement.

Noah’s reaction was expected. “Does this mean I get my own room now? I mean, you and Dad will share the master bedroom again, right? Just at different times? So the guest room or Nana’s old room…”

“No one is moving into Nana’s room,” I had said.

It was barricaded with boxes anyway. I normally didn’t have hoarder tendencies but when you watch a parent die in front of your eyes, it’s not an image easily erased from your psyche. You don’t want to continually have to revisit the room where it happened, so I made it off-limits. I intentionally filled it with junk to stuff the void of grief I felt, which was just another thing that irritated Alex.

“This is a four-bedroom house, Dani,” he had said in response to Noah’s comment. At that point Alex looked to Noah and said, “We’ll make it work. You’ll get your own room. ”

Ethan’s reaction to the news was different. He was quiet. He came up to me later in my bedroom and said, “Did you want this too…the divorce?”

I wondered what his perception was. We kept a lot from the kids but they were no strangers to our trivial arguments and the general sense of unrest in our house. Still, I felt they were too young to understand that the marriage type of love is not always forever and it’s not unconditional.

“Yes, I do, Ethan,” I had told him. He simply nodded and looked down. Was he looking for a hero and a villain? “There’s no bad guy in this story, babe.” I could barely choke the words out.

He had looked up at me, blinked, tears in his own eyes, and said, “Okay.”

I had hurt him by telling him the truth. Another parenting decision I would go on to question endlessly. Would it have been better to lie? To give him a narrative that would make the pill easier to swallow?

The conversation currently happening in the kitchen sounds light, so I take it as a cue to go down and get some coffee.

When I get to the bottom of the stairs, I look off to the left and notice the blinds in the front room are open. I try to remember if I left them that way the night before. It was one of my pet peeves that Alex would be seemingly oblivious to the blinds open at night on the front-facing windows. It made our house feel like a fishbowl to the neighborhood. I always closed them when it got dark and opened them in the morning, but they were open already.

As Ethan passes me on the stairs I turn to him and say, “Did you open the blinds in the front?”

“No, Dad did. Are you leaving soon?”

“In about an hour,” I say. “Why, you trying to get rid of me? ”

He laughs once and heads up the rest of the stairs. In the kitchen, Noah is wrapping up a conversation with Alex about space junk as I walk in. Noah looks up and scatters like a startled animal. Our kids are, understandably, in a constant state of avoidance when Alex and I are in the same room.

“Has he actually talked to you about what’s going on?” I say to Alex after I’m sure Noah is in his bedroom.

“Yeah, he asked me if the rules were going to be different when I was here alone with them,” Alex says without looking up.

He’s buttering an English muffin directly on the countertop. It’s disgusting and quickly forming a crumb-covered grease smudge on the granite.

I breathe deeply in and out of my nose. He glances up, “What?” he says.

“Nothing. Did you open the blinds?”

“Is that okay?” he snaps.

“You know it’s okay. I was just asking.”

With a mouth full of muffin he says, “Noah’s fine. He isn’t melodramatic, thank god.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” Without waiting for an answer, I continue, “Avoiding his feelings is not healthy for him.”

“Moping around can’t be any better.”

“This conversation is pointless.”

“As are many of our conversations.”

I choose to ignore him as I pour myself a cup of coffee. With the mug in one hand, I open the cabinet under the sink and reach for the Windex to clean Alex’s grease smudge. Then I hesitate.

I don’t have to worry about this shit anymore. I’m leaving, going to a place where there are no grease smudges, no crumbs on the counter, no derisive looks.

Alex is watching me. “You don’t have to worry about the grease and crumbs on the counter anymore, Dani. ”

The gift of mind reading comes with the long-term relationship territory. “Well, I will on Wednesday, won’t I?” I say.

“I’m sending the cleaning company from the clinic here every Wednesday morning to do a once-over before your scheduled noon arrival. They’ll also go to the apartment every Sunday morning to pretty up the place up for you, your highness.”

“How much is that costing?”

“Who cares, if it means I never have to hear you bitch at me again?”

Resigned, I say, “Great. I’m going to pack up the rest of my stuff and head to the apartment, then.”

As I leave the kitchen I glance back at Alex, who is happily chomping away on his muffin and staring at his phone, completely indifferent.

Once Alex agreed to get an apartment to share, things happened fast. He found one a block away from his office. I agreed based on the pictures and the next day it was a done deal. The apartment is a small one-bedroom, furnished in sterile grays…not exactly my style, but I would do my best to make it comfortable.

It’s been hours of packing and organizing when I finally shove the last suitcase and laundry basket into the back of my Jeep and head back into the house for one last box. It holds my record player and a stack of LPs I grabbed randomly from my collection. Alex and the boys are still upstairs as I head to the front door carrying the box.

“Danielle!” Alex yells from upstairs.

“What?”

“Was just checking to see if you were still here,” he says as he makes his way to the landing and looks down at me standing near the front door .

“I’m leaving in a few minutes. I’ll say goodbye,” I say, struggling to hold on to the heavy box.

“Wait a minute.” Alex comes down the stairs and approaches me. I set the box down.

“What?” I say, impatient.

“You’re taking the record player?”

“You’re kidding, right? I’m the only one who uses it. It’s mine. Yes, I’m taking it.”

He reaches down and flips through the stack of LPs in the box.

“And these records? The boys listen to these.”

“No they don’t. No one has used this thing for years. I want to get back into collecting. This was my collection. I had it before I even knew you.”

He holds up Bruce Springsteen, Born in the U.S.A. “This is mine. You hate Bruce,” he says.

“I do not hate him. Fine, take it out. Whatever.”

It’s true. That album is Alex’s, but the stunt he’s pulling right now has nothing to do with the record player or the albums, or goddamn Bruce Springsteen.

“What are you holding on to, Alex?” I say quietly. “It’s definitely not me.”

He looks up, a seriousness that is void of anger washes over him. “That room is not your mother’s, it wasn’t before she got sick and it’s not now that she has passed.”

“You’re seriously lacking a sensitivity chip. I don’t want to talk about that room right now.” I haven’t yet started crying, thankfully. “I’m taking the record player to the apartment. It’s not like I’m donating it. You will be there too, and you’re welcome to use it then.” A few beats of silence sit heavy between us. “I used to write on these LP sleeves, remember? ”

“I remember.”

Part of the collection was my father’s. He had started the tradition when he and my mom first got married. He would write a few sentences about what was going on in his life on the white LP sleeves. Every time he would play a song from that album, it brought the memory to the surface. Many of his notes were about Ben and me growing up. Things like, “Ben took his first steps today. Irene caught him just before he tumbled into the coffee table. Supermom!”

The year Ben died, my parents divorced. They couldn’t recover from the loss. My mother became hardened and bitter…mean. She was verbally abusive toward my father, toward everyone. But my father had been checked out completely at that point anyway. He’s existed in some alternate universe ever since. It’s a place where there is no love and therefore no chance to lose it. Even though ten years ago he moved less than a half an hour away from us, I only see him once or twice a year, on a holiday or birthday, where he’ll stop in, have a meal, leave a gift, and go home. He barely knows my children, but every month he deposits two hundred dollars into their college funds. It’s too hard for him to be close to us. He never remarried, he’s just alone, going to his job as an insurance adjuster, punching the clock, eating, and sleeping. Barely existing. Even music is too strong of a reminder for him, so he gave me his entire record collection.

I continued the tradition for years, making little notes on the LP covers about what was going on in my life. Those memories are forever attached to the songs. Most notes naturally involved Alex or the boys. It was my thing and my collection and Alex knows that.

“This is how I fell in love with writing,” I tell him. “By making these notes on the inside covers, remember? ”

“Yeah, I remember, Danielle. You did that for a few years. So you think it’s gonna help you get over your writer’s block?”

“I don’t have writer’s block anymore. I wrote a pilot script in one day two weeks ago.”

“I’m sure we’ll hear about it endlessly until you write something else.”

“You have no limit, no governor, do you? By the way, I wrote the notes in the LP covers for more than a few years. This holds meaning for me. I’m sorry you are a shell and have no feelings and that makes you incapable of understanding mine.”

“Dani, I do have feelings. I’m mainly irritated about something else and this is just adding to it.”

“Please, do share, I’m all ears.”

“That room, Danielle! We have to do something with your mother’s things.”

“Go ahead. Knock yourself out. By the way, I won’t let you buy me out of this house. I love this house.”

“So do I,” he says.

“Are we gonna go to war over it?”

“We can afford to split the mortgage for now. Let’s cross that bridge when the boys go to college.”

“The nesting apartment is temporary,” I say.

“We’ll figure it out!” he snaps.

I pick up the box and open the door to head to the car.

“Stop! So you’re gonna be okay with me clearing out that room so Noah can have it? You’re not gonna be pissed?”

“It’s fine,” I say quietly, momentarily forgetting that Alex can barely hear.

“What?”

“It’s fine!” I scream.

“Why are you shouting?”

Here come the tears. “I’m leaving, okay? Do whatever you want. Put my mother’s stuff in boxes in the garage and I’ll go through them when I’m back.”

“Now you’re crying?”

“Of course I’m crying.” I set the box down on the porch. Alex is standing in the doorway. “You act as though I shouldn’t mourn her because you two didn’t get along.”

“She didn’t get along with anyone, including you! She was a monster, Danielle. She was horrible to you, to the boys, to your father. I put up with it for so long while you made excuses for her.”

Alex is leaning against the wall with his hands in his pockets. His body language and lack of expression on his face makes him seem like a sociopath.

“Can you imagine what her life was like? Her only son dies suddenly, then her husband leaves her a month later? I was all she had.” I wipe tears from my face and pull it together.

“She should have treated you that way, but she didn’t. She hit you, threw food at you, called you stupid. She called our sons pussies, Danielle. Her own grandsons. She said they would be weak like their father…me! She told me that you settled for me, that you never loved me, and that you cheated on me all the time. What kind of mother does that?”

“One with early onset Alzheimer’s, Alex. One who is swept away in her own delusions. It wasn’t long after those outbursts that she didn’t even know her own name, let alone who the hell we were. Have you no compassion?”

“Each time I defended you. ‘She wouldn’t cheat on me,’ I’d tell her when she was on one of her kicks, but she wouldn’t stop there. Do you know how many times she told me that you and Lars belonged together? That he was your ‘intellectual equal’? I mean, it wasn’t enough that Entertainment Weekly was saying you two were sleeping together. I had to have your mother rub it in my face too, all while I was helping take care of her physically and financially.”

“I didn’t cheat on you! We’ve been over this. She was sick and Hollywood gossip isn’t real. You know that!”

“One time she actually told me Lars had a bigger dick than me.” He laughs maniacally while I cringe.

“That was less than three months before she died,” I say.

“Does he?”

“What?”

“Have a bigger dick than me?”

“How would I know? How would my mother know that? You’re being ridiculous. You know all that Hollywood stuff is bullshit!”

“Maybe I don’t know that. Maybe I’m not smart enough. Not your intellectual equal .”

Emotionally spent, I say, “Maybe you aren’t. Lars never even made a pass at me. He thought I was happily married because that is how I acted. I could have won an award for that performance.”

Alex rolls his eyes. “Now you’re defending his virtue?”

“His virtue? His career was trashed. He was accused of being a misogynist at the height of the Me Too movement and he’s literally the most fair and progressive person I know.”

“He sounds great. Anyway, it was you that was being accused of being unprofessional, remember?” He smirks, arrogantly satisfied with his comeback. He knows how sensitive I am to the topic.

“Let’s get something straight. My professional reputation…his career, they were torched to the ground and smeared all over the internet because of one woman’s jealous accusations and her own harebrained imagination. We were stripped of our dignity. I was strong enough to fight back and that’s why I’m still treading water in this business, but Lars was not. He’s now a shut-in at some hippy freaking commune in Northern California! Because of me, Alex! Me! I feel a tremendous amount of guilt for something I’m not even responsible for.”

“You never think about us. It’s always your career, his career, your mother, her feelings, and on and on…”

“I could easily say the same about you and the fact that you avoid this house. At least I’m here.”

I can’t believe the day is already coming to an end. It’s getting dark out and I’m still fighting with Alex on the porch.

“You took care of her despite her endless criticism, her abuse, and her unyielding cynicism. She was toxic, Dani. And you still defend Lars despite being accused of having an affair with him. It’s disgusting.”

“I defended Lars and I took care of my mother because it was the right thing to do. Is this why we’re still fighting? You need me to apologize…again? For something out of my control? Okay, fine. I’m sorry about my mother. And I’m sorry I wasn’t more considerate of your feelings with the Lars thing. It’s confusing because you don’t appear to have any feelings.”

With that he turns on his heel and heads back into the house. Just before shutting the door, he says, “It’s exhausting, Dani. I can’t wait for this to be over.”

“Same!” I grab the box and head down the steps to the driveway. I’m holding it together all the way to the car. I drive away as the picture of strength and resolve, but I get exactly one block down the road before I pull over and start sobbing.

It’s hard to pinpoint how I feel. I don’t understand why Alex is pushing back now after weeks of being seemingly detached. I thought he would have been shoving me out the door.

I look down at my phone to see a text from him only a minute after I left. The argument continues …

Alex: What about dating, Dani?

Me: Dating? You’re kidding me? What are you asking me?

Alex: Are we gonna set some ground rules?

Me: You in a big hurry to jump back in the deep end?

Alex: I’m asking to avoid another huge fight.

Me: Do whatever you want. The apartment is off-limits though. OFF-LIMITS! I don’t want to see or hear about it either. You’re a piece of work. The ink isn’t yet dry. Twenty-two goddamn years!