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“The drinking. The colleague of Nina’s you mentioned to me…she mentioned Nina would sometimes show up for work with liquor on her breath.”
I stared at the floor. Suddenly, I became acutely aware of all the noises inside and outside of me, like an orchestra tuning up to play. The rapid thump of my heart, the blood beating in my ears. The dizzy feeling came on strong. There’s something to be said for a man that knows he’s about to come face to face with his own faults. It’s not pretty.
“When did the drinking start?”
“I don’t know.”
“Are we talking years or months? Weeks?”
Years, I think but don’t say. I certainly hadn’t known Nina had a drinking problem. I hadn’t known a lot of things, it turned out. The saddest part…I hadn’t even suspected.
I had been working a lot, and sure, partaking in vices of my own. Nevertheless, there are certain things a man should know about his wife. A doctor, a good one, should have noticed such issues, shouldn’t he? That’s what Dr. Jones is thinking. It’s written all over her face.
Maybe she’s right. Maybe I was ignorant. Or maybe Nina was just very good at hiding the things she did not want anyone to see.
In hindsight, those were the wrong questions to ask. And anyhow, the truth always seems to have a way of coming out.
It was apparent from the beginning that Ellie wasn’t normal. She didn’t cry straightaway, and then not even when they poked her, rolling the needle around, trying to manipulate her tiny veins, each time, failing. I wanted to push everyone aside and start the IV myself. I wanted to fix her. I knew then, just as I know now, that some things that are broken cannot be fixed.
It didn’t stop me from trying.
Meeting my daughter had not turned out to be the joyous occasion I’d envisioned. It was the first time in my life I can ever recall feeling truly helpless.
Her Apgar Score was low. She was listless, ashen, and of all of the physicians in the room, including myself, no one except for my wife knew what was wrong. I’ve been scared since, terribly scared, but I’ve never been as scared as I was in that moment.
“You hadn’t known that your wife had consumed alcohol during the pregnancy?” the neonatologist questioned.
“No.”
The alcohol was a shame, one that Nina was forced to admit when it came down to it. But even I had reservations about it being the catalyst that caused my daughter’s condition.
“Why didn’t you leave her?” Dr. Jones would later ask.
It was a question I had asked of myself any number of times.
It was a question with a very clear-cut, unclear answer. How could I leave my wife? What would leaving solve in the context of where we were with an infant who had more needs than either of us had planned on? Sure, I probably could have won custody. But what then? Nina wasn’t going to just fade into the background. I knew that much about her. But most of all, the thing about a sudden betrayal, the thing you can’t know until you’re in the thick of it, is it doesn’t allow for much room to move.
The night Nina ordered takeout from Sullivan’s, the night I left to drive by Laurel’s house, something else unsettling had happened. Something I hadn’t told my attorney and certainly not Dr. Jones.
Nina had informed me that she’d found a place for Ellie. She’d placed a deposit, and she wanted us to go and visit the following weekend. She’d scheduled a tour. It didn’t come as much of a shock as the drinking, but it wasn’t entirely expected either. Ellie had been doing good. She was showing improvement. Slowly, sure. But improvement, nonetheless.
Ever since the official diagnosis, we’d worked hard to come up with a treatment plan that would allow her to thrive. There were far more options than I’d had as a kid—not that I’d ever been diagnosed. The medical community hardly understood spectrum disorders back then, unless you were on the far end. Which I wasn’t. Not like Ellie.
“We can always have another, Max.”
All sensory input became intensified. Clearly, she’d given this a lot more thought than I’d realized. Nina was well aware that I’d had a vasectomy three months after Ellie’s birth. She was also well aware there were other ways.
Even though I don’t think she meant it about having another baby, I told her our daughter was enough, for the both of us. I told her in no uncertain terms that I was not interested in having another child
“You’re right,” she’d whispered later in the dark. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought it up. It’s just sometimes I wonder what it would be like, don’t you? To have a normal life?”
I didn’t answer my wife. The truth is I was afraid. I was afraid that I might slip, and if I did, years of pent up rage might escape. I was afraid I would do something that I could never, ever take back.
But Nina didn’t stop there. “I’ve been thinking…before summer is over…before we get her settled in at the facility… that I should take her up to the mountains. Santa Fe…Colorado, maybe. I think a change of scenery and some cooler air would do her good.”
“I’ll come too,” I said, in a thin voice that hardly resembled my own. The words came out so fast I didn’t have a chance at a second thought. Looking back, I chalk it up to the exhaustion. After the day I’d had, fresh mountain air hadn’t sounded like a half-bad idea. Escaping the heat seemed like a no-brainer, once the idea had been presented and was out in the open. More than anything, I thought it would buy me time. Time to convince my wife. Time to come up with another plan.
Nina turned to me in the dark. “When would we leave?”
