Dry Heat

Shattered Moon

 

by Malka Daskal

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            When her husband told her he needed some space, Holly thought he was talking about needing more room in their shared closet. While she was mentally rearranging her shelves of folded sweaters and rows of shoes, Jerimiah’s voice filtered through her thoughts like elevator music, and it wasn’t until she heard him use the words “deposit on a rental across town” that Holly looked up from her Architectural Digest Magazine, a half-eaten cracker in her hand suspended awkwardly, midway between the table and her mouth. She had been leaning over the kitchen island, the glossy pictures of marbled fireplaces and tasteful throw pillows spread out in front of her. Feeling faint she sat down on a wooden bar stool so forcefully that a bruise would bloom there, black and angry, an ugly mark on her right upper thigh that would last for three weeks.   

            “But, why?” was all she could manage. It occurred to her that she sounded exactly like their six-year-old son, Lucas, her voice pitiful and petulant.  The tone of Jerimiah’s response was comforting and kind but Holly had difficulty discerning the exact words pouring from his mouth. Over the sound of the blood rushing in her ears, she heard him say implausible phrases like he wasn’t happy, he thought they had been drifting apart for a long time, she was a good person and he would always care for her and look after her, he hoped they could remain friends and keep this amicable. Later, Holly would replay these snatches of words in her head until they took on a mythic quality. She would twist and rotate them, holding them up to the light, trying to discover their true meaning, searching for anything that would suggest that the ten years of marriage they shared could not be so easily reduced to rubble by tired clichés. But sitting in her kitchen, dishes from that night’s lasagna dinner waiting to be washed in the sink, all she could see was the cold flatness in Jerimiah’s eyes that told her this wasn’t a conversation, it was a decision.             

 

            They had agreed to tell Lucas together in the morning. On most Sundays, she would have been staying in bed late, letting Lucas spend hours dancing his fingers over the surface of his beloved iPad like a graceful ice skater on a frozen pond, killing drooling zombies and catapulting irregularly shaped balls with menacing eyebrows. This Sunday, the persistent stinging of the sun’s light on her eyelids woke Holly after a fitful night’s sleep.  She found herself sitting next to Jerimiah on the couch in the seldom used living room while Lucas sat on the love seat facing them, his narrow body barely taking up any space at all. Lucas took it stoically. He seemed mostly confused and Holly had the urge to move to the loveseat and sit down next to him. Not so much to comfort him, but because, feeling equally confused, it seemed more appropriate for her to be sitting beside Lucas facing Jerimiah, having her life and what she could expect from the future explained to her.

            “You know we love you buddy and you will always be our special boy,” Jerimiah said.  Holly nodded in agreement so vigorously she felt like her neck might snap.

           “It’s just that sometimes Mommies and Daddies think it’s better to live in separate places for a while,” Jerimiah continued.  Holly willed her breath to remain even and natural. Was she the Mommy in that scenario? Is that what she thought?

           “You are such a smart boy, Lucas. You understand, don’t you? Do you have any questions?”  Holly leaned in waiting for Lucas’s questions the ones Jerimiah would be forced to answer but Lucas just gave a small shake of his head. When they got up Jerimiah initiated a “family hug.” Holly felt Jerimiah’s hand on her upper arm, his touch heavy and lifeless as a dead fish.  She was acutely aware of herself, her movements and the words she was saying, her clothes and the way she was standing. She felt like an actress who had been given only one take to get the movie’s climactic scene right. It felt very important to get it right.

            Monday arrived with its predictable routines. Lucas was sent off to school, his backpack bursting with glitter and glue artwork to proudly display to his friends. Jerimiah drove off to work in his white Camry, a suitcase full of clothes packed unceremoniously in the trunk. Holly felt unmoored by the empty house. She tried reminding herself that she was usually alone in the house on weekdays, today was little different than most, but the house seemed bereft, the rooms silent, expectant. The words “broken home” whispered themselves incessantly in Holly’s mind. She considered calling a friend but couldn’t bring herself to even pick up her phone. How could she explain what had happened when she herself was still not sure? She imagined her friends’ voices, soothing and sympathetic, and laced with relief. Relief that it wasn’t them, that their lives were still whole and intact. They would offer comfort even as they would back away, careful not to be impaled by the razor edge shards of her once happy marriage. The idea of facing their smug condolences felt more unbearable than the quiet. In an effort at achieving normalcy, Holly began straightening up the bedrooms and collecting the laundry.

 

            Lucas came home from school a whirling dervish of excitement. Holly was quickly besieged by his rush of first grade announcements. “Jack said that I’m his best friend today. He said I could come over for a playdate and see his new galactic mega wand. Leslie got in trouble with the teacher because she accidentally put dirt in Vanessa’s shoes. Next week is going to be picture day so you have to give the teachers money so I can have my picture taken. I think it costs like a hundred pennies. Can I have a snack?”

            Holly was grateful for the return to normalcy, the ebb and flow of life with her son. It was not unusual for Jerimiah to be home late. His work as an investment broker often kept him in the office for long hours. Lucas was accustomed to going to bed before he got home and waking up after he had already left for work. Tonight, Lucas ate his snack, did a perfunctory pass at his math worksheet, and played chess on the computer until dinnertime. It was only while Holly was putting him to bed, that he seemed to register his father’s absence.

            “Is Daddy coming home tonight?’

            “No, Sweetie. Remember we talked yesterday about how Daddy is going to be living in a new place. You’ll get to visit him on Friday.” Holly felt a stab of anger that she should be the one to have to explain Jerimiah’s absence.

            “What if I don’t want to?”

            Holly felt unprepared. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to, but I’m sure Daddy misses you very much and will want to see you.”

            “Then why did he leave?” Lucas’s face was soft and pink in the glow from his nightlight. His brown eyes were a pool of black in the dimness. Holly fought the urge to agree with him.

            “Daddy needed to have some alone time to think about things, but he loves you very much and misses you very much,” Holly heard herself babbling. “Go to sleep now and we can talk more about it in the morning,” she finished feebly.

            Lucas looked unconvinced but settled himself back against his pillows. When Holly checked on him thirty minutes later his body was splayed horizontally across the bed, his chest moving rhythmically, his eyelashes fluttering with unknown dreams.

 Alone in bed, Holly thought back to the first week of her marriage. She remembered how she would wake up after a night’s sleep and have forgotten that she had gotten married. For a fraction of second, her life with Jerimiah would be erased completely, the months of dating when she and Jim miraculously grew to appreciate each other’s endearing foibles, surviving their fumbling early courtship and awkward miscommunications, the engagement with endless meetings where plans for menus and photographs were discussed with grave faced solemnity , the elaborate three hundred guest wedding with tapered candles burning dangerously low into the grand floral centerpieces . In the brief moment between regaining consciousness and opening her eyes, it all vanished and Holly would feel the heaviness of the desperately single pressing down on her. And then the memories would reappear with the force of a tidal wave and she would feel like a kid on the first day of summer, buoyant with relief and slightly dazed. Her eyes would adjust to her surroundings, her husband’s sparsely furnished studio apartment, still an unfamiliar sight to wake up to after only a week of living together. The one room apartment was shaped like an “L” with a queen size bed just barely squeezed into the smaller leg. Holly could remember sitting up in bed in the morning, blinking away the last vestiges of sleep and surveying the apartment, tethering herself back to reality. There, under the window, was the inexpensive couch that had been purchased prudently from the previous owner of the apartment, outdated but comfortable with oversized grey cushions and arm rests fit for snuggling. There, against the far wall, was the large oak desk which dominated the room, the computer resting on its cluttered surface. There, in the corner, was the small table from Ikea which could seat two comfortably, four uncomfortably. Jerimiah would have happily kept the folding table which had served him well during his bachelorhood, but Holly had convinced him that a folding table, with its implications of impermanency, was not a suitable choice for their new status as a married couple. They had worked together late into the night to assemble the new table, trying to decipher the manual’s hieroglyphics, laughing at each other’s ineptitude, surrounded by a silver sea of loose bolts and assorted Allen wrenches.

            That laughing couple, brimming with confident optimism, felt foreign and distant, like a picture viewed from the wrong end of a pair of binoculars. Even living in the cramped studio apartment seemed like something that had happened to someone else. Its one room could fit ten times over in their current home. A historic Tudor on a street in Shaker Heights densely canopied by leafy oaks, with five bedrooms and acreage to spare, their current home bespoke Jerimiah’s success as a sought-after broker. If Holly sometimes complained about the amount of maintenance required to upkeep their home, she was still proud of its stately grandeur and status conferring address. And she was proud of Jerimiah too, for working the long hours and possessing the business acumen to succeed in a demanding job. His days, and many evenings, were occupied with work, while her world existed solidly in the domestic domain.  Life had settled into a predictable routine which satisfied Holly.  Holly had been happy, maybe not overjoyed, but certainly content. It never occurred to her that Jerimiah found their life to be lacking, deficient.

            In the morning, Lucas woke up with a fever. Holly felt the warmth of his forehead through pursed lips. She tucked him back into bed and, at his insistence, read to him from a stack of books on his nightstand. When Max had been made king of the wild things five times and Sam- I- Am’s perseverance had triumphed six times, Lucas finally nodded off to sleep. Holly stroked his hair, softer than chinchilla fur, and curled up next to him.

            When she awoke, disoriented in the fading light of day, Lucas was not in the bed. Holly heard the gentle cadence of the television’s hum from the family room downstairs. When Holly entered the room, Lucas moved aside, making space for her on the sofa next to him so they could watch cartoons together. While Lucas’s eyes were transfixed on the screen, Holly was watching Lucas.  Lucas’s unexpected giggles at the show’s silly hijinks, seemed to fill the whole room and Holly laughed at his laughter. They went to bed late, and in the morning, Holly told Lucas he could stay home despite not feeling a fever. Another day to recover felt like an acceptably indulgent gift for both of them.

            They spent the day behind the closed door of Lucas’s walk-in closet constructing intricately detailed Lego creations. Using the colorful plastic pieces, they designed airplanes and helicopters, castles and prisons, following the step by step instructions in the colored pages of the accompanying sets. The spacious closet had just enough room for them to lie prone, their toes and fingertips just brushing the walls, the soft fabric of the hung clothing tickling their arms and bare legs. They worked in companionable quiet, intermittently crying out in glee over a piece found after a maddening search or muttering in frustration over the realization of a stumbled step. Holly could feel the tension ease away with each satisfying click and flip of the pages in the carefully sequences instruction booklet.

            Holly could tell that Lucas was thrilled to have her undivided attention and delighted with the reprieve from school. If he sometimes looked at her curiously, as if to try to understand the reason behind his good fortune, he chose not to ask. And when there was no mention of school the next day, Lucas opened a newly purchased Lego set without hesitation. Holly and Lucas spent another day ensconced in the comfy interiors of the plushily carpeted closet, building fantastical formations and engineered masterpieces. Their bodies close enough in the small confines to always be touching. Shoulder to shoulder. Foot to calf. Hip to thigh. At night, Holly resolved to take Lucas back to school the next day, but in the light of morning, it seemed like too much trouble to get dressed, pack a lunch and rush Lucas out the door to make it in time for the 8 am bell. 

            On their third day at home, Holly and Lucas baked sugar cookies together and ate dozens of them for lunch and dinner. With heavy stomachs, they lolled around the house, playing card games and reading books.  The books had playful lilting rhymes about silly animals or moral imperatives. Others were educational books, mostly about space, a topic which had interested Lucas since his father had bought him a children’s telescope the previous year.

            “Read this one.” Lucas thrust a book with a dreamy picture of a dotted galaxy on the cover under Heather’s nose.

            “Our Solar system is contained in the Milky Way,” Holly began.

            “Wait a second,” Lucas took the book back and rifled through the pages. He opened the book to a page with a radiant orange planet surrounded in day-glow colored rings and handed it back to Holly.   “Saturn is the sixth planet from the sun,” she read. “Scientists believe Saturn’s beautiful rings were formed when one of its many moons shattered. The fragments of the moon’s icy mantle and rocky core were distributed as particles around the perimeter of this gas giant.”

            “Do you think we will ever get to go to outer space, Mom?”

            “Who knows. Anything is possible. Imagine if we could live on our own planet. Just the two of us.”

            “That’s silly. You can’t live in outer space.” Lucas snuggled in closer, and Holly felt his body, sturdy and dense, relax into hers.  

            The next day, Holly took out Lucas’s painting supplies and they spent the morning painting scenes from their favorite movies. Lucas painted a giant candy factory with a river of brown chocolate flowing through the center of the page. Holly painted Audrey Hepburn in four strands of pearls and large black sunglasses. Absorbed as she was in putting the finishing touches on Audrey’s sultry red lips, Holly failed to hear telephone’s shrill ring. Besides, she had grown accustomed to blocking out i’s accusing tone. She looked up in surprise when Lucas passed her the phone, half a brown painted handprint marking the phone’s surface. “It’s daddy.”

            “What’s wrong with Lucas? The school called to say he hasn’t been in class all week.” Jerimiah’s voice intruded, strident and demanding. Holly noticed the blinking light on her answering machine. The school must have been trying to reach her. It was hard to hear the ringing of the phone from inside Lucas’s closet.

            “He’s fine. Just getting over a cold.” Holly’s voice caught in her throat. She realized she hadn’t spoken to an adult all week. It felt like jumping into a freezing cold pool.

            “Well, what time should I pick him up?”

            “Pick him up?”

            “Yes,” Jerimiah spoke impatiently. “It’s Friday. He is supposed to come to me tonight.” Holly looked at Lucas through the open door to the kitchen. He was sitting with a paintbrush in his hand and a smear of blue paint under his eye in the same place Holly had been a few nights ago when Jerimiah had ripped through the fabric of their lives.

            “No, I don’t think that’s a good idea. I think he should stay home with me.”

            “Holly, we agreed on this. Don’t make this difficult.” If his tone had been pleading, remorseful, sympathetic in any way, Holly would have done the right thing. She would have agreed to have Lucas ready by five. She would have behaved maturely, rationally. Instead, she hung up the phone and the silence from the other end felt more gratifying than a thousand Lego creations.

            “Come see what I painted,” Lucas called to her from the kitchen.

            “In a few minutes sweetie. I have to take care of something.” Holly sat down at the computer desk and stared for a moment at the blinking vertical line. Then, she typed in the words how to find the best divorce lawyer.     

 

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