Intentional Fallacy (Book 5)

Chapter 16

They are silos, these lives of mine. One is very different from the other and the difference is striking. Driving from Matt's to the high school led me back to a place where Jeff didn't matter. Matt didn't really either. I turned on the radio and pushed the car lighter in. I rummaged through the worn leather briefcase I used to carry my work to and from the school. Student papers, books, lecture notes. I felt around for the feel of the cigarette pack, it's slick cellophane wrapper. Once I found it I removed it from my briefcase. It crossed my mind that managing so many things will driving could cause an accident. I didn't care. I almost wished for it. Something supernatural making the decision for me because really I didn't want to decide what to do anymore. It was there, lingering. This new idea that there was a way out. I thought of the children. I wanted their love for me to penetrate these dark thoughts. They were my children. I was the only person committed to them. Their only real parent. Their only close relative. I had no family. Jeff had only his father and sister and they were so cold and distant that none of my children felt close to them. I thought about it and it seemed that I had compensated for the absence of a real family. I inhaled the smoke and the burning felt good. The rush of nicotine went to my head and it sharpened things. The snow was starting again. I didn't want another storm. I was tired of the snow days. What did I want? I wanted spring to arrive so that the school schedule would be uninterrupted. I could build momentum in my teaching life and with the other faculty. I would regularly start going to PTA meetings and political groups again. I would be able to return to the part of my life where I had value. The rest would recede. Since Christmas my family had been my singular focus and it was terrible. All of it. Weak, sad. During the rest of the year, Jeff and I had our little stage and we acted things out in a pace that suited our moods. He could come and go as he pleased and if he were in the midst of an affair then I would be happy for the time to myself. If he were enchanted with me or ignited a spark of jealousy, then we'd play that out too. That was what I'd wanted from him. :assion. But, spending all this time together was causing me to unravel. It seemed since Christmas I was a broken person around him falling deeper and deeper into an endless pit. Maybe I'd thought Matt would cause me to rise back up to my life but really having sex with him didn't.

Life as I knew it was over.

I turned on the wipers. The snowfall was getting heavier. I put on my blinker and turned into the parking lot. It was empty and I realized immediately that school had been canceled again. I don't know how I hadn't thought to turn on the radio and listen for the cancellations. I parked the car and sat for a short while, smoking and staring out at the snow as it fell. It was a beautiful silence. It was a suspended peaceful moment. I turned off the engine and finished my cigarette. I snuffed it out and waited some more. The snow was accumulatin and sitting in the parking lot with my tire tracks already disappearing I thought of a small life boat, set in the middle of the ocean. I got out of the car and stood in the falling snow. We rarely had snow when I was a child in Oregon. I remember after moving to Chicago it seemed like an amazing gift. It was something magical and child-like. I'd loved bundling the children up and watching them trudge their way out to the woods behind our house. Clara had always stayed back and I remembered her trying to build an igloo every winter. The bricks she'd formed never held together. The task seemed insurmountable. I remembered the year it had dawned on me to help her. I went into the basement and found a rectangular wooden box that had been used to store some kind of woodworking tool left behind by the old owners of the house. I removed the top and then the curved drill looking thing and I carried the box upstairs. I'd put on my coat and gloves. When I got outside and close enough I'd heard Clara "Mommy what are you doing?"

I'd made my way through the deep snow and when I got near I bent over and showed her the box.

"What's it for?"