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I moved through the days in a fog of suspicion. My greatest desire was to keep our life as a family – our imagined future as a family – but the web of deceit he had woven was thick. I knew now what easy prey I’d been. Yet when I wavered in my belief he was clean, he convinced me he was: up early with me in the morning, at night, he’d climb into bed and pull me close, his skin against mine a plea to believe in him again. He raked the leaves, cooked meals, made cups of tea and did chores around the house, singing silly songs and joking with Molly. Initially, with his dark secret finally out in the open, he seemed a changed man. Still, I wanted more than theatrics. I had yet to learn how insidiousness a cocaine habit could be but I knew it would not go away by itself. I insisted we go to counseling.

 

Dr. X’s office was in a large house on a quiet street. We pulled into the gravel driveway. I led the way in and up the carpeted staircase to straight-backed chairs at the top of a landing. We sat side-by-side listening to a woman’s strident rambling audible through the shut door. Our appointment time came and went. Neil looked tense but made funny faces in reaction to the woman’s harping. We’d have to be sure not to talk too loudly when it was our turn. Finally, the door opened and the woman scurried out followed by a bear sized man, as tall as Neil, with a beard and a full head of messy hair. A flannel shirttail hung out of his pants and the last button was undone exposing a patch of his potbelly. He looked like he had just rolled out of bed. We followed him into the room.

“Go on and take a seat. I’ll be right back,” he said. Bird song wafted through the room with a breeze through the open window. We sat in the two chairs he motioned to across from his more comfortable looking armchair. Notebooks and papers lay scattershot around his chair and an unmade bed was on the opposite side of the room. Neil and I looked at each other and cracked up.

“What’s up with the bed?” Neil said to me, laughing nervously.

“Well he looks like he just woke up from a nap,” I answered. We relaxed, taking in the messy room. Finally, Dr. X returned.

“Okay! So what’s up? Hey, do you guys want a cup of tea or coffee or something else to drink?”

Really? I thought. We’re already more than fifteen minutes late and now we’re taking a coffee break? Neil rarely turned down an offer of caffeine, so I answered before he could, “No! We’re fine.” I glared at Neil letting him know he better not disagree.

“You’re not going to want us to get into bed or anything, are you? Or is that in case we bore you and you need a nap?” Neil was already defaulting to his jokester persona. He’d say anything to avoid discussing why we were there.

Dr. X chuckled politely. “Sometimes I do bodywork. You’re feeling kind of edgy, huh?” he asked Neil before settling back in his chair. “So, what can I do for you two? What brings you here?”

Neil looked at me, waiting for me to tell our sorry tale. He hated saying it – refusing to identify himself as an addict. I resisted my compulsion to rescue the awkward silence and kept my mouth shut. I wanted him to own this, to hear him tell the truth. As part of the crazy magical thinking I’d adopted, I waited as if in Neil telling this stranger we’d come to for help, he might be healed.

“I’ve got a problem with cocaine and it’s destroying my family.”

“I’ll bet it is. And you?” Dr. X looked at me.

“Do I do cocaine? No. But I pay for it in more ways than one. Apparently this has been going on for a very long time and I had no idea.” If I were a cartoon character, there would be green bile shooting out of my mouth. I fought back tears as a flash of painful and confusing days and nights that I now knew could account for years, ran through my head.

“Cocaine is intense. It messes with your neurotransmitters.” The doctor launched into a description of the short and long-term effects of the drug then leaned back in his chair and pronounced, “You two are in a mother-child relationship here. Tricia, in taking care of his needs a dynamic is created that makes Neil want to rebel against you.”

“So it’s my fault?” I couldn’t hide my anger in answering him, “Well I don’t want to be his mother. It’s definitely my choice that he’s not taking care of his family.”

Neil sat twisted away from me in his chair, chewing his nails, probably dying for a cigarette – or something else.

“No of course not! But you have to realize that you’re enabling him to continue.”

Enabling. I was beginning to hate that word and all the rest of the catchphrases of addiction. As if any of this could be summed up in a self-help pamphlet. What the hell was I supposed to do? Where were my instructions?

“So, how do we get out of this dynamic? I want a husband, not a son!”

In response he launched into another ramble on theories and brain patterns but offered me no solutions. My eyes glazed over. Okay, enough, I thought, what can we do, how can we fix this? Finally he suggested Neil detox his body including getting a high colonic to flush out his system. Really? I thought, cleaning his asshole is going to get him straight? I almost guffawed. He prescribed anti-psychotic and other prescription drugs and Neil agreed to do it all, happy to end the session and get out of there.

We met with Dr. X a few more times before I figured out that we were wasting time and money. The clincher was the day I called him after secretly counting Neil’s pills and he had taken an alarming number more than the prescribed dosage. He brushed me off saying it was no big deal. I felt like he and Neil had forged a strange alliance and when the two of them talked about cars or tried to one-up each other on jokes, I seethed. “Can we get going here? I’m glad you guys are having a good time but I don’t think this is what we need to be doing right now, do you?”

They looked at me as if to say, “what’s your problem?”

 

I made appointments for both of us with other therapists who claimed to specialize in addiction. Neil often did not show up and alone with the counselors, I wept and ranted until paying the deductible on these visits became just another stress of a bill I couldn’t afford. Remembering what Dr. X said about my role in Neil’s addiction I decided that at least, I could figure out how to control my behavior.

Focusing on one’s self rather than the addict was a regular theme at the Al-Anon meetings I frequented. Although never a fan of groups, these meetings were free and provided comfort and a chance to talk without shame or embarrassment. I tried to attend a few times a week. Other people’s ordeals were sometimes so frightening, so insane, that mine no longer felt so terrible. Al-Anon literature became my bedtime reading. Slogans that initially seemed trite and set my teeth on edge, soon became my mantras that when mentally repeated, took the edge off a terrible episode. Even the references to God, usually uncomfortable for me in my uncertain faith, provided solace. My favorite became the Serenity prayer. The simple words steered me clear of the gaping abyss of anxiety threatening to swallow me up. Mornings, when worry rushed me like a wave upon waking, I met it with a mental chant: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change and the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.”

 

From kindergarten to 3^rd grade, I’d gone to the neighborhood Catholic school. My siblings and I were required to go to Sunday mass by the school. When we moved away from Saint Gabriel’s Parrish my parents enrolled me in public school and due to a combination of their own ambivalence towards the church and towards us, they stopped monitoring our faith. Even though my parents and siblings stopped going to mass, I continued to rise early on Sundays to go to church by myself. Burdened with the guilt of my imagined mortal sins, I’d leave my still-sleeping apartment and walk alone up the 10 blocks to Saint Margaret’s Church, sliding into a pew with the solitary old people. I knelt, stood, sat and knelt again, praying for my ten-year old soul and for the slumbering souls of my family.

My faith lapse or rather, my epiphany, came after a pre-Easter Sunday confession. When I confessed to the priest behind the dark screen in the musty booth that I’d missed a few Sunday masses, he began yelling at me. “What school do you go to?” he demanded to know and gave me an extra dose of Hail Mary and Our Fathers as penance. Devastated by his admonishments, I shuffled up to the altar, stared at the gloomy statues of blood and mourning could not remember how to say either prayer. Flustered, I stood up, hurried past the other penitents, out of the incense-filled church. Staring at the cracks of the sidewalk for the dozen blocks home, my mortification became anger. Who was that man pretending to be God’s judge? What did he know of my life? By the time I’d taken the elevator up to our floor and opened the door to apartment 7D, I’d rejected all priests. I needed no spiritual intermediary making sure I conformed. I released myself from ever having to attend another boring mass again. Nature would be my church. No men in dresses needed to run interference in my not-yet cobbled connection to God. To this day, I cannot remember the words to the prayers of my penance.

 

Yet years later, I am comforted by the possibility offered by prayer. My terror of Neil’s addiction and worry about the damage it was doing to our lives, receded behind the dam of my new composure. Al-Anon slogans helped curb my preoccupation with what Neil was up to. I was learning to let go of him and to move forward on my own. But I could not let go of the hope that Neil would catch up.

Neil admitted he had not been the best father to his daughters in England and vowed to do better by Molly. The girls were now young women and told me they forgave him. Like me, they remained grateful for any glimmer of attention he gave them. He called them mostly when I my badgered him to and was able to go to their weddings only because I bought his plane ticket.

I hated when his behavior towards the girls reminded me of my own father who was completely disinterested in me for much of my life. He moved out when I was seventeen and never looked back. Months passed without as much as a phone-call. Perhaps he felt absolved by my mother’s bitter instruction that once he moved out, he should stay away. In any case, he obeyed her, not attending my high school graduation or any other event in my life from then on. Our visits were rare and stilted and almost always, I initiated them. When I was 19 and just back from a solo four-month backpacking trip through Europe, I called him and asked if I could visit. He said no.

When my father died more than 30 years later, I felt strangely hollow. I’d mourned him long ago. No surprise I dated men as miserly in their love and sometimes as mean in their rejection. But Neil seemed different. He had me from the start with his shout-it-from-the rooftops courtship. Only after seeing how absent he was from his daughters did it dawn on me he was the same as my father and as all the other men I’d picked – he was just better at faking it.

 

On a Saturday in early autumn, Lucy called from England. Neil and I had argued fiercely the day before and he’d spent the night at a hotel. Usually, I didn’t share our problems with her but today could not stop myself from pouring my heart out.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with him! He doesn’t do anything but sleep and when he’s not sleeping, he’s nasty.”

“Tricia…” Lucy started.

“I’m sorry. He’s your dad – I shouldn’t be venting to you like this but I don’t know what to do anymore. I’m feeling like this is could be the end. Honestly, I don’t think he even wants to be married anymore and at this point I’m not sure I do either.”

“Tricia, wait – I need to tell you something. You need to know something about Dad.” Lucy’s urgent insistence quieted me.

“What? What do I need to know?” I asked, a sick feeling flooding my gut.

“I’m going to tell you something that’s going to make Dad furious at me. He may very well never speak to me again, but you really need to know this.”

“What is it? What do I need to know?”

“It’s drugs. He’s doing drugs,” she said.

I felt like I was going to throw up.

“How do you know that? Are you sure?”

“I’m sure. Remember when I was over last year and he and I went to visit his mate – the guy he knew from his work? Well, he was buying some then. I told him he should tell you but he refused and made me swear not to say anything. Honestly, I’ve never known him not to be using. He has all my life.”

‘All of her life’. Lucy was in her late 20s. That added up to how many years of lies and manipulation? I shivered, my blood like ice. How did I not know?

“What? What does he use?” I asked after a few moments of silence.

“Coke. It’s always been cocaine. I remember so many times, especially when I was Molly’s age, maybe 7 or 8, waiting at the window with my bag all packed and dressed up and ready for him to come and get me from mum’s for the weekend. Waiting and waiting. He never showed up. And this happened more than once. I don’t want Molly to have to go through that.”

The image of that waiting little girl ran through my mind. First, of little Lucy, then of Molly, then me, all of us girls so loving and waiting for this man – who never showed up. It was too much.

“Thank you for telling me. At least I know what I’m dealing with now.”

 

How dense could I be? Now it all made sense: the sleeping, the disappearing money, moodiness, constant complaints about sinuses and headaches – how obvious! I knew his past – on our first date he admitted his coke addiction, his stint in rehab – why didn’t I figure out he was back at it? Over the years, I sometimes, usually in the middle of a fight, asked if drugs were to blame for his behavior. His vehement denials were always convincing. I believed him in spite of all the glaring evidence. I searched but never found anything in the house or his pockets. “I swear on Molly’s life!” he’d say and I was sure he would never take such an oath unless it was true. So I searched for other explanations for his behavior – looking for answers from incompetent shrinks, regular and naturopathic doctors. Neil played along by visiting whatever specialist I made appointments with, me hoping they held the answer, the way to a ‘cure’. And these professionals, perhaps as conned as me, gave their (all different) diagnosis of allergies, depression, herniated discs, polyps and added more drugs to his mix of poisons. None of them saw or at least none told me, the truth. Neil’s specialty was deception and we were all fooled. Why did I so willingly accept his lies? If it weren’t for Lucy telling me I may never have figured it out. Now I knew. My husband, Molly’s father – was a drug addict.

A few moments after hanging up with Lucy, hands trembling, I dialed Neil at the hotel.

“I just got off the phone with Lucy,” My voice was composed and cold.

“Yeah?” he answered defensively. He hadn’t been gone long enough to be contrite or perhaps, to have run out of drugs. Now I had that missing part of the puzzle.

“She told me everything. She told me about the cocaine.”
“What the fuck is she on about? What a stupid idea! She doesn’t know what the hell she is talking about!” he yelled.

“Forget it. Save your energy. I know. I know everything. Things finally make sense.” I spoke calmly even as my heart thundered. But I felt an all-but forgotten clarity. I didn’t know what to do but at least I now knew what the problem was and as my enemy had a name, I might beat it.

For a moment, he was silent and then, in a different, fearful tone he asked,

“Can I come over? I can’t do this on the phone, I need to talk to you in person.”

“Give me some time to take Molly over to the neighbor’s house. I don’t want any scenes in front of her.”

I could see Molly out in the yard, swirling on her rope swing, twisting around and around as high as she could and then releasing into a violent spin.

“I swear to you, I won’t make a scene and I need to see her. Please!”

“I think we should talk alone first, don’t you? She’ll come back when we’re done.”

I heard concession in his voice and knew that what Lucy told me was true and my stomach turned. Somehow I still half-hoped he’d pull something convincing out of his bag of tricks, to swear to me for the umpteenth time that it was not addiction ruining our marriage, our family and his life. Explain it away as something less terrifying. For once, he didn’t even try.

 

Less than an hour later he stepped into the kitchen, his usual swagger and the smirking grimace I’d grown accustomed to, gone.

“Let’s sit outside,” I suggested, knowing we were less likely to let things escalate into a screaming match in view of the neighbors. I followed him through the house to the front door. He wove past the furniture as if dodging a sniper. Outside, we sat down in two lawn chairs set far enough away to be awkward. A carpet of red leaves surrounded us.

“I’m relieved, like a weight has been lifted off of my shoulders. You can’t imagine what it is living with a secret like this.”

I was taken aback, ready for another lie and instead, this honest admission. His face seemed to have changed, his brow and mouth looked almost relaxed. He looked relieved.

“So why didn’t you tell me? If it weren’t for Lucy, I’d never known!” I’d been so blind. Now, memories of past events ran through my head like flapping red flags. Of course I should have known.

“How could I tell you? How could I admit it?”

“How could you not? All those times I asked you if it was drugs making you so crazy – you always said no. And stupid me, I believed you! Why couldn’t you just tell me the truth?”

“I know. I’m a lying git. I don’t blame you for being mad.”

I heard the grind of one of my neighbor’s lawnmowers and from the baseball field, the crack of a bat hitting a ball followed by a cheer from proud parents watching the game.

“So you have a dealer? Do they come here when I’m not here? Is it just cocaine? Do you use when you are with Molly?”

He looked at the leaves on the lawn as I pelted him with questions.

“Lucy said she never knew you not to use – have you been using since we have been together?”

He looked up, his eyes wide. “NO! Lucy doesn’t know everything! I was clean when we were in Europe. It’s only since coming to this fucking country that I got into it again. It started with the car business. Drugs are all over the place, it’s so easy. You can get anything you want. But I swear it’s only been ‘charlie’ for me – I don’t touch the other stuff – never would. And when the cash started coming in and someone offered me something, I thought I could handle it. I thought it would be a one-off. Bloody stupid, I know. I didn’t think I’d get hooked again!”

Neil looked me, the fear in his eyes reflecting my own. I’d never seen him afraid. Through the worst shelling in Sarajevo, Molly’s too-early birth, I was comforted by his confidence and now, seeing his fear, I felt unmoored. Maybe he’d had enough of his life being a charade and maybe this was his rock bottom. He needed me. Whatever I needed to do to beat his addiction and to save our marriage, our family I had to do. I couldn’t give up on our family.

“What do you want to happen?” I asked, trying not to concede anything to him yet.

“I want you and Molly! I don’t want to lose you two. I don’t want to lose my home, our life here, our dream of growing old together. I’ll do anything to save it.”

He sounded and looked desperate. In those moments, I began to crack and believe he might come back to me. I swallowed hard to keep a sob from escaping. This was not the time for emotions – I needed to stay tough with him until he really committed to me.

“I’ll do whatever I can but there are going to be rules. There are things I’m not going to bend on. You can’t put us in jeopardy any more. You need to go to rehab.”

He shook his head, “What? How can I do that? I’d lose my job. You know I need to keep working.”

He was already backpedaling.

“But isn’t work where you get your drugs from? How much sense does that make?”

I hated the idea of losing even the meager amount of money he gave me each week – hardly enough to count. But we needed every penny. He was right. I didn’t want him to lose his job yet again.

“I can do it. I need you – you and Molly. I swear to God and on Molly’s life I will!”

He was crying now and I was breaking. But I needed to get something more, to extract a commitment from him of what he actions he was going to take to quit. He offered nothing so I wracked my brain for what I imagined might solve the problem.

“Meetings! You need to find the right meeting and you have to go every single day. And we need to go to counseling – me and you together.”

“Whatever you want me to do, I’ll do whatever you want. I can’t lose you and Molly!”

“And there can’t be any goddamn drugs in the house. What if Molly were to find them? What a fool I’ve been!”

A momentary panic shook me as I imagined scenarios that might have happened, that could happen. Molly finding him in an overdose, Molly finding his drugs and thinking they were candy. She wouldn’t do that – she was too smart, too savvy for her age. That shouldn’t have happened. She shouldn’t have to be exposed to all of this. I felt my face get hot.

“Don’t you dare put her in danger ever again or everything’s over. I could lose her! You bring drugs anywhere near this house again and or those creepy guys, and we’re done – and I’m not kidding.”

My voice grew louder with a surge of anger, this time, mostly at myself. I had been so blind for so long!

He wiped tears from his face and nodded his head up and down, like a child, agreeing to everything, to be good.

“I promise you I will be the man you married again! I swear this to you.”

“And you need to give me money. Christ! How much money have you blown on drugs?”

He hung his head.

“A lot, a bloody hell of a lot. I’m sorry. I am so, so sorry. From now on I’ll give you my entire paycheck.”

“We deserve that. God, how I’ve scraped by, Neil! It’s not fair! None of this is fair to us. You can’t mess up! I’m serious.”

We sat, him in his shame, me in a confused stew of fury and terror, picking at the chair webbing between my legs, fraying and probably not strong enough to make it through another season, certainly not with the weight of Neil’s frame. Although I’d never seen him so thin. Now I knew why.

“Go ahead and pick up your things from the hotel before I change my mind. I’ll get Molly.”

“I won’t let you down, I swear. I love you both so much!”

He leapt up and the flimsy lawn chair collapsed behind him, a crash of aluminum on the grass. Grabbing me in a hard embrace he let out a sob. It was all I could do to numbly pat his heaving back a few times. Pushing gently away, I tried to sound encouraging although my stomach was in knots.

“Go on, get your stuff. I’ll see you back here.”

“Thank you. Thank you for believing in me.”

Did I? I looked back out at the yard, the overgrown hedge splattered with red leaves. My head ready to explode with this new understanding of our reality. Now I knew the truth, we would beat this, I told myself again. I wanted my Neil back. Back? Was he ever the man I thought him to be? When did he disappear down this rabbit hole? Was it only a fantasy, me imagining the man I wanted? The hopes and dreams we once shared had shattered over years of lies. But now that I knew the truth, we could fight this together. A gust of wind spun the leaves around in a mini tornado on the lawn. I grabbed a sweatshirt from the back of the closet door and went to pick up Molly from the neighbors.

Molly’s first day of kindergarten, in new dress and shiny shoes with ruffled ankle socks, she perched on her little chair at a table with three other children. Her new classmates wept around her, distraught as their parents left. Meanwhile, my girl urged Neil and I to go so she could take command of her new life. Briefly brushing my lips with hers, she turned to comfort her bawling peers. That she knew what to do in this chaos disturbed me a little. This orderly room with miniature everything must feel safe and I found comfort in that. We followed the stream of cars out of the school lot and made it around the corner before I burst out crying. In daycare from the age of two, Molly – and I, were accustomed to a full-day routine of being apart, but somehow, today felt final. She was officially part of the system of outside life and I would become increasingly peripheral. Molly had become less mine.

She loved school, excelled in all her subjects and was socially at ease. I worried our home-battles might take a toll but she seemed happy and well adjusted, popular and in every grade, she became a favorite of her teachers.

 

Neil also found new friends. One day when Molly was in second grade, I returned home to check on her before going back to work for an evening event. An unfamiliar car was in the driveway.

“Daddy’s friends are here,” Molly said meaningfully, greeting me at the door clutching Tetley, the little Cairn terrier Neil had brought home one evening. I’d been annoyed at this new addition, registering the additional expense and chores for me, but had quickly fallen in love with and was completely devoted to the shaggy gray dog.

“Oh really? What friends?”

I leaned down to kiss them both and Molly giggled as Tetley slobbered me with a kiss. Neil sat at the computer desk with two men whom he introduced as Juan and Duncan. They barely glanced up from the screen.

“Juan’s computer isn’t working and he needs to send someone an email message about some real estate down in Florida that Duncan might buy.”

“Okay. I can’t stay long, I have to get back to work,” I answered, looking over at the two men.

“Oh, that’s too bad. You really have to go back?”

I could hear his relief that I wasn’t sticking around. Obviously, he hadn’t expected me home and I suspect knew that I didn’t find his friends very charming. Besides lacking any social graces, I wondered why they weren’t at jobs at 3:30 pm on a weekday?

Having tapped out all the car dealerships in the area, Neil was now running a coffee stand at the train station. Ironically, for a guy who couldn’t wake up, this job required he be at the station at 5:00 AM – before the first train to New York. He finished up around noon and could pick Molly up from the bus stop saving us the expense of after-school care. I always felt nervous around 3 o’clock afraid he’d forget or still be sleeping when he should be at the bus stop.

Everyday it was a crapshoot whether I’d find him crashed out on the couch with the television blaring or happily greeting me in kitchen while he prepared dinner, a cup of tea at the ready. Recently he’d been playing his part well except that he rarely sat down to eat with us. Claiming he needed something for the coffee shop the next day, he’d take the car and leave Molly and I to eat the dinner he’d made.

 

The two characters huddled in our dining room made me suspicious. Neil knew so many people, anytime we were out together at the grocery store, on the beach, he’d be greeting faces I didn’t know. But none were friends, friends he didn’t have – as far as I could tell. No one he confided in or checked in on regularly – or vice-versa. It seemed he never risked connecting with anyone but me – and our connection had lately been feeling very tenuous. I wished he had at least one other person around here that he could count on, who really cared about him. These guys were not such friends. They made me nervous and I didn’t want them as his buddies. In the kitchen out of earshot, Neil reassured me they were fine, he was only helping them with their business. What business? I wondered but didn’t ask.

I went upstairs to the bathroom to put on mascara and brush my hair. Molly followed me, twisting her brown hair around her fingers, watched me as I leaned forward towards the mirror.

“How was school today, honey?” I glanced over at her, the mascara wand mid-air.

“Fine. I got an A on my spelling test. Mom, do you have to go back to work? I really don’t want you to go back to work.”

Molly should have grown out of the separation anxiety thing by now, but she still complained when I worked evenings and weekends, leaving her alone with her Dad. When she was smaller she sometimes grabbed a fistful of my shirt and clung to me as I tried to leave the house. But what could I do? I needed to be the stable one and financially support us.

“I know honey, I do. But only for a few hours, I won’t be long,” I tried to comfort her, feeling even more irritated with Neil. Why did this have to always happen? He just wasn’t attentive enough to her. Once, when Molly was smaller, she wept and screamed as he put her in the car to take her to her daycare.

“Don’t make me go with him! I don’t like him!”

Neil blanched as he buckled her into her car seat and I felt gut-punched. She didn’t like him? I didn’t understand: Molly loved her father and always greeted him excitedly when he came home from work and cuddled up on his lap to watch television. But she preferred not to be alone with him. What was I missing? Acutely attuned to his mood swings, from an early age she recognized changes in his behavior before me. I felt helpless when she rejected him – it wasn’t right.

I put the cap back on the mascara, took Molly’s hand and headed back downstairs. I said goodbye to the two men who barely looked away from the computer screen to acknowledge me.

“Please make Molly something healthy for dinner and get her into bed by 8:30, okay? Promise? And walk Tetley.”

“Of course! We’ll do books-a-bed and everything, right sausage?” Neil reassured me, kissing me once as we walked out of the house. He seemed eager to have me gone.

As I opened the car door, Molly came close for a hug and whispered urgently, “You’re not going to leave me here with the three stooges, are you?”

I laughed nervously.

“What do you mean by that? And how do you even know about the Three Stooges? You’ve been watching too much TV with daddy, you!” I tickled her under her arms.

Molly twisted away with a giggle.

“Come on honey! Those guys will go soon and you and daddy can have a nice evening together. And someone has to keep this puppy company.” I scratched Tetley under the chin. “You’ll be fine! I’ll be back in just a couple of hours. I love you!”

I closed the car door but hesitated before putting the key in the ignition. Why had she referred to Neil and these guys as the three stooges? Maybe I should bring her with me. Molly was happy to look at books and had made friends with all the booksellers and they loved having her around.

Neil came out of the house calling, “Where’s my sausage?” Molly put her arm around him and he hoisted her and dog up in his arms.

“You’re okay then, Moll?” I put my head out the window as I started the car.

“Of course, why wouldn’t she be?” Neil squeezed her tight as she nodded.

They both smiled and waved as I backed out of the driveway saying aloud to myself, everything’s fine.

 

 

Neil had no trouble getting jobs but could not seem to keep one for more than six months at a time. In the few years we’d been in Connecticut he worked at almost every car dealership within a ten-mile radius. I always knew when the end of a run was imminent. He would call in sick and when he did go to work, came home miserable, complaining about his boss or a collapsed deal. With each new job I felt myself watching the story of our marriage over and over: he started out as a star, his new employer seduced by his energy, humor and promise to be a hard worker. For a few weeks, he’d be a model employee, easily closing deals. The magic disappeared earlier with each company, the pattern beginning again: he’d struggle to get out of bed in the morning and sleep well past when he should be at work. I tried to sound loving as I prodded him to get up but inside, I’d be steaming.

“Honey, don’t you need to get up now? You’re going to be late. Hon?” I’d shake his shoulder gently.

“What? Huh? No, I’m going in later today, it’s okay,” pulling the covers tight under his chin as if to ward me off.

I pulled my hand away, a wave of anger shooting through me. If this was true, which I doubted, why the hell didn’t he get up and help me get Molly ready for school rather than leave everything to me? I suspected he either wanted to be – or already had been – fired. My suspicions would be corroborated by angry messages from his boss left on the answering machine, wondering where he was.

After I’d left the house for work, I obsessed over the image of him still in bed and dialed the house, telling myself maybe he just needed another wake-up. The phone rang and rang until the answering machine picked up. “Hi! Just wondering if you’ve left for work yet!” I tried to leave a breezy message, hoping I sounded warm. Surely he was up and about ready to leave the house or had already left. One day, consumed with the image of him still asleep, I made up an excuse to leave work, frantically driving home.

Gripping the steering wheel, I imagined him on this same highway, now speeding to work. As I pulled around the corner to our house, I hoped for an empty driveway. His car had not moved. My heart sank. Willing him to be in the kitchen, freshly showered and on his way out, I opened the house door. In the kitchen sink, my lone coffee mug was where I’d left it. I visualized him just at the top of the stairs pulling his tie on. But the house was quiet. I abandoned my magical thinking and climbed the stairs to our bedroom. He lay stretched out straight, snoring. I exploded.

“What the hell? What’s wrong with you? Why are you still in bed? It’s going to be almost noon by the time you get to work or aren’t you going to bother today?”

I shook his shoulder, my voice cracking as I yelled. His eyes peeled open slowly, like an ancient tortoise coming out of a stupor.

“Neil – tell me what’s going on! Why are you doing this? What the fuck? Please, you can’t get fired again. What’s wrong? You need to tell me if something’s going on!” I pleaded stepping a few feet away from the bed, hugging my arms across my chest in an effort to control my shaking.

“Look at you. You’re like a madwoman! You’re like a bloody witch! What’s wrong with you?” He yelled.

“I need to know what’s going on, Neil? Please, tell me what’s wrong? I’m scared. This sleeping is crazy. I don’t even think you remember Molly and I exist most of the time. How are we supposed to keep living here if you keep losing your job? ”

“I’ll get another fucking job. I always do, you know I do! Why do you have to be such a bloody nag? Stop trying to control me! I’m getting up now, are you happy?”

He flounced the sheets and pushed his pillow, glaring at me as he shifted up on an elbow. My fingernails dug into my damp palms rather than punch or throw something at him. Gulping back an ugly sob, I ran out of the room, down the stairs, slamming the house door. The tires screeched as I pulled out of the driveway but I slowed on the back roads, allowing myself to scream and weep all the way back to the store. I pulled into the parking lot and peered at my bloated face in the rearview mirror, brushed my hair, took a few deep breaths and went into the bookstore, cutting through the emptier stacks to my office, stepping around a woman crouched in front of Romance.

 

For a few weeks after each blowup, we’d enter a ‘honeymoon’ phase and Neil would be the kind, funny, delightful mate I had committed to in war-torn Sarajevo. There were mornings when he sprang out of bed before me, bringing a cup of coffee delivered with a kiss. Later he’d serve up one of his special dinners of ‘Sausage and Mash’ or ‘Shepard’s Pie’, the table decorated with flowers and lit by candles. In bed, he held me close, promising his undying love, swearing how much he needed us in his life. Tucked into his arms, encircled by his familiar warmth, I pretended to believe all was well. And for a while, it would be.

Years. Not days, weeks or months – years went by marked by bad episodes followed by sweetness. But each season, my crazy hopes for normality were marred by bitter disappointments and insanity. I tried to keep my focus on Molly as she grew from toddler to a beautiful, animated, little girl. I resented all the time and energy spent worrying about Neil’s erratic behavior. Why couldn’t we enjoy our daughter’s precious years together? She was growing up so quickly.

 

Connecticut Summer 1999

The rusty porch glider squeaked as I swayed back-and-forth, mentally running through my ‘to-do’ list. Looking out at the overgrown lawn between sips of tea, I thought of the laundry piled high in the basement, the kitchen floor covered in footprints. I filled my lungs with summer morning air, almost tasting the brine of the Long Island Sound. Lifting arm, I used my tee-shirt sleeve to wipe the sweat off my brow and decided: to hell with the chores – a Saturday in July – we should go to the beach. Molly can play in the playground. A self-possessed 4 year-old, she makes friends easily, just like her dad used to before he started sleeping all day again.

Back pain, sinus headaches, upset stomach – ailments he complained of while swallowing pills and swigging neon medicine straight from the bottle. Lately, he didn’t bother making excuses for checking out since I already knew them all. But today might be different, I thought, conjuring the image of the three of us sprawling across a blanket on the sand after eating our picnic. It had been months since we’d done anything like that. It was still early though – even Molly had yet to get up. I’d make my rounds in the garden before trying to wake him.

I walked to the back of the house to the small vegetable patch where radishes crowded together, their red shoulders and green crowns jostling for position in the earth. I could never bring myself to thin out plants until it became obvious they were smothering each other. How could I decide which should go? I knew in the end, the radishes suffered from my indecision, growing twisted and skinny from lack of space.   But the same technique worked out well with lettuce that thrived all clustered together, the ruby reds provided shade for the more delicate greens of the mesclun mix. I plucked a few leaves for our sandwiches.

“Mommy!” Molly called to me from the bathroom window.

“Good morning honey,” I answered, at once happy to see her sweet face and disappointed my solitude was up.

“Come join me,” I called back.

Her brown curls disappeared from the window and moments later reappeared at the screen door that slammed behind her. Maybe the sound would wake Neil. Climbing up three wide steps to the vegetable garden, she stepped through the gate and hugged me. She smelt of last night’s bath, her favorite pink Powder-Puff Girls nightgown clung to her back, damp from sleep. I called her my little radiator, always so warm. We crouched together searching the twisting plants for hidden pea-pods we popped whole into our mouths agreeing they were better raw. I grabbed her in for another hug before going back into the house for breakfast.

Would Neil spend another Saturday unconscious instead of with us? He stayed up late watching television until the early morning hours, claiming he couldn’t sleep – no wonder he couldn’t get out of bed the next day. I had no idea when he came to bed, but at 2:30 in the morning I woke to the canned-laughter of an English comedy. Rather than try and entice him to bed, I rolled over and willed myself back to sleep. Later I might try to cajole, nag and finally bully him to get up. Or maybe I wouldn’t. Molly no longer expected anything different from him. I should take my cue from her. She and I spent our days together running errands, dropping in to friends’ houses and enjoying whatever adventures came our way while he remained comatose in bed.

There were mornings, (although rare) when he’d get up and make us breakfast. Banging pans around, covering the counter with ingredients of his English breakfast complete with the canned tomatoes that Molly and I declined. Such times, his energy was irresistible. Swinging her over his shoulder calling her sausage, Molly laughed till she cried. He’d be helpful, jovially greeting neighbors as he clipped the hedges. Or we might drive around searching for tag sales finding bargains on things we didn’t really need. Desperate for that man, I continued to hope today would be one of those days.

 

Molly climbed onto the couch, fishing for the controls lost between the cushions during Neil’s late-night television viewing. After filling the kettle I poured cereal into a bowl, letting her eat in the living room, dish balanced on the faded blue couch armrest, eyes riveted by cartoons. It was almost 10:00 o’clock – 3 hours since I’d fed the cat and taken a shower. Another hour, I thought, deciding to be generous. His sinuses had been bothering him lately – another reason why he should get up and go to the beach with us – the sea air and sun might help. I washed the dishes that had appeared in the sink overnight. Mugs with tea and coffee stains – beakers, Neil called them. I guess I should be grateful he wasn’t a drunk, only drinking the odd beer with dinner. Still, I put my nose to the cups. They smelled faintly of milk.

Rinsing out the last dish, I looked out at the flower garden by the side of the house and noticed the lilies in bloom. Grabbing the scissors from the windowsill, I went out to the yard again, giving the screen door a good bang behind me.

Molly called, “Where are you going, Mommy?”

“I’m just cutting some flowers, honey. I’ll be back in a minute.”

The sun was getting hot and I should water before it gets too late. I usually tried to do this in the morning, getting up early before going to work at the bookstore. I read somewhere watering at night causes the roots to rot so I only did so if they were drastically wilted. First, I’d snip some flowers. I loved how the fragrance of the Oriental lilies filled the house. I didn’t bother with Daylilies as their bloom barely lasting an afternoon – I preferred to enjoy them as a bank of blossoms outside rather than in a vase, spent blossoms and pollen dropping all over the tablecloth.

Sitting on a wooden bench against a wall of tumbled rocks, I assessed the small flower garden. It lacked form. I read garden books and magazines but when it came time to plant, I did so without any design in mind and the results looked haphazard. No brilliant color scheme or orchestrated timing between blooms. I was learning as I went along. With a handful of lilies and daisies, I went back inside.

“Pretty!” Molly said, barely glancing up from the television.

“Aren’t they lovely?” I said. The kettle whistled.

With a cup of tea in one hand and a vase of flowers in the other, I climbed upstairs to our bedroom. It was almost 11. I left the door to the bedroom open earlier, but no morning noise, not the TV, the slamming screen door, or chatter, had any effect. Neil lay on his side, his usually handsome face slack – mouth open, his thick eyebrows every-which-way like useless paintbrushes. I put the tea on the end table next to the bed and touched his shoulder.

“Hey, it’s beautiful out. Why don’t you get up so we can go to the beach together?”

He didn’t flinch. I shook his shoulder slightly.

“Honey? Can you get up soon? It would be nice to spend the day together and it’s almost noon.” How silly of me to make the time later, as if an hour, or two, or three would even matter to him.

“I brought you a cup of tea.” Finally, a response – he opened one eye and grunted a barely audible answer, “In a minute.”

I left the room. From the top of the stairs I called down to Molly louder than necessary,

“Hey sweetie, do you want to go to the beach?”

I knew I was foolish to think this might provoke a reaction from Neil. In my imagination, he heard me and thought what a great idea it was to go to the beach with his darling daughter and beloved wife. In my fantasy, he sprang out of bed to join us. I tried to will this response into the bedroom, into his head, but in reality, he did not move. Molly ran up the stairs towards me, excited to go.

“Go get your bathing suit on. It’s in the bottom drawer.” I directed before going into my room and intentionally bumping into the bed en-route to the dresser. I changed out of my jeans into shorts before shoving the drawer shut with a thud. I left the tea to grow cold beside him.

I joined the other adults who watched from the shaded benches as their children climb over the wooden structures and bounce on the spring-toys shaped like animals. A father stood with two little boys, one barely walking and the other about 3 years old, played on the slide. Molly joined them to take her turn. The father hovered over the smaller boy tottering unsteadily on the steps, anxious to follow his brother. The beach, shimmering in the heat, filled with sunbathers and a lone swimmer swam laps. As cars drove through the beach entrance, I looked up watching for Neil’s.

“Mommy! Watch me!”

Molly slid down the pole and hit the sand hard, tumbling over. I moved to go to her but she stood up, smiled gamely and ran around to do it again.

“You go girl!” I applauded her. What a great kid. She didn’t ask where her father was or why he didn’t join us instead of sleeping all day. I almost wished she did so I could tell Neil, as if guilt about being an absent father might be the thing to finally jostle him into consciousness.

He would rouse by the evening and probably make a meal, doing his best to be good company. Would I find him unbearable or as usual, set aside my bitterness so as to not miss the crumbs of attention and affection? This couldn’t go on. But what could I do? I wanted our family to be intact. I wanted the man I married to come back to us.

The father and two boys were leaving.

“Come on guys, Mommy’s waiting!” Carrying the little one and holding the other boy’s hand, the man left to meet his wife. Was she at home in bed? Perhaps lingering luxuriously with a book and a cup of coffee he’d brought to her with a kiss before taking the boys to the park. Everyone else’s life appeared so normal, so appealing to me.

“Mommy, push me!” Molly called from the swings. She wiggled onto the metal seat and held tight to the chains. I pushed her gently. She pumped her legs forward and then behind, as I had taught her. The swings faced out to the water and we could see straight across to Long Island.

“Harder, mom! Push me harder!”

Molly strained as if to reach the sky, her little body stretching, feet pointing straight in her strappy-sandals, the strawberry-patterned dress ballooning around her, then collapsing again, with her eyes closed in ecstasy, she flew back towards the horizon. I wanted to join her.

“OK – one more push then you have to pump by yourself. I’m getting on this one!” I said, motioning towards the swing next to her.

Molly squealed as I gave her swing an extra-hard shove to propel her higher. Sliding onto the swing, I kicked away from the earth, lunging upwards, sweeping back and up again, the sound of Molly’s laughter rushing with the wind through my ears.

 

 

 

Connecticut 1997-98

Driving the streets of Connecticut I coveted the grassy yards and picket fences I’d once dismissed. I imagined our little family in one of these charming houses, the screen door slamming behind Molly as she came in from playing in our yard. I wanted a patch of my own to plant flowers and vegetables, to nurture my family in a normal life with friendly neighbors who didn’t harbor bizarre ancient hatreds. After four years in a war-zone I wasn’t even sure if I recognized ‘normal’ and my previous dreams of adventure had been replaced by a longing for stability and a home.

We decided to buy a house while we still had enough for a down payment and quickly fell in love with a white cape in a quiet neighborhood. As soon as we drove up to the corner property just shy of a quarter of an acre set back from the street, I knew we’d found home. Stepping inside the privet hedge that surrounded the property felt bucolic in spite of the drone of the nearby highway. On a September afternoon, the greens erupting into a flame of color, the owner, a woman in her eighties, stood on her small porch pointing out the variety of trees and shrubs on the property.

“What are these?” Neil asked gesturing towards some bushes in front of the porch.

“Azaleas in different shades of pink. And in the back there’s a whole row of peonies,” she said and turned to me, “I’ve lived here for 45 years. There are a lot of good memories in this house. It’s been a very happy home.”

“I hope it will be for our family too,” I said.

With glass doorknobs, hardwood floors and a sun porch, the 1930s cape was an antique compared to the boxy split-levels in the neighborhood. Satisfied that we would love her home as she did, the woman accepted our offer. We became homeowners just in time for Molly’s second Halloween.

 

The house needed an electricity upgrade, the bathroom’s pink sink had to go, the tiny hot water heater barely provided enough water for one quick shower. I paid for these things. Neil still didn’t seem to have money. Since he started selling cars, I thought he would be contributing more but it was never enough. I dreaded the mailman for the bills he delivered.

In life-before-Neil, I had loved opening my mailbox at the end of the day and never flinched at the sight of a bill because I knew what to expect, never had outlandish balances and paid them within days of receipt. Same thing with phone calls. Seeing a flashing light on my answering machine when I came home at the end of the day made me happy. What friend wanted to talk? What invitation awaited me? I hit the ‘play’ button even before taking off my coat.

This was no longer true. Now telephone calls and mail triggered anxiety. Even though Neil now earned more money than I did, his spending continued to be out of control but I could not figure out what he was buying. New charges and eventually, collection notices filled the mailbox. He didn’t seem to care about whether they were paid and hid bills. If I didn’t get to the mailbox first, balances remained outstanding until the following month doubled and with late fees.

When the phone rang, I held my breath, dreading a collections call. One regular caller frightened me but he wasn’t from a collections agency. Neil knew the guy but never picked up to speak to him and the man seemed to know we were there as he snarled out his message.

“Neil! Pick up the fucking phone. Neil! Neil! It’s Chet. I need to talk to you … now! You better call me back. I’m getting sick of this, Neil! I need my money. You better fucking call me back!”

That voice chilled the house. Sometimes I came home at the end of the day to multiple threatening messages on the answering machine and quickly hit the ‘off’ button so Molly would not hear the foul language. One night, after checking she was asleep, I kissed her dewy, toddler forehead and went downstairs to confront Neil. Still in his Landrover uniform of khakis and polo, he was sprawled across the couch watching English comedy reruns. He turned to me with a smile.

“Poppet asleep? Would you like a cup of tea?”

I picked up the controls from beside him and muted the television then walked over to the answering machine and pushed play. As Chet’s nasty voice came on, Neil put a hand to his face, fingers massaging his brow, eyes closed.

“Who is this guy?” I asked, a sick feeling in my stomach.

“He’s no one. I owe him some money – I’ll get it to him soon. He’s fine. Don’t worry, he’s a nice bloke, he just sounds bad.”

“You’re joking – a nice guy? He’s scary and I don’t want him calling here anymore. What do you owe him money for? And how much money are we talking about here?” I was shaking, afraid of his answer.

“Only a grand. Mike, the guy from security in Zagreb introduced me to him. He lent me some cash when we needed to fix the car and I didn’t want to ask you for it.”

“When was this?”

I searched my memory. In contrast to the fancy Land Rovers Neil got to drive, our car was old and needed constant repair – maybe he was telling the truth.

“But why would you go to someone like him for money? That’s crazy!”

“He’s a mate. That’s just how he is. He’s really okay. I made a mistake in borrowing from him but he’ll get his money. I’m expecting a big paycheck next week. I have a few big sales.”

“He’s not a ‘mate’, he’s a wack job. Friends don’t speak to each other that way – this guy’s a creep, don’t you see that? I don’t want him calling here anymore. Please, just get him out of our life.”

“I will, I will! I promise. Now, can I make you a nice cup of tea?”

He kissed the top of my head and hurried out to the kitchen.

 

Connecticut 1996-97

We arrived in the States in June and quickly found an apartment in a two family house in a small diverse city less than an hour from New York City. Our first purchase was the biggest bed we could find. We’d agreed on this after years of Neil twisting his 6’4” frame into pullout couch beds that left his feet dangling over the end. The new California King was so large we barely squeezed a bureau beside it. One year old Molly slept in her own room adjoining ours, on a futon spread out on the soft wall-to-wall carpeting. She rarely made it through the night alone, initially crying until I stumbled in to either lay beside her or bring her in to our gigantic bed. She soon found her own way from her room to ours, gently touching my face to wake me so I could lift her up and settle her warm body next to mine, inhaling her sweet scent.

 

Like Molly, I sought out company and delighted in easy conversation. Shamefully, I’d never mastered the languages of my host countries. Happy to understand and be understood, I greeted the cashier while loading my groceries onto the conveyor belt.

“Hi there! How are you today?”

“Good. Do you have a Shoprite card?” Absently, the petite Latina woman with large gold hoop earrings and impeccable makeup scanned my milk, butter, bread, toilet paper and other groceries.

“It’s so great to be able to buy everything I need in one place and not have to run around to 3 different shops to get everything!”

The cashier gave me a puzzled look as she bagged.

“I’ve been living overseas for the past four years and there weren’t any big grocery stores like this.”

“Oh. $76.78 please.”

“And so much cheaper too!” I exclaimed. She didn’t take my bait and ask me where I’d been, counting out my change before turning, I imagine with some relief, to the next customer. Pushing my cart out to the parking lot, I felt like a crazy woman.

I chatted incessantly with the mailman, other parents at the swing sets. Every encounter became a chance for connection. At first, I spoke about Bosnia but that was a mistake. Some listened politely to my war stories but most people looked at me like an alien.

 

Neil had better luck piquing interest with his English accent but his initial excitement about living in America was wearing off and he began to lose patience with the dull life I was reveling in. He struggled to adjust to the lack of helicopter rides, flak jackets and regular adrenaline rushes of danger and risk.

Our friends in Europe shared similar war experiences of shelling, sniper fire, living without electricity and water and spoke the same strange vocabulary of acronyms and military slang. Here we felt disconnected with the ‘civilians’ surrounded by fertilized lawns and shopping malls. Our tales about refugees who fled their homes and lived in chicken coops, sounded hollow in this landscape. Most people only wanted a quick anecdote, a paragraph on conflicts in far-flung countries, glanced at on the way to the Arts and Leisure section of the New York Times. The war was so complicated and our tales too far from any relatable experience – or perhaps, what anyone wanted to believe really went on in the world so when their eyes glazed over, we changed the subject. I began to understand the silence of war veterans including Neil’s reticence to speak about his days as a soldier. No one really wanted a first-hand account of how inhumane humans could be.

 

The Balkans remained in the news and we followed every development, hungrily reading the newspaper on the sunny porch and watching CNN and BBC from our overstuffed couch. We searched the screen, looking for and sometimes recognizing faces. One evening Neil shouted to me, “Bloody hell! Look who’s still there! Quick, come see!”

Leading Bill Clinton through an overcrowded refugee camp of families who’d fled Kosovo was one of our former colleagues. Neil sat close to the television as if he might climb through the screen.

Creating a normal life for ourselves was not as easy as we hoped, especially in the limbo of waiting for Neil’s Green Card. While we enjoyed our unemployment during the early summer months, by the time August rolled around we were both irritable. Neil became bored without a regular structure and steady stream of new faces to entertain. He smashed the metal mailbox closed when there was still no news on the Green Card that would allow him to work.

“I hate this country. Why the hell does everything take so bloody long? Maybe I should just go back into the field. I could call someone at UNHCR and see if they would take me on and this time, get a good job with a proper contract.” He couldn’t stop watching the grim scenes of the newest humanitarian horror in Sierra Leone on our television screen. Some of our friends were there too and I felt a surge of panic that Neil might consider joining them.

“I thought we’d agreed we’d had enough of war zones – at least while Molly’s little. That we wouldn’t take jobs that would separate us?”

Neither of us had been inspired by the lives of colleagues with families on crazy international assignments. They often went months without seeing their children and we agreed, it put way too much stress on a marriage.

“I don’t want to, but I’m going mad not working. And it’s frustrating here watching these disasters on the telly when I know I could be doing something useful. You know I get things done that no one else thinks is possible. I should be there.”

“Go ahead and make some calls,” I said, shifting closer to him on the couch, nuzzling against his chest while doing my best to sound encouraging.

I didn’t want him to go to any of these terrifying places, or anywhere away from us, but his darkening disposition distressed me. Maybe life in the suburbs just didn’t suit him.

 

Unlike Neil, I was not chomping at the bit to return to work. I loved watching my toddler discover the world and wanted to prolong full-time motherhood as long as I could. But one of us needed to get a job before my savings completely disappeared and as long as Neil had no Green Card, it was up to me. I hoped for something close to home and flexible that didn’t require me to sit on my ass in a carpeted cubicle for eight hours a day and I found it, my perfect job: an community relations and events coordinator position at a Barnes & Noble Bookstore less than fifteen minutes from home.

At first, leaving Molly was difficult but soon I relished being back in the adult world, focusing on and actually completing tasks by the end of the day, something rarely possible as a mother. Walking into the store everyday and seeing all the new books (in English!) made my heart skip a beat. Life felt like it was coming together. We lived a stone’s throw from the beach, libraries, movies and good friends and Molly was growing into a cheerful, animated little girl.

 

Neil cared for Molly while I went to work and as far as I could tell, their days were often spent in front of the television and maybe worse: shopping. A day didn’t go by without a shopping spree. By the weekend, up to a thousand dollars might be gone from our joint account. When Neil picked me up at the end of my workday, the back of the car was always full of bags from Walmart, Bed Bath & Beyond and other stores he haunted.

“What did you buy now?” I asked, making no effort to hide my irritation as I pushed past the heap of plastic bags to kiss Molly in her car seat.

“Some bits and pieces for the kitchen and a little outfit for Molly. Right sausage?” He reached back to tickle her leg. She giggled, a box of sugary candy clutched in her hand.

“Don’t worry, everything was on sale,” he said.

“I know, but it adds up. We’ve got to be a bit more careful.”

I looked nervously at the bags. America was a shopper’s paradise compared to the dearth of things to buy in Bosnia and Croatia or prohibitively expensive Italy. I understood how Neil could get carried away. We did need a lot of things starting from scratch in setting up our lives here and Neil was making the apartment cozy and comfortable and he always had dinner ready for me. He was doing a great job of taking care of things at home and I should be appreciative. But the stress of his spending and unemployment grew. I constantly needed to shift money from my savings to our joint account in order to keep it open – my bookstore salary was not enough to support us.

I had no idea what Neil spent so much money on. The house-wares and nick-knacks he bought didn’t seem to account for what was going out of the account.

 

Even in the early days, money had been a touchy subject for us since Neil made less than me yet spent extravagantly. I felt like a tightwad. One evening in Zagreb, not long after quitting his job in Sarajevo, he called out to me from the bath. I was curled up with a book on the sofa in the living room.

“We should open a joint bank account!”

I pretended not to hear him.

“It’s part of being in a relationship together,” he continued, somehow knowing I heard him. I also heard the water sloshing about and imagining the flooded bathroom floor, resisted the urge to go mop it up, not wanting to engage in this conversation.

“Why? I mean, your money is your money and my money is my money. We both contribute to living together as best we can and this seems to work just fine.” I said diplomatically, because the truth was I paid the bills. But surely he would contribute once he had a job.

“It would just make a lot of things easier. And it’s a commitment. It’s what you do when you are in a committed relationship,” he said as if this was obvious and everyone but me knew it.

This was my first time living with a lover and Neil had been married and lived with girlfriends over the years and crowned himself as the relationship expert. I bristled at being patronized.

“Yeah, but I don’t feel comfortable with that. Not just now. Don’t take this the wrong way, I am happy to lend you money if you need it but I think we should keep our accounts separate,” I answered.

“It’s a trust thing. Don’t you trust me?” he asked. I heard the water splash again, definitely soaking the floor.

By the time we moved to Connecticut, I had set up an account in both of our names.

 

Neil finally received his Green Card in March and immediately, landed a job as a Land Rover salesman. He’d always bragged he could “sell ice to Eskimos” and “charm the knickers off a nun” and indeed, outfitted in his Burberry jacket, ascot knotted at his neck, he was perfect at pitching English luxury cars and soon came home announcing sale successes. I looked forward to the revival of our bank balance and Neil’s good humor.

Zagreb – Autumn, Winter, Spring 1995

Back in Zagreb, we moved to the same tree-lined street we’d lived on before. Our new apartment did not have the charm or fantastic view of our previous flat but nor did it have all those steps to climb with a baby carriage. We were within walking distance to the center of the city and my favorite open-air market. Zagreb’s markets paled compared to Italy’s where bouquets of herbs, varieties of basil, our favorite arugula and endless selection cheeses. Here potatoes and cabbages were piled unceremoniously onto cement slabs. Choice and charm were limited. But I was content to be at home with Molly and loved reconnecting with friends. Leah, a petite but tough nurse from New Zealand I’d worked with out in the field, had also recently become a mom. We rendezvoused at the main square, our babies parked beside us as we sipped coffee in the afternoon sun, marveling at how completely our lives changed in the last 6 months.

Before giving birth to her daughter, Leah had worked with MSF (Medicin Sans Frontieres – Doctors Without Borders). We last met in a makeshift refugee camp on the outskirts of Zagreb filled with thousands of people fleeing conflict in the northern ‘Bihac pocket’ of Bosnia. The Croatian government would not allow yet another wave of refugees, (and this group – Muslim) to cross the border. As a result, the entire town’s population was stranded in no-man’s-land – a buffer patch of a few miles between the official Croatian border and the United Nations Protected Areas where the Serbs lived. Ancient looking men, haggard women and their children crowded together in filthy chicken coops and sodden fields with no running water and an inadequate number of portable toilets. Leah and I reminded each other guiltily of the miserable conditions of these mothers and babies as we sipped coffee in the sunny square with our warm girls sleeping in their carriages.

“You know, Leah, I don’t think I can do it anymore. I just can’t imagine leaving Molly with someone and going back to work in the field. Could you?”
“No way! Look at Sally – she’s such a wee thing. I wouldn’t leave her, not now. No, I’m happy Dennis makes enough so I can care for this little one.”

 

Leah’s husband was a long-time United Nations staff member and they had traveled the world for years with Leah easily landing a job with whatever international organization needed her nursing skills.

“Isn’t it amazing how powerful this mothering instinct is? I never thought I would be so happy spending all of my time doting on my baby. I mean eventually, I’ll have to go back to work but for now I can’t imagine anything else I would rather do. Luckily I’ve been stashing away my salary for the past four years so I can subsidize my time at home. As an outside contractor for the UN, Neil doesn’t make enough to support us.”

“I know it’s really hard to make that jump from a contractor position to UN staff. I’ve seen it before when we were with UNIFIL in Lebanon. Maybe if you go to New York and he re-applies directly with Field Service or Peacekeeping he might get something. It’s worth a try,” she suggested, sipping her tea.

“That’s an idea. Neil’s so miserable in his new job and before we went to Italy, he just loved being in charge at the Dispatch Office. He’s really a very good manager and he got a kick out of having high-ranking staff sucking up to him when they needed a UN car. And the drivers were devoted to him.”

“That’s a shame. No chance he can get the job back?”
“It seems unlikely. Besides, there’s someone else in the position so he’s stuck.”

 

These days, Neil usually came home from work despondent.

“It’s so bloody dull! And the git that has my job is terrible. It really winds me up. All the drivers hate him.”

“Maybe you’ll eventually get it back then,” I encouraged.

“No chance. With this new restructuring, all management spots have to be filled by someone who is full United Nations staff – no contractors. They’re such idiots!”

“Well, talk to personnel about getting a different position. They like you. They’ll try and help,” I suggested.
“There’s no bloody way. There’s nothing in Zagreb. They’d want to send me down to Knin or into Bosnia and I don’t want to leave you and Molly.”

 

The ordeal of Molly’s premature birth still fresh, Neil and I guarded our time together. I didn’t blame him for wanting to stay close to home – I wanted him here too. Weekends we pretended we were still in Italy, sharing long lunches and afternoon siestas as the snow piled up outside. We tried to forget Neil’s dissatisfaction with work but I worried he would do something impetuous again – like quit his job.

 

Meanwhile NATO had taken action in Bosnia ending the longest siege in modern history with a few well-aimed air strikes, the guns bombarding Sarajevo were eliminated. In Croatia, while we were still in Italy, the Croatians had forcibly taken control of the UNPAs, driving out the Serbs from Krajina. Families who lived for generations in these small towns and villages, fled with their mattresses, refrigerators and any other possessions they could fit onto whatever truck, car or cart available to them. The UN protected areas in Croatia were no more. I wondered about my Serb friends and the family in Knin whose house I once lived in. Where had they gone?

Even if I had wanted to go back to my job with UNICEF, my position as the Project Officer for the Serb populated part of Croatia had brutally been made redundant. The international community was now moving on to other wars in Rwanda and Liberia in a kind of macabre migration of relief workers.

After years of negotiation and peacekeeping efforts, in the end it was violence that resolved the conflict and determined the borders formalized by the Dayton Agreement. For years, our ‘mission’ was to tread water in the hopeful sea of ‘peacekeeping’ but it seemed like all we managed to do was maintain a bizarre status quo. Aggression won and now it was time for us to leave.

Many of our friends and colleagues had already left for Africa where even more terrifying battles were being fought. I was not made of such stuff. I would not venture into those brutal killing fields. It was never in my make-up, but especially not now I was a mother. I had enough of this place where people seemed shameless about hating each another – Serb hated Croat, Croat hated Serb, Bosnian – depending upon where they came from, what brutality had been endured or recounted to them by relatives. A common language, even years of intermarriage, were not enough to keep the ancient stories of hatred told and retold through generations from blistering up again, the flame fanned by politicians and gangsters. How strange and maybe ominous, that my family began amidst this tortured history and boiling hatred.

 

My UNICEF-provided tickets to New York were set to expire in June. We would build our life in the United States. Neil was thrilled, excited by what he imagined as a new world of opportunity. And I was ready to go home. I would miss the cobbled streets, markets, café culture and other grace notes of European living but I couldn’t wait to see friends and looked forward to the ease of navigating through day-to-day life in my own language. Even after four years, my language ability was only good for shopping and weather chats. I missed the impromptu connections possible with strangers, so much more likely if you share a language.

We were to arrive in the United States a few days shy of Molly’s first birthday and four years to the day since I’d left. Neither of us had jobs waiting for us. Until Neil secured his Green Card, we’d have to live off my savings since Neil had never managed to put anything away.

 

“Maybe I’ll try and get back into the film game. I hear there’s a lot going on around New York right now.”

“I’m sure you could get into the film or television business there. You have some great connections – like the actor who you met for drinks in New York last January – Peter…”

“Peter Gallagher. Yeah. Maybe. Or I could drive a lorry. I’d love to travel across the country. But of course, I wouldn’t want to leave you two. Maybe you could come with me?”

“I don’t think so, honey,” I laughed. Molly was in her bassinet at the foot of our bed and we lay enjoying the morning light on a Saturday morning. I propped myself up on an elbow to look at him, his eyes still closed, one arm folded beneath his head.

“Come on! I could just see you in the front seat beside me and Molly’s little head poking out from the back cab – it would be fantastic!”

Neil’s future career was a recurring conversation as we tried to imagine what lay ahead for us in America. He wondered out-loud about possibilities and I cheered him on, reassuring him and believing, he could do anything.

“One of the exciting things about going to the States is there are all sorts of quirky, interesting jobs and with your experience, good looks and charm – you can do anything. A whole new world will open up for you there. It’s exciting!” I crawled beneath his heavy arm and lay my head against his chest.

We spent hours speculating about our future alternately excited and nervous. I wanted to be home with Molly and hoped his Green Card and a job would happen quickly so he could support us. He was so charming and Americans love an English accent. I’d seen him in action – I knew what he was capable of. We’d be fine.

 

 

Puglia and Zagreb, Summer 1995

 

Those early months at home with my baby flowed along in a sweet, slow rhythm of the hot Italian summer. Each time I lifted Molly up out of her cot and inhaled the scent of her downy head, my heart expanded more with love. To add to my joy, after weeks of frustrating attempts while in the hospital, we were now expert at nursing. Molly fed constantly and I felt triumphant watching the soft spot on her skull pulse with each gulp. She drank until her eyelids drooped drunkenly, her cupid bow mouth slipped away from my nipple, her breath rising and falling with mine.

My fantasies of being a mother, of living in Italy with a loving man and my baby had become reality. I basked in each moment. Waking in the morning, making pots of espresso, shopping in the market for basil and fresh cheeses, cuddling up with Molly and Neil in the darkened bedroom for afternoon siesta and finally, watching night descend dramatically over the Adriatic. I savored it all. Neil often came home and made lunch with fresh bread, arugula and mozzarella. We ate on the veranda overlooking the rose garden, Molly beside us or in our arms. Life felt too good to be true. The war across the sea still raged but we were ensconced in our dream. Sometimes the summer squalls that moved across the Adriatic delivered violent thunderstorms that reminded me of the bombs that fell through our courtship and I held my child close.

 

Neil made friends quickly and sometimes his new best friends were dubious. Lorenzo was definitely shady. Recently fired from his job at the UN base, Lorenzo was rumored to be Mafia. But Neil pointed out “in Southern Italy, who isn’t?” The guy had a car to sell and Neil wanted to buy it.

“It’s just gorgeous! A Maserati! And he only wants 10 grand for it and I could definitely resell it for a lot more either in Zagreb or back in England.”

Neil had been trying to convince me to buy the car for weeks before Molly’s birth, but it seemed such an unnecessary indulgence when I was already worried about how much money we were spending. I’d been dipping into my savings to sustain our sweet life. And besides, Lorenzo gave me the creeps. Yet only days after the birth, probably delirious from hormones realigning in my body and the joy of finally bringing my baby home, I caved and gave Neil the money.

I could hear the Maserati a mile away. “Oh my God, Neil! It’s way too loud. You need to get the muffler fixed.”

“It’s supposed to sound like that!”

“Seriously? Why?”

“It’s… never mind! I will, I promise. But isn’t it beautiful? Come take a look – the steering wheel is made from wood. This is a boyhood dream!” He swung me off the ground.

“Well, good: you have yours and I have mine!” I kissed his rough cheek and nuzzled into his neck, inhaling the familiar scent of cologne sweat and less potent but still there, cigarettes.

 

Everything felt right with the world. For the past four years on mission I had saved almost all of my salary. So $10,000 didn’t feel like much of a dent. A significant gesture of love and trust for Neil; I believed his assurances he would eventually sell and make a good profit when we left Europe.

Italy’s famous bureaucracy was bewildering. Transferring ownership of the car entailed jumping through many hoops. We had the car and Lorenzo had our money for over two weeks before the necessary documents were in order and ready to process. Neil and Lorenzo went together to the lawyer’s office to finalize the sale. Later that afternoon, the doorbell rang. I opened the door. Neil stood on the threshold, his face twisted with panic.

“Did you forget your keys, honey?” I asked, stepping back from the door, shocked at how pale he was. “What’s happened? What’s wrong? Are you all right?”

“It’s been nicked,” he mumbled without looking at me.

“What?”

“The car. It was nicked. Stolen.”

“You’re joking.”

“I wish I was. I picked up Lorenzo and we went to Caravigno to meet his lawyer. I parked the car right outside and when we came out it was gone. Gone. And not only that – our house keys, all our documentation, Molly’s birth certificate, our wedding certificate, the folder with all of that was in the car.”

“You’re kidding me? Shit! Did you go to the police?”

“Yeah. I filed a report. What they do here is take the car and then call the owner and demand money. You pay if you want the car back.”

“Car-napping? That’s crazy! Do you think that’s what’s going to happen?”

“I hope so. But I’m not waiting – I’m going to go talk to one of my mates who knows the mafia bosses in Brindisi and see if he can do anything.”

Neil talked to everyone in the heel of the boot of Italy until finally the word on the street was that nobody would do anything because too many people were involved. Even the local radio station made a plea for our papers to be returned to us, to no avail. The car was gone, our money was gone and I bet anything that Neil’s good mate Lorenzo is in his driveway today, polishing our Maserati.

 

The car theft dulled the gleam of our Italian life. Our joy at being there melted in the relentless August heat. Streets were eerily empty amplifying my feeling of isolation. Siesta time, the afternoon hours when families gathered at home to share a meal and rest, had lost its charm for me. When Neil came home for lunch, I ventured out alone onto the sweltering streets to buy milk or run other errands and felt irritated by the closed shops. I no longer felt in synch with Italian life, the dream-like quality of our lives, squelched by this mean theft, oppressive summer heat and my loneliness.

In September, Neil was assigned by the UN to go back to Zagreb. New York headquarters had decided only UN staff could hold managerial positions and as Neil was a subcontractor for the United Nations, he could not stay in Italy. Posts in this sunny port city were reserved for UN personnel only.

“As usual us contractors are second-class citizens even though half the time we’re the ones working harder than the overpaid United Nations prats,” Neil complained bitterly. He was disappointed. I felt ready to leave.

“Hey! Don’t forget I’m one of them!” I tried to joke. “At least you reap benefits from being married to one of us overpaid prats.”

“You know what I mean. It really winds me up how bloody stupid this system is.” Neil’s sunny demeanor was fading. He loved his job at the Brindisi base with his office looking out at the harbor and staff of devoted employees.

“When?” I asked.

“Two weeks time.”

“Wow. Okay. Well, we can do it. Look, we’re together and Molly’s healthy, we’re healthy. We’re moving on to the next adventure. Please don’t let this get you down,” I pleaded. The last thing I wanted was to Neil to descend into depression and sleep all day like he did in Zagreb.

 

Driving north along the coast we passed endless meadows of sunflowers and grape fields being harvested. When we lived in Croatia and Bosnia we regularly traveled to Italy for light, laughter and good food. Leaving now was bittersweet – it was the end of our Italian fantasy and Neil felt he’d been unfairly demoted. As we sped along the highway, I reminded him that we’d still only be hours away from Trieste. We were just off on yet another journey and anyway, after living in Sarajevo under siege, he could live anywhere. And I thought, ‘as long as you have a job’. I worried my pep talks would not be enough. Recalling how miserable he was when jobless in Zagreb, I knew he needed structured days and regular validation to feel good. And of course with a baby, I was sure there’s no way he’d sleep the day away.

 

 

Zagreb and Puglia, Italy – Spring & Summer 1995

I imagined a blissful pregnancy but instead my body ached and even at a few months, I had the sensation my baby might slip out of me. I walked like an old lady, one hand supporting my back and the other holding my middle, already heavy. We were having a girl! As the months passed, she seemed to be shoving aside my parts to make more room for her own.

Getting on and off airplanes and helicopters and driving on potholed streets was certainly more stress and bumps than recommended for a mother-to-be. My work with UNICEF-Croatia was mostly travel on lousy roads. I visited isolated villages to deliver vaccines and school supplies and met with local authorities to discuss their community children’s education and health needs. Mostly men, they badgered me to celebrate the impending birth with toasts of their homemade brew, slivovitz. I declined, instead lifting glasses of sok – a neon-orange soda they called ‘juice’ that was probably as lethal.

Alone in dreary hotel rooms, I listened to the sounds of fighting and explosions that no longer felt far enough away and wondered what the hell I was doing there. I should be living near my girlfriends who might advise me on my pregnancy and throw me baby showers. I should be home – although now I was beginning to wonder where home might be. At least I should be safely in Zagreb with my husband who pampered me with hot baths, delicious meals, propping me up with pillows. As my belly swelled, so did my sense of being in uncharted territory without a map and on these field trips, I felt really lost.

 

Six months into my pregnancy, Neil came home from work manic with excitement.

“They offered me a post in Italy! They’re setting up a new UN logistics base in Brindisi – right on the sea, sweetheart! I’d being doing what I do here — manage all the local vehicles and civilian transportation – only in ITALY. What do you think? Of course we’ll go, right? Italy, darling – Italy! We get to live in Italy!”

“Wow,” I rubbed my stomach as the baby shifted inside of me. “That’s fantastic,”

Living in Italy was one of our favorite fantasies and we often drove the 2-hours from Zagreb to Trieste just to eat lunch and absorb the joy and light of the country we’d come to love. But since becoming pregnant, I longed to return to the States to be near my sister and friends. I didn’t want to be lonely no matter how charming my surroundings were.

“I guess that means we won’t being going to the States.” I tried not to sound disappointed.

“We can always go there, sweetheart. But how often do we get a chance like this? We’ll be right at the port of Brindisi, we’ll have the sea, Italian food! What a great place for the baby. What do you say?”

“I agree, it sounds great – it’s an opportunity we shouldn’t pass up.” I tried not to sound disappointed. And he was right. “When do they want you?”

“That’s the thing – I’d leave in about ten days time. I hate to leave you…”

I cut him off. “Don’t be silly. I’ll be fine. You can get everything set up. I know you’ll find us a great place. I’ve still got two more months until my maternity leave kicks in so I won’t be able to leave until then.”

In fact I liked the idea of some time alone to contemplate my imminent new life.

“I’ll try and come back on most weekends. Are you sure about this honey?”

“Yes! I’m sure. I’ll call Chloe and see what she knows about the hospitals around there.”

Chloe was a UNICEF consultant and midwife based in England and we’d become friends on her last trip conducting breastfeeding seminars in the UNPAs. I liked her no-nonsense personality tempered by warmth and she’d agreed to deliver our baby at John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford where she was based. I’d move there about two months before my due date, take Lamaze classes, shop for baby clothes and start nesting. Should I now change my plan to be in Italy? I called Chloe to update her and ask advice.

“What do you think about me staying in Italy to have the baby rather than travel to England? I mean I know that I don’t want to give birth in Zagreb; I’ve been in that hospital, but what about Brindisi? Do you know what it’s like there?” I asked.

“Yes. And honestly, if you are really thinking of giving birth in Southern Italy, you might as well go back to Sarajevo. The Italians are not very modern thinking when it comes to women and Southern Italy is poor – they don’t have the best facilities. I wouldn’t if I were you,” she said.

“That bad, eh?” I wasn’t sure if I was relieved or disappointed.

“It’s really not the best,” she said diplomatically.

We decided to stick with our original plan: I would go to Italy for a few weeks in July before traveling to England where, as planned, Chloe would deliver our baby. Maybe I’d be lucky enough to get one of the birthing rooms with a Jacuzzi we’d peeked in at during our visit to the hospital a few months earlier.

 

Zagreb’s relative peace unraveled a few weeks after Neil’s departure. Word around UNPROFOR was that the Croatians were fed up with the UN-maintained status quo and were going to take back the Serb populated areas (UNPAs) once and for all. As a last-ditch effort to keep the Croatians at bay, the Serbs retrieved the heavy guns and artillery supposedly under UN lock and key, and began lobbing shells into the center of Zagreb. This provocation was just what the Croatians needed to begin their counterattack. The war, only simmering in this capital city for the past few years, began to boil.

With each wail of the emergency siren, the elevator in my office building shut down and I lumbered behind my colleagues, climbing down 17 flights to the garage to wait for the shelling to stop. International staff, mostly veterans from Sarajevo and other battlegrounds, took these bombardments in stride, matter-of-factly speculating on the launching and landing points of mortars crashing into the city. Our Croatian staff members with homes and families in Zagreb were not so nonchalant. In fact, during these attacks, six people were killed and about 200 wounded.

 

As I leaned against a UNICEF Land Cruiser waiting for the okay to go back upstairs to my office, the director of personnel joined me.

“How are you feeling, Tricia?”

“Well, I am getting my exercise,” I gestured towards the stairwell.

“I was speaking with New York about the situation here and they agreed it would be best for you to take an early maternity leave. Starting next week. Do you agree?”

Feigning concern about my work, I tried not to let on happy I was for this get-out-of-town pass. Since the escalation in fighting, it was impossible to deliver vaccines and supplies or attend meetings with my Serb counterparts so I spent most days stuck in my office trying not to fall asleep at my desk. Besides, I was ready to be done – done with the war, done with the shameless-hatred between these cousins – all of them: Serbs, Croats and Bosnians. No longer did I have any illusion that I might be a vehicle for change. When I moved to UNICEF and began doing humanitarian work, I thought I would feel like I was contributing more. But in the end, I felt like an international social worker, providing band-aids to gaping wounds. Only changes at a political level would change anything. Disillusioned by my work, I was ready to focus on my life, my baby, constantly pushing and kicking inside me, she seemed to be urging me on as if to say, “let’s get out of here!”

 

Neil rented a large villa in Ostuni, a small town perched on a hill about 40 minutes up the coast from Brindisi. In one of our evening telephone calls he described it in detail.

“When you walk in, there’s a big, heavy wooden table that will be perfect for dinner parties. The floor is red tiled – just gorgeous and it helps to keep the place cool. The one bad thing is the kitchen was not designed for tall people. The ceiling is so low I can’t stand up straight in there so you’ll have to do the cooking and washing up!” he laughed. “Just joking, darling! I’ll help. But honestly, the ceiling is barely 6 feet. The rest of the villa is perfect. On the second floor there’s a big sitting room that has a fireplace and French doors opening onto the veranda. I’m sitting here now and the scent of the rose gardens is wafting in with a gorgeous breeze! I wish you were here now, darling! And we can eat out on the veranda. And the food is delicious – think about it: no more gristly meat and cabbage!”

I worried about the extravagance, but a week later, when Neil drove me through the automatic gates to the stucco villa, I was enchanted. I spent my days wandering from corner-to-corner of the house and puttering in the gardens filled with fruit trees including a hidden garden with a small grove of lemon and lime trees. In the front of the property were blooming rose bushes. I had landed in heaven.

After Neil left for work, the day stretched before me like a big question mark. For the first time in a decade I had no job to go to. My purpose was simply to wait, to hatch my girl. I passed the hours cleaning, furiously washing dishes, sweeping the tile floor of the kitchen and doing laundry. The clothesline was on the roof so I lugged the basket up the steps, dropping it at my feet. The heat was so intense, the black tar of the roof oozed up between gravel. A strange wind whistled in my ears. The Scirroco blowing in from the Sahara bringing heat and sand across the Mediterranean amplified the scorching summer heat of Southern Italy. My dress wrapped around my legs as I pulled a sheet out of my basket, gathering the damp fabric to spread over the clothesline as a fierce gust whipped the sheet out of my hand flapping into the sky towards the edge of the roof like a sail. I just managed to grab it, wrestling with the wind as I flung the sheet across the line and quickly clipped on half a dozen pegs to keep it fast, my hair flapping around my face.

The house echoed when I pulled the door shut behind me. Usually, I preferred light filled rooms, eschewing curtains or shades. Not here. Like my Italian neighbors, I drew the shutters closed against the heat and scorching wind. I crawled into bed and immediately fell asleep. My dreams were intense, fanned by the bizarre winds and woke sticky with sweat and anxiety about giving birth. I had barely thought about the details of what my body needed to do to deliver this baby. I longed to talk to friends, to have someone to compare notes with. Soon I’d be in England and without a language barrier, imagined bonding with other mothers-to-be in a Lamaze class. And I’d finally get around to reading those last frightening chapters of my pregnancy books.

The baby always felt like she was sitting very low on my pelvis, but these days I felt even more uncomfortable and the slightest exertion exhausted me. I passed hours prone on the veranda, gazing at the golden fields and the Adriatic sometimes visible, as a hazy ribbon gleaming between sky and land. But mostly I focused within, imagining my future child. What kind of person would she be? Would she look more like her father or me? We would show her the world! She would know she was loved and that her parents loved each other. If only we could agree on a name. One evening I looked up from the book I was reading and said to Neil, watching television beside me, “What do you think about ‘Willa’?”

“Naw. Sounds like a bloody tree.”

“Antonia?”

He dismissed these suggestions. Katie and Claire and Molly, were his current favorites. Molly Fiona was the only name we agreed upon.

 

A week later, almost 2 months before her due date, I gave birth in Ostuni’s little hospital. With no facility to handle premature babies, my baby girl was swept away for the 30-minute ambulance ride to Brindisi hospital. I’d barely gotten a glimpse of her. Craning my neck from the table where the nurses stitched me up, I watched the doctor examining my baby – her body still pink with blood, stretched out for the first time on a counter to my right. “Is she okay? Is my baby all right?” Neil had refused to budge from the doorway, when the nurses tried to chase him away, and called to me reassuringly, “She looks perfect! Look at her long legs. She’s gorgeous.” He followed the ambulance and when they arrived to the intensive care unit for premature babies and asked for her name, he named her: Molly Fiona.

Three days later I was released and would finally get to meet and touch my daughter. Driving to Brindisi to see her, I felt like I was going on a blind date – freshly showered and dressed up, excited but full of trepidation. Neil held my hand as he led me through the hospital halls to the Neonatology wing. Neonatology – a word I had never used in English and now I knew in Italian. He was already friends with all of the doctors and nurses and now gallantly introduced me as “the mama”. He showed me where to don a green gown and how to scrub my hands with the special soap, then led me into a small room full of beeping equipment attached to one open-air incubator. My baby. I had no idea what to do. The wires and tubes attached to every limb and the oxygen flowing into her nose made it impossible to embrace her – and besides, she was so teeny. Neil’s two daughters in England were now adults, but he remembered. Confidently, lovingly, he touched our little girl, one of his big hands large enough to cover her body. He held her head, gently whispering to her, “Your mum’s here, Molly! And Dadda’s here too.” He turned to me, “Go on, you can touch her – she’s yours! She’s your baby.” Stepping back from the incubator he drew me into his spot next to Molly.

I stroked the translucent, yellow skin of her cheek. I wanted to see her eyes but a gauze mask shielded her from the glaring lights for counteracting jaundice. Tubes came out of her ankles and her head and strapped to her foot was a small monitor that Neil told me was measuring her heart rate. I thought I might crack in two from the ache I felt looking at her. Why wasn’t she still inside of me where she belonged? I touched her miniature hand with nails like a little animal. She gripped my finger.

 

Over the next weeks, I remained in a dreamlike state spending every day at the hospital sitting next to and touching Molly. I joined the other mother’s diligently pumping our breast milk determined to do what we could to make our babies strong. After a week some of the tubes were removed from her ankles and I was able to hold her in my arms while the nurses changed her bedding. I gazed into her startling blue eyes and fell more deeply in love than I had ever been in my life.

I lived in a bubble – a surreal mix of trauma, new love and obsession, I rarely left the hospital. One day I took a short walk around Brindisi, an old port city and gateway to Greece, but soon turned and retraced my steps quickly back to the ward as if drawn by a magnet. My world and I had changed forever – I barely noticed my surroundings or other people. I only cared about getting my girl healthy. Neil went to work each day and came to pick me up in the evening, entering the ward like a tornado, showering us both with kisses. He flirted with the nurses, practicing the new, usually rude Italian words he’d learned and they laughed uproariously, charmed.

Evenings, Neil took me to a tiny restaurant near the ferry dock to sit outside in the evening breezes. The owner Roberto, had become our friend and like a doting uncle, personally chose and prepared my meals and then as he set plates of scrumptious grilled fish and garlicky greens and fresh salads, listed all the important amino acids and rich nutrients in each dish and explained how important they were for me to eat post-birth. Neil showered me with trinkets he’d bought during the day; a new dress, a gold heart engraved with ‘Molly’, a turquoise bracelet. At home he filled vases with fresh flowers, sat me in the cool breeze on the veranda and served me milky tea, kissing me as he set the tray in front of me. We fell more in love with each other during those hot June nights, newly alert to the preciousness of life. Climbing into bed I ached with longing for my baby, heartbroken at the thought of her swaddled alone in a hospital bassinet in Brindisi.

The neonatology unit was separated into three units, each marked the progress of our baby as she graduated from one to the next, determined primarily by the baby’s weight. Molly still looked like an undernourished child from a war-zone with limbs that looked strangely adult without the dimpled knees or knuckles I associated with babies. After 2 long weeks she made it into the last room. Meanwhile, newly admitted babies with mothers looking as shell-shocked as I once felt, made me feel like an old-timer. As the summer heat kicked into full throttle, the nurses rattled down the metal shades in our room early in the morning, and the windows stayed covered till evening. “Fa caldo!” we greeted each other by 8 AM, ready for our day’s work united by our focus and complaints about the heat.

Each day the other mothers and I waited anxiously for the doctor’s visit, standing like guards beside the plastic bassinets as the nurses brought our babies to the examination table at the center of the room. The doctor listened to lungs, poked and flipped our tiny babies as we all watched, hoping for him to say, “La bambina si puo portare a casa domani.” The doctor turned to me with a smile and I hear those words: that Molly was ready – tomorrow, she could go home! On July 4, after more than three weeks in the hospital, it was our turn. I called Neil excitedly, “Neil! It’s Molly’s independence day! She can come home!”

 

For the first few years of Molly’s life, as the heat of June cranked up and my little girl’s birthday neared, I flashed-back to those frightening first days when I wondered whether my child would survive. It seemed to me those steamy weeks in Southern Italy when she lay alone in her cot stuck with needles and attached to tubes, should have absolved her from any further childhood suffering.