There isn’t much else to say. We can’t really go into detail about other specifics. Like what she had for lunch or me telling her about the garage door sensor going out this morning. I had to get out to manually open and close it, and it made me a few minutes late to work. Irrelevant niceties I don’t think she cares to know about at this moment.
“Well, I guess I’ll?—”
“Can I ask you something?” Her question catches me off guard.
“Of course.”
“I don’t really know if this is the kind of stuff I’m allowed to talk to you about?—”
“You can tell me anything.” I don’t mean to interrupt her but want her to know she can tell meanything. She can tell me she’s committed murder, and she buried the body in our backyard. She can tell me she’s really from an alien planet, and they’ve come to collect her after all these years. I can’t imagine anything she tells me will change how I feel about her.
“I was thinking about…I-I don’t know,” she stammers. “You know, I’m still doing my sessions here with my therapist. Not every week, but just when I can, and we’ve been figuring out different ways for me to organize my thoughts or whatever.” She pauses to exhale a deep breath as if she’d been holding it in. While her words were carefully spilling out, it’s obvious she’s holding back. Like she’s worried it might overflow like a tidalwave when it should trickle like a leaky faucet. “And we sort of discussed maybe journaling.”
My ears perk up. “Yeah?”
I know I can’t hear it, but I imagine her nodding. “Yeah, and…that doesn’t feel like a bad idea.”
I don’t mention that my own therapist mentioned the same, too aware she doesn’t even know I’ve sought out some form of help on my own, and that we’ve done something very similar in the past. Yet there’s a disconnect, because the emails were meant for someone else when what she’s talking about is meant to be for her. And I don’t know how to tell her those two are one and the same. Writing down her thoughts in whatever form all intersects, and there’s no one way to do it.
“No, it doesn’t,” I affirm. “I think it sounds like a good idea.”
She sighs again, but it’s short and sharp. The last of that breath she’s holding back. “Okay, I’m going to go.”
“Yeah.” I’m about to hang up, but then I have a thought. The memory of how unsure I was to call her just minutes ago makes me want to keep her on the line for longer. But I can’t. We’ve met our limit, so I add, “Would…it be okay for me to call you? Again?”
She doesn’t answer for some time, and I take it as my answer, but then with a few rustled sheets and her breathing filtering through the phone, she finally answers. “I don’t know. Maybe? Maybe not.”
I know she’s not trying to hurt me. She’s not withholding a part of herself and Sophia to punish me or to exercise some evil side of her out of spite. She’s being completely honest. She’s not sure. She doesn’t know about us, about me, about our future. She just doesn’t know.
“Okay. That’s okay. I just thought I’d ask.”
“Yeah,” she answers. “I guess…goodbye.”
“Good night.”
I stare at my phone in my hands. I do this thing where, once the screen locks, I tap my thumb on it to make it light it up again. I stare at the picture of Kendall and Sophia on the lock screen until it goes black again, only to tap my thumb once more. I keep doing this, not realizing why. All I know is that, while it’s painfully temporary, I get to see my family for those five seconds.
It’s a picture I took when we were at some local restaurant. A diner that serves sodas in tumblers made of durable plastic and has metal napkin dispensers at each table next to the salt and pepper shakers. Sophia’s chubby arms are wrapped around Kendall’s shoulders like she can’t get enough of her mommy, and Kendall’s smile isn’t just a smile. It’s pure and simple joy. She isn’t posing for the camera, but she’s laughing. I can see it in the vein that pops on her neck when she laughs so hard she can barely catch her breath. I can see it in the extra sheen on her eyes from the tears that are just starting to form.
I remember Sophia took a sip of Kendall’s soda, and she burped the first three letters of the alphabet. It wasn’t anything particularly funny, even a little gross depending on the audience, but it had us in tears. Sophia basked in the pride of making us laugh until our stomachs hurt, and we couldn’t get over our adorable little comedian.
I don’t know how much longer I sit there before I reach for my laptop. I had it charging at the end of the couch, something I don’t usually do. Kendall doesn’t really like it when some of my electronics trickle from where they’re normally kept. Like from our home office or off to the side in the kitchen. I had left it there the night before without really thinking about putting it away, and she wasn’t here to remind me to. Next thing I know, it’s open on my lap, and the bright screen illuminates the otherwise dark living room.
I hadn’t thought about the emails in years. At least not until my therapy session reminded me of them. They probably last flitted through my mind some time before Sophia was even born. They came from a moment of desperation. I wanted to help Kendall somehow. I didn’t really know what I was talking about, and it was the first thing that popped into my head. We’d seen some variation of it in a movie, and…I really wasn’t sure if it was going to help. I know I stopped writing long before Kendall did, but I guess I never really thought about when she herself stopped.
She never did.
There are gaps between the letters. Some mere days, maybe weeks, even years, but she always managed to come back to them. I’ve never read her emails, and this feels like a small violation of her privacy, but she knows I have access to these emails. We both do. I don’t know if she’s read the ones I’ve sent, and a part of me has always wondered if she did. I think it would offer some kind of peace knowing she can get a glimpse inside my head. It could help her understand me, and maybe…if I read hers, it can help me understand her.
It’s gradual, my transition from opening one letter to the next. It starts off cautious, still unsure if I should be doing this. I read each line unsure if I want to move on to the next, but by the fourth email, I start to understand that these letters aren’t just for our baby. They’re for herself. They change over time. In the beginning, they’re addressed to the baby. Baby Girl Bean, like a little lima bean. In a language meant for little ears. Then they shift. They become letters to herself. Like she wrote them out to lay out her thoughts and look at them, just like my therapist said. Declutter.
The last one is dated to the day after she and Sophia left.
From: [email protected]
It feels like it’s been a long time since I sat down and wrote here, but for some reason, when there’s some kind of big change in my life, I seem to come back here. Milestones or crossroads. Like an online scrapbook of my deepest darkest thoughts. I feel like today is a milestone but not the good kind. A watershed moment is what I think it’s called.
