Edward

Chapter Nine

Washington, DC, 2018

NOTE: Some sections are still under construction.

My mother says they used to say "broken record" but now "no one knows what that means." It's an apt metaphor and it's apt that it's an obsolete one. The way my brain works there is no translation.

Finally Alexander settles and I'm on edge. I'm on edge because I've hardy slept this week. This is the most precarious influence on my mental state. Anxiety sits below the surface; of course it does. It's there and eroding, but the nights awake contaminate my senses. I could-now that you're back-Edward, I could ask you to help me and you want to but something comes over me, seeing you asleep in our bed. So at peace, and comfortable. Do you remember how your grandmother explained love for her husband, for her children? She was holding the photograph of your grandfather, even lost in dementia her gray eyes-once blue- turned wet and she stared intently at you. It felt like an omen. She smiled and told you how happy it always made her to know her family was resting, content. I ask myself how she could be so loving. I have to wonder now if it was the dementia because it's obvious now that she had not been at peace and neither had her children. Your father was broken and -in my mind- he had been since he was a young boy. That is how family secrets are though, an ocean of lies, a reality that mimics reality, an uncanny facade and what makes it a transparent foil? Edward, it is because of shadows—the way you are a shadow in your family. The things you do not hide. And, now you are a shadow in our family-because you know what happened to me. You hold my memories and it feels like a haunting to me. But I don't think our connection, our love, is a facade. Honestly, I don't—I think sometimes if the night on Slater's Beach hadn't happened and we had met each other again a couple of years later at Georgetown, it wouldn't seem peculiar at all that I  had known your family when I was a teenager. It wouldn't have seemed that weird that I'd dated Jack.  I don't think there would be temporal irony. I was your brother's friend as a teenager. Well, maybe it would still be weird, seem incestous but incest isn't a word in your family vocabulary. 

I still don't know how no one ever spoke about your father's sister who had drowned on Slaters.  That's weird.

Alexander finds his circadian rhythm and I lay awake at night and it's dark shadows and memories of the snack bar—the cool sand, finally the heat of august dissipating. I force the memories to calm myself, to return to before. I want to go back to that innocent time because it is so precious to me. I can remember how it felt to inhabit myself completely, teenage Annie. 

Two weeks. You've been back two weeks and in this time I've reconciled infidelity because things mean what we want them to mean. I have never been someone to let others shape my truth. And so while I feel betrayed-in such a scarring way—I do not feel like a fool for letting you back in. It's not one sided, I know that Edward. That is why I am writing these letters to you. I am contemplating your need to resolve the "trauma bond" we have. That's what my therapist calls in. She doesn't say it, but Dr. Antol with her questioning eyes and blunt dark hair, I think she wonders if we love each other at all. Becuase of the night on the beach. 

Despite Dr. Antol's insinuations, I'm not so afraid that if we talk about it, I won't love you any more—that is such a rare insecurity of yours. I don't get the logic but maybe you believe that if I remember or let you describe what I experienced then I will somehow transfer it to you. But really, that's your fear. Why would I do that? I do try to direct that fear, that reasoning. No. The reason I don't want process it with you is because while I don't remember the events, I know the truth. My body knows the truth. I was alone for months afterwards—a whole semester. I sat in a dark room and those first nights after the hospital, I felt what happened to me. I think if you tell me what you witnessed, it will release you from the torment of how traumatic it was for you.