The Long Way Home Read online

  I sat beside her, traced the letters of his name on the marble. Touched, tentatively, Ava’s shoulder.

  She jerked away. “Don’t touch me.”

  “Ava, please, we need to—”

  “Go away.”

  “I’m hurting, too, you know.”

  “Then go have another drink.”

  “That’s not fair,” I told her. “He was my son. I loved him, and I lost him, too. You’re not going through this alone.”

  “Yes, I am.” Her fingers dug into the grass, clawing as if to dig through the earth to cradle his tiny form beneath the soil.

  “Well, you don’t have to. I love you. I need you, Ava. Let’s try to get through this together.”

  She shook her head, but said nothing.

  I stayed with her as she lay on the grave, hour by hour. The sun began to set, and I grasped her hand. “Ava, let’s go home. Please.”

  She shook her head again. “You go. I’m staying here.”

  So I sat with her hours more. The air grew cool, and she began to shiver beside me. I went to my Rover and retrieved the blanket I keep in the trunk, settled it around her shoulders. For the first time in the months since Henry passed away, her eyes met mine. Briefly, a fleeting touch of her eyes on mine; in her vivid blue gaze I saw a woman I did not know. Gone was the vibrancy, the life, the fierceness, the humor, the sweetness and compassion and the touch of arrogance, gone was the giver of zero fucks—her words, not mine—and gone was the woman who once convinced me to walk out of our philosophy class together so we could—as she put it—fuck like teenagers. Which was exactly what we had done. We had excused ourselves to go to the bathroom, her first and then me, and we fucked like crazy in the handicapped stall. Then we got into my restored and beloved 1988 Ford Bronco and drove to the beach where we fucked in the surf.

  I would put it more eloquently, more poetically, but in truth, that afternoon, it was exactly that: raw, rough, and dirty fucking. There was no sweetness to it, no soft sighs in the candlelit darkness, no hands clasped and trembling as we found union in each other’s arms. We discovered all those things together, certainly, and many many more times over the years. But that afternoon…I don’t know. There was something in the air, I suppose. A fierce and wild drive to devour each other.

  This evening, at 8:38pm, I looked into Ava’s eyes and did not see that woman.

  (When I looked away, because I could take no more of her gaze, my gaze fell to my iWatch, and the digital readout told me the precise time when I knew my wife was gone.)

  In her eyes, I saw only a vacant and haunted being, a withered and bitter emptiness. A woman I did not know. She was cold. So, so cold. I would say there was “distance” in her gaze, but that would not be a strong enough word; “distance” is the space between New York and Los Angeles. When we broke up our senior year, it was because she was afraid of falling in love with me as deeply as she felt herself doing, and panicked—a tale as old as time. She shut me out, and eventually walked away. But a month later, she knocked on my door and asked if we could talk. That day, in my apartment in Miami, there was distance in her eyes. She couldn’t stay away, but she was still afraid. It took months more for that ice to thaw, for the distance to close. That day, I saw distance—as if I was standing in Miami and she was physically present there with me, but emotionally, she may as well have been in Seattle.

  When I met Ava’s gaze this evening, we were both sitting in a cemetery in Ft. Lauderdale, but emotionally and mentally Ava may as well have been sitting on Pluto, spinning in the farthest reaches of our solar system. That is not mere distance—that is something so much more that I do not know a word in any language to encompass it.

  I got into my car and I drove home. I took the bottle of Johnny Walker and went out onto the beach and I buried my toes in the cool sand, and I drank myself into a stupor.

  I am writing this at 4:24am, because I woke up on the beach, freezing. I vomited into the sand, and then went inside. Ava was asleep, and remained so as I took a shower and changed into sweatpants and my University of Miami hoodie. Instead of joining her in our bed—what had once been our bed, at least—I slept on the couch in my office. Or…tried to sleep. The couch is comfortable enough, which I know from experience, as I’ve slept there a few times after particularly nasty arguments. I couldn’t sleep. Not anymore.

  I’m writing this journal, because it’s all I know how to do.

  Perhaps if I can write here, I can manage to write fiction.

  Perhaps not. I don’t know.

  The only thing I do know for sure is that it feels as if I have died and am now trapped in purgatory.

  How do I escape? Because escape I must, or…

  Or what? I don’t know.

  A common enough phrase to hear: I’m going crazy; I’m going to lose my mind.

  But what does that look like when it really happens? What will I do when I can take no more?

  10

  [From Ava’s blog: Confessions of a Working Mommy; July 3, 2015]

  Three months.

  It has been three months since…

  God, it’s impossible for me to even write the words. Let me get some wine and I’ll try again, a bit less sober. Hold on.

  Okay, let’s try this again, now that I’m lubricated with some cab sav.

  It has been three months since Henry died.

  FUCK.

  He passed away on April 3, 2015. We buried him on April 5.

  I didn’t eat for the first two months; I think I’ve said a total of a hundred words maximum in these past ninety days. I mean that very literally. I didn’t speak, didn’t eat, barely got out of bed. I drank water and I had diarrhea, and I cried.

  Friends stopped by, and I ignored them. My sister called me a thousand times, and I ignored her calls. Her voicemails are still on my phone, not listened to. My voicemail icon has a little red 28 next to it, which is the number of voicemails Delta has left me. My text message icon? 128 unread messages. My parents called too, but I’ve never been very close to them, and I have nothing to say to them, and there’s nothing they could say which I’d want to hear.

  The good news: I’m under my pre-pregnancy weight by 18 pounds.

  I was 135 before pregnancy, 156 after, and I’m now 117. Which, I suppose is worth mentioning, puts me officially underweight for my height.

  Yay!

  That’s all I’ve got for good news, dear readers.

  Waking up is hard. Putting on clothes is hard. Breathing is hard. Making myself eat food is hard. Not drinking myself into a catatonic stupor every day—which is Christian’s current coping methodology— is really really really really motherfucking hard.

  In fact, it’s so hard I’m failing completely. See, I too am prone to long bouts of intensive alcohol consumption. The truly sad part is we’re not even coping via alcoholism together. He drinks in his office or on the beach out back, and I drink in our room or in the den in front of the TV.

  Judge me all you want, readers, IDGAF. For the uninitiated, that stands for “I don’t give a fuck”, FYI.

  And FWIW, Christian has tried his damnedest to connect with me, but I just can’t seem to function or understand him or feel any emotions other than rage and grief and depression and guilt and listless apathy. I guess I only say that so you guys don’t feel the need to crucify him in the comments or anything. He’s trying, and I see that. I just…don’t know how to care.

  Also, is needing to drink myself blind an emotion?

  I’m sorry to be such a downer, peeps, but it’s all I’ve got right now.

  How did you cope with a debilitating loss? Sound off in the comments.

  For now, I’m going to finish this bottle, and probably drink another bottle or three before passing out in a pool of my own vomit.

  JKLOL, I don’t puke when I’m drunk. No need to worry about me, Christian won’t let me die like that.

  Probably.

  I’m out of fun acronyms, so I’m ending this blog post wit
h a rare request:

  If you pray, pray for me; if you believe in the power of positive thinking, then think good thoughts for me; if you’re an activist who believes in taking action to solve problems, then send me more wine and possibly Xanax.

  11

  [July 25, 2015]

  Ava is passed out on the couch, Judge Judy muted on the TV. Two empty wine bottles sit side by side on the coffee table, silent witnesses to her wine-soaked sorrow. She has spent much of the past month like that, drinking, watching TV, and picking at the occasional meal.

  Christian has not been idle. He sold his Range Rover for close to market value, cashed out all their investments, sold the condo in LA, sold the apartment complex in Miami and all the other properties he owned. When his books started selling and the cash started rolling in, he decided to invest in real estate rather than letting it sit idle, or trying to monkey with the stock market. Ava knew about it, but had always been content to let him do what he wanted as long as they could afford the payment on her SL550 and splurge on the occasional purse. He’d invested wisely, it had turned out: he’d netted himself a net profit on the sales of all the properties to the tune of well north of twenty million.

  He paid off the Ft. Lauderdale condo he and Ava currently lived in, paid off Ava’s car, purchased a life insurance plan for himself, and set up an auto-payment plan for the utilities and Ava’s car insurance. He split the remaining income streams—percentages from the film deal, which included merchandise royalties and gross sales percentages—between their joint account and his new personal one. The real estate money was his, so he kept the remainder after setting Ava up for financial solvency in his impending absence. Their personal account had contained a nest egg of savings, which he left alone; after setting things up he had enough cash in various offshore accounts plus royalty payments that he could function in luxury for a long time.

  Then, he bought the boat. He’d come across the listing quite by accident—as an idle pursuit, he’d searched sailboats for sale online, and had come across a gem: a brand new, ocean-going catamaran for sale, with a ridiculous list of amenities and custom features, operable by a single experienced occupant.

  Christian was nothing if not an experienced sailor: he’d left home at sixteen, hitchhiking and walking from rural Illinois all the way down to Miami, where he’d found work at a mechanic’s garage, which specialized in boat motors. Christian knew motors better than he knew anything, since his father had taught him everything there was to know about fixing an engine…along with how to take a beating. He’d shown aptitude and willingness to work, and had ended up finding a berth aboard a sailing yacht a couple years later, doing engine maintenance and learning to sail. He’d circumnavigated the globe aboard that yacht, and eventually became an expert sailor. When he was nineteen, he’d accepted a position as first mate aboard an antique schooner, and sailed from the Caribbean around Tierra Del Fuego and up the Pacific to Los Angeles, and then to the Far East sailing West. By that time he was twenty-two and didn’t even have a high school diploma. The owner and captain of the schooner, a reclusive millionaire, had offered to pay for Christian’s education, and so Christian found himself in Miami, finishing his GED and enrolling at the University of Miami.

  He’d worked aboard a fishing charter while studying, and had planned to save enough for his own boat. But then he’d met Ava. One day, six months after they began dating, he’d written her a romantic little short story, just for fun, on a whim. Not a big deal, and he hadn’t even considered it very good. It had just been meant to make her swoon a little, laugh a little, and get him laid. Well, it had done all three with admirable success, and had also sparked an interest. So he wrote another short story, and another. And another. And then, a few months later, he realized he had nearly fifty short stories, and collated them into a single volume. On a whim, he’d sent it out with a query letter to a few dozen agents—and to his immense shock, he’d been accepted by one, an exclusive and premier agent who had immediately sold his short story collection with a caveat that Christian follow up with a full-length novel within a year.

  He’d taken an idea he’d had for a short story, expanded it, and had a full-length novel within six months. It had sold as well. Not for a lot, but enough to prompt him to write another novel. Which had also sold, and through luck, timing, clever marketing, and aggressive touring, had ended up earning out in a year. By this time, Christian was twenty-six and in his senior year of college.

  Then, toward the end of his senior year, his father had died. This sent Christian into a tailspin, but not out of grief; rather, out of a bizarre sense of relief, which had birthed a large dollop of guilt, which had in turn incited confusion and self-loathing, and like any writer or other artist, he’d turned to his craft for solace.

  He’d produced a full novel within three weeks, and his agent had sold it in another week, for a huge advance, and that novel had gone on to go through several print runs, earned out swiftly, and garnered him praise and adulation…and a Hollywood film deal.

  It had all been very surreal, and there was the breakup with Ava in there, which had also prompted a magnificent piece of angst and heartache driven prosodic brilliance, which had only cemented his status as a hot new star, one whose every work turned to gold.

  He’d gone after success like a man possessed, churning out sequels and standalone novels with crazy speed, and they’d all done remarkably well, two more novels getting optioned over the next four years—of the four books he’d had optioned, two had been made into films, the first and second books in a planned trilogy, and it was the third and final book in that trilogy for which his editor was now clamoring so desperately. Producers were already sniffing for the manuscript, hoping to capitalize on the heat of Christian’s momentum.

  Six years after that first novel, Christian has eight titles to his name, six of which were bestsellers. Two movies, both of which had done hundreds of millions at the box office, meaning massive payouts for him, since his film agent had been a wickedly savvy negotiator.

  Six years. Eight books. Two movies. Millions of dollars.

  And one dead child.

  One ruined life.

  One ruined marriage—well, one might argue two ruined marriages, since it’s Ava’s marriage as well as Christian’s, and they seem to be approaching it differently, at the moment. Namely: Ava is drinking and avoiding and curling further and further into herself, and Christian is about to leave her.

  He buys the sailboat, rechristening it The Hemingway. He’s not exactly sure why he chose that name, only that it seems apropos.

  His life has come to an abrupt halt, and it’s now crashing into a million pieces around him. He can’t write, can’t sleep, can’t do anything. His wife is lost to him, utterly. She won’t speak to him, won’t look at him, won’t even respond to the slightest stimuli. She drinks, and she stares listlessly at the TV.

  He checks her blog regularly. She’s posted once since Henry passed, and that short post, all five hundred words of it, ravaged his heart and soul. He doesn’t know how to fix her.

  He can’t fix himself. He’s not cried for his son. He can’t. He hasn’t slept more than three hours in a row in nearly a hundred days. He has no appetite.

  Worst of all, the very sight of Ava makes his heart bleed, makes him shake uncontrollably. He isn’t sure if it’s hatred or love or a confused mixture of the two, but her presence makes him physically ill. Not out of disgust, but…well, he’s not sure. He can’t pinpoint it or describe it or make sense of it, all he knows is that she won’t even look at him. The few times she has, her gaze has been that vacant, icy stare she’d given him at the cemetery.

  She goes there, every day.

  He doesn’t. He can’t. His feet won’t carry him there.

  Sometimes, he can’t breathe. His heart palpitates wildly. His hands tremble. He feels as if he might vomit, but doesn’t.

  Everything hurts.

  Henry’s nursery is exactly the way it
was when they left to take him to the hospital. Nothing has been touched. The door remains closed. Once, while Ava was passed out, he tried to go in, intending to clean it out, but he couldn’t. One look at the rocket ships on the walls and the stuffed lamb and the spare binkies and the open container of dried-out baby wipes, and Christian had fled, closing the door behind him. He’d finished an entire bottle of whisky, and woke up alone on the beach once more, still drunk at 2 a.m.

  Everything hurts.

  The only thing Christian knows, now, is that he has to leave. He can’t stay anymore. He just can’t. He’s dying. Suffocating.

  The guilt over leaving Ava will eat him alive, he knows this already. But if he stays…

  Well, that’s just not an option.

  He’s taken possession of The Hemingway, stocked it, moved the majority of his clothing and personal effects over to it; he’s gone over every inch of the boat a million times from bow to stern, double checked all the arrangements to make sure Ava will be provided for into perpetuity, for as long as the royalties keep coming in. There’s nothing else left to do.

  He tries to wake up her. Shakes her shoulder.

  “Ava.”

  “Mmmnnngg.”

  “Ava, wake up.”

  “Nnng. Lemme ’lone.”

  “Ava, please. Wake up for one second.”

  She squints one blue eye at him. “What, Chris?”

  He hesitates. Hoping she’ll give him a reason to stay. “I love you, Ava.”

  She stares at him for a long moment, as if uncomprehending, and then she closes her eye and rolls away from him.

  “Ava?”

  “Don’t.” Her voice is muzzy, slurred. Sleepy.

  More than likely she won’t remember this when she wakes up.

  “I love you, Ava. Never forget that.”

  “Mmmm.”

  A sob tries to jag through him, and he clamps down on it, so it only emerges as a soft, whining exhalation. Had she heard it, she would have said it sounded like a hurt puppy.