Night, Forgotten: Draft 1

Chapter 17: Now

I open my eyes in the darkness and it doesn't quite feel the same as waking up. But I must have been having a nightmare, like I used to have after the car accident that should have killed me when I was nineteen years old. This was just as terrifying as those dreams used to be, even in its utter lack of violence.

In this nightmare, I was running after Owen on a platform, trying to catch a train heading into Providence to do something fun for the evening. I wasn't looking where I was going, so I snagged my stockings on a railing. When I stopped to inspect the damage, I noticed that I was wearing hideous shoes and decided that I needed to go change them. Owen was yelling at me that the train was going to leave, that there was no time, to just forget about my shoes and come join him. I couldn't move.

We missed the train. When it was gone and there was nothing to do except go home, I just stood there on the platform and cried. It was such a visceral dream that I could feel the wail breaking in my throat.

Now, I'm lying awake feeling not the terror that usually lingers after nightmares, but shame. I'm embarrassed of the way I behaved in the dream, of my reaction to having let Owen down and having caused us to miss the train. It was such a markedly childish instinct:

I feel ashamed of myself, so I just stand here and wail. I have no responsibility to think of a solution to what is hurting me. I'm not thinking at all. I'm just immersed in what this pain feels like right now.

So self-indulgent.

I can't shake the lingering uneasy feeling, so I just let my mind fall back into the darkness, thank god, into a dreamless sleep.

*

Diana meanders ahead of me, along the same wooded path where I like to notice the leaves turning yellow. Her long, wavy hair is tied in a neat braid, a few silver strands trailing beside her on the frosty breeze. Thomas's tiny head, covered in a warm knit cap, bobs up over Diana's shoulder with every other step she takes. She's wearing him on the front of her body in a long piece of fabric that she's fashioned into a sling.

This is one of those walks best taken alone, but here we are.

Now that Sadie has gone back home to Boston, Diana has been taking Thomas with her almost everywhere she goes. It means the baby and I are hardly ever alone together, so it's been impossible to keep the commitment I made to Owen, to be a better mother. I feel terrible about it, but what am I supposed to do? How can I learn how to be a mother when my mother-in-law won't let me take on any responsibility?

Even when I try to help with chores around the house, she interferes. The way she redid my folding of the laundry last week was only the beginning of what has become a pattern. It seems like whenever I take care of a task around the house, from loading the dishwasher to putting Thomas's laundry in the dryer to extinguishing the fire in the parlor before bed, Diana either assumes that it is Owen who has completed it – and thanks him for doing so, much to his confusion – or she straight-up redoes everything in a slightly different, and I assume "better," manner.

So this afternoon, I'm a few steps behind Diana and Thomas on purpose. The path beneath our boots snakes all the way through the woods in our sprawling neighborhood, meandering among houses, over creeks, and in between ancient stone walls that might still legally divide the land parcels. Usually when I walk here, I like to pretend I'm Robert Frost or someone of similar creative genius, just opening my brain up and letting the woods inspire me to write. It's like a little game. Sometimes it actually works, and I send myself running back inside, into the parlor to type up whatever snippet of sentence or combination of words has come into my mind, as quickly as I can, before it dissolves again into nothing.