Moving On - Chpt 1

She’d been careful not to say anything negative about their father in front of them. In her head though, the negative thoughts had been having a jamboree for months.

She’d talked to him. She’d gone to counseling with him. She’d begged him to stop treating her like crap, but his response was that she was picking on him. She never spent enough time with him. She didn’t show her love properly though her house cleaning. She was a lousy wife.

She’d thought to herself many times If I was a lousy wife, let’s see how you do with no wife. Now he was going to get to find out. She’d left him. She’d filled out divorce papers and left them on the kitchen table, right next to a note that read, “You’ll have to fix your own damn food from now on.” Then she’d grabbed the suitcase from under the bed and the duffel bags out of the closet and started throwing things in. She probably could have fit more of the kid’s things if she’d packed a little more carefully, but she couldn’t afford to waste the time.

She had to be to the airport by three p.m. Jack didn’t normally get home until 3:30, so it shouldn’t have been an issue, but when she woke up this morning and saw the clouds, she was convinced that it would start raining. Hard rain would mean they’d have to call it a day, send the guys home. They couldn’t be on roofs in that kind of weather.

When they’d first gotten married, she rejoiced to see cloudy days, because it meant the chance to spend time with her husband.

Lately, she dreaded cloudy days because it meant having him underfoot, like a third, oversized child, whining and complaining; making a mess and then blaming her and the kids for it.

Today, her heart had clenched at the sight of the clouds. If he came home and saw the suitcases, there was no way she’d have gotten out of there. At least not with the kids.

The fear was real and it was palpable. What am I doing? It was practically a mantra by now, the way it wouldn’t leave her alone. Her brain had kept up an ongoing pro/con argument ever since she made her decision.

I hate him. But he loves the kids. He claims he loves me. But he doesn’t act like he loves me. He calls me names and insults everything about me. How can he call that love? But I shouldn’t be taking the boys this far away from their father. But I’m not sure he’d let me leave if I didn’t put this kind of distance between us. And so it went, back and forth.

The idea that she was an abused wife never entered her mind. Jack had never intentionally hit her. He got a little ruff sometimes when they were playing around, but he worked construction. He was stronger than her, and she was no slouch, she could take it. The fact that the rough housing often went on well after she’d asked him to stop, well, that was just Jack. He had to take everything one step too far.

Few wives acknowledge that they are being verbally abused. If a man belittles them, tears down their self esteem and tells them they’re worthless to anyone but them, well, they’re just being a jerk. And who realized their self esteem is being torn down until they go to use it and find it’s gone.

She was jerked out of her thoughts by the cab coming to a stop. She hadn’t even noticed that they had eased into the traffic queuing up in front of the terminal.

“That’ll be thirty eighty five Mam.” The cabbie was looking at her in the rearview mirror.

“Of course.” She dug through her purse, pulled out two crumpled twenties and handed them over. As she opened the door she heard the mechanical voice announcing “The white lane is for loading and unloading of passengers only.”

“Tommy, you get out  on my side” she instructed her five year old as she started to climb out of the back seat, readjusting Jay, who was just starting to wake up. She heard the other door pop open. She whipped her head toward Tommy to see him start to climb out into the oncoming traffic side of the cab.

“Tommy!” She said in her sharpest voice as she dove back across the seat to grab her sons arm to keep him from getting creamed in airport traffic. “I told you to get out on my side of the cab.” She drug him back across the seat, juggling poor Jay at the same time, who’d started to cry from him mommy using her angry tone.

“Shhh, its okay baby” she said to the crying toddler at the same time as Tommy was informing her “I don’t have to do what you say.”

“She knelt in front of him and grabbed him by his shirt sleeve, pulling him very close to her. “I am your mother” she informed him, her voice low and dangerous “and you DO have to do what I tell you. If you disobey me again, there will be dire consequences. Do you understand me?”

He glared at her in stony silence. “I said, do you understand me?”

“Humph.”

“You are such a little shit.” She stood up, still holding to Tommy’s sleeve, and noticed her luggage piled next to her on the curb. “Oh, thank you…” she looked around for her cabbie only to see it easing away from the curb. Then she realized she hadn’t gotten any change back. “SHIT”.

“That’s a bad word” Tommy informed her, crossing his arms and giving her his stern look.

“Yes, it is a bad word, but mommy didn’t mean to give the cab a ten dollar tip! Oh shit, shit, shit. Shut up Tommy” she informed him before he could scold her again. The lip came out and started to tremble.

“Oh for crying out loud. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said shut up.” She knelt down again, setting Jay next to his big brother and held one of the boy’s hands in each of hers. “Look, here’s the deal. We’re going on a very long trip, and I need you to be on your very best behavior. I know we didn’t get off to a good start this morning and I’m sorry about that, but” and she looked directly at Tommy for this part “I need you to be a big boy and help mommy look after Jay. Can you do that?”

He nodded his head up and down. Maybe she should have had this talk this morning, maybe things would have gone smoother. Then he asked the one question she’d been dreading. “Why isn’t daddy going with us?”

She put on her brightest smile, at least the brightest smile she could muster under the circumstances and said “This trip is just for the three of us! It’s a surprise where we’re going. Okay?”

Tommy nodded again, but the promise of a surprise didn’t distract him. She could see on his face that he was still wary about the situation.

“Okay” she said, standing and surveying her surroundings. “Let’s see…” She spotted some luggage carts on a rack. It was a few feet away and she couldn’t leave the luggage or the kids. “Tommy, take Jay’s hand and follow me.” She draped first one duffel over her shoulder, then another, then the third. She couldn’t stand up strait from the weight, so she grabbed the suitcase handle in one hand and Tommy’s free hand in her other and crab walked over to the cart rack. She had to unload everything in reverse to get to her purse to find two quarters for the cart. Once she had everything loaded on, she set Jay on top of the pile and told Tommy to stand on the front and hang on. The entire arrival escaped had taken longer than she’d anticipated. Inside the terminal, she looked around trying to figure out what to do. She’d never flown before, but she had dropped people off at the airport. She saw long counters with airline names above them. She found the one with the airline she was flying on and got into line.