Forever This Time

I kiss Louise goodnight and tuck the blanket around her tiny shoulders.  It’s a woven synthetic, scratchy like wool and just as heavy in the middle of the summer.  Edged in smooth satin.  And that’s the only saving grace of this cheap blanket: that smoothness over the scratchiness that soothes Louise to sleep.  She grasps the satin, rubs her thumb along the top.  I hear a rumble of thunder and go to her window, wrestling it closed against thick layers of paint that flakes in my hand.    

“Sleep tight, Louie,” I whisper.  From her dresser, I pick up a picture of my mother—a mother who died giving birth to me—and whisper a silent prayer to that smiling woman behind glass—Let her be happy.  Let her be safe—before tiptoeing from the room and closing the door quietly behind me.

This I know: Louise will throw off the blanket while she sleeps.  Even at seven, she refuses to be constrained by anything, even something designed to provide comfort.  But I also know this: Late at night, she will worry her finger over the bits of the blanket that have pilled and gathered unbidden upon the blanket’s surface.  With her tiny fingernail, she’ll tease them from the blanket, roll them between her finger and thumb.  And then, while she listens to Paul and me argue, she’ll tuck one into each nostril so that she can smell what she 
calls “mommy perfume,” while she sleeps.

I return to the dining room where Paul is setting out the bills; arranging them by due dates, eight of them stamped in red—Past Due—as if that red stamp could somehow magically force us to come up with the money that Paul has spent on fast women and fast cars and expensive romantic dinners for two while Louise and I ate Ramen noodles and watched Laverne and Shirley reruns on a black and white portable television set.

We work quietly, only breaking the silence to announce an amount to write on the check.   “Verizon.  Sixty-four twenty-nine.”  “Rent.  Four fifty.”  We pay what we can and put the rest back into the file folder.  Paul stacks the envelopes neatly, affixes the final stamp, perfectly aligned in the right hand corner of the envelope.

Lightning flashes and the overhead lights dim for a moment and for the first time in months, Paul and I allow our eyes to touch.  He gives me a smile full of sadness and regret.   “I’m leaving you, Becca.”

I am not shocked by this.  “I figured it was coming.” 

He is angered by my composure.  I can tell he wishes for my anger, to justify his own.  “I mean…I don’t even know if Louise is my child.”

“You know she is.”

He looks me in the eye.  “Do I?  Really?”

And I realize that not only is there another woman, more permanent that the last one, there is someone else: “How do you know the other child is yours?”

He has the decency to flush.  For too many years I’ve allowed him to believe I believed his excuses of last-minute work; travel emergencies; demands of trying to move up the corporate ladder.

He removes his overnight back from the front hall, perpetually packed, but this time intended to be unpacked into someone else’s life.  He leaves in the rain, slamming the front door behind him.  I step out behind him, watch his taillights disappear down Liberty Avenue.  The lightning flashes and the thunder roars and I let the rain wash over me, soaking me to the skin.

“Mommy?”

Louise stands in the door holding the satin edging of the blanket close to her cheek.

I return to the house and gather her up in my arms.  I prepare her a cup of hot chocolate and put on my pajamas and we snuggle in the oversize chair to read a story.

“Daddy’s gone, isn’t he?”

I hesistate.  “He went out for a bit, yes.”

“He went forever this time.”

I stare at her.  “Why do you say that?”

“The anger is gone.  The house is bigger.”

I choke back a sob and kiss the top of her head.  Louise is the smooth over the scratchiness of my life. 

“What will we do now, Mommy?”

“We’ll be fine, Louie.”

“But…”  Her eyes—the eyes of her father—are troubled.  There’s a smear of cocoa on her upper lip.  


“Where will we get money?”

“We’ll be fine, sweetie.”  I pat her leg and tuck her back into bed, this time pulling only the sheet over her.  I take the blanket and the picture of my mother into the dining room.  With a seam ripper, I remove the smooth satin where six years ago I’d hidden hundred dollar bills.  I remove my mother from behind the glass and take the key to the safety deposit box. 

When I first met Paul he told me to never trust anyone.

Thank God, I’d listened to him.

For the Scriptic.org prompt exchange this week, Chelle at http://awriterisborn.wordpress.com/ gave me this prompt: a blue blanket, a picture, a thunderstorm.

This was also linked to Yeah, Write.