A Life More Complete (34 page)

Thinking about my father’s words made
me question my methods and my relationship altogether. Was that what we were
doing? Were we fighting for love or were we just fighting? I know in the beginning,
each time Tyler and I got back together things were perfect. It’s nice to feel
loved and wanted. There’s something to be said for that. It can make the
negative appear invisible. It takes over and nothing else matters. It can make
you do stupid things, make you choose blindly and make you irrational. Love, it’s
like a flask full of peach schnapps when you’re seventeen, ruthless and unkind
yet so wonderfully delicious. I’m not even sure at this point either one of us
knows what we are fighting for and even more, is it worth it?

I climb in the car and back out of
the driveway. Tyler doesn’t chase me and part of me is devastated. I’d guess the
part that is still craving a normal family and a loving husband and the other
part of me doesn’t care in the least. Unfortunately, the L.A traffic gives me
too much time to dwell on our most recent argument and I am now left feeling
guilty. By the time I arrive at the hotel and check in, I’m overcome with
guilt. The urge to call Tyler is beyond words as I slide the key into the door
and dump my suitcase in the entryway. I pull my phone from my purse and call
him.

“I knew you’d call,” he says, but it’s
not condescending. I can hear a small amount of happiness in his voice.

“I knew you’d answer on the first
ring,” I reply back. “I’m sorry.”

“I know you are and I’ve already told
you I am too. This is who we are. We’re never going to change. We try each
other’s patience, we know what makes the other angry and we do it because we
can.”

“I don’t want to do it anymore. I
want us to be normal.”

Someone knocks on the door to my
room. I smile knowing it’s him. Opening the door he pulls me into his arms and I
give in immediately. I’m hoping this is the moment when Tyler comes to his
senses. I want this to work so badly.

“Can I stay with you tonight?” he
asks already slipping off his shoes.
      

I fall asleep in Tyler’s arms, his
hand resting on my stomach, but when I board the plane the next morning I’m
alone.

My sisters and I are standing in my
mother’s kitchen. Why? I don’t know. We could have stayed anywhere, yet we came
here. It’s like a time warp. I feel like I’ve been transported back to 1996,
nothing has changed. My mother’s house is a 1927 Sears home built in the
historic downtown area of Naperville. She bought it from the original owners
back in 1986. It was the Puritan model, straight from the catalog. I know this
only because the former owners left the catalog page from Sears in a frame
hanging on the wall of the living room. It still remains. It’s a beautiful
home, meticulously maintained and charming just like all the other houses in
the neighborhood. White washed wood siding with gray shutters and a white
picket fence. A pergola covered with ivy gracing the driveway with its homey
feel. Its outward appearance has always given the illusion of happiness. Gia’s
parents house shares a backyard with the side yard of my mother’s house. This
is how I met Gia. The summer we moved into the house Gia was in her backyard
playing, the entire time taking in the moving trucks, and watching as my
sisters and me mill around in the yard. Finally she called out to us, asking
our ages and when I told her I was eight, she seemed thrilled. “There are only
boys in the neighborhood, including my brother Christopher,” she informed me
and with that we became best friends. Life was so much simpler then. We’d run
through the yards, back and forth to each other’s houses, laughing and playing
until dark.

My sisters are both staring at me
when I finally explain why Tyler is not in attendance. Their mouths slightly ajar,
the look in their eyes telling of what’s to come next.

Maizey asks, “So he’s coming later
then, right?” She’s trying to play dumb, but it just comes across as passive
aggressive. Fitting since I know precisely where she learned this move. My
mother had perfected it, possibly while standing in the exact same location.

“No. I already told you, he has to
work,” I say reaching for the extra key we’d swiped from its hiding spot to
allow us access to the house, since our mother is still at work. Some things
never change and luckily she still kept a key to the house taped under a shelf
in the garage, in addition to never locking the door to the garage, I was able
to find the key and let us all in.

“So, he’s not coming at all?” Rachel
reiterates Maizey’s original question with the look of repulsion in her eyes.

“That’s what I said. Now can you stop
sounding like a broken record? My answer isn’t going to change and you
repeating it is getting on my nerves.” Grabbing the key I head toward the
garage stopping at the junk drawer to pull out a roll of tape. The whole
process is bizarre given the fact that I haven’t lived here in close to eleven
years, yet it all still remains the same. It’s like I never even left. I can
tell you where the scissors are located and where to find the laundry soap and
when I opened the back door with the extra key, I remembered to pull up on the
door knob to level the key hole with the locking mechanism or the door wouldn’t
open. Rachel shouts to me as I walk out the back door.

“It’s Memorial Day weekend. Who works
on Memorial Day?” Her tone is flippant as she hounds me to no end. My first
reaction is to flip her off and that’s just what I do as I slam the door behind
me.

Regrettably, she follows me out to the
garage. She obviously has no clue as to the sore spot this conversation already
is, not to mention the fact that I already hashed it out with Tyler and gave
up. She’s wearing me down and although I’ve never hit anyone in my life she
just might be the first.

“This is bullshit and you know it,”
she half shouts coming up behind me. “Why do you accept this from him? I get
it. He’s the father of your baby. Blah, blah, blah. But seriously, he’s an
asshole and you know it. Paul would never...” I cut her off before I get the
lecture about whose husband is better. It doesn’t take a genius to see hers
would win the award.

“Listen,” I hiss back, “sorry my
husband’s not perfect. This is my life not yours. And don’t think for a second
that I’m not hurt, because I am. The last thing I need is for you berate me. So
back the fuck off!” I scream so loudly that I’m sure even the neighbors hear
it. I stomp away leaving her silent.

The three of us don’t speak as we
climb into my rental SUV to make the long commute from Naperville to Chicago. Our
first stop is the Cook County morgue for the identification of the body and
then to the funeral home in Oak Park. Our father, up until a few days ago, still
lived in the same house the five of us once resided in as a family. That was where
he was found five days after his death by a ComEd worker who was there to read
the meter and smelled something foul. The story is sad and just thinking about
it causes the guilt to grip my chest tightly.

My father just disappeared after my
parents divorced. We’d hear from him on occasion, but primarily he stayed out
of sight. Most of the contact we had with him was through the Oak Park police
department. My mother was listed as an emergency contact whenever he was found
unconscious or was arrested. The police visited our house with such frequency
that Tom was on a first name basis with them and even hired one of them to work
on the Naperville police force with him. My father was in and out of hospitals,
jail and rehab more times than any one person should ever be, yet it never
seemed to make a difference. He continued down a path of self-destruction,
eventually ending with his three daughters identifying his body in the most
morbid and grotesque environment I have ever seen.

The guilt has been eating away at me
since the phone call from my mother. I keep feeling like if I had tried harder,
made more of an effort, that maybe he would have at least died knowing his
daughter; instead I hid from him and everything that he had become.

We schedule the wake for Saturday and
the funeral for Sunday to take place in the church where my father was
confirmed, where he was an altar boy, where he married my mother just after
their eighteenth birthdays. A Catholic mass with a luncheon to follow at a
local restaurant. It’s by the book and not one of us disagrees with the
choices.

My father has no family to speak of,
with the exception of my sisters and me. He was an only child to an abusive
alcoholic father and a mentally ill mother. My paternal grandmother killed
herself when my father was only ten years old, a story he liked to share
regularly with us as children. She hanged herself using her husband’s tie. He
described her dangling from the showerhead in the only bathroom in their small rundown
apartment that bordered the edge of the city limits. The showerhead pulled from
the wall but not enough to give way as her toes almost touched the bottom of
the bathtub. She had made my father a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, placed
it on the TV tray and turned the television to
The Flintstones
before she took her life. This is the only memory I
have of my grandmother and as I aged the memory took on a ghostly creepiness. My
father lived in that apartment until the day he married my mother.

Maizey cries all the way back to the
hotel while Rachel texts obnoxiously from the back seat. The sound of her nails
tapping against the keypad of her BlackBerry is one of those sounds that could
drive you to complete insanity. I reach over and take Maizey’s hand as the
tears begin to fall from my eyes just as quickly as hers. Rachel never looks up
and I can’t say I’m surprised.

Before I can even put the car in park,
Maizey scrambles from her seat and into Kevin’s arms as he waits for her out
front of the hotel. Moments later Paul appears taking Rachel’s hand and the
four of them retreat to their rooms leaving me alone.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. I
wasn’t supposed to be the one alone. Out of the three of us I’m the only one
who wanted to get married. Yet, I’m the one with the husband who would
definitely be in the running for worst husband of the year. I’m the one left
alone.

I grab my phone and call Tyler
because right now I need to know someone loves me. I’m shocked when he answers
on the first ring.

“Hi, kid. You hanging in there?” he
asks but he sounds distant.

“I guess so. It’s been surreal to say
the least. I haven’t seen my mother yet, but it’s coming. We made the wake and
funeral arrangements for...” I stop short due to the giggling of a girl in the
background. “Who’s laughing?” I ask, perturbed by the lack of privacy.

“Oh, that’s Ryan’s assistant. She’s
reiterating a story to us about ordering Chinese food last night. Something got
lost in the translation of no shrimp in the fried rice and we ended up with
about ten pounds of shrimp instead. It was hilarious,” he says laughing with a
little too much gusto.

“Funny,” I deadpan. The conversation
stalls out. I wait several seconds and speak again. “I really wish you were
here. The wake is on Saturday and the funeral on Sunday. You’d still have time
to get ready for your case on Monday. It’s Memorial Day.”

He sighs and I can hear the annoyance
in it. The background noise grows muffled as I realize he has placed his hand
over the phone. Seconds later he returns, the room quieter. “Listen, I told you
I have to work all weekend. I’m not sure what part of that you missed, but I’ll
repeat it again. I have to work all weekend.”

“Good-bye Tyler,” and with that I
hang up. And the cycle continues. He won’t leave and I know that. He knows I’ll
feel guilty and call. It’s disgusting.

The times when we truly enjoyed each
other’s company are beginning to be overshadowed by Tyler’s ability to make me
feel inferior to him. The respect is gone. The problem is that his passive
aggressive tendencies and his view of me just make me want to try harder. For
some reason I can’t leave. About ten minutes into my self-pity party my phone
vibrates. Maizey asks if I want to walk over to the Cracker Barrel and have
dinner with the four of them. The idea of having to sit through a meal with the
two perfectly happy couples, makes me feel like barfing. In the end, after
battling back and forth, I agree. The baby and I can’t turn down green beans
cooked in bacon fat.

Luckily for me the conversation
throughout dinner is dominated by Paul and Kevin and their obsession with
securing seats on the first base line for the White Sox game tomorrow.

I pull my phone from my purse for a
third time during dinner and Rachel glances at me with suspicion in her eyes. I
quickly drop the phone back into my bag and pull out my wallet.

“I’m done for the night,” I say,
stretching adding in a yawn for good measure. I place a twenty on the table and
begin to leave.

“I’ve got dinner tonight,” Kevin says
handing me back my money. “It’s been a hard day for everyone, you more so than
anyone.”

My reply comes out as indignant as I
narrow my eyes at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It’s just that you’re the only one
who’s here alone. I thought it’d be a nice gesture. I didn’t mean anything by
it.” He looks over at Maizey for support, but her eyes drop to her hands. She
hates confrontation, but she pulls it together to mutter a few words, which do
nothing to subside my agitation and humiliation.