When It All Falls Apart (Book One) (5 page)

I didn’t think there was anything wrong with what I was feeling even though I knew he wanted me to feel differently. Nobody had given us any real answers. They kept asking us if Rori had gotten into any type of medication or household chemicals. Dr. Yang had asked us in the emergency room, the nurse who admitted us to the pediatric unit asked, and it was the first question out of Dr. Koven’s mouth when she walked into our room. How did we know Rori hadn’t accidently gotten into something when David wasn’t looking? There was a chance she may have, but I didn’t dare say that to David because he’d take it personally. It was possible Rori had taken something without us knowing and she had to sleep it off until it was out of her system. I didn’t like to jump to the worst case scenario about Rori like David always did.

“This
thing
? That’s what you’re calling all of this? Our daughter is in a hospital bed strapped to machines and only opens her eyes when the doctors open them for her? Whose blood shows all kinds of weird abnormalities and this is just a thing for you?” He shook his head in disgust at me.

“Honey, I know you’re upset. I get it. I understand. I just don’t think it does us any good to get all worked up. Besides, one of us has to be the calm one. One of us has to be able to think straight. I’m just trying to stay calm.”

“I–” He opened his mouth and then quickly shut it again. “Never mind.”

“I should go home and get some stuff since we’re going to be here overnight. I thought maybe I could bring her new pajamas and get some stuff for you and me to sleep in too?” I hadn’t meant for it to come out sounding like a question.

“Sure.”

On the drive to our house I called Robin to fill her in on the details. I quickly brought her up to speed.

“God, hon, that’s so awful. How are you?” she asked.

“I’m okay. I mean, it totally sucks. I hate that she’s sick, but I’m not going to get freaked out until I know there’s something to get freaked out about and honestly, I really don’t think there’s going to be something seriously wrong with her. She’s such a healthy kid. I feel bad for David, though. He’s a nervous wreck.”

“I would be too! That’s scary shit!”

Maybe I should’ve been more scared, but I didn’t have the alarmist button that most parents had. All the parents I knew looked at every instance in their child’s life as a major life or death situation as if one wrong move would alter their lives forever, but I never saw things that way. I didn’t walk around in a panicked state like Rori’s life was always teetering on the edge.

This difference was obvious each time I took Rori to the park. I watched as the other mothers anxiously hovered around their children waiting to catch them in case they fell. Meanwhile, I sat on the side of the sandbox as Rori scampered up and down the equipment by herself. All I could think of as I watched the other parents and kids were the concrete playgrounds with steel equipment that my sister and I played on when we were kids. We’d managed to survive and I didn’t think the Teflon floor underneath the equipment would do anything except spring Rori right back up even if she did fall.

Unlike me, David had gotten the alarm button. He’d been so worried about Rori’s head when she was an infant. He acted as if her head would roll off her neck and bounce on the floor like a basketball if you let it go. He was constantly calling out for me to watch her head—keep my hand on it. His fears about her head grew with her as if her skull was made of paper instead of flexible bone. He’d been sure she had a concussion when she took her first slip in the bathtub and hit her head even though she seemed fine to me. She’d cried, but I’d heard her cry louder when she was hungry. He’d insisted on taking her to the pediatrician despite my voice of reason that she was fine and she was.

Robin was as neurotic about brain injuries as David. She’d call me constantly with all of her worries and I spent just as much time reassuring her that everything was alright with Emma as I did David. She freaked out when she put Emma in her wooden cradle for the first time. She was afraid she’d rocked her too hard and given her Shaken Baby Syndrome. I calmly explained to her that cradles were made to rock babies and I was pretty sure there wasn’t a single case of Shaken Baby Syndrome due to cradle rocking.

“How was your day?” I asked her looking to change the subject.

“Clearly not nearly as dramatic as yours. Emma did have an ear infection. We took her to the doctor this morning and they put her on antibiotics. She seems fine now.”

“What’d you think about what Larissa said last night?”

“That she’s about to have sex with someone other than her husband which officially makes it an affair?”

I laughed. “Yeah, what’d you think?”

“Really? Your daughter is in the hospital and you want to gossip about Larissa? You crack me up,” Robin snorted.

I laughed again, but it was nervous laughter this time. “You know how much I hate it when things get intense with David. I don’t know how to handle this new side of him. I keep telling myself I’ll get used to it, but it’s been four years and I’m not any more used to it now than I was.”

I hadn’t expected David to become so paranoid and hyper vigilant when he became a dad. I figured he would be the most laidback father there was because he was the most relaxed person I’d ever met. I was the worrier and the obsessive one—the one who got frustrated when things didn’t go according to my plans or who willfully exerted my will to make things happen the way I wanted them to. I was the person who couldn’t sleep because I was too worked up about something or who got so anxious I got stomach aches and migraines. It had never been him. He’d always been the voice of reason and calm.

He started to change shortly after we’d found out I was pregnant. He was obsessed with me taking my vitamins, getting enough rest, and not working so hard. He barraged me with questions about how I was feeling all the time, calling multiple times a day while I was at work. At first, I thought it was because he was nervous given my other miscarriages, but his hovering continued into the second and third trimester after the threat of miscarrying dropped dramatically. He read all the parenting and birthing books he could get his hands on. He was more scared of giving birth than I was. I thought his worrying was cute and figured once the baby was born, he would relax and return to his usual self.

Instead, he became just as hovering over Rori as he had been of me in my pregnancy. He jumped every time she cried. At night when she would wake up, he would leap out of bed and be leaning over her crib, pulling her into his arms before my feet had hit the floor. It was as if her crying physically hurt him. His face would become just as contorted with emotion as hers. When I listened to my friends talk about how completely inept their husbands were at caring for their babies, I knew I should feel lucky and fortunate to have him be so wonderful with Rori. But all I could think of when I heard them complain about how their husbands didn’t know how to hold the baby right, change the diaper quickly, or put the baby to sleep was how much I longed for the attention he used to give me.

I quickly tired of my conversation with Robin. I had called her for a distraction, not a reality check. She was probably texting David while we talked asking him how he was holding up. They were closer than they’d ever been since they spent so much time together. It had been weird at first that he spent more time with my best friend than I did, but I’d gotten used to it.

“Will you let me know as soon as you find out anything?” she asked.

“Of course. I’ll let you know as soon as I know anything.”

“If I can do anything for you guys, bring you coffee, just call me.”

“I will. Thanks. Bye.”

I clicked End and set my phone down on the seat next to me and felt the familiar wave of loneliness wash over me. I missed David and the person he used to be. I hadn’t been prepared for our role reversal and didn’t like it. We’d always had neatly defined roles that allowed our relationship to run smoothly, but I didn’t know how to act in my new role. I wanted the old David back—the guy who didn’t get upset about everything and blow insignificant moments into crises.

The worst part of our role reversal was that I couldn’t do for him what he’d always been able to do for me despite my best efforts. I attempted to make him laugh about taking himself so seriously but it only angered him or even worse—disappointed him. I tried to get him to relax using the same tactics and techniques he’d used with me to make me feel better like reminding me to breathe and rubbing my back in circles. None of it worked or made a difference. He rolled his eyes at me when I reminded him to breathe and swatted my hands away like I was an annoying bug when I tried to rub his back.

I took a deep breath before walking into the house—our Spanish colonial home that we’d worked so hard to renovate and make our own. I stepped onto the restored original wood floors that we’d painstakingly done together for months. We’d spent so much time on our knees that we developed matching bruises, but the floors had turned out beautiful.

I walked into the living room and found it littered with the remnants of David and Rori’s morning. The pillows on the brown sectional were messed up from where they’d laid together during their thirty minutes of the cartoon time David scheduled into each morning. Rori’s sippy cup sat on the coffee table next to his coffee mug holding coffee that had long grown cold. I straightened the pillows on the couch, setting them each back in their place perfectly. I carried their cups from the coffee table into the kitchen and loaded them into the dishwasher already filled with the dishes left over from breakfast—her hardened bowl of oatmeal and his plate caked with scrambled eggs and syrup from his famous pancakes that I was sure he’d shared with her. I looked around at our kitchen. It was first room we’d remodeled. I picked up the dishrag from the sink and wiped the black marble countertops that we had argued over for two weeks until he had finally given in to me, “if marble is really that important to you, let’s do it.”

My favorite part of the kitchen was the island and bar stools we’d meticulously chosen to slide underneath. Before Rori was born, we spent endless hours each evening sitting at the island, sipping wine, and talking about our days. We would fill the room with our conversation and laughter. I regaled him with stories of my difficult clients and accounts I was working on and he shared about the classes he was teaching and the students he found promising or alternately annoying. I couldn’t remember the last time we had hung out at the island and shared a bottle of wine. Most nights when I managed to make it home in time for dinner, the dinner focused on Rori and trying to get her to eat. She was notoriously picky. If she had her way, she’d only eat goldfish crackers and bananas. As soon as the dinner dishes were cleared, we shifted into the night time routine that David had created and been diligent about performing since Rori had been a few months old.

The next two hours were split into neatly timed intervals. First, there was a brief playtime followed by a bath. Next, we put her in her pajamas and brushed her teeth. Afterwards, we tucked her in bed, read two books, snuggled with her for ten minutes, and then it was lights out. The routine ran like a well-oiled machine and he was convinced if we veered from her schedule in any way that she wouldn’t sleep. Rori never fell asleep once she was in bed despite the fact that David developed the routine to enhance and promote sleep exactly like all the books instructed. She alternated between calling out to us playfully and sobbing as if her heart was breaking. One evening, I pointed out that her bedtime might be too early for her and suggested she might go to sleep easier if she went to bed later and he had looked at me as if I suggested we serve her glass shards for breakfast. I never brought it up again. It was usually another hour before she was asleep and David was never able to relax completely until he was sure she was. By then, we were both so tired we collapsed on the couch and binged on Netflix rather than settling down together at the island with a glass of wine for some alone time.

When we did find the time to be alone together our conversations inevitably worked their way back to something Rori had said or done. I liked talking about Rori, but there were times I missed our discussions about other things. I never dared express it to him, but I missed when he used to talk to me about things besides her. I longed for our conversations about sports even though I didn’t care who won because I liked how excited he always got about the games. I missed our talks about the books he was reading or thinking about assigning to his students. The only books he’d read in the last four years were parenting books. I didn’t pay any attention to the media, but he was the opposite. It used to annoy me how philosophical and passionate he could get about the issues in the media, but now I’d give anything to hear him spout off about how the use of cellphones was going to turn everyone into robots.

I let out a deep sigh and climbed the stairs up to our bedrooms to begin gathering the supplies we would need to stay overnight in the hospital.

We should have gotten a cat.

I was immediately assaulted with what a terrible mother I was for thinking such a thing, but it wasn’t the first time I’d regretted having Rori even though I knew it meant I was a bad mother. Over time, I’d gotten used to feeling like I wasn’t a good mother. During Rori’s first year, whenever I would start to feel like I wasn’t acting the right way or feeling the way I was supposed to be feeling about being a parent, I would tell myself it was only temporary and was because of my insecurities and inability to do things with her perfectly like David did. I assured myself it was an adjustment period and like any new relationship, it was going to take time to develop. I was sure as time went on I would start to like my role as a mother and begin to feel as competent about it as David and the other mothers around me. I refused to even acknowledge that it might have anything to do with That Night.

But things didn’t improve over time. They only grew more pronounced as Rori moved into her second and third year. As I watched David, Robin, and other parents interact with and talk about their children, I could no longer deny something significant was missing in me when it came to being a parent. I didn’t want there to be, but the harder I tried to force it to happen, the more I struggled and the more obvious it was. The more I tried to say the right thing, the more I said the wrong thing whereas David seemed to always know exactly what to say. Robin wasn’t any different. I watched her on play dates as she skillfully talked Emma down from temper tantrums when both of our kids were going through the terrible twos. She was able to soothe and calm her down. When it was Rori’s turn to have a melt-down, she wanted nothing to do with my efforts to comfort her. She shoved me away and screamed louder. Every effort I made resulted in the same end—carrying her to the car over my shoulder kicking and screaming.