“It’s OK, Madd, I’ll tell him.”
Madison and Ian had always been close. Before he was born, she practiced putting a diaper on her Baby Alive doll, helped me set up the crib that had once been hers, went to the obstetrician with Adam and me to see the ultrasound live on the screen.
Ian had been sucking on his toes in one of the sonograms, something that delighted her.
The day he was born, Maddy was the first visitor.
“Is this really Ian?” she’d asked, looking at the little swaddled lump of a red-faced newborn. “Does he know how to play?”
Madison was a little mother to Ian, holding him in the tub so I could wash his little hairless head, pushing his stroller, feeding him Gerber strained apples and pears. When he got old enough to play, he pushed around her Barbie Doll Malibu, built castles with Legos for her Rapunzel doll, and cooked by her side in the Betty Crocker play kitchen.
“Don’t stare at my brother,” Maddy used to tell people in line at the grocery store who were admiring Ian. “He belongs to me.”
For his fourth birthday, Ian asked for a Ken doll to play with her Barbies. One year for Christmas when he was five, Ian got his sister a silver ring and asked her to marry him.
I was so lucky to have kids like my son and daughter, blessings I counted every day.
Now I was giving up someone I loved.
I called to Penny, but she was standing right next to my ankle where I couldn’t see her.
“How about you, sweetie? You surprised by the news?”
Penny tilted her head the way dogs do when they’re listening intently. Then she came over and scratched at my leg to be picked up.
“At least I’ll always have you,” I said into her warm shoulder.
“You’ll always have all of us,” Madison said, lobbing a raisin at me. “And you must have a plan. You always have a plan.”
4
Bryan and I dug to the bottom of his closet to sort, separating the heavy clothes he’d worn to get through frigid New York winters. The wool L.L.Bean sweaters went in the donate pile, which quickly became a mountain. I folded the cotton-lined jeans, flannel shirts, and zip-up fleece jackets—things that were once on his Christmas list—and even the thick cabled socks I’d found at the Army-Navy store three months before, the ones with the reinforced toes.
Truth was, Bryan was cold from October to April—most of the year, really—in the fickle New York weather. His favorite thing was a heavy, hooded robe that I got online when he turned fifty-six. He wore it tightly belted, hood up, in a way that made him look like a boxer headed for the ring. I used to hum the Rocky theme and he would shadow box, back in the days when things were fun.
I had waited months, all winter, for things to change, for us to get out of the rut we’d settled into, Bryan on the couch and me at my computer writing blogs and website copy for insurance companies, warehouse-sized home stores, and anyone else who would hire me. It was freelance work that brought in enough money to pay the mortgage; Bryan paid the rest of the household expenses.
Bry increasingly hated upstate New York winters, the long stretches of unforgiving wind, snow, boulder-like and crusty, turning black from the exhaust from cars and impossible to scrape off the driveway and sidewalk out front. New York winters sting your face and make you run cursing to your car. You wonder why in hell you choose to live in New York, until beloved spring arrives, followed by summer, making you forget the evil, unbreakable winter.
We’d tried, both of us, to get him through the winters with some enjoyment. He’d become a stellar snowman-builder. We got his and hers snowshoes and tramped around the backyard. But his fingers and toes lost sensation quickly, and I ended up being the one looping around the willow tree out back, wearing down a path in the newly fallen snow.
Bryan had those hand warmers you crack to release heat in every one of his pockets and inside his boots and gloves. He wore cotton-lined jeans, two T-shirts, a button-down flannel, and always had shoes or slippers on his feet. He swaddled himself in fleece blankets when he was on the couch, which had become more and more frequently. We constantly argued about how high to turn up the thermostat.
We also argued about things far more serious, especially his very dark winter mood swings. It was something that frayed holes in the fabric of our marriage. Bryan didn’t seem to listen to or care about anything I came up with that could possibly help.
“Why don’t you talk to a doctor?” I asked him one Sunday afternoon while he was huddled on the couch.
“A doctor? What kind of doctor?” he answered without opening his eyes.
“Well, not a psychologist really, maybe a specialist that prescribes meds…?”
Bryan opened his eyes. “You think I haven’t thought of that, or tried it?”
“What do you mean?” I sat down at the end of the couch and he reflexively moved his feet away from me.
“Yeah, I saw docs, more than one. One said Seasonal Adjustment Disorder. Another said social anxiety. Another said I was fucking bipolar. Every one of them had their own ideas.”
I was startled by his anger. “So, what did they say?”
Bryan sat up, kicking the blanket off his legs impatiently. “Listen, Jessica, I tried a bunch of antidepressants, mood stabilizers, anything they could throw at me. I took shit for more than a year.”
It was silent in the living room. Even Pen, who had been watching us in wonder about his raised voice, hunched down in her dog bed.
“What happened?” I asked.
“They made me jittery or exhausted, dry-mouthed and afraid to leave my house, my palms were sweaty, my heart raced,
