Bad Love

Chapter 14

Waking up the morning after Andrew left, Jasmine felt a depression not too dissimilar from what she'd felt after giving birth to Lucy. Bradley had dropped her off at the hospital two days before they'd delivered Lucy and had only returned when they'd contacted him to tell him that they were going to be discharged. He drove them home and was quickly gone again without checking with her to make sure she was going to be okay with Lucy all alone. The whole time she'd been in hospital Jasmine had known that he was with another woman and that he had had her over at their home. Jasmine realized then that this was how it was going to be; it was always going to be just her and Lucy. Bradley had not made himself available to her during those first months with Lucy which had been the most difficult time of Jasmine's life. The enormous task ahead of her as the mother of this child pressed itself upon her every moment of every day, and without anybody upon whom she could call Jasmine had on more than a few occasions descended to dangerous levels of despair. There were times when Lucy would be crying in her crib and Jasmine would just stand motionless beside the crib looking down at her, questioning the wisdom of her decision to bring this child into the world. She didn't communicate her depression to Bradley; she didn't think she needed to. It was there in plain sight for him to see, the fact that he took no notice of it was further evidence of her aloneness, which compounded her despair. There were times when the thought of taking her own life had entered Jasmine's mind and remained for an uncomfortably long period of time. She failed to see how it was worthwhile for her to do this for the rest of her life, to be alone like this with no reason to keep going other than to take care of a child which in all honesty she hadn't wanted.

The addition of Lucy to their lives wasn't the primary cause of Jasmine's unhappiness during this period. Over time she came to understand that it was the non-presence of her husband. The moment she wrote him off as not being of any use to her as a co-parent Jasmine gained a fresh perspective that made her responsibility as a mother less oppressing. Caring for Lucy became more manageable and by embracing her role as the sole parent she started seeing Lucy as more of a partner and less of a burden. Her loneliness evaporated and a new chapter of her life began, one of immeasurable happiness.

Recollecting this time in her past, Jasmine woke up the morning after she'd asked Andrew to leave with barely enough energy to get out of bed. Having to choose Bradley over him, Jasmine felt the sting of parental responsibility like she never had before, and missed Andrew more than she imagined she would when she'd asked him to leave. She could smell him in the linen she was lying in, some of his books and CDs he'd left on the shelves above the desk, her body that hadn't been enjoyed by him since before the incident with Bradley felt separate from her. Andrew's absence was palpable and pervasive, as was the reason for his absence, the eight year old girl still asleep in the room down the hall whose things for school she needed to start getting ready.

The 5 a.m. silence of the house penetrated her deeply and worsened her melancholy; this was what was going to be waiting for her when she returned from leaving Lucy at school, not the hours full of love and happiness that she used to have with Andrew. Slowly and reluctantly she got out of bed, her responsibility to attend to her child's needs the only thing enabling her mobility. Sluggishly she made her way to the bathroom and there, in the mirror, came face to face with a woman she didn't recognize. The woman in the mirror was old and tired, worn down by a life of deference and self-sacrifice. Jasmine had seen this woman before; she'd failed to recognize her at first because it had been so long since she'd last seen her. She looked a lot of worse than she had the last time she'd seen her; her eyes reflected not the slightest trace of hope or resilience, her face had lost all vitality. She raised her hand and touched it and the skin felt loose, was perceptibly sagging under her chin and had formed frown lines on the sides of her mouth and crow's feet around her eyes. Was this really the woman that Andrew had found so beautiful, for whom he'd longed for so many years? The woman in the mirror couldn't have been the object of such desire, the affair she'd had with him couldn't have been what she remembered it being. Looking at the woman in the mirror, the fragile motivation that Jasmine had for continuing with the day came under heavy siege. She rinsed and dried her face and quickly left the bathroom. Almost instinctually she first walked out onto the deck, which she did every morning to look for Andrew running on the beach. A part of her thought that there was a possibility she was going to see him out there, that the sounds of packing and moving that she'd heard last night had been something else. They weren't, the beach was empty, just like the bed she'd woken up in. Jasmine was certain that she'd done the right thing by choosing to preserve Lucy's home but in doing so she had also brought an end to what was most likely the only romantic happiness she would ever know. "What about your life?" Andrew had asked her whenever she'd talked about the times she'd had to give something up for Lucy's sake because Bradley couldn't be depended upon. A year ago her mother had become alarmingly ill and Jasmine, unable to take Lucy with her because of school and unable to trust Bradley to take care of her alone, had to ask her sister go home and take care of her. Jasmine had felt pathetic asking this of her sister, and in the time since had hardly spoken to her out of shame. "I don't see you that way," Andrew had said to her when she'd described herself to him as nothing but a useless housewife. She liked hearing him say it, of the many nice things he'd said to her it had been her favourite thing to hear. Alone again, with nothing ahead of her except leaving Lucy at school and collecting her later, Jasmine's remembrance of Andrew's words did nothing to rid her of the feeling that she was nothing more than a useless housewife.