He’ll fall asleep with his once-brilliant, now useless head on the edge of the table, neck bent awkwardly, crippled from the weight of too many thoughts. I don’t help your son back into the warmth of our bed anymore. I haven’t slept beside him since your diagnosis.
Dear Mrs. Evans,
By the time you read this, I’ll be far away. Three-hundred miles far. Daniel and I will have just moved into a house in Detroit, where everything will be set up, as he insisted we unpack the boxes immediately upon arriving. I will have dropped Audrey and Mitch off for their first day at a new school, and you will have just eaten the same lunch you always eat, at the same time, on the same tray. By the time you read this, Audrey will have asked—at least six times this week, no doubt—why Grandma can’t come over anymore.
She’ll have asked where all the pictures of you went; why we never talk about you. And Daniel, out of grief, weakness, or hope, will tell her you’re dead. But instead, you’re above ground. Today will be like every other pointless day. After receiving this letter, you will be ushered down the hall to your room by a young nurse named Cindy. You’ll call her a bitch. You don’t mean it—you never used to curse—but you will. You don’t care about her, her low wages, her birthday. She’s nameless, just like your husband, your son, his children. Just like me. Cindy will roll her eyes at you, which will startle you into existence. You’ll sit up in your bed, pausing for less than a second, lost in time, the glimmer of a memory tugging at your mind. You notice her eyes. They look like mine. Hazel. Your favorite eyes, the color of honey, of fresh earth, of beginnings, you said. “If I ever get sick like that,” you told me one Christmas Eve, after watching The Notebook for the hundredth time, “don’t just hole me up somewhere. If I don’t remember you, just pull the plug. Or, if they won’t let you, kill me yourself. Shove me into traffic, lead me into the river up the road, I don’t care. Whatever works.” You held my hands in yours, looking more serious than I wanted you to, and said, “I’m depending on you.” By the time you finish reading this, Daniel will be on his tenth glass of his homemade beer. He’ll have convinced himself, while sitting there alone at our counter, that he’s just a regular beer-man. That he’s simply taste-testing his home-brews, a necessary part of creating the perfect stout. He’ll write down a few arbitrary alterations on a napkin: “less hops,” “more water.” Who’s he trying to fool? He’ll fall asleep with his once-brilliant, now useless head on the edge of the table, neck bent awkwardly, as if crippled from the weight of too many thoughts. I don’t help your son back into the warmth of our bed anymore. I haven’t slept beside him since your diagnosis. “Mia, what’s happening?” You looked at me, confused, knee-deep in water, black mud melting under your toes. We’d finally made it to that river. Your nightgown was soaked, and when the pebbles beneath your feet ripped you from your constant reverie, thrusting you into your soul, you screamed my name. Over and over and over again. With that pitiful, twisted look on your face. I stood at the bank and waited.
The minutes flowed past us, splashed us, begged one of us to move. By the time you go to sleep tonight, I’ll have cleaned the new house twice. I’ll have played your Bruce Springsteen record a few times over while I dusted, especially that one song at the end of the track. I won’t cry. I’ll just sing. Sometimes it’s like someone took a knife, baby, edgy and dull, and cut a six inch valley through the middle of my soul. I don’t cry anymore. By the time you wake up tomorrow, the world will have started again, and everyone will know everyone. Our dreams will have ended, lives resumed, and your world will go on spinning, too. It will, but you won’t know yourself, no matter how hard you try. By the time you eat your breakfast tomorrow, you’ll remember that I left you all alone. You’ll remember the sounds of that quiet morning, when I tugged at your wet arms and breathed life into your still mouth as you laid unconscious and old in dirt. You’ll remember the feeling of my hair between your wrinkled fingers, the touch of my silent lips against your head.
With love