Tiny Little Fractures

Chapter Six

Jon and I had the odds against us. We both knew that. Even when we weren’t together, he was mine and I was his. We decided to get married. Not because it was convenient, but because breaking up just didn’t work. Everyone knew we belonged together. We knew it. Why bother to pretend that we weren’t sure just because the odds said we should?

My parents got married in the month of January. My mom spent the day of their anniversary alone every single year. She would hide in the den in our house with a glass of whiskey and go over the photo albums and video tapes she’d made before my dad died. In the beginning, it seemed like she was just refusing to let go of her grief. Later on it just became a sort of ritual she did to celebrate his life and all he had been to her.

I was still in that “refusal to let go of grief” period. My mom had a fear of leaving me alone on my anniversary. I tried to explain to her that it wasn’t the anniversary that hurt, but the regular days. She didn’t buy that for a second. Her first wedding had been an extravaganza. Mine had been a pretty simple ceremony of friends and family on a public beach. It was just to make my relationship with Jon legal. Nothing more. We didn’t even have a honeymoon. We just went straight home and didn’t leave the apartment for a few days. We already felt married. Hell, if you wanted to be technical we’d been committed since we were twelve.

It wasn’t that the day wasn’t special to me. It was. It was the day he became mine officially and I got to put a ring on him that stood as a representation that he was mine. Everyone and their mother knew that he was my husband and I was his wife. It was the day we became a family for real and began our plans to add to it.

The point is that I spent so much time working myself up for the day the first time that it came and passed just like any other day. The pain was there. It always would be, but it never got any worse because it just couldn’t.

Jon and I were married for a little over a year before he went missing. We had spent our first anniversary together. I spent our second one at work until I came home and spent the night with my mom. Our third anniversary I intended to do exactly the same. I just wanted to get away from my apartment and my mother’s babying. But I didn’t really have anywhere else to go. Stephanie was planning her own wedding and was casually keeping me out of the plans for fear that it would cause me to break down.

So I stayed at work grading papers until I absolutely had to leave. And when I finally did wander back home to my apartment I found my mother in my kitchen making dinner and planning to spend the night. As if she would have to prevent me from sobbing myself to sleep or offing myself.

I just wanted to be alone, but that was nothing special. I always wanted to be alone. My relationship with my friends had strained since Jon disappeared. I didn’t speak to my family unless they contacted me first. My only regular human interaction came from six different groups of 20 to 25 pubescent tweens. I liked it that way. The tweens didn’t know about Jon. I didn’t have to put on a show in front of them. They never told me, “He’s in a better place.” They didn’t care about my personal life. They cared about their grades and whatever they were going through. Not that I didn’t get the occasional question about my wedding band and where Mr. Milner-Sharpe was. But they didn’t dwell on it. And they made me laugh.

Whenever Jon did find his way into conversations people expected me to cry. They would look at me as if tears were going to suddenly spring out of my eyes and I would start sobbing and pleading all over again. They always liked to apologize. I hated the apologies. They came at the worst times. Like in the middle of the grocery store. Some people thought I was hiding my pain. Some people though I didn’t have any. Some people even verbally wondered if I’d killed him and got away with it. The truth is just that every time I heard his name the fractures became weaker and threated to break open and destroy me.

My mom expected me to cry too. She came over and made me dinner. She would let me shower and then after that she wouldn’t let me be alone. We sat in front of the TV and had average chitchat. How is work coming along? How’s Dave? Have you seen they’re putting in a new mall across town? Boring. Average. We were doing everything we could to keep Jon out of the conversation. It was just a day for us to spend together. That just happened to fall on the day I married my missing husband.

I couldn’t stop thinking about him, though. I knew my mom was thinking about him too, and I knew if I wanted to talk all I would have to do is say something. My mom would be right there to offer me whatever I need. Be it comfort or advice or silence, but she would never make the first move. She would wait for me to do it first, but after the fake funeral and all the paperwork, I just stopped talking about him. I took his pictures down so I wouldn’t have to see that heart shattering smile anymore.

My mom still had photos of my dad in her house. In the beginning, it really bothered my stepdad. I called Dave dad, but he wasn’t my real father. My mom didn’t want me to forget the man who fathered me. So she always told Dave the pictures were up so that I could see him. He believed this story until I went off to college and the pictures didn’t budge. Then she told him that the images documented her life and taking his pictures down would be denying that he happened.

We all grieve in our own ways, I suppose. I took Jon’s pictures down the week after his parents held the fake funeral. Not because I didn’t want to document my life. He was my life. I didn’t need pictures to remind me of those things. Everything already did. I couldn’t move on and forget that those moments happened. He was part of every single one of them. Wiping him out of my life would wipe out my entire adolescence and young adult years. Jon could never be erased, but if I had to see those eyes every single day, I’d probably wither up and die.

So my mom never brought him up. My brother didn’t talk about him anymore. Dave stopped. Stephanie stopped. Sometimes Jon’s parents or his sister called to see how I was or to invite me over for dinner. They didn’t bring him up, but they kept his pictures up. I usually always declined the invitations and they never asked why. They only invited me out of politeness anyway. Sure, they’d been my family for a while and had been in my life since I was a kid. But the truth was that none of us could stand to be around each other without pain.

I was the one who brought him up this time. We were watching something on TV that had absolutely no relation to Jon whatsoever. There was nothing to trigger a memory except my own thoughts. Jon had never seen this show. The music was new and unfamiliar. There were no missing husbands. Nothing that could remind me of him at all. I just sat there watching until my eyes drifted to the actors in the background. I hardly ever focused on main characters anymore. It was the background faces that held my interest.

I was sitting in Jon’s armchair. My mom was sitting on the couch picking at her plate. She had short cut brown hair and my round brown eyes. We were so similar that it was scary sometimes, is what other people said anyway. My hair was longer and I was younger than her, but we had the same sadness in us. The same reason for all that sadness.

“I miss him,” I admitted. It was meant to be a thought, but I’d spoken it out loud. It popped into my head all the time. Sometimes without any provocation at all. I would be sitting in class and “I miss him” would slam into my head unannounced and for no reason at all. It happened in the shower, in the middle of the night, driving to work. All the time.

“I know,” my mom said. “I miss him too.” I sighed heavily. That was how I fought back the tears. I focused on breathing and pushed them away.

“Do you remember what you told me the day you and Dave got married?” I asked her.

“Of course.”

“Do you still believe that?”

This time she was the one to sigh. I still had my eyes on the screen, watching a couple order coffee in the background as the main characters chatted in the foreground. I knew my mom’s eyes were on me now, studying my profile to make sure I wasn’t cracking.

“It’s one thing to lose someone you love,” she told me. “We all experience that in some way or another. It hurts when you lose a favorite toy or a pet, or a family member or a friend. But when you lose your husband—your soul mate—it’s something entirely different.”

“I know it is.”

“It’s not easy to describe to other people.”

“It’s like your whole life is over but you’re still walking around and wondering what’s next and at the same time not even caring at all.”

“Yeah—it’s like that. I lost my husband too, and I felt like I lost everything. I had you, though. I took one look at you and I knew my life couldn’t end just yet.” I nodded slowly.

Jon and I talked about having kids. We loved the idea of them so much we even named them all in the order that they would be born. We promised each other five children, but that was just a joke. I don’t think either of us really intended on having that many children. We still planned them anyway. We even imagined what each of them would look like.

We loved those imaginary children, but now they would never exist. The little girl with Jon’s hair and the little boy with my attitude. The father who would have showered them with love. Gone. We promised five children and each and every one of them was taken from me. Losing them hurt almost as much as losing him. I mean, I was still young enough to have kids, but I couldn’t imagine having anyone else’s children. Jon was supposed to be the father of my kids. I knew that in my heart.

“I decided to start seeing Dave because I had closure,” my mom continued. “I knew your father was never coming back. I knew why he was gone. I grieved and then I stopped grieving. He’s still the love of my life, but he’s gone. And no amount of pain or anger is going to change that. Then I met Dave and he was perfect in every way except that he wasn’t your father. He was good to you and even though I was hesitant about getting married again—I knew that I would eventually. And I love him so so much.” She was silent for a moment as I wondered what she was going to say next.

“But I buried my husband,” she said. “You buried an empty coffin. You never got to find out what happened to him. Until you do—you won’t have that same closure. And I’m afraid the grieving will never stop. You can learn to live again. I see you trying, but he’s always in your head. The question is always there.” I nodded again. “Do I think everything will be okay? Maybe with time. But you don’t believe that. Will you move on? Maybe, but you won’t want to until you know what actually happened. You might learn to love again, but you’re never going to give up that last little bit of hope I see whenever you search for his face on TV. Not until you know for sure.”

“You didn’t answer all my questions,” I reminded her. “I want to know if you think he’s in a better place.”

“You already know the answer to that question. I don’t believe in heaven. I never have.”

“That’s not what I was asking.” She took another slow, deep breath.

“No, honey. Until you know where he is you’re never going to believe it’s any better than right here next to you. This is where he belongs. Either right here at your side or in that coffin you paid so much for.”

“I’m not really hungry, mom. But thanks anyway.” I put my plate on the coffee table and headed into my single bedroom. My mom didn’t say anything after me. Again, one of the things I loved about her. She didn’t shove the truth down your throat and make you accept it. But if you asked she would give it.

Jon was a light sleeper. He always used to say that he didn’t sleep at all. It wasn’t true obviously. He just had to have everything perfect. The room couldn’t be too hot or too cold. There had to be no light and just the right amount of sound from his mp3 player. He also flat out refused to sleep naked because had this irrational fear that there would be an earthquake and they would pull his naked body out of the rubble in front of everyone.

I used to fall asleep every night to the sound of his voice. He liked to sing. He wasn’t very good at it. He knew that and I did too, but I never pointed it out. It wasn’t like he had the voice of an angel or anything. Just that I would fall asleep to the subtle tones from his earphones and his half whispered voice singing along.

His side of the bed was closest to the door and it was now empty. The mp3 player used to sit right next to the bed on his nightstand. It was always right there beside his alarm clock, cell phone, and lamp. Unlike the pictures, I hadn’t moved that stuff right away. They stayed right where he left them for a few months, ready to be used when he came back to bed. I kept his clothes in the dresser by the door, clean and ready to be worn. I didn’t remove them until I got used to not having him around anymore.

The nightstand was now bare of everything except for the lamp. I had my own alarm clock and I didn’t see the point of having two of them. His cellphone had gone missing with him so I gave the charger away. And the mp3 player was packed up with his stuff and sent to the storage unit we rented across town. I donated his clothes because I knew he would want me to.

The house was missing of him, yet full of him all at once. His clothes were gone. The sheets were new and his things were no longer lying around where he’d left them. But it was still the same pillow he used to sleep on. Just with a clean cover. He picked out the living room couch. He used that same coffee maker every morning before heading off to work at the children’s clinic.

I laid down on our bed and faced his side for a long time. I wondered what had become of the headphones and the mp3 player. I was sure I had packed them up but I was so distraught that day that it was hard for me to remember exactly which box they were in. His clothes must be long gone from the thrift store now. But the headphones and all of his knickknacks and junk and the pictures went to storage. I hadn’t been there since I closed it up, but I still paid the bill every month.

I rolled over to face the window instead. The room was silent except for the dull drone of the TV in the living room and the occasional car that passed by on the street and momentarily filled my room with light. There was no quietly thumping bass from the pillow next to mine. No half-whispered singing. No pressure on the bed beside me. The scent was long gone. Our pillows had probably been mixed up in the wash. I’d cleaned my home of him.

My mother said I still had hope and that’s why I searched those faces on TV. I didn’t believe that. Jon would have found a way back to me if he was alive. He would have reached out to me if he could. I was sure of it. My mother stayed because she knew I could break. Maybe she knew it would be soon.