I'm Fine and Neither Are You

“Almost nine.”

“At night?” I pushed myself into a seated position. “I slept all day ?” I hadn’t done that since—well, ever.

Sanjay nodded. “The kids are fine,” he said, but for once I wasn’t thinking about them. “I’ve been keeping them away from you, though, so they don’t get whatever you have.”

“I’m not sick,” I said.

He grimaced. “Are you pregnant?”

“No, and given the look on your face, thank God.”

“What is it, then?”

I sighed. “I just really don’t feel like living my life right now.” Sanjay looked alarmed, so I quickly added, “I’m not thinking of hurting myself or anything like that. Matt texted last night to say he needed space, and that we would be putting visits with Cecily on hold until he was ready to see me again.”

Sanjay put his hand on my leg. “Oh Penny. I’m sorry. I wish you’d said something.”

“I thought you’d come to bed before I fell asleep, and the next thing I knew, I was passed out.” I pushed myself into a sitting position. “I don’t know what you could have said or done to make it better. I’m . . . depressed, I guess.”

“Oh,” he said. “I’ve kind of been waiting for that.”

“You were waiting for me to get depressed?”

“Not clinically, necessarily.”

“You sound like your father right now.”

“Maybe I do. Point being, you haven’t really dealt with your grief, have you?”

“This isn’t about Jenny.”

He raised an eyebrow. “No?”

“No,” I said firmly. “I just told you about Matt. It’s about you and me, too. It’s about my dad. And the fact that everyone keeps asking me what I need to be happy and the truth is I have no idea.”

But this wasn’t true, exactly. I did have an idea. A couple, in fact. And every single one seemed utterly impossible.

“Do you want to talk about it?” he said.

Now he asked me.

“No,” I said. “I want to sleep.”

He looked at me with resignation, but I was too exhausted to try to fix how he was feeling. “Sweet dreams, then.”

“Sanjay,” I called weakly, but he was already gone.

I did not go to work the following day, either, though I did get out of bed before lunch because my stomach was beginning to self-digest and I had a wicked caffeine-withdrawal headache.

When I came downstairs Sanjay was in the kitchen, running a sponge over the counter. He was dressed in another dress shirt and a pair of freshly pressed pants, and it took me a few seconds to remember he had his second interview today.

“Why are you cleaning?” I looked around. “You’re going to get your clothes dirty, and the kitchen is already nearly spotless.” I sounded disappointed, and maybe I was, because it almost felt as if his success were an indication of an unspecified failure on my part.

He tilted his head. “I’m just trying to stay on top of things. Anyway, I already went in for the interview.”

“You did? When?”

“At nine, right after I dropped the kids off.”

“And? How did it go?” I asked.

He broke into a huge grin. “I’m almost afraid to say it out loud, but I think it went really well.”

I tried to smile, but I couldn’t. My husband had done what I had asked. He was trying to make more money, and it looked like he was incredibly close to doing that. He was succeeding.

“What is it?” he said. “Isn’t this exactly what you asked me to do?”

“Well, yes.”

“Then why don’t you look happy? I know you’ve got a lot going on, but this is a big break for us.”

I stared at him blankly. I wanted to admit that I was truly worried that the minute he started a full-time job, he would no longer have the mental energy to work on his book and he would quickly come to resent me for that.

I wished I could tell him that the ease with which he had tackled his list only highlighted how much I had struggled to do the two lousy things he had asked of me. How could I be the one to say that we should fix our marriage—but not be able to do the work?

I was even tempted to say I was superstitious and secretly believed that if I let myself get excited about no longer carrying the financial load for four people, the job would never materialize and we’d be right back to square one.

Instead, I said, “I’m sorry. Like I said last night, I’m not feeling like myself right now.” And I wasn’t sure when I ever would again.

That night, I sat on the deck sipping a glass of wine. The sky had just begun to grow dark, and fireflies were hovering over the grass in our yard, lit up and ready for love.

As I looked at the trees and the clear, deep-blue sky marbled between their branches, I could feel sorrow rushing through me, as fast and steady as a stream. As much as I missed Jenny, the ache of Cecily’s absence was even more acute. It seemed so obvious that Matt was punishing me for pushing him. What if he took it one step further and took Cecily out of our lives?

“Over here,” yelled Miles to Stevie.

They should have been in bed, but Sanjay was having drinks with an old college friend, and I had decided to let the kids join me for this golden hour. I had given each of them a jar with a lid with holes punched in it, and they were running back and forth across the lawn catching fireflies. “Here!” they kept yelling to each other, sprinting from one spot to the next and squealing with delight as they cupped a new bug in their hands. “Here, here!”

Miles’ jar was nearly full when he ran up to me and held it up for me to admire. As soon as I started to ooh and ahh , he began shaking the jar. “Watch this, Mama!” he said. “Electricity!”

I’d enjoyed my moment of pretending to have Hallmark children—at the very least, it took my mind off Jenny. Now it was back to reality, in which my son, mad scientist of the animal kingdom, gave no thought to the cost of his curiosity.

“Sweetie,” I said, “you’re going to kill all the fireflies if you keep shaking them.”

He stopped abruptly and peered through the glass. It was apparent that several of the bugs had not survived their encounter with his human centrifuge. “Oh,” he said.

Then he uncapped the jar, held it upside down, and shook it again, this time gently. Those who could, escaped. He scooped out the rest with his hand and threw their dark, motionless bodies onto the grass. “Goodbye, bugs,” he said solemnly. “You had a good time and so did I. Now I release you.”

He glanced up at me and smiled shyly, suddenly aware that he had an audience. I could feel my sorrow lifting, and I smiled back.

As I watched my own six-year-old gallop across the grass, Jenny’s voice came vaulting through the dusk. You can’t just give up now, she said. Look at all you have to fight for.

I’d been wondering where she’d been the past few days. I’d missed her.

You’re not six years old anymore, she added.

What does that mean? I thought. I waited for an answer, but none came.

As I watched Stevie cup a firefly with her hands, I suddenly understood what Jenny had been trying to tell me, even if her presence was nothing more than a mirage I’d made out of grief.

As a girl, I couldn’t make my mother stay or make my father be more caring, and that inability had been the hardest reality of my childhood.

I still couldn’t make anyone other than myself do anything. But I was no longer a child hindered by her own powerlessness. I was a grown woman with the tools to fight for the people I loved. I didn’t know how to convey to my father that I wanted to become a part of his life now, before it was too late. Nor did I have any idea how to put an end to the animosity between me and Matt. Honesty hadn’t been enough to make Sanjay and me true partners again, and I wasn’t sure why or how to fix that, either.

But if I knew one thing, it was how to keep trying. And damn it, that’s just what I was going to do.

TWENTY-FIVE

I rose early the next morning, surprised Sanjay with a kiss in bed, ignoring his shocked response, then rushed through my routine. When I arrived at my office, I sat at my desk but didn’t turn on my computer. Before the day was swallowed by emails, meetings, and assignments, I needed to cross the most important thing off my to-do list. I reached for the phone. In spite of my plan, I had a split-second instinct to call Matt. But he had asked for space, and that’s what I was going to give him. So I dialed the number I had intended to all along. “Dad?”

“Niña? What is it?” My father’s voice was muffled.

“I’m sorry. Did I wake you?”

“No, no, I needed to be up.”

“Sorry,” I said again.

“It’s fine. Is everything okay?”

“No, in fact, it’s not.” I looked over my monitor at a picture of Stevie and Miles I’d hung on the wall. Miles, then a sturdy infant, was sitting on Stevie’s lap; they were both laughing, though I never did find out why. The photo was one of the many Sanjay had snapped while I was at work. At the time, I remember feeling jealous that he’d had that moment with them. Now I felt thankful that he’d been able to have it. How lucky my children were to know their father—to have experienced the kind of love that three words just can’t fully convey.

“Are you and Sanjay all right?” my father asked.

“We’re fine,” I said. “Well, actually, we’ve been having a rough go of it lately. Nothing catastrophic, but things have been strained.”

“Rough times can be worked out,” he said. “Maybe if your mother had understood that . . .”

“I know. I think so, too,” I said. “But that’s not why I’m calling.”

“It’s my stomach, then,” he said.

“No. Well, sort of.” I’d been thinking through this all morning. But as these things go, the conversation had been so much easier in my head. “Dad, I know you don’t want me to worry about your health, but I’m your daughter. I’m going to worry. And the more you keep me out of what’s going on, the more worried I’m going to be.”