1
It’s Not About the Dang Drawer
I didn’t mean to say those words.
Let alone shout them.
But the second they fly out of my mouth, the house becomes a tomb. My husband Tanner, kneeling on the floor next to me, Allen wrench in hand, stony eyes on me. Our beautiful kids, Marcus and Joshua, sitting in front of the TV fighting over which video game to play next, now silent and peering at me over their shoulders, eyes wide. I’m pretty sure even the crickets holding their nightly meeting in the tall grass around the pond went dead cold.
Between me and my husband squats a piece of furniture we were in the middle of assembling by the back window—a shortwhite nightstand that looks like a four-legged marshmallow, one drawer in, the other on the floor by my knees. No matter what I’d do to the wheels or the metal track, the second drawer refused to slide in right.
It doesn’t fit. We didn’t build it properly.
Despite following instructions.
One, two, three, to the end.
It still won’t fit.
Now a stubborn drawer is the least of my concerns. The words I just shouted, they’re out there in the air now. I can’t possibly put them back into my mouth. Even the kids heard.
Tanner whips his hat off and rubs his short head of hair, his eyes on me. “Uh, Billy …?”
My glassy eyes snap to his. I panic. “Sorry. I … think I just …” The kids are still looking at me. What do I say? “Don’t worry. I think I … um … I think it’s just …gas.”
Tanner’s face twists. “What?”
“Gas. From dinner. Just had a bad cramp. I think I need—”
“Some Pepto?” suggests Joshua sweetly, our eleven-year-old, his eyes so cute and wide, my heart can just shatter all over the place.
“Yep, that’s right, a little cup of that will make it all better.” I’m off the floor the next instant. Tanner’s eyes are still on me. He knows damned well it isn’t Pepto I need. He heard the words, too. “Daddy is … gonna get himself some to gag on.”
“I love how it tastes,” moans Joshua with a grin, and now our family’s worst moment is turned into a commercial for the pink stuff, and where do you go with that?
It’s the look in Marcus’s eyes, our older one, fifteen—that cuts deepest. Even just after a year and a half, the kids are comfortable enough with us now that I can’t tuck my words under a rug and play them off as anything other than what they were. It’s unfair to them. Marcus, going into his junior year atSpruce High, as bright as he is, the boy notices everything. He’s observant, sometimes disturbingly so.
What am I going to do when he starts asking the real questions? What will I say?
How will I defend my outbursts?
Haven’t I ever thought once about how this might affect our beautiful kids?
Of course I have.
It’s the reason I’ve buried it all for this long.
But while little Joshua continues to think I’m mad over how our medicine tastes, I know there’s no more wool left to pull over Marcus’s bright, inquisitive eyes. I can’t protect the kids from the reality of things any more than I can protect myself.
I grip my stomach when it makes a sudden noise.
Or maybe it really is gas.
In a blink, I’m in the kitchen pretending to get the Pepto, but I’m just standing in front of a picture tacked onto the fridge with a banana magnet, taken at a beach on Dreamwood Isle—us and the boys. Tanner just peed on my foot because my clumsy ass stepped on a jellyfish. Marcus and Joshua were doubled over in laughter. I gritted my teeth and pretended to find it all funny, too, despite the stinging and how many times I insisted the peeing thing was just a myth.
How much of my life is spent pretending?
My hands are shaking, I notice. Not sure when that started.