When we both have mugs of coffee in our hands, Ayla says, “We can go into the family room.”
She leads the way into the comfortable room and turns on the fireplace. All the windows on three sides of the room look out on the backyard. Colorful cushions are layered on the big cream-colored sectional where we used to snuggle up to watch TV. I take a seat on one side; Ayla sits adjacent.
“Okay,” she says. “Let’s talk.”
I rub the back of my neck and look away. Christ, is my hand shaking? “I feel like I always say the wrong thing. Where do we start?”
“Let’s start with you telling me I’m ridiculous.”
“What?” I lower my hand, staring at her.
“Back at breakfast. When I said my divorce felt like a failure. You said that’s ridiculous.”
“I didn’t meanyou’reridiculous. I meant, you have to get over that idea that you’re a failure. You’re not.”
“And there you go again. “Just get over it.” That’s always what you said.”
My face tightens and my back teeth grind together. “Because you have to do it.”
“It’s not that easy!”
I make a rough noise. “I know that.”
“Do you? Really? Because after Kane died, it seemed like you didn’t have much empathy for what I was going through. I felt like you were pressuring me to just get on with life.”
Pressured? What the fuck? This isn’t going well. I take a breath. “I wasn’t pressuring you.”
“I said, that’s how Ifelt. Argh! And you never…” She pauses and draws in a breath, then rephrases her sentence. “Sorry. I felt like you weren’t acknowledging how I felt when you said that.”
“I’m sorry I made you feel pressured.” I rephrase my own sentence.
“Do you see why I felt that way?”
I nod slowly. “Yeah.”
“You didn’t want to talk about it. About what happened or how you felt. I felt like you didn’t care, you got over it so quickly, and you kept tellingmeto get over it and get on with life and I couldn’t.”
He nods.
“I didn’t want to talk about what happened either, at first. I was a zombie. But then… Iwantedto talk about my baby. About how I felt. I wanted you to talk about it, too. I thought that would help you move on. But you shut me down all the time, saying you were fine. And you know what?”
“What?”
“It pissed me off.”
My attention is riveted on her beautiful face, at the emotions passing over it. I’m stunned by her declaration that she’d been angry with me.
“Your desire to ‘get on with life’ pissed me off. It felt like a betrayal. And that was a double loss. I’d lost my son… and my husband was betraying me. It made me angry. It made my grief even worse. It made me doubt myself and question our love.”
“Fuck.” My heart is hammering and I start sweating. I fold my arms across my chest.
“I just wanted to talk about it, just wanted you tolisten, but I felt like you were judging me. Like you thought I wasn’t trying hard enough. Like you were trying to control me. Because you’re like that. You want to fix everything. And I got uncomfortable talking to you about it. So I didn’t.” She drags fingertips under one eye. “You were treating me like a child.”
My whole body heats. Defensiveness makes me want to argue with that. My brain scrambles to try to find something that will refute what she just said. “I didn’t treat you like a child,” I mutter.
Christ. Is that the best I’ve got?
I take a deep breath and let it out, remembering what it was like back then. “Okay. Yes. Every time you talked about your feelings, it made me uncomfortable. Anxious. You’re right… I did want to fix things. I tried. But it was killing me because I couldn’t fix it for you. I got frustrated because it seemed like…” I hesitate. “Like you tried to make yourself feel worse by constantly going into Kane’s bedroom, sitting in there, leaving it just like it was.” I close my eyes and cover them with my hand. “I felt like you didn’twantto move forward.”
