Gail Thomas

Word Count 1065

Me: Have you always lied to me?

Me: 5 days ago I believed that you loved me and that I could trust you, now I just want to know if you think about me at all?

No response.

Me: And when were you planning on telling me about your latest plaything? I feel like a complete idiot. How do you lie like that and live with yourself?

Him: My ability to compartmentalize, while efficient for business, is a little sketchy when it comes to my personal life. Lying like that and living with myself is easy when I put things in their own boxes since I don’t feel the emotion or guilt around it.

Me: Sketchy? Who are you?

Him: Check your email when you get a chance.

 Why couldn’t he just answer all my texts? Why did I have to check my email?

I peeled myself off the lawn chair I had parked next to the raspberry bushes. They were still generously providing their second helping of oddly large, sweet fruit this late in fall. I couldn’t bring myself to eat a single berry, the staple diet of my childhood. Having forgotten to put shoes on, my bare feet squished into the muddy cold late November grass. The low morning sun burned my swollen eyes. I opened the frosty iron door handle, pushed past the dogs without saying hi to them, and plopped onto the lime green “bouncy chair” that Michael had insisted was good for our backs. Never had I NOT said hi to dogs. I opened the new email from my husband, five days after I discovered that he was cheating again. HE opened with:

“I’ve always thought you’re too nice for me.”

Too nice. Is that a thing? A sourness of regurgitation coated my tongue.

 He spent the next five paragraphs going on about his desire to “experiment with a new woman, to travel to every corner of the globe, to taste exotic fruits in exotic countries” before mentioning that he and his new passion fruit had a two-month-old “little guy.”

A little guy? A little guy?

“I attached some photos of the baby. I know it’s unconventional, but I hope you can be part of his life when things calm down,” he wrote.

“Oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god…” I mumbled.

 My head spun, owl-like, to look at my sixteen-year-old daughter who was trying to be invisible behind me at the head of the long kitchen table. She looked strangely calm. Stoic.

“I know, Mom.”

“YOU KNOW? YOU KNOWWWW????” I tore past her out the front door, my body flying to the garage to find my son. Adrenaline alone kept me careening along. As soon as he saw my face, he knew that I knew.

 “YOU KNOW, too?” I pleaded.

“Mom, please, calm down.” I felt my eighteen-year-old son’s grownup hands gripping my shoulders as my mouth howled.

“I’m gonna kill him! How could he do this to us?”

I threw myself, face first, onto the cold blacktop of the basketball court. My arms and legs flailed like a toddler’s in a tantrum. I pounded my forehead against the ground. A spiderweb pattern of blood speckled the gravel marks that imprinted above my eyebrows. This crying was deeper, darker, different from the continual sobbing of the past week. My son had only seen me cry watching Free Willy and My Dog Skip.

 After I dialed my husband's phone again and again only to hear his lighthearted voicemail, the phone left my hand, cut across the crisp blue sky, hit a high branch and bounced its way through the tangle of spruce boughs to nestle into the grass below. I jumped into every available vehicle to find no keys. The kids had already dived into protection mode. I ran down our quarter mile driveway like I was going to run from Pennsylvania to New York City to kill my husband.

 My mom and oldest brother, Jeff, appeared in the driveway. Frantic, wild-eyed and still screaming, I ran back to the front lawn. This time I threw myself on the damp, cold grass, face first again, grass making its way into the gaping, drooling hole that was my mouth. Looking family in the eye was impossible. Humiliation would not loosen its grip. Face down. Never look up again.

 "How could this happen? I wanna die. What am I gonna do?" I pleaded to my sheet white, horror-stricken family members. They were like lawn ornaments, frozen in their spots, unsure of what to do with me. I had not needed any of them to care for me before this tragic movie for which they had premium seating.

 "Take me to the hospital, PLEASE! NOW! I can’t be awake. I want drugs." I had no idea what kind of drugs I wanted, but through my frenzy, it was clear that my family still needed me to make the decisions. Asking for help was unfamiliar. Giving advice had been my lifelong comfort zone. I wanted someone to tell me what to do. To save me. To scoop me up and make it okay.

 Face up. Do something."NO, wait," I said. I ran into the house and raced up the stairs, two at a time, towards my bedroom. My entourage followed, afraid to leave me alone. The kids seemed to feel that it was their duty to witness my collapse. Maybe they felt guilty for knowing about their new sibling before I did. Maybe this was no different from watching the goriest scene in a horror movie without looking away even though you feel the vomit rising.

 I tore his suits, ties, blazers and shirts from their hangers and hurled them out the bedroom window. As my family stood silently, terror and deep grief in their eyes, I emptied his underwear and sock drawers. Finally, I cleared his cedar lined sweater and shoe closet. Hangers swung and broke, closet doors slammed and hung from their hinges as my kids watched their father's wardrobe sail out the window. The multi-colored, feathered, fake parrot that sat on my husband's shoulder as part of his Halloween pirate costume three weeks earlier went 'flying' out the window to land, upright on top of the mountain of clothing that no longer lived in our house.

*

Gail owns and runs a dog coat company with her husband in rural Pennsylania. She is a graduate of NYU and Le Cordon Bleu London culinary school. A neophyte in the writing world, Gail has had stories in Motherwell Magazine and Synchronized Chaos. She homeschooled her children, and is working on a memoir, weaving a blissful farm-life past with the horrors life delivered as mid-life settled in. She lives back on her childhood farm with her husband, elderly mom, four dogs, and a boatload of pet farm animals