Chai Tea Sunday (5 page)

Somewhere over the next few weeks, our marriage also died. We tried to fix it, of course, but we were at a complete loss on how to make our marriage work after experiencing such unequivocal tragedy.

The social worker assigned to us by Mount Sinai referred us to a local therapist who specialized in working with parents who experienced the death of an infant. But it seemed that even
she
couldn't do anything, or even suggest something, to help us repair our relationship.

She recommended that we also join a local grievance group that helped parents who had lost a baby. I had hoped there was truth in the old adage that misery loves company. It doesn't. At least not for Eric, who wanted to shut the world out and never speak of Ella again.

“Would anyone else like to say anything? Tell us how they are feeling?” Shannon, the group leader, asked towards the end of the first — and last — meeting Eric and I attended together. Shannon glanced at Eric, who had been the only one in the room to not say anything during the hour we had been at the meeting. Eric remained silent and looked down at his feet, shrugging his shoulders and looking defeated.

“You didn't even say
anything
. Not one word!” I said to him after the meeting on our car ride home. It had started snowing, which Eric was completely disregarding as he drove too quickly through the dusted streets. My mind was taken back to the last time I had been in a car with Eric when he was driving too quickly. I clung to the memory.

“I told you that I didn't want to go. You forced me into it.
Remember?
You said that it would be good for us. Well, it wasn't. I hated it. Every minute of it.” Eric's words were quiet. Bitter.

“Fine, then. Don't go anymore. I'll go by myself.”

Eric never joined me again at the grievance group meetings, and even missed our next session with our therapist, Dr. Covert. Eric messaged me on my BlackBerry ten minutes into our appointment, saying that something had come up at work and he wouldn't be able to make it on time. He didn't even apologize.

Upon seeing the frustrated tears welling in my eyes, Dr. Covert handed me a tissue, saying simply, “Well, Nicky, hopefully Eric will be able to come next time. For now, this gives us a chance to talk about you. What
you're
going through.”

I shrugged. Blew my nose. I wanted to be with Dr. Covert — I was desperate for her to find a way to make me feel better — but I needed Eric to be there,
with
me. “I miss Ella, of course. Like crazy. But I miss Eric too. He just feels gone to me, Dr. Covert. It's like his soul died with her and all I have left is this empty shell that looks like him.”

“I hear that a lot when I work with grieving parents. Men often deal with death differently than women. Innately, many men feel that they are the stereotypical strong protectors who should not freely show their emotions. This is one of the reasons there seems to be a struggle between mothers and fathers after a child dies. Wives are looking to their husbands for support and understanding, but many times, their husbands can't — or won't — show the same sympathy.”

“But it's like he doesn't even care that she's gone!”

“We know that isn't true, Nicky. Eric is just showing his grief in a different way,” Dr. Covert answered gently. “In most cases that I have seen, and Eric seems to be included in this, men
act
instead of dwell on the situation. They put their feelings into actions and experience grief physically, not emotionally. Instead of talking about their feelings, they focus more on completing specific tasks.”

“Like going back to work?”

“Yes, like going back to work.”

“But what about me? What about what I need? What about the fact that I need
him
? My husband.”

“That's what we're working on, Nicky. You have to remember that this will take time.”

But Eric's non-stop work ethic in response to what we had been through never seemed to change. And it clashed horrifically against my need to constantly talk of Ella and the few moments we had with her. Eventually, our brutal fights at home entered into the territory of how much we could even say her name out loud.

“I can't take hearing you say her name!” Eric would say to me, quietly at first but with an increasingly raised voice that ultimately reached screaming. His words scraped at my eardrums like a death metal song being turned up on the stereo. His face would be bright red by that point, his eyes lined in tears that refused to fall. He was shutting Ella out. And subsequently me as well.

“I'm scared I will forget her,” I would retort back. I was obsessed with her memory and craved — no, needed, with every ounce of my soul — to be grieving with my husband. But he couldn't give that to me. He couldn't talk about what we had been through. Or
her
.

“Where are you, Eric? It's like you're standing there, but you're not even here with me. Can't you see I need you? That
you
need
me
?”

“I'm right here. I haven't gone anywhere, although sometimes I want to.”

“What?! Fine. If you're so miserable, then why don't you just go?”

Eric looked straight into my eyes, his gaze hovering somewhere between misery and madness. “I don't
want
to go, but you're making me feel like it's my only chance at escape. The only way I'll be able to breathe again.”

“Escape from
what
,
Eric? From me? Our life together? The new world that we've been given? The one that doesn't include Ella?”

“Stop, Nicky. Just stop. I don't know anything anymore. I'm struggling to just move forward. But you constantly bringing up her name isn't helping, because it only reminds me that she isn't here anymore.”

I searched his eyes, waiting for him to continue, the bitter rage encircling us and closing in.

“But what about me? I miss her. I need her. I don't want to just forget her, like you want to do.”

“I don't want to forget her, Nicky. It hurts so much to talk about her. It just hurts too much. So, seriously, just
stop
talking about her.”

I stopped, as he asked, and stared straight into his eyes. And then I delivered the blow that I knew neither of us would ever forget. “It's like you didn't even
love
Ella! Why do you want to forget her so badly? She was our daughter!” I hissed the words, seething and hurting. I had lost control of my emotions and my actions. My soul had collapsed when Ella's heart had stopped beating.

The callous insinuation having shot through the air like a bolt of lightning, I couldn't take it back. He took two giant steps towards where I stood. Closed in on me, fists raised, and then punched a hole through our kitchen wall. He paused then, and hung his head, his shoulders slumping under the pain of my accusation. Eric said nothing, but it was the closest he had ever come to hitting me, and it scared both of us.

Eric couldn't look at me before grabbing his keys and screeching out of the driveway in his BMW M3, a recently made purchase my mother swore was designed to make him feel better.

He disappeared for four days after that. I didn't know where he was or what he was doing. Our conversations were forced and uncomfortable when he returned, ultimately reverting back to screaming matches when we couldn't take the strain. It was as if we no longer knew how to talk to each other and occasionally yelled just to break the silence.

We couldn't even manage to be in the same room together. I didn't recognize Eric or who he had become; the man I married was simply gone. I knew he felt the same way about me. To be honest, I didn't recognize myself either.

By the middle of the summer, we were no longer sleeping in the same bed. By fall, we were officially separated. The papers were signed almost nine months to the date of Ella's birth and death.

Neither of us wanted to keep our home, so we sold it to the first buyers to make us an offer. Belinda, our real estate agent, assured us it was a fair purchase price, with a reasonable closing date.

“Do they have kids?” I asked her, as we signed the papers at our kitchen table. My heart was breaking as I asked the words, but I couldn't help myself. For some reason, I needed to know.

“Two,” she said softly. “A little girl who is six and a son who is two.”

I nodded, blinking back tears as I continued to sign the paperwork. From under the table, I felt Eric reach over and gently squeeze my knee. It was all I needed for the tears to fall on the paper, smudging my signature.

“It's okay,” Belinda jumped in, dabbing the sale agreement with a napkin from the table, trying to save the signature. Eric's hand left my knee. “I'll dry this up, and we'll just white it out and sign overtop. It will be
fine
.”

Our time in the house officially ended with the ring of our doorbell on a crisp Saturday morning in October. I opened the front door to find three burly men, standing side-by-side in sweat-stained clothes that seemed to have been washed but permanently marked by too many long days of lugging boxes and furniture.

“You Nicky?” the largest of the three men asked. “We're here to move your stuff.”

I opened the door wider, just as Eric came down the stairs, his hair still damp from his morning shower. His crisp, clean jeans and button-down shirt stood in stark contrast to the movers' faded T-shirts and sweats. As Eric passed me to shake hands and introduce himself to the movers, I breathed in the smell of his shampoo. It smelled of familiarity, mixed with a blend of lavender and mint.

As the men got to work, they took turns glancing at me in a way that seemed to inherently suggest they all knew it was one of those sad moving situations. Maybe it was just me being paranoid, or perhaps it was because the boxes were clearly marked with an
E
or an
N
, and the movers were instructed to carry each box to the appropriately identified van, both of which were parked on our street.

“His versus hers,” I heard one of the movers mutter underneath his breath as he carried an oversized box down our stairs, leaving a smudge of back sweat against the wall as he went.

And that's exactly how it had been for the previous month as we divided our belongings. Wedding china for me, flat-screen
TV
for him. Couch for me, dining room table for him.

It had actually been relatively easy dividing up our assets. Much easier than I had heard so many people complain about in the movies. Maybe it was because Eric and I had somehow remained cordial in our last few months together. Or maybe it was because neither of us really gave a shit about the possessions that had found their way into our home. After all, it was just stuff.

When the last boxes were loaded, we took turns saying goodbye to the empty house and, finally, each other. As hard as it was, we agreed to no contact. I knew that seeing Eric again, talking to him — well, it would just make it harder. I needed a clean break. A new start. A world without him.

I used my half of the money we made on the sale of our house to purchase a small, one-bedroom condo in the heart of downtown. I needed to get out of suburbia and my new home came with the city buzz I was craving, and the promise of watching baseball games and concerts from my balcony when the stadium roof was open. It was the start of my new normal.

Except my new normal was lined with insomnia. I lay awake all night, every night, and wondered why I couldn't keep a classroom of Grade 3 kids in check the next day. Every time I closed my eyes, I had hospital room nightmares that led to crying fits into my pillow.

Each new day, I would drag myself through the morning motions of getting ready, and hoped that under-eye concealer would be that day's secret weapon. It never worked and I knew I wasn't fooling anyone.

Eventually, my principal called me on it, saying that she could be somewhat lenient given the circumstances, but that I needed to focus on pulling myself together. Soon.

I tried sleeping pills. Three different kinds, in fact. But I lay awake right through them. Night after night, I got up, frustrated and tired of crying, to surf through any mindless internet sites that would prevent Eric and Ella memories from sinking in.

I scoured Facebook, but was bombarded with recently posted pictures of the gorgeous, smiling faces of my friends' children. I left the site, turning to Perez Hilton and certain I would be granted mindless, numbing entertainment. The first article I read was on John Travolta and his daughter Ella Bleu. Bye-bye Perez.

One night, over my token dinner for one, I picked up the phone to call Eric; he was the only person who knew exactly how I was feeling, and I craved his touch and understanding. I needed him.

I made it through all of the numbers but one before I forced myself to hang up. The Eric I knew was gone to me. He had been replaced by a stranger, and there was nothing I could do to get him back. We were finished. It was over.

I clicked the phone off. Then on again. Off. On. Off. On.

Numb, I listened to the dial tone fill the silence of the empty room. Eventually it was replaced by the loud alarm bursts designed to tell you the phone is off the hook. The sound hurt my brain.

I scraped my untouched food into the garbage and climbed into bed without brushing my teeth or washing my face. I stared into the darkness, waiting for sleep to find me. It didn't come.