“I’d love one,” she sighed a little out of breath. She dropped her oversized bright orange purse on my kitchen counter and slid onto a barstool next to Lucy. “Hey little girl,whatchyaup to?”
“Coloring a picture,” Lucy replied in her sweet four-year-old voice.
“Can I help?” Emma asked, already picking up a crayon.
“Just don’t use green. Wehatethe color green,” Lucy emphasized.
I cleared my throat and turned my back on them. That was my terrible influence and obsession with her daddy’s eyes. It was unfair to take out my trauma on the kids, but I didn’t know how to stop.
“For now,” Emma agreed. “But I bet we learn to like it again.”
“No psychobabble this morning,please!” I begged. I poured my sister her cup of coffee and handed it to her along with the creamer. She liked her coffee insanely sweet, and I wasn’t even going to try to guess her creamer-to-coffee ratio.
“What happened?” she asked in her knowing, grownup voice that I still had a hard time taking seriously. She was my little sister, a good six years younger than me and a complete flake. But ever since Grady, she had actually stepped up to the plate and been a huge support system for me. I wouldn’t be functioning today if it weren’t for her.
“I didn’t hug Abby when I dropped her off,” I admitted and the tears were already falling. Hot mess did not begin to cover the train wreck I had become.
“Alright, start at the beginning.” She pulled off her gauzy infinity scarf and settled in for the duration of my tale.
She was still getting her masters in counseling, so her schedule allowed her to stop by during the day and help me out. She was my saving grace in so many ways, but adult conversation was high on the list.
“Abby left the house this morning without telling me. I found her swimming laps in the new neighbor’s pool.” My anger still simmered under the surface, but more than that, the fear of almost losing her was choking me and I could barely breathe through the panic.
“Your sister is such a little fish,” Emma looked down at Lucy and giggled.
“Don’t make jokes,Em. She’s only six. Anything could have happened to her and I didn’t even know she left the house!” I stared into the black depths of my coffee and sniffled back more frustrated tears.
“Liz, you cannot keep blaming yourself for not being both parents. Youareenough. You’re everything these kids need.” She smiled at me sympathetically and reached across to pat my hand. These were coping/comforting techniques she picked up from school and I found them mildly obnoxious.
I pulled my hand away from my sister’s compassionate grip and looked at Lucy. She colored happily for the moment, but I knew this would be another picture added to the pile I was supposed to “keep for Daddy.” The daddy she was convinced was just vacationing to heaven. The daddy she was positive wouldn’t leave his family forever. The daddy that should be walking through the front door any moment.
I wasn’t the only one struggling with denial.
The cold hard truth was that I wasn’t enough. Ihad never beenenough. My marriage was a partnership built on mutual love and shared responsibility. The house had run as smoothly as the chaos of four little ones would allow, but we ran ittogether.
Grady had always been a doting father. He would get up early with the kids, make holidays, important days at school and birthdays so unbelievably special for them, and most of all, he met me halfway with discipline. He wasn’t a perfect man, and our marriage had been anything but.
I knew that. I told myself that often because it was too easy to idealize our relationship into utopic perfection. And imagining our life as perfect was a straight spiral into the dismal abyss of despair. But life had been good- really,reallygood, and easier and happy.
And now we were just barely surviving.
“So what happened with Abby?” Emma prompted.
“I couldn’t get her out of the pool. She was being difficult like usual. Finally the guy next door found us and lured her out with a Pop-tart. By then, we were late for school. I had to walk all the children inside and stop in the office to sign them in. I was so mad at her. Mad because she left the house without telling me, mad because she went swimming by herself and I can’t even think about the worst case scenario there, and mad because she made yet another morning difficult for me. I was so angry when I dropped her off in her classroom that I didn’t even hug her or tell her I loved her.” I was helpless to stop the tears that flowed freely down my flushed cheeks and dripped off my stubborn chin. “Now I have to wait until after school to see her. She has to go all day thinking I’m so mad at her that I don’t love her anymore. And I’m making myself sick over it.”
Emma’s blue-gray gaze held mine, her own tears brimming at the corners. With equal parts conviction and concern, she promised, “Liz, youwillsee Abby again. Youwillget to hug her and tell her you love her. She’s going to be alright. She knows you love her. There’s not a doubt in her pretty red head.”
I nodded, with my chin trembling and more tears falling. These were things I’d been trying to convince myself of all morning, but it helped when they came from someone else. Just because I lost one of the people I loved most in life, didn’t mean I was going to lose them all.
At least I wanted to believe that. The hole in my chest argued differently.
“Liz.” My sister stood up from the barstool and walked behind the long, tiled island to give me a tight hug. “You’re going to get through this. I know this is hard, but you are the strongest person I know. Grady would not have left you if he didn’t think you could handle this.”
Ihiccuppeda big, ugly sob and bent my face into her neck. She smelled like lilac and vanilla and like my sister. We’d been sharing hugs like this since she was born.
“Em,” was all I could sniffle. The pain was too acute, too shattering right now. I looked around the kitchen with watery eyes taking in all the careful details Grady had done himself with his own, rough hands.
Before cancer, he had been a strong, smart, capable man that started his own construction company and built it into somewhat of a local empire. He went from working every job himself to having multiple crews and foremen. He built our house, brick by loving brick and designed the entire inside himself when we finally had enough money and enough good credit to leave the cracker box of an apartment we shared for the first years of our marriage.
