Resilience Page 17

  I opened the lid.

  I saw the child.

  Burned.

  A baby, as long as the inside of the box—

  Crisp, dead, like petrified wood.

  I didn’t want to believe.

  I didn’t want to take the lid all the way off

  And I didn’t want to touch the baby

  And I didn’t know how to look at her.

  But I didn’t want to give her away.

  I handed the baby to

  My father

  And knew the lid needed to stay on.

  He mustn’t see it—

  This burned child;

  He would only turn away in disgust.

  I didn’t want him to be ashamed of the child,

  Of me,

  So I took it back.

  I took her away from him

  Because he really didn’t want her anyway.

  I blew a small patch of skin onto her face,

  And another by her ear,

  Near the jawbone.

  And I covered her body with a soft blanket.

  A grey-blue blanket.

  I picked her up

  Out of the box,

  Inside the blanket,

  So I didn’t have to touch her burned skin

  And I held her

  And I knew I didn’t want you to have her, either.

  I knew you wouldn’t know what to do with her.

  You made sure she remained burned.

  I made sure you kept her like petrified wood.

  Where else could she go?

  If she wasn’t burned,

  If you didn’t hold her,

  If the lid didn’t stay on the box,

  If you didn’t keep her burned body inside the box

  Where could she go?

  Would it be all right if I held her?

  Would the two of us have to remain alone

  Forever?

  What else,

  My husbands,

  My lovers,

  What else can I give you

  Besides custody of my burned self?

  —from my private journal

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Montana April came, erasing most of the dirty snowdrifts in the street and on the sidewalks. Tom and I and our two boys had arrived and settled into Bozeman during the fall of 1984. In the three years that had passed, I’d come to look on April as my fetal-position month. April light was white, flat, dead. The fields surrounding Bozeman were dormant and wouldn’t come alive again until the end of May. April was the month that made it easy to forget which way the seasons were headed: the brown vegetation could have been a precursor to spring or to fall. It was a confusing month, one that found me curled up in a fetal position, deeply depressed.

  Calen and Sander, now almost six and four and a half, had grown fast, as little boys do. Sander spoke so quickly he garbled his words. Neither Tom nor I could understand him, so Calen became our interpreter. Whenever Sander wanted something, Calen took Sander’s hand, locking their tiny fingers together into one unit. Calen would point and say, “We need…” anything from a Popsicle to a blanket. Calen’s hair now was darker, like Tom’s, while Sander remained a towhead, their matching cowlicks standing like antennae, streaming backwards whenever they ran. Did my boys ever walk?

  I loved the bond that had formed between my sons. Calen didn’t want Sander near me at first. Jealous. Then the two of them were like two boys with one mind, coexistence in the raw.

  I adored being with them, but when my moods darkened and I sank into one of my sad times, I sometimes sought refuge in our bathroom, locking the door. I would sit on the toilet seat with my hands covering my ears, but I could still hear them calling me.

  “Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!”

  They would stand outside, Calen pounding on the door. Were their tiny fingers locked into one fist now?

  My relationship with Tom had grown as gray and uncertain as the season. Were we moving forward or backwards? Tom sold cars for about a year after we first arrived but didn’t enjoy it. The dealership had required him to watch videos about sales tricks to take advantage of buyers. He found another job at a gun store selling firearms and working on the shooting range. After a while, I’d made friends with several women. We began going to bars together and staying out late. Tom had gotten angry—no, that’s not the right word. He’d become furious. Oftentimes he’d refuse to speak to me for one or two days. His “cold shoulder” made me feel guilty, but not for long; it was the price I paid for having a good time. What I hadn’t realized was that my actions and his reactions had sown seeds of resentment, like rust gently eating at the metal beams of a sagging seaside pier. Tom had always known that I liked to drink with my girlfriends. Why had he expected me to change?

  My dad had recognized my moods as depression and had prescribed an antidepressant, imaprimine, but it was no longer helping. It had only tricked my brain for a short while. Dad called in a prescription for me over the phone: another antidepressant, Zoloft. What I failed to mention to him was that I was also experiencing intense periods of mania along with my blues. Except I didn’t even know the word: mania.

  Depression had been easy to identify. Mania was more insidious. Tom, my friends, and my boys were relieved whenever I emerged from a depression. For several weeks, I would become the perfect wife, pal, and mother. I would play with Calen and Sander and cook actual meals instead of throwing leftovers on the table or ordering pizza.

  Tom would always be excited to have me back, because I would be filled with energy. I would be in high gear, but soon my intensity would cause him stress. It would lead to enhanced sexuality, much heavier drinking, more talking, racing thoughts, and hysterical laughing. He hated me going out with the girls and coming home drunk and stinking of cigarettes.

  Inevitably, my high-energy phase would peak in a manic rush that would become almost unbearable to me. I would pick fights with Tom, yell at the boys, and begin drinking during the day at home to slow down my racing mind. Rum at four o’clock. I would drive too fast, scream for no reason, and curse wildly. It was as if I was trying to release the energy exploding inside my head. Yet no one understood what I was going through. Not even me. Sometimes I would have thoughts about running away—wild, incoherent thoughts about returning to India and volunteering to become a spy for that government against Pakistan. Hadn’t I run away once already, after I’d first met Tom, and escaped to Greenwich only to return to Wyoming?

  Tom soon began recognizing a pattern to my mood swings. He would ask me about each phase as he and our boys suffered through it.

  “What can I do to help you?” he’d offer. “Do we need to try a different medicine? Do you need to see a psychiatrist here in Bozeman?”

  While his intentions were well placed, I didn’t want his help. “I am fine!” I would tell him and myself, even though I clearly wasn’t.

  When I first started taking Zoloft, Tom became guardedly optimistic. Perhaps this would be the solution. It was, but only for a while. It tempered the depression but appeared to escalate the mania.

  After years of dealing with my moods, his patience had grown thin.

  Tom had done well working at the gun store but hadn’t seen much future in it, so he’d quit. Although he’d always worked to provide for us, his government retirement and my income gave us enough to squeak by and try something new. I’d started writing a book, and Tom decided he wanted to try his hand at writing, too. It would be something the two of us could share. I liked the romance of the idea. Tom wanted to write poetry and thought he could sell articles about hunting and fishing to outdoor magazines. Tom also had a clever idea. He suggested that we coauthor a children’s book about two boys who lived on a dude ranch in Wyoming with their parents. In the back of both our minds, we knew Glenn might be able to help us get a publishing contract, although I was loath to ask. Glenn’s film career had taken off shortly after Tom and I had married, and she had lots of connections in Los Angeles and New York entert
ainment circles.

  Tom quickly found that he was more of a reporter than a novelist. He had trouble imagining scenes and crafting dialogue. After several failed starts, we gave up the idea of cowriting a children’s novel. Instead, he focused on selling stories to outdoor magazines—without much success.

  I enjoyed writing both nonfiction and fiction. Glenn was working on the first of three television movies inspired by the children’s book Sarah, Plain and Tall and had become friends with its author, Patricia MacLachlan. My sister encouraged me to send some pages of the novel that I was writing to Patricia, and she kindly forwarded them to her editor, Charlotte Zolotow, at Harper & Row publishing in New York. When Zolotow expressed interest in buying my book, Glenn introduced me to Sterling Lord, head of Sterling Lord Literistic, a literary agency, and one of his agents, Philippa Brophy, agreed to represent me.

  Brophy handled the haggling, and before I knew it I had a contract to turn my handful of chapters into a book entitled The Warping of Al. With Calen and Sander in tow, I flew to Manhattan to meet my editor and sign the paperwork.

  Zolotow was an icon in New York publishing, and I was in awe, but she put me at ease right away by ordering pizza for the boys when we arrived. We all sat in her office and ate. When I told her that I felt insecure because I didn’t have a high school or college diploma, Zolotow replied that if I had been schooled in writing, I would never have developed the individual writing style that she loved in my early chapters. I have carried that comment with me ever since.

  Back in Bozeman, I couldn’t wait to get started, but I ran into roadblocks. Tom had given up writing and had gone back to work at the Soil Conservation Service, so finding time during the day to write was difficult because my boys were so demanding, which was their right. The best time was at night. I would get the boys in bed by eight, sit with Tom until nine, and then finally retreat to be alone and write until one or two in the morning.

  While I enjoyed the night’s stillness and had a deadline to meet, Tom began resenting that I preferred being at my typewriter to coming to bed. I began resenting that he didn’t appear the slightest bit interested in my manuscript. He never asked me about its plot or characters. Even if I brought it up, he wouldn’t pay attention, and I took that indifference to mean that he didn’t care about my book and, by extension, didn’t care about me.

  Tom and I were living in a farmhouse on the outskirts of Bozeman, and we decided to expand it, so we hired a contractor—let’s call him David—who noticed one day that I would rush over to my typewriter whenever I could break away from my boys. I explained that a New York publisher was paying me to write a novel entitled The Warping of Al.

  “What’s it about?” David asked, and with that question he showed more curiosity than my husband had.

  “It’s about a boy who lives with his sisters, mother, and grandmother,” I proudly declared. “The father is gone all the time, and the boy has to learn about life and coming of age on his own.”

  “You’re writing a book about a teenage boy growing up?” he asked, gently chiding me.

  “The main character is based loosely on my brother, Sandy,” I said.

  David seemed genuinely interested. He stopped working, removed his heavy carpenter’s belt, poured himself a cup of coffee, sat down at the kitchen table near where I was typing, and listened as I explained that the main character in my novel was the only son of an absentee father who was overbearing and difficult to live with.

  “If Al is based on your brother, is this overbearing father your dad?” David asked.

  “Actually, he is,” I replied.

  Before I realized it, I was not only telling David about the characters in my book but also telling him about my family. David poured himself another cup of coffee, and when he finished it, we realized we both needed to get back to work but didn’t want to stop talking.

  Our relationship changed after that initial conversation. We soon fell into a routine. David would arrive early and begin working, but when Tom left the house for his job, David would take a coffee break and ask me about my book. I would read him paragraphs and explain how the various characters were each finding their own ways to deal with their father. The mother in the story simply bent to her husband’s wishes whenever he was at home, I explained. Goopie, the grandmother, closed her door and ignored him. His daughter Dotty learned how to flatter and manipulate her father. A daughter called E—short for Ethel—was rebellious and fought with her dad. Another daughter, Flavia, was sad around him because he intimidated her.

  David knew I was basing the characters in my novel after my own dysfunctional family.

  “Which one are you?” he asked one afternoon.

  “Flavia,” I replied. “The daughter who avoids her father and doesn’t know how to talk to him.”

  My chats with David became the high point of my day. I couldn’t wait for Tom to leave. I was sharing special moments with David that I should have been having with Tom. But that was his fault, not mine, because he didn’t care about my book.

  David talked about his background, too. I knew he was married and had a child. Despite that, I found myself becoming romantically attracted to him and began fantasizing about us making love.

  I decided one afternoon to just come out and express my feelings. “Would you like to go to bed with me?” I asked.

  He wasn’t surprised—so I knew that he’d been having the same thoughts—but he balked.

  “I’m married,” he said. “And Bozeman is a small town.”

  The next day, David didn’t take a coffee break. I’d clearly scared him, and it was awkward. If anything, his resistance made me even more obsessed. I went upstairs and put on a low-cut blouse. He noticed, but only smiled.

  I was clearly entering a manic phase, and Tom recognized it. He started to become more attentive now that I was emerging from what he saw as my hostile, sad mood.

  But I didn’t want Tom’s attention, I wanted David’s.

  I could feel my mania building, too. I liked it. The intensity, the feeling of being alive, the sexuality, and heat of the moment were building inside me. I called my friend Connie, who had a son the same age as Sander, and asked if she would take care of Sander the next day so that I could be free to write. She agreed. Calen would be in preschool. Once Tom left for work, only David and I would be in the house.

  Tom wanted to make love that night, but I refused. I was thinking of David and didn’t want to spoil my fantasy. Lying next to Tom, I suddenly felt ashamed. Tom was my husband, and I was planning on betraying him the next day. For a moment in the dark with him beside me, I started having second thoughts about seducing David the next morning. One moment, I would decide to abandon my plan, realizing it was not fair to Tom and our marriage. Just as quickly, I would begin calculating all the real and imagined wrongs that Tom had done to me. David had asked about my book. Tom hadn’t. David listened to me. Tom didn’t. I barely slept as I went through my list of pros and cons. When the sun came up, the pros had won. I was filled with righteous indignation—coupled with intense feelings of boiling sexuality because of my unchecked mania.

  I couldn’t wait for Tom to leave and David to arrive.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  I was frantic with arousal.

  My face was flushed, my heart was pounding, and I was tense with anticipation when David came through the door and went directly to work on our remodeling project. I tried to appear calm when he broke for his morning coffee. Sauntering toward him, I asked if he would come upstairs to check on a room that his construction crew had completed the day before.

  When we entered it, I faced him, put my arms around his neck, and kissed his lips. He was taken aback, but didn’t pull back, and within seconds we were on the floor, pulling at each other’s clothes.

  David quickly entered me, and during that brief moment, we looked into each other’s eyes and I realized that his body was a stranger to me, and that made me even more excited. I was the aggressor. I h
ad forced myself on him, and for a split second I thought about Brad and how he had forced himself on me. What am I doing? Why am I doing this? I’m married. I have children.

  Within minutes, it was over, and we got up from the floor and faced the awkwardness of our situation. I told him that I had to go fetch Sander from Connie’s house but wanted to take a shower first. David kissed me tenderly and walked downstairs without saying a word. What have I done? There is no way to undo it, is there?

  The next morning arrived, but rather than stopping we repeated our infidelity. Every morning after that when Sander was gone, we would have sex. After a while it began to feel normal, as if we were making love, not two animals in heat. But I hated myself. I knew I was jeopardizing my marriage with Tom, but I couldn’t seem to stop. Why? What is driving me into another man’s arms?

  David and I began using the love word, and it soon became terribly difficult for me to be in the same room with both David and Tom. I hated deceiving Tom but had no choice. Did I?

  David had called Bozeman a small town, and word of our illicit rendezvous made it through our circle of friends and reached David’s wife. Furious, she told Tom. He was caught completely off guard.

  “Are you having an affair with David?” he asked. “I need to know!”

  My mouth was a dark, locked space that wouldn’t open.

  He asked again. “Are you having an affair?”

  My body began to shake. Tom wasn’t supposed to ask direct questions like that. He was supposed to leave me alone, as he always did. I suddenly felt cold, and vomit tried to rise up my throat. I’d been caught.

  “Are you?” Tom asked, raising his voice.

  I had to force out some kind of answer from my constricted throat. I lied.

  “No,” I said, trying to sound a bit indignant.

  Tom searched my eyes for a sign. “Is that the truth?”

  I felt myself sinking into a black hole.