We All Fall Down

Chapter 14

Rick

Ben was born the following August. I didn't even know she had been pregnant. But when I paused to think back, I did notice her increase in appetite, and how her curves filled out her clothes more. Her skin glowed while she became repulsed by the smell of my morning coffee. How could I have missed the signs? I guess that didn't matter now. The damage had been done. She hated me again and blamed me for consistently failing her.

Before though, in the months following her return from the hospital, she suffered horrible night terrors. I was expecting some emotional flare-ups but nothing the likes of this. I felt the familiar rage from her that mirrored our earlier years of marriage, her disdain of having a son. Over time, her anger quelled. She loathed me mostly but was able to find ways to love me in small spurts. I could never make sense of it, could never understand because she wouldn't talk to me. Or maybe couldn't articulate her reasoning. In her eyes though, there was a knowing.

I found myself creating happier moments in my head just to get through the day. One afternoon, I knocked off work early and came home to find Patrice napping on the couch with the baby cradled in one arm wedged against the cushion, while John lay entwined in a blanket on the floor beside them. He had a toy tucked into the fold of his tiny arm, while a tiny pool of drool puddled under his cheek. Patrice's hair was knotted in Ben's unbelievably tiny fist. I couldn't even remember John being that small.

I stood there for a moment, basking in the glory that could have been. I closed my eyes, soaking it in and imagined that they were simply exhausted from running around the yard, playing tag as Ben rolled around on a quilt in the warm sunlight. That once they grew tired, Patrice scooped Ben up and raced John inside for some fresh lemonade, giggling as they sipped. Then, they would have curled up to nap as they waited for me to return.

I drew in a long, deep breath and slowly opened my eyes to accept the reality of our life. I saw an empty bottle of chardonnay sitting on the coffee table. A half-empty glass with a lipstick stain rested next to it. An Elvis album spun on the record player, the needle scraped on the end. Patrice's eyelids were gray and sunken as she snored. A cigarette dangled between her fingers that hung out over John's sleeping body. Little burn holes dotted the blanket that covered him.

I lightly walked toward them and plucked the butt from her hand and dropped it into the chardonnay bottle. I sighed again and quietly roamed to her bedroom at the back of the house and did what I never saw myself doing. I looked through her things. My pulse thrummed as I paced to her dresser and slowly pulled open the top drawer. There was a bowl full of cocaine, a smudged mirror, a marijuana pipe that had residue all around the mouth of it. I shook my head.

I moved to her closet and was hit with the smell of cigarettes and perfume. Her clothes neatly hung over her collection of shoes and the top shelf was stacked in boxes of things I didn't have the energy to snoop through. In her bathroom, I found a drawer full of condoms which we don't use.

I assumed she had stepped outside of our marriage a time or two, but I worked to ignore those intrusive thoughts. It was too painful to face what have become of us. Patrice only wanted to have sex with me when she was loaded. In the moments after she'd been sated, she would roll onto her side and tell me how much she missed me. But I knew better than to take it to heart because by morning, her eyes were cold once more. I ended our intimacy altogether when she began moaning other men's names.

However, no matter what she did, I honored my vows. I wouldn't betray her. Becky has put me in a precarious situation more than once, but I did not stray. I didn't even relieve myself to her image like I had planned, convincing myself that it was not infidelity.

_______________________________________

I resigned myself to focusing on the boys. I was so proud of my sons. John had been a protective older brother and was so patient with Ben over the years. But as they grew, I noticed a difference in them. A strangeness in Ben that I never witnessed with John or most other boys. While they both were healthy and happy, Ben much preferred spending time in Patrice's room, running the fabric of her nice dresses along his cheek or trying on her shoes. John taught himself more masculine trades like fixing the sink instead of calling a plumber or repairing the lawnmower since I kept forgetting.

I'd moved up in my company since Ben's birth, which claimed more of my time. I hated to admit that suited me just fine, because with the boys needing things for school and paying Delores, we could use the money. But if I were completely honest, part of my distance was that Patrice had taken so much out of me that it became difficult to give anymore of myself to anyone else. She had been the light of my life since the day we met and slowly over the years, that light had begun to dim.

I was devastated the day I found those drugs in her room. It's bad enough that I had confirmation she'd been sleeping around, but to have drugs in the house where the boys could see, broke my heart. I tried to be her rock, holding on to the shreds of our marriage in hopes that we would find our way back to one another. I wanted so badly to keep her from the torment that haunted her, but all she did was fall right into the trap that her parents lay out for her. She appreciated nothing I had done for her, the sacrifices I'd made and the excuses I swallowed.

I wanted better for John since I had so miserably failed with Patrice, and watching Ben prance around in her dresses made me sick. It wasn't that he was a fruit, but I knew what it would mean for him. He'd come home with a black-eye more than once, and I often found his clothes torn or his backpack ripped apart. We've had to buy three in the last school year. One day I asked him as we sat down for dinner, "Ben, why does this keep happening?" Ben looked up with a worriless face.

"Because Dad, some people are just not nice." I stared at him for a moment and was taken aback by the poignancy of his statement. My eight-year-old child already knew the darkness of this world that it took me decades to grasp. He needed to maintain that strength because I knew John would leave one day. Even at the age of thirteen, I saw he was tired of catering to Patrice. And without having someone to lash out at, she would self-destruct. These boys didn't have the childhood that most would envy. Their mother stood in the way of any normalcy they could have had. It was what killed her.