Read Online In the Middle of All This by Fred G. Leebron - Free Book Online

swatted at his face. Had to eat. Had to warm the nice food, teach the nice class, walk the nice walk home, kiss her once so primly on the lips because she’d be exhausted as well from the day with Max and the evening with the two of them, and then he’d go and pour the wine and they’d sit on the sofa while he dumbly watched the sports channel or she’d sit in the kitchen catching up on Sunday’s news and at eleven or eleven-fifteen, after two glasses for her and three or four glasses for him, they’d trudge upstairs, check on the children, slide into their pajamas, brush their teeth, floss, turn out the light, turn once groggily to each other and kiss a last perfunctory or sometimes tender kiss, and drop into sleep. And he’d never say it. He’d never express it. Today would become another missed day in a year of missed days, of climbing out of bed into the daily slog, of projecting energy into the void, of the endless tick against the endless tock , when he couldn’t say, when he hadn’t said, when he needed to say, how much he felt her.
    I am keeping a journal, she wrote, so that no one will have to hear how afraid I am, how being afraid of death is not good enough, how you can’t give in to it and let it rule you, how exhausting it is, how careful you have to be in everything you ever do. I am keeping a journal only when I want to keep it and I am keeping it away from anybody else—even Richard, even Martin, even Martha—and when it’s done and I am somewhere else, it will be like a rock that never existed and no one will have to even know how awful it is and no one will have to know what it means to die and why it should matter how they die, how they take it, because I will not be the sick sister, I will not be the sick wife, I will not be the sick daughter. I will not, I will not, I will not. I will not be mad and I will not be miserable and I will not be afraid and I will not be pitiful. I will follow my God because that is part of whatever the healing can be, and I will not think only of the numbers and I will not hold back what shouldn’t be held back and I will be. The difference being the difference between being and doing. I will be. I will do whatever can be done, but I will also be.
    Yesterday he finally called. We talked about what the children were doing and we talked about the usual shit about Mom and we talked about what it means to complain, how complaining is okay, how everyone complains, how everyone has something to complain about. I could hear him getting tired and I said, “I don’t want to drag you down with me,” and he said, “You’re not.” But I heard it in his voice and I lied and said, “Look, I’ve really got to run. There’s someone at the door.” And I could hear the relief in his voice as he tried to offer up a resigning “okay.” We hung up. He is the one I am closest to and I’ve told him that and not to tell anybody else that, and he said of course not but why does it matter who I’m closest to? Why am I being like this? Why am I pitiful? Why am I doomed? Why can’t matter.
    Maybe I won’t write in this journal again.
    Was that really her? She’d always distrusted journals, she’d always felt they kept you from living, that while you wrote in them life went by, and you rose afterward still heavy from seeing inside yourself, and you were slow to catch up. She didn’t have time for slow.
    In the kitchen she put away spoons and bottles, hearing the hollow echo of her tending to herself. When they’d first gotten beyond the shock, Richard had suggested a dog. A dog . As if she were blind. As if she were an old woman living alone looking for any constant company to extend her time. He was only thinking aloud. A dog wasn’t it. Every now and then Martin or Martha would dare, Are you sure you don’t want to move back? She didn’t want to interrupt