Reasons

We can think of a thousand reasons to blame but seem to come up empty when it’s time to forgive, especially when it’s ourselves who need forgiveness.

I wake up to the 9mm on the kitchen table. What the...? I quickly hide it in the cabinet so Jackson and James won’t see it when they come in for breakfast.

I make myself small and quiet going through the motions of getting ready for the day. Jonathan is sleeping off another night of drinking. He didn’t even make it to the bedroom, which is great with me. I could do without another night being told what a disappointment I am.

My phone rings as I’m dropping Jackson and James in their daycare rooms. The center director is trying to talk to me about late tuition payments and I cannot dig my phone out of my bag in time to silence it. She’s looking at me with disdain, annoyed I think because of the chaos that seems to follow me. I’m not like the other moms - career women in their early thirties, polished and confident.

“Sorry,” I say. “I think it was my husband calling. I’ll talk to him about the missing payments today.”

“Mrs. Murphy, we’ve been more than patient. Your account is four weeks overdue. We have to have payment this week or we will have to unenroll your boys.”

“I understand. I appreciate your willingness to give us the extra time. We’ll figure something out, I promise.”

The phone rings again as I get in the car. I flip it open as I drive off, trying to get to work on time.

“Hello.”

“Why didn’t you answer?” Jonathan says. “And where the fuck did you put my gun?”

“I was talking to the daycare director because we’re late on tuition. She says the boys will be unenrolled if we don’t pay by the end of the week.” The timidity in my voice makes me sick but I don’t know how to stop it. “And I put your gun in the cabinet because I didn’t want Jackson and James to play with it.”

“Don’t ever fucking touch my gun again. Do you hear me?”

“Yes, I hear you. I won’t touch it again. I’m sorry,” I say. “What about the tuition payment? Did you get paid yet for the last job? I don’t have any more money in the household account after buying groceries this week.”

“You don’t need to get involved with my paycheck. That’s none of your business - I’m doing just fine providing for my family. If you would just stay home, we wouldn’t have to put the boys in daycare. As a matter of fact, quit your job today. I want the boys staying home tomorrow.”

“What? Even if I took the boys out of care today, we would still owe them for the last four weeks.”

“Fuck ‘em. What are they going to do? Come after us? The boys don’t need to be at that uppity school anyway.”

Jonathan hangs up before I can respond. I don’t want to quit my job. It’s just some stupid waitressing job at a chain restaurant in the mall, certainly not my dream job. It’s not even full time, but I need it. I need to get out of the house and feel productive, but more than that, I need a way to put cash aside that Jonathan can’t spend on booze. I also don’t want to pull the boys out of their school. They’ve been doing really well there.

Jonathan doesn’t make it home for dinner, but I’m not surprised. He’ll make do with his usual liquid sustenance, I’m sure. I reassure our boys once again that daddy is just working late but misses them tons. When he stumbles in later, I glance at the clock and feign sleep.

He falls into bed beside me, not caring if he wakes me, or maybe he’s just too drunk to notice.

“Did you quit your job?” he slurs.

I don’t roll over but speak as if he had just woken me up. It’s easier than explaining why I had been awake for hours, alternating between crying and fuming, wondering how I got here, in this life of mine.

“Yes,” I lie, hoping I can figure something out soon since I really just asked for a few days off. “The boys will stay home with me tomorrow.”

“Good girl,” he says before drifting off into alcohol-fueled sleep.

I know I’m only buying time, but I keep hoping something will change at home, that some miracle will replace the life I live with the life I should be living. My thoughts go down the rabbit hole of regret and shame. It’s like a security blanket I can’t give up, this self-destructive pattern of insecurity and hopelessness in the quiet and the dark of night, the only time I have space to myself. How did I get here? I ask myself again, hoping for a different answer, one that involves some unavoidable life-changing event that wasn’t my fault. But it was my fault. I made the choices that brought me here...here to this run-down two-bedroom apartment, with an alcoholic I don’t love but can’t leave, and two children who need me to be better.

I wake up groggy with a splitting headache, my night time pity party keeping me from sleep too long again, as Jackson is tapping on the bedroom door. Jonathan had raged at the boys a few weeks ago about walking into our room without knocking first.

“Mommy, I had an accident,” Jackson whispers to me, crying. At four years old, he has already learned shame.

“It’s okay, sweetie. Mommy will help you get cleaned up.”

Once Jackson is cleaned up, I get James out of his crib. He’s big enough now to crawl out, but Jonathan doesn’t want to spend the money on another bed. I’m tempted to just put his crib mattress on the floor, but when I mentioned it last week, Jonathan told me that was a stupid idea and would make us look like trailer trash. And stumbling home drunk every night and not paying our bills makes us look respectable? But I say that only in my head.

While Jackson and James are eating breakfast and Jonathan is in the shower, I look around at our tiny space. The walls and door jambs are smudged with fingerprints and shoe marks. The sofa and coffee table are beat up, tired-looking, second-hand purchases from another decade. The boys’ toys and art supplies are haphazardly thrown in plastic bins at the edge of the room. I’m embarrassed by my home. I didn’t grow up like this. My parents always had a house they took pride in. They could have friends over for dinner at a moment’s notice whereas I don’t even like opening the blinds in case some nosy neighbor judges me for my lack of housekeeping skills, my failure as a modern woman and mother blatantly obvious.

“Get your car cleaned up today. Brent is coming to pick it up this afternoon,” Jonathan says as he grabs a can of soda for breakfast.

“What do you mean? Why would Brent be picking up my car?”

“I sold it to him last night. With you not working now, you don’t need a car. You can walk to the grocery store with the boys when needed.” He stares at me, smirking, daring me to respond.

“What if there’s an emergency?” I ask.

“You’d better hope there’s not one, huh?”

I tell Jackson and James we get to take a few days off from school and work, a sort of vacation, and that we’re going to make the house like a posh resort so it’s really special for us. They help me, however much two active toddlers can, tidy up the apartment. When we’ve done as much as possible, I put James and Jackson in their room for some quiet time. They’ve never been good nappers but we at least have a structure of quiet afternoon time on my days off. I usually have about an hour until one of them gets anxious or bored. I take a moment to start up the computer and open an email from my high school friend, Sam. He recently graduated from a prestigious west coast school and used to regale me with tales of late night philosophy sessions and parties with friends so I wouldn’t feel so left out. We had wanted to attend together, but my life took a different turn. My high school friends went to universities out of state and don’t come back here much to visit. Calls and emails from most stopped long ago, and I haven’t the time nor energy to reach out to them to rekindle the relationships. At least Sam still keeps in touch so I feel a sliver of my former self is still lurking somewhere deep down inside.

Jonathan wakes me. He’s trying to remove the t-shirt I sleep in.

“I’m trying to sleep Jonathan,” I say, pushing his hands off me, the scent of stale smoke, beer and sweat lingering.

“What the fuck! It’s been weeks,” he slurs. “You know, Destiny and Angel wanted to take me home tonight. I coulda had them both, but I came home to you. Little miss prissy. God damn prude bitch.” He gets up, turns on the light and grabs the half empty beer bottle he had brought to bed. “Ya know, you’re not even that pretty.”

“You’re drunk and you’re going to wake the boys. Just go to bed,” I say.

He throws the bottle, missing my head by mere inches. It’s not the first time. Sometimes I wonder if it wouldn’t be better if the bottle actually made contact...but then I remember my boys and the thought disappears. He storms out, nearly knocking over Jackson in the hallway.

“Mommy! What was that noise?”

“It’s okay, sweetie,” I say, moving towards the door to intercept him before he steps on broken glass. “Mommy just tripped and knocked something over. Let’s get you back to bed so I can clean up in here.”

By the time I get the beer and glass cleaned up, there’s no point in going back to bed. Jonathan is gone when I get out of the shower. When the boys get up, I paste on my happy face, trying once again to maintain the secrets of their father’s behavior.

After breakfast, we make our way to the local thrift store to buy a few items to help the apartment look nicer. Coming out of the store, with our little bag of throw pillows and knick knacks that I purchased using the spare change I had dug out of my car before Jonathan sold it, I bump right into Ashley Williams. Ashley, my high school tormentor, who took every chance she could to make a derogatory remark about me or my friends. Blond, perfect complexion Ashley, dressed in her cute little vest and skinny jeans showing off her yoga-formed body, is getting out of her new Mercedes with a box marked Donations as I struggled out the door with my bag of barely affordable used home goods, in my tired sweatpants and high school theater t-shirt, my two boys in tow.

“Alex,” she says. She looks me up and down and sees the thrift store shopping bag. “Doing a little shopping, I see?” I want to slap that smirk right off her face.

I don’t humor her with a response. Nobody in the old neighborhood shops at thrift stores. It’s just not done.

“Hello, Ashley,” I say as I start walking the boys towards the sidewalk.

“Do you not have a car? You must live nearby,” she says.

“Yes, we live nearby. See ya, Ashley.”

“That’s strange...I thought you moved to California to go to school. Right...valedictorian and all? I didn’t think you would be back here.”

I keep walking, knowing she’s not actually looking for an answer. I have no doubt news of my change in life course made it even into Ashley’s circle.

“Mommy,” says Jackson, “what’s a valditoran?” Christ, how did I get here?

My neighbor Abby stops by with her little girl after the boys’ quiet time. I suppose you could call her my only local friend. The people I work with at the restaurant think I’m pretentious because I don’t speak like they do or hang out and get drunk after my shift. And the other moms at daycare are a good ten years older and don’t have time to chat before rushing off to their professional jobs or rushing back to their beautiful homes. Abby is only a few years older and seems to have had a similar fall from grace, so I feel more human with her.

“Alex, I love what you’ve done with the place! It looks so good in here, like one of those Better Homes and Gardens pictures,” Abby says.

I blush, not comfortable with compliments. “Thanks...it’s nothing really. We just cleaned up mostly and moved some things around. I bought some small things to help decorate the living room, that’s all.”

“No, really, I like it! You really have an eye for decorating. You should do this professionally.”

“Oh, I don’t think so. I’m really not very creative.”

“Don’t say that - just look at this. Besides, you are creative - you told me you did drama in high school and wrote short stories and all that.”

“Yes, but I wasn’t very good. Math and science were easier for me - that’s why I was going to be an engineer,” I say.

“Well, I think decorating would be much more fun,” Abby says.

“Yeah, but I suppose it doesn’t really matter. Jonathan doesn’t want me to work any more and I’d never be able to go back to school or do any training or anything anyway.”

“Doesn’t want you to work any more? What happened?”

I tell her about the ultimatum and the beer bottle, and then so many of the other things that have happened recently come gushing out and I don’t realize I’m crying until it gets Jackson’s attention from the other room.

“Mommy, are you crying? Are you okay?” he says.

“Yes, sweetie, I’m fine. Just talking about a sad book I was reading,” I lie. Lies upon lies upon lies, until I suffocate.

“Why do you stay with him?” Abby asks, bringing me out of my reverie.

“What choice do I have, Abby? I’m a 23-year old with two small children, no college degree, no job, no car and no freaking idea of what to do next. Besides, it’s not like Jonathan beats me. There are women in much worse situations than this. I’ve made my bed and now I have to sleep in it.”

I know he doesn’t treat me right, that this isn’t how love should be. But marriage is work, right? No one has a perfect relationship without challenges. Other couples deal with alcoholism and other issues...maybe I need to be more supportive and compassionate. I’ve never had to overcome difficult things in my life, and I know Jonathan didn’t have the greatest childhood. I should just try harder to make things work.

I had thought Jonathan would like that the apartment looks better now, but if he noticed the changes, he hasn’t said anything. He has been giving me the silent treatment for the last week since throwing the beer bottle at me. When I start to talk to him, he just glares at me. He still kisses the boys goodbye and hello each day and plays with them. I tell myself it’s fine - I don’t want to talk to him anyway. But the truth is, it hurts not to be acknowledged in your own home by the man who is supposed to love you for the rest of your life.

I hear squeals of laughter coming from the boys’ room. Jonathan is in there on the floor playing with them. It’s times like these when I catch glimpses of the laid back, funny boy I was so enamored with at a friend’s party five years ago. The graduation party was at her brother’s apartment so a lot of the guys were a few years older, but not like the college guys I was used to meeting. Jonathan was surrounded by girls that night, all in awe of his charm and wit. When he smiled at me from across the room, despite the attention of the more popular girls, everything else in the room faded and it was just me and him. Boys didn’t smile at me from across the room. I was the one they asked for homework answers from, not the one they went out with. So, one smile and I was hooked. The next two months were a blur of parties and lake trips and sneaking out. By August that year, I was pregnant and everything changed.

I could tell my parents had disagreed with my choice to marry Jonathan but were old-fashioned enough to believe it was for the best anyway. I had thought it would work out fine. Jonathan and I had fun together, he made me laugh, and I had always wanted children. It hurt tremendously that I wouldn’t be going to college with my friends, especially after working so hard to make sure my academic record stood out, but I didn’t let on that I was disappointed with how things were turning out. To do so would be to admit I had made a mistake. And let’s be real, people like me didn’t do fuck-ups of this magnitude. So, full speed ahead it was for me, squashing down those dreams of a bigger life.

As winter sets in, the boys and I get more and more restless being home all day, especially now that it is often too cold to play outside. I had told the restaurant that I needed to quit, and the extra money has all but dried up. I’ve stopped answering the home phone because it’s probably just going to be a debt collector. We never paid the daycare bill and we’re behind on credit card payments. I know Jonathan is going off to work every day at different building sites, but I don’t have any control of the family money, so I don’t know where it goes. I don’t dare ask him for fear of him blowing up. When my cell phone had been shut off for a couple of days, my mom finally comes by to check on us.

“You haven’t been answering the phone or returning my calls, so I got worried,” Mom says.

“Everything’s fine, Mom. Jonathan just forgot to pay some bills so the cell phone got turned off for a little while - you know, he’s so busy with work and everything. And with all those telemarketing calls, I don’t like to answer the home phone.”

Lies upon lies…

“Well, I’m sure you’re busy with the kids and work all day, but I know how smart you are so you could probably take over the household accounts since he’s…forgetful.”

Perhaps the people who love us see more than we think they do. I don’t discuss Jonathan’s drinking or anger issues with my parents, or with anyone really besides Abby, but I suspect my mom knows something. I don’t want my parents worrying about me but I also don’t want the lectures about my rash decisions. I’m a smart girl...and smart girls don’t make colossal mistakes.

“Yeah,” I say, “I could probably take care of the accounts. We decided I would quit my job at the restaurant since it didn’t really make sense to pay for daycare. So I’ll have more time to take care of things like that.” As if Jonathan would let me take over control of the money.

“Oh, do you think you’ll be happy staying home all day? Maybe you could do something on the side.”

“Maybe, but I don’t know what I would do.”

“Well, you were always good at organizing growing up. People do that now. My neighbor just hired someone to come in and organize all of her closets and cabinets. And just look at your place now - it looks really good.”

“Thanks, Mom. It looks okay, but nothing like your house. You’ve always been so good at decorating.”

“Well, you really have an eye for it. I could help you if you wanted.”

“Thanks, I’ll think about it.”

“Why don’t you and the boys and Jonathan come for dinner tonight? I know your dad would love to see you and it’s been so long since you’ve been out to the house.”

“That sounds great, but I’ll have to talk to Jonathan in case he has to work late. His schedule is all over the place.”

“Well then just you and the boys can come.”

“We’re down to one car now with me staying home, so I’ll try.” I can tell my mom is concerned but I keep the smile on my face like it’s the most normal thing in the world to suddenly be without money or a car of my own.

“You know we are always here for you, no matter what,” she says. I know, but is that enough?

I think about what she says, about decorating or organizing on the side. I don’t even know how one goes about starting something like that, and what would I do with the boys? I might be okay at it...and Jackson does start kindergarten next year. So, maybe?

Hope...it’s a transient thing, fleeting, fragile.

Jonathan and I argue on the phone about going to dinner. I finally tell him we will just take a taxi and he doesn’t have to go. I tell him that maybe it would be best if the boys and I just stay the night. We never do that but suddenly it’s what I really want to do.

“No, I’ll pick you up in thirty minutes,” he says.

He’s late, and as soon as we pull away from the apartment parking lot, I can tell he has been drinking.

“Why don’t you let me drive?” I say.

“I’m fine! Just had a few quiet ones with the guys.”

“Look, I know you don’t want to go to dinner but we’ve got the boys in the car and I think it would be better if I drove.”

His agitation is growing and his movements through traffic start scaring James and Jackson.

“Jonathan, pull over!”

“Do you think you can run away to your mommy and daddy’s and take my boys?”

“What are you talking about? I just said it would make sense for us to stay the night so we wouldn’t have to take a taxi back. I thought you could just pick us up tomorrow.”

He continues to speed up and tailgate the car in front of us.

“Jonathan, please!” He doesn’t stop. “Maybe I should take the boys away if this is how you’re going to act. You could really hurt us.”

“I’ll fucking kill you if you try it.” His gun comes out of his jacket pocket. He points it at me and swerves into the other lane, hurtling towards oncoming traffic.

Not on my watch, not with my babies in the car, over my dead body.

I grab at the wheel. We go flying to the side of the road, bumping over dead grass and gravel until slamming into a fence, as a truck, blaring its horn, comes barreling along the lane we had just left.

Oh God, what have I done?

The river relaxes the boys. We come here every day now that spring is approaching. Their memories fade, but not mine. Guilt pervades my thoughts. For now, though, we are safe.