QUACK

In Which We Meet A Saved Woman

“Long wide arms losing their strength and form:

            Sixty-year-old man in twenty-year-old skin.

                          Skeleton, your eyes have lost their warmth:

                                    Look to your daddy for some support.

    Hush, hush, hush, says your daddy’s touch,

            Sleep, sleep, sleep, says the hundredth sheep.

                         Peace, peace, peace, may you go in peace.”

                                                      -           “Hush, Hush, Hush,” Paula Cole

THIS CHAPTER IS FROM SAL'S POINT OF VIEW

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A million things were probably running through my mind at that moment. But they weren’t important thoughts, you know. Just a thousand synapses going off in my head: pick up the laundry, pay the bills, go to the grocery. Just errant –well, really, errand – thoughts.

For once, I didn’t have to think. I didn’t need to remember all that I’ve left in Florida, all the baggage I have lugged over to New York. I didn’t have to think of you, or your next tantrum, or you not liking your new school.  And I couldn’t be happier.

I swear I couldn’t be any happier.

And that pretty much tells me where this road is headed.

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     Dear Ethan,

                By the time you read this, I would already be gone.

     To my dearest son Ethan

                I am so sorry you had to find me the way that you did.

      Ethan,

                 Life is a living hell. Fuck the world. I tried so hard to love you.

                                                                                                                Sal

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I have no idea what I am doing. I have no idea how to take a life. Had I known, I’d have long taken mine when I knew for certain that I was pregnant, that you would choose her over me. Had I known how, I’d have done myself in early into my pregnancy, when I could hardly hold anything down; when all I needed but couldn’t have was a stick of Camel Lights, a bottle of Grey Goose, a night alone with you. Had I known how to take a life, I’d have long killed myself before being thrown into the grips of an eighteen-hour labor and delivery. If I had known how to kill, I’d have smothered him in his sleep, cradled him too tightly, rocked him too hard.

But I couldn’t because I didn’t know how. And I figured, if I couldn’t have you, then at the very least I had him. I had a part of you. Did you know how much he looked like you when he had been little? It’s those eyes, see. They got to me pretty much the same ways yours did.