Not true.
Relief; I feel relief that I’m not there.
And resentment.
Because this email—is this about making sure I’m OK? Or is it about making sure I come home and handle all the shit he doesn’t know how—doesn’t want—to do? Is this insecurity in his messages about me? Or is it about him, having to handle two kids on his own, figure shit out, make shit up, just fucking getting shit done any way it can get done?
It’s the P.S., the friggin’ P.S. I’m in here having a breakdown and he’s asking me where Rocky’s medicine is. I bet he’s patting himself on the back thinking he’s amazing for even remembering that Rocky needs medicine. He can’t even, not even now, he can’t even open his eyes and fucking LOOK FOR IT. “OK, get it together, Jeej,” I have to say out loud when I find myself screaming at the blinking cursor.
I start typing:
It’s in the fridge asshole that’s where you keep liquid antibiotics and our kids have needed antibiotics at least four times in the past year and every time they have been in the fridge and they have not been camouflaged as lunch meat or apples every single time they have been there in a translucent bottle full of fluorescent yellow liquid and you live in our house and you are the father of these children and you should know that and the fridge is a discrete area it’s not hard to find something in a fridge especially not ours since it’s empty most of the time because you never help me because you are incapable of entering a supermarket or maybe that’s just what you expect the help to do oh wait WE DON’T HAVE ANY HELP ITS JUST ME YOU MOTHERFUC—
I delete it. The intimate management of shit and dirt and food and children is of little interest to him. Of so little interest that he doesn’t even know it exists for him to have no interest in.
When I was pregnant and still working I would set my alarm to get up early so I could vomit twice and still get to work on time. One morning, while I was lying on the bathroom floor, just to feel the cold tiles on my face before I puked again, Johnny poked his head around the door.
“Jeej, are you alright?” he said, head tilted upside down to see me better. Sweet boy.
“Yes, baby, go get ready for school, I’ll be OK.”
“OK, but Jeej, do you have a shoebox? Remember I need a shoebox today.”
Oh, fuck. The fucking shoebox. “Um, go ask Harry to find one, OK?” I croak from the floor. Johnny needs a shoebox, a glass jar, a cardboard tube, or a historical costume every week. The school seems to think that we have a huge surplus of shoeboxes and jam jars that we keep on a magical shelf with our bottomless box of cardboard tubes next to the closet full of child-sized Roman emperor’s capes and pharaoh’s headdresses because God forbid they learn anything without appearing in full costume and dragging a bag of garbage to school.
The point was I had done everything the night before. Packed the waterproofs with the rain boots in a named plastic bag for forest school; signed the homework diary; checked the spelling sheet; packed karate uniform and after-school pre-karate snack; labeled the water bottle; tested him on his five-times table. I did a nit check with a metal comb because somebody in the class has friggin’ lice again. After he went to bed I finished three client letters and emailed a brief to counsel. I knew I’d be throwing up in the morning so I did everything the night before. Everything except finding the fucking shoebox.
While I washed my face between rounds of vomiting, Harry came into the bathroom, in boxer shorts and a dress shirt, tying his tie and checking his shave in the mirror. “Pukes, Johnny needs a shoebox,” he said. Pukes was his new nickname for me. I vomited on his business socks.
“My God, are you alright, darling?” Harry said, alarmed.
“I’m fine. Find him a box. And change your socks.”
Twenty minutes later I pulled on a black dress, put on my sneakers and put my work shoes in my bag. I did the best I could with my makeup but it was hard to cover the spray of red dots from the broken blood vessels left around my eyes from the vomiting. Harry had left for work and Johnny was standing at the door waiting for me. His shoes were on the wrong feet and he’d skipped a button so his shirt was crooked. His teeth were brushed but his hair wasn’t, but I had to let that go. He had his school bag with all his stuff; I had my work bag with my plastic bags for emergency puking on the train, water, foundation and a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos, the only thing I could keep down.
“OK, baby, where’d Harry put the shoebox?” I asked Johnny, ready to walk us out the door. He pointed to the table: “It’s there, Jeej. I’m not sure it’s right though.”
On the table was the extra-large cardboard box that we used to move our bedding from the States. I knew because it was written in marker on the side: Bedding. It was fifty times the size of a shoebox. The presence of the box on the table meant that upstairs in the loft, everything that had been stored in this box was now in a huge pile on the floor.
Johnny, already skilled in British understatement, said, “I think that’s a bit too big, Jeej.” I would’ve screamed if my throat wasn’t so raw. Instead I sighed, opened a kitchen cabinet, took out a box of cannelloni shells and emptied them into a bowl.
“Jeej, what’re you doing?” Johnny asked, peering over the counter.
“Gettin’ shit done, Johnny.”
“Language, Jeej, £1 in the jar, please.”
“Sorry, remind me later, will this be OK?” I held
