years doesn’t quite constitute regular, Justin. Oh, shut up.
The driver studies Justin now. “You’re on TV?” He narrows his eyes. “I don’t recognize you.”
“Do you watch the show?”
“No.”
Well, then.
Justin rolls his eyes. He throws off his suit jacket, opens another of his shirt buttons, and lowers the window. His hair sticks to his forehead. Still. A few weeks have gone by, and he hasn’t been to the barber. He blows the strands out of his eyes. They stop at a red light, and Justin looks to his left. A hair salon.
“Hey, would you mind pulling over for just a few minutes? I won’t be long.”
“Look, Conor, don’t worry about it. Stop apologizing,” I say into the cell phone tiredly. He exhausts me. Every little word with him drains me. “Dad is here with me now, and we’re going to get a taxi to the house together, even though I’m perfectly capable of sitting in a car by myself.”
We’re outside the hospital, and Dad has hailed a cab and now holds the door open for me. I’m finally going home, but I don’t feel the relief I was hoping for. There’s nothing but dread. I dread meeting people I know and having to explain what has happened, over and over again. I dread walking into my house and having to face the half-decorated nursery. I dread having to get rid of the nursery, having to replace it with a spare bed and fill the wardrobes t h a n k s f o r t h e m e m o r i e s / 5 3
with my own overflow of bags and shoes I’ll never wear. I dread having to go to work instead of taking the leave I had planned. I even dread seeing Conor. I dread going back to a loveless marriage with no baby to distract us. I know it would be common sense for me to want my husband to come rushing home to me—in fact, for my husband to want to come rushing home to me—but there are many buts in our marriage. And to behave the right way, to do the adult thing, feels wrong right now; I don’t want anybody around me. I’ve been poked and prodded physically and psychologically. I want to be on my own to grieve. I want to feel sorry for myself without sympathetic words and clinical explanations. I want to be illogical, self-pitying, self-examining, bitter and lost, for just a few more days, please, world, and I want to do it alone. As I said, that is not unusual in our marriage. Conor’s an engineer. He travels abroad to work for months before coming home for one month and then going off again. I used to get so used to my own company and routine that for the first week of him being home I’d be irritable and wish he’d go back. Now that irritability stretches to the entire month of his being home. And it’s become glaringly obvious I’m not alone in that feeling.
I always thought our marriage could survive anything as long as we both tried. But then I found myself having to try to try. I dug beneath the new layers of complexities we’d created over the years to get to the beginning of the relationship. What was it, I wondered, that we had then that we could revive now? What was the thing that could make two people want to spend every day of the rest of their lives together? Ah, I found it. It was a thing called love. A small, simple word. If only it didn’t mean so much, our marriage would be flawless.
My mind wandered a lot while I was lying in that hospital bed. At times it stalled in its wandering, like when a person enters a room and then forgets what for. It stood alone, dumbstruck. 5 4 / C e c e l i a A h e r n
Sometimes, when staring at the pink walls, I thought of nothing but of the fact that I was staring at pink walls. On one occasion while my mind was wandering far, I dug deep to find a memory of when I was six years old and had a favorite tea set given to me by my grandmother Betty. She kept it in her house for me to play with when I came over on Saturdays, and during the afternoons, when my grandmother was “taking tea”
with her friends, I would wear one of my mother’s pretty
The driver studies Justin now. “You’re on TV?” He narrows his eyes. “I don’t recognize you.”
“Do you watch the show?”
“No.”
Well, then.
Justin rolls his eyes. He throws off his suit jacket, opens another of his shirt buttons, and lowers the window. His hair sticks to his forehead. Still. A few weeks have gone by, and he hasn’t been to the barber. He blows the strands out of his eyes. They stop at a red light, and Justin looks to his left. A hair salon.
“Hey, would you mind pulling over for just a few minutes? I won’t be long.”
“Look, Conor, don’t worry about it. Stop apologizing,” I say into the cell phone tiredly. He exhausts me. Every little word with him drains me. “Dad is here with me now, and we’re going to get a taxi to the house together, even though I’m perfectly capable of sitting in a car by myself.”
We’re outside the hospital, and Dad has hailed a cab and now holds the door open for me. I’m finally going home, but I don’t feel the relief I was hoping for. There’s nothing but dread. I dread meeting people I know and having to explain what has happened, over and over again. I dread walking into my house and having to face the half-decorated nursery. I dread having to get rid of the nursery, having to replace it with a spare bed and fill the wardrobes t h a n k s f o r t h e m e m o r i e s / 5 3
with my own overflow of bags and shoes I’ll never wear. I dread having to go to work instead of taking the leave I had planned. I even dread seeing Conor. I dread going back to a loveless marriage with no baby to distract us. I know it would be common sense for me to want my husband to come rushing home to me—in fact, for my husband to want to come rushing home to me—but there are many buts in our marriage. And to behave the right way, to do the adult thing, feels wrong right now; I don’t want anybody around me. I’ve been poked and prodded physically and psychologically. I want to be on my own to grieve. I want to feel sorry for myself without sympathetic words and clinical explanations. I want to be illogical, self-pitying, self-examining, bitter and lost, for just a few more days, please, world, and I want to do it alone. As I said, that is not unusual in our marriage. Conor’s an engineer. He travels abroad to work for months before coming home for one month and then going off again. I used to get so used to my own company and routine that for the first week of him being home I’d be irritable and wish he’d go back. Now that irritability stretches to the entire month of his being home. And it’s become glaringly obvious I’m not alone in that feeling.
I always thought our marriage could survive anything as long as we both tried. But then I found myself having to try to try. I dug beneath the new layers of complexities we’d created over the years to get to the beginning of the relationship. What was it, I wondered, that we had then that we could revive now? What was the thing that could make two people want to spend every day of the rest of their lives together? Ah, I found it. It was a thing called love. A small, simple word. If only it didn’t mean so much, our marriage would be flawless.
My mind wandered a lot while I was lying in that hospital bed. At times it stalled in its wandering, like when a person enters a room and then forgets what for. It stood alone, dumbstruck. 5 4 / C e c e l i a A h e r n
Sometimes, when staring at the pink walls, I thought of nothing but of the fact that I was staring at pink walls. On one occasion while my mind was wandering far, I dug deep to find a memory of when I was six years old and had a favorite tea set given to me by my grandmother Betty. She kept it in her house for me to play with when I came over on Saturdays, and during the afternoons, when my grandmother was “taking tea”
with her friends, I would wear one of my mother’s pretty
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