Dinah in the Deep End

Three. Seven. Thirteen. Tick tick tick. The little blue pills don’t do anything anymore. Neither do the yellow ones. Maybe if I took a green one it would combine the strength of each of them. Jewel would say, “Yellow and blue make green!” if I told her this. But she was seven, and I’m not going to talk about a controlled medication with a seven year old child.
We were on the way to her sister Ruby’s soccer game. I was wearing sunglasses and have the windshield wipers going. There is no rain, but my left pinky hurts so that must mean there will be an earthquake in Taiwan next Thursday, or it was the arthritis, and it was actually going to rain. The speedometer is telling me I’m doing almost seventy-five, and I’m in the middle lane. I have to get Ruby to her soccer game or else the coach is going to blow a gasket. Last time we got there right after the first quarter and she was supposed to be the goalie. They had to put another girl in and they were losing very, very badly. That was the day I took three blue pills in the morning and had fallen asleep on the couch. I had to do an overnight at the pharmacy and so I was trying to get a few winks in. I was woken up to the sound of Ruby screaming at me that we were going to be late for her soccer game, and that Coach Aly was going to bench her if she didn’t show up on time. She wasn’t benched, only because her teammate who has been in her place wasn’t doing her job guarding the goal.
“Look! A Turquoise car!” Shouted Jewel. “And look! Cyan!” Her second grade art class had been studying the color wheel and she came home every day telling me the weird names of all the colors of the different objects around the house. The only colors I cared for were baby blue, pollen yellow and white. In that order.
“Mom, you’re going too fast.” Ruby said. I saw her fingers curl around the back of my seat. “And it’s not raining, you should shut your wipers off.”
“When I drive through the puddles, the splashback is too intense.” I replied.
“There are no puddles, mom.” Ruby said, her knuckles turning white as she gripped the seat harder. “It hasn’t rained here in weeks.”
The air was dry. The sky was very blue and the heat was like living on the first floor of Hell. It was also July in California.
“Mirages.” Said Jewel.
“What?” Ruby said, a hint of pre-teen annoyance in her voice.
“Mirages! Those things on the road that look like puddles when you’re far away, and then when you get up close they disappear.”
“And what color are those?” I asked, and I changed lanes without putting my blinker on. A car honked its horn for a good ten seconds and I heard, “Learn to drive, douchebag!” from the closed windows.
“Mommy, what’s a douchebag?” Asked Jewel.
“It’s the thing women use to clean their hoo-ha’s.” Ruby replied, sitting back with her arms crossed.
“Almost there.” I said, my voice cracking. I hated being yelled at by strangers. Especially when my pinky was hurting like this. Taiwan could about to be covered in water and all people care about are getting to their high paying jobs in L.A.
Finally we pull into the parking lot at the soccer field. The lot is pack full of cars and I can see little spots moving around on the field. I hear Ruby’s door open and she jumps out, slamming the door closed without saying goodbye to me. I roll down the window and shout, “Bye, honey! See you in a bit.” She doesn’t respond. Just stomps down to the field carrying her soccer bag on her shoulder.
“Why is she mad?” Jewel asks.
“Oh you know,” I paused. “Teenager stuff.”
“Is she on her period?”
Snorting, I said, “No, honey, not yet. And how do you know about periods?” I turned around to face her.
“We had sex ed!”
I started to reply, but for some reason I have nothing to say. How did I not know they were giving sex ed lessons to second grader’s now? Ruby didn’t get sex ed until last year, in sixth grade.
“I know what a penis is!” She shouted. I felt my face go red, but I couldn’t help but laugh; she was going to learn about it anyway.
“It’s what daddy used to put me and Ruby inside your belly.” Jewel smiled at me, with her one front tooth missing, looking so innocent. So innocent, I held myself back from breaking down into a puddle on the floor of the car.
Todd worked in an office. He wasn’t even the boss, but he was the most good looking one in there. That’s probably why Sheena from logistics moved on him pretty quickly. At first, it was a secret. He didn’t say anything, never mentioned her, and he didn’t smell like her Burberry For Women perfume, just his regular men’s cologne. Also Burberry. Todd continued to love me like normal. He made dinner, took care of the girls, helped me through panic attacks and depressive and manic escapades. Not to mention, sexual escapades.
A few months ago, he was late coming home from work. This man was never late. He was always home on time, on the dot, at seven o’clock sharp.
The clock hit seven-oh-one. I knew something was wrong. Right away, my brain jumped to the worst possible things; he got into an accident, he was pushed off the twenty-seventh floor of his office building, he had gotten stabbed to death. None of the things that crossed my mind were actually what happened.
Finally, he came home. It was seven-fifteen. He pulled his silver Prius into the driveway, behind my orange Subaru. He closed the door, saw me staring at him through the window, and smiled and waved, like he wasn’t actually fifteen minutes late. Like it was normal. Like he had called to warn me he would be home at this time and not to panic or call the police.
Todd opened the door, and immediately Jewel and Ruby jumped into his arms, not realizing that something was very, very wrong.
“Hey girls!” He exclaimed.
“Daddy!” They cried, nuzzling into his neck like little cats.
“Hi Dinah.” Todd said, looking up at me while still grasping the girls. “What’s for dinner?” Like that was an actual question he asked when he got home. He always knew what was for dinner. I texted him the menu, and he always replied with an emoji with its tongue sticking out, as if it were saying, “Yum, yum!”
“I texted you.” Was all I said.
“You did?” He put the girls down and checked his phone. I noticed the back of the phone was cracked and had a large scratch running over the Apple logo. He was smiling as he tapped into his phone, pulling up my message. “Why, yes you did.” He smiled at me, green eyes shiny. And red. Oh, so red.
“Girls,” I said, clapping my hands together. “Could you two go up to your room and finish the rest of your homework before we sit down and eat? Daddy and I need to talk.”
“But moooooom,” Jewel groaned. “I’m so hungrrrry.”
“Homework. Now.” I said, gritting my teeth, but smiling at the same time.
Both of them mumbles and grumbled and made a ruckus stomping up the stairs. Once I heard the door shut, I turned on Todd.
“I smell Burberry for Women.” Was the first thing I said.
“Excuse me?” Todd said, taken aback. The shine in his eyes dulled right out.
“Burberry. For. Women.” I clapped my hands after each word.
“Don’t you know I wear Burberry cologne?” He laughed, like I was having another one of my episodes.
“For Women?” My voice got high. I felt like I was going to snap the many rubber bands holding my mind together.
“Duane Reade was out, remember?” I saw his eyes dart from side to side. I noticed the shine on his forehead. The nervous sweat of a very guilty man.
“Duane Reade?” I asked, calmly. “Duane Reade?!” Then I was shouting. “We don’t even use Duane Reade! There is no Duane Reade nearby! Where the hell did you go to a Duane Reade?” I knew I sounded like the crazy woman that I am. But I couldn’t help it. He knew our family pharmacy was CVS. There was maybe one Duane Reade within twenty-five miles of us. And they never had the blue pills. It was always unavailable from the warehouse they ordered from.
“Um…” There it was; the ultimate guilty “um…”, the male version of, “Well fuck.”
I came right up to him and took a big whiff of his jacket. I grabbed it, clutching it in my fist, like I could squeeze the scent right out of it.
“Dinah, I can explain-”
“No.” I said, still clutching his jacket. I held my hand up, universal signal for “shush.”
“She came on to me!”
“Ohhh!” I groaned, bringing my hand to my forehead, like a woman from a 1940’s film about to faint from the heat. “Don’t even START!” I yelled the last word through gritted teeth. I was grinding them, and my jaw felt like it was going to break from the pressure I was applying.
“Dinah, please-”
“Don’t!” I put my finger to his lips, bringing my head back, leaning my forehead against his chest, since I couldn’t reach his forehead. “Don’t say a word.”
I let go of his jacket, brought my hands back to my sides. I met his eyes. They were still red, but now they were glistening with tears. “The minute the clock ticked past seven, I knew something was wrong. But my brain went to something totally different.” I inhaled. Held my breath. Slowly exhaled. I was using one of the methods my therapist taught me to help me calm down.
“I thought you got hit by a car. Or stabbed, shot, shanked! Or that James had pushed you out the window because your design skills surpassed his at your last presentation! Or...or….” I couldn’t think of anything else. I could feel my throat closing up. I was gasping for breath like the goldfish from the old asthma commercials. I had to sit down. I sat right on the floor, on top of the toy horses the girls had been playing with. I think I heard one of the horses snap, and neigh in distress. But I didn’t care. This was the worst nightmare I never knew I had.
Todd had cheated. And this wasn’t the first time. It had been going on for a long time. He learned to hide it so well from me. If he wasn’t so sly, I would have known the first time it happened. Which was how long ago? I have no idea. To think I was being bamboozled for the past who knows how long, made me want to curl into a ball. Which is exactly what I did. I laid on my side, held my knees to my chin, and whacked my head against one of the plastic horses hooves. Todd kneeled down next to me.
“Dinah…” He was using his soothing voice. The one I loved so much when things like this happened.
“I’m sorry, Dinah. I wanted you to know. I just didn’t know any other way to tell you-”
“You could have just straight out told me!” I shrieked, but it came out as a gag instead; “Youcoddavejusstrayoutolmeee…ehhhh” Wheeze.
“Here,” Todd said, standing up and leaning over to the coffee table where I kept my inhaler. He held it to my mouth, and automatically I opened it. “Ready? 1, 2,...” On 2 I inhaled and he pressed the button. Grey smoke pushed out of the top and a swoosh of air entered my mouth and I held it in, feeling it fill my lungs. I exhaled. He put the inhaler back on the table.
“It’s been a long time coming, hasn’t it?” I finally said, so softly I couldn’t even hear myself.
He pushed my hair out of my face. Tears pushed out of the corner of his eyes and trickled down his cheek. He nodded.
I closed my eyes and wept.