If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This Part 2

You nod. And then you hand me a letter. Our full names are typed on the envelope-complete with our middle initials. You've been looking through public records. You are doing this by the book. This is no friendly note held in my hand. It's a doc.u.ment.

Here is the part I go over in my head: When I think about you buying the house, having the land surveyed, finding the property line just about in your neighbors' driveway, telling them you're going to build a wall, a solid wall, right there; this is the part that I still don't understand.

You know nothing about the reasons it might matter to us to be able to park right in front of our door.

For example, in the cancer scenario, I'll grow weak. That's inevitable. Walking twenty feet will feel like a mile to me. Maybe I could do it, make the walk from the car, if we were just a foot or two from the house. But all the way down the drive, all the way from where there's room to open the door, that's just too far.

So Sam is going to have to take out the folding wheelchair from the back. And wheel me up the drive. And then help me out from the chair and then, when he's settled me in the house, he'll have to wheel the chair, empty now, back down the drive to the car. And every time he does this he'll suffer. Every time, his heart will break. Because one day soon, he knows, the chair will be empty for real.

But back inside the house he tries to make me laugh-by imitating you. We're going to get an animal, he says. An animal! A hippopotamus, in fact.

What's the deal, I ask, with a man who can't just say dog? dog?

And then Sam says, Just don't set a foot onto my land. My land, my land, he says in a Scarlett O'Hara voice, his fist raised in the air. And I try to laugh-for Sam. But eventually I have to raise the question of whether it's time for us to tell our son. Because I can feel that there are only three or four more visits left in me. Power is running from my legs like sand down an hourgla.s.s. Do we tell Todd in advance? Or will I just be gone one day?

We hire a lawyer.

I don't want to, but your letter quotes township statutes and talks about your rights as a landowner. It's just possible, Sam says, that we have rights too. He looks so worn and haggard as he speaks. He looks as though this is one thing too many. I say, Go ahead, hon. Hire a lawyer. Let somebody else take this on.

Our lawyer sends you a letter. It says that we want you to hold up on construction while we investigate the situation. We want you to give us a chance to see if there's any way around this. The phrase adverse possession adverse possession appears in the second paragraph. We also send you a handwritten note, behind our lawyer's back, saying we don't want this to be a legal fight. Please. We just want you to let us open our car door in front of our house-as a courtesy. We only hired a lawyer because you gave us that doc.u.ment, you made it seem so official. We felt we had to do everything we could. appears in the second paragraph. We also send you a handwritten note, behind our lawyer's back, saying we don't want this to be a legal fight. Please. We just want you to let us open our car door in front of our house-as a courtesy. We only hired a lawyer because you gave us that doc.u.ment, you made it seem so official. We felt we had to do everything we could.

Your response comes hand-delivered, overnight.

"I have every right to erect a fence on my own property."

It says a bit more. But not much.

There's a conversation that hasn't been had, I tell Sam. The conversation human beings have with each other. He isn't quite treating us like people.

He isn't quite a person, Sam says. He's a creature. He's an animal himself. He's like a yeti or something.

He is! He looks exactly like a yeti. That scowl on his face. The way he stomps around his land. It's inspired, I say. He's the yeti.

And that is what we call you after that.

I suppose it's this ability of yours not to care that intrigues me so. suppose it's this ability of yours not to care that intrigues me so.

If I loved you, I would tell how much you're missing because of that. I would find ways to convince you that I exist. I would resist erasure every moment that I could.

For several weeks the letters fly back and forth.

You're amazed that we think we have any rights.

We're amazed that you think rights are what's at issue here.

Sam says he's going to paint a bright red stripe on our side of the line. It'll be wet paint, he says. I'll put it down on the day they're building the fence. So if they set a foot on our property... if they set even one foot on our property...

I'll sit out there with a shotgun, I say. First one of them steps in red paint loses a leg...

I want to scold you in the harsh, caressing tones of a mother to a child. I want to help you, make you understand more about the ways things want to scold you in the harsh, caressing tones of a mother to a child. I want to help you, make you understand more about the ways things should should be than you do, make you think more, give you some imagination. I want you to imagine that I have a life. A life that matters. You should care about my life. be than you do, make you think more, give you some imagination. I want you to imagine that I have a life. A life that matters. You should care about my life.

Sam stares out the kitchen window every night when he comes home from work.

I'll miss the trees, he says.

I really will. I don't give an answer.

Why make matters worse?

Another possibility is that Sam is in danger of losing his job.

What if I have cancer, our son is out there in the inst.i.tution, and, because the boy and I take up so much time, Sam is having trouble putting the hours in at work? They've tried to be patient with him, they know the situation, but the irony is it's dragging on for too long. If I'd died six months ago instead of four months from now, there might not be a problem. They're good guys. They do care. But this is too much.

The fence goes up on a day when we're out.

And you have no idea where we've been.

If I loved you, I would invite you in, sit you down in our kitchen, and I would say to you: You just never know. You, the yeti. You don't know why this matters so much to us, why we care. You don't know what secret pains we have that we haven't shared with you. You don't know us.

But then I would have to admit that I don't know everything either, wouldn't I? Like I don't know why it matters so much to you to build that fence exactly there.

What happened in your life that makes a property line mean so much?

Why do you think you should get what is your right?

You're so uncaring, so unreasonable. It must be a defense mechanism of some kind. I'm sure that it is.

But Sam says that's ridiculous of me. Even to think about you that way.

It's late at night and neither one of us can sleep. I say to him, I'm sure that the yeti must have been hurt. Very badly. At some point in his life he must have been very badly hurt. Or he'd understand our side. No one can care so little about other people unless they've been very badly hurt.

Not necessarily, Sam tells me. Maybe the problem is he's never been hurt. He can't imagine real pain because he's never experienced it.

I can feel his hand reach across the bed for my arm.

Or maybe some folks are just bad.

He wraps his fingers around my wrist.

Maybe some folks are just bad.

My poor sleepless husband.

He says that to me twice.

II.

On the day of the mammogram I was more worried about the technician seeing all the bruises on my arms than about the results. You'll be lucky, I told Sam, if they don't come and arrest you for wife abuse.

I hate to see you look like that.

I was standing in just a bra and panties. The bruises were all different colors, the newest ones purple, the oldest turning yellow. It's not so bad, I said. He doesn't mean it. He doesn't know he's hurting me.

I know he doesn't mean it. I'm not angry at him-you know that. I just hate to see you this way.

It's nothing big, I said. He gets upset. He can't talk to us, so he lashes out.

But I understood that the words were pointless, just filling the air between us with sound. There was nothing I knew that Sam didn't know. There was only this ritual of repeating back and forth what we both already knew.

We kissed in the door and I watched him pull out his car-just behind mine in the driveway. He didn't wish me luck and it never occurred to me that he should.

So, first there was the mammogram, at which I stood with my b.r.e.a.s.t.s and my mottled arms exposed. As the technician squeezed my flesh into position I mumbled something about having fallen off my bike. I bruise very easily, I said. Not: My son had a stroke while in utero and is severely brain-damaged. He isn't a bad boy at all, but he has these moments of violence and these are the results.

Not that.

Then came the letter ordering me back for more tests, an ultrasound, the biopsy, the meeting in my doctor's office-this time Sam right there by my side. And through all of this, about three weeks, right up until the surgery, all I could think about was Todd. Not even what would happen to him if I died-I couldn't die, that was out of the question, not on the table for discussion-but little things like who would watch him while I went in for the biopsy, and could I possibly take him to the doctor's office with me and have him there in the room.

It used to seem so simple: you're young, you go through school, you fall in love, you marry, you get pregnant. And then the road takes a certain kind of curve. Your sense of self can disappear.

Todd: cannot speak, cannot walk, barely hears, is blind in one eye. Cannot control his bladder or his bowels. Does he know us? It's never been clear. Until now, I'd always hoped that he did. I'd always hoped that it gave him some kind of comfort to have me and have Sam there with him. But now I'm not so sure that I want that anymore. Now I find myself hoping sometimes he never really knew who I was.

Now, my yeti, I find myself hoping he may be like you. And so won't ever miss me when I'm gone.

There was spread into the lymph nodes. One doctor spoke about saving the b.r.e.a.s.t.s and I said, Just do whatever will make this stop. I don't give a s.h.i.t about my b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

New questions arise: Just how many fifths of scotch were the two of us going through every week?

We tried not to count them in the recycling bin. And eventually we began to throw a couple of bottles into the garbage cans instead, split them up. Maybe Sam would take a bottle or two in the car and dump them somewhere else. It's almost funny.

We were drunk the night we realized Todd would have to be moved. In vino veritas In vino veritas. In whiskey are decisions born.

Is this the brave thing to do or the coward's way out?

Sam said, I don't know, honey. I just know it's what has to happen to now. And so do you.

Lawrence House. It's a low-lying building filled with heartbreaks, amongst whom my son looks like part of a crowd. And people like me and like Sam pa.s.s one another with guilty looks on our faces. The first year, I went to see him just when I was well enough. The second year, there was no sign of spread. I was off chemo and I went almost every day.

Maybe we could bring him home, I said to Sam. We managed before and I'm feeling fine now. He could come back.

Sam's voice was quiet. He said, I don't know if that's something we should do. Remember how the two of you used to struggle? You were covered with bruises, Ruth. You couldn't handle him at all.

Well, let's think about it anyway. Let's just not say that we won't.

Okay. If you want. We won't say that we won't.

Sam deals the cards, counting quietly to himself. We've kept the same deck beside Todd's bed for all these years.

Fives? I ask.

Go fish.

So I draw from the pile.

No, I say. Not a five. It's your turn.

I look over at our boy. He is staring somewhere else.

My son is eighteen years old. His head is covered with thick black curls like my own used to be and his eyes are the same bright blue as Sam's. He would have been a very handsome man. He would have been something wonderful, I'm convinced. But for the travels of a blood clot to his brain, while he burrowed small and silenced in my womb.

III.

It's been two months now since your six-foot fence went up. Two months, more or less. From my bed, I can hear your children playing on the other side. Sometimes I turn the television up louder just to drown them out. It's a terrible thing to feel yourself hate a child.

Sam didn't want to go to work today but I argued him out through the door.

Nothing will be improved by you losing your job, I said.

He drives my car these days. It was always the more dependable one. It's parked down the drive, near the street, of course-thanks to you. His is stowed in our garage. He argued when I first told him he should take my keys. We went through the game of my telling him not to be silly; it would just be until I felt stronger. It wasn't a big decision at all. Stop being ridiculous, I said. You look like you're murdering me. It's just the better car. You should use it while I can't. I'll be taking it back soon enough.

And so he gave in.

I know that you go to work a little after he leaves-I hear your car door, the ignition. I know the hours you keep, can predict when you'll come home. And I know you have a wife. A friend who visits me, brings us food, brings me gossip, has told me that your wife is very pretty, slender and naturally blond, in her thirties. She stands on the corner in the mornings and puts your daughter on the bus. Then an older woman comes in and watches your little boy, while your wife keeps herself busy, though no one in the neighborhood knows exactly what she does.

There are speculations about you. The new family on the block. There are rumors that you're putting in a pool. But winter is coming now, I know, and it isn't the right time. Maybe in April, when the world has thawed again so the ground will be soft enough to dig.

Sam drives out alone to Lawrence House now, every two or three days.

My last trip was two weeks ago. I said my goodbyes in silence, the language of my motherhood. There were other periods when I wasn't there. There's no way to explain to my child that this is different. And probably no reason that we should, though I still carry this awful fear that he'll think, in whatever way he thinks, that I have given up on him.

I held his heavy head one last time, pulled it gently to my chest, no longer soft.

That day, in the car driving home, Sam was unusually talkative, telling me stories about a new coworker, and then about an old friend. Both of them had done hilarious things-as though everyone Sam knew had taken on an antic side, every situation holding a fistful of punch lines.

And it was funny, genuinely funny. I laughed out loud as he drove us both home.

I don't drink anymore. I lost the craving. But Sam brings the bottle upstairs now and he sits by the bed. Sometimes we watch television. Sometimes we just talk. He pours freely for himself on the understanding that I'm not keeping track. I pick through our lives, recounting good moments, like looking for treasures at the flea market. He listens, sometimes even smiles. don't drink anymore. I lost the craving. But Sam brings the bottle upstairs now and he sits by the bed. Sometimes we watch television. Sometimes we just talk. He pours freely for himself on the understanding that I'm not keeping track. I pick through our lives, recounting good moments, like looking for treasures at the flea market. He listens, sometimes even smiles.

I know you must have heard by now that I'm sick. It's that kind of town, that kind of neighborhood. Our story: the boy who was born so damaged, the mother who won't make it to the spring, it's all well known. We're the kind of family people talk about.

Sam phones me from the office to let me know he'll be late because he's visiting the boy. I tell him that's just as well. I'm feeling tired. But by the time he gets home, I say, I'll be awake.