The Truth About Love (4 page)

A mere four months later we had our daughter, Kylie, sixteen weeks early.  For the next six months, she lived in the hospital, fighting for her life while Shane struggled to keep his promise.  The struggle continued even after she came home. 

I had married my prince.  We had our princess.  We lived in a really nice house.  On paper, everything looked perfect.  In reality, my happily ever after had never seemed so far away.
 

In the fourteen months since Kylie had come home, we’d had few ordinary days.  During the week there was always some kind of therapy or doctor appointment.  This Monday, however, we had nothing scheduled other than meeting up with a friend.  When Shane wandered out from our bedroom around nine in the morning, I was on the phone with Julia.  We had been long time virtual friends brought together by similar circumstances.  Like us, Julia and her husband had special needs children, and like me, she was a freelance writer.  After ten months of daily conversations and frequent messaging on Facebook, they were coming to Charlotte from Atlanta for a doctor appointment and we were all supposed to meet for lunch.

Shane smiled when he walked out, which was encouraging.  Since we were in the middle of joking and making plans, I decided to incorporate him into the conversation.
  “
Hey, babe, which restaurant did you want to meet at?”

“Don’t start with me, Nina.”
 
He had snarled at me before heading out to the garage for his morning smoke, and though I tried to cover it up, I was already hurt and licking my wounds.  Ending the conversation, I convinced Julia to meet at Taco Bell.  It was right across the road from the doctor and even though Shane was a picky eater, he loved tacos.  I figured since we weren’t meeting until almost two in the afternoon, I had plenty of time to finalize the plans with my grumpy husband.

When he hadn’t come back into the house nearly an hour later, I checked and found him asleep on the couch in the garage.  I suppose I imagined this would be like the last few days of constant sleeping where he was spending roughly eighteen hours a day unconscious.  The longer this continued, the harder I tried to convince him to see a doctor and get help, all to no avail.  At one in the afternoon, as I prepared to leave, he was still there.

“Babe, you wanna come to Taco Bell with us?”  I spoke quietly, gently, so as not to anger him.
The second his head turned my direction, I knew I had failed miserably.  Still, I stood my ground and waited for a response.  He hated when I acted nervous around him.

“Why would I want to go to Taco Bell?” He snapped instantly.

Trying to maintain a calm disposition, I sighed.  “I thought you might want to meet Julia and her family.”

“
I don’t want to be around anyone right now.”  He glared at me, indicating that I was lumped into that category.

Instead of reacting, I merely nodded.  “Okay.  Want me to bring food back for you?”

Already he had turned his head into the back of the couch.  “No.”
 
His arms were crossed over his chest, his balled up fists tucked into his armpits.  Occasionally, he would open his eyes enough to peek and see if I was still there.

There was no sense in staying when he was in this mood.  The time apart might do us both good.  “Well, I’m leaving.  I’ll be back after.”

Turning, he sneered at me.
  “
I supposed you want me to move the truck.”

A trailer filled with tools took up one side of the double driveway, forcing him to park in front of my SUV and block it in, but disturbing him further was the last thing I intended.  I shook my head.
  “
Nope.  I’ve got it.”  I walked down to his truck, hopped in the cab, parked it on the street, then exited and locked the vehicle.

So, I went back in the house, where our daughter played in her bouncer.  It only took a few minutes to pack up Kylie.  Then I secured my baby girl in her car seat before driving away.

The drive was short, less than three miles, which didn’t give me much time to shake off the melancholy hanging over me.  Seeing Julia and eating Taco Bell had me feeling happy and hopeful once more.  Sadly, I’ll admit I’m easy.

Lunch was good, but entirely too short, which is why I went with them to the doctor.  After all, the doctor Julia’s son was seeing had been Kylie’s pulmonologist since she was discharged from the NICU.  It meant we could talk more before she interviewed me that evening as a special guest on her radio show.

By the time I returned to the house, it was four in the afternoon.  At first,  I was pleasantly surprised to discover Shane was no longer asleep on the garage couch.  Further investigation, however, showed he had merely relocated to the bedroom where he was sleeping diagonally upside down on the bed, bare feet on the pillow, shoes kicked haphazardly onto the floor.  Laying Kylie down in her crib, I planned to use this quiet time to my advantage.  I had writing to do. Since Shane hadn’t worked in weeks, it would fall on me to replace his income.

As I started to leave the room, I heard his phone ringing.  Knowing he was attempting to sell some of his excess tools on Craigslist, I stood beside him a moment before speaking quietly.  I had learned never to rouse him unnecessarily.
  “
Do you need to answer that?”

His eyes shot open and within seconds he was glaring at me.
  “
What are you doing here?”

“I live here.  Where else would I be?”  My brows furrowed as I waited for him to process our conversation.

“You left.”  His tone was accusatory.

Nodding, I agreed.  “And now I’m back.  Check the phone.”  I hoped to distract him as I gestured towards his pocket.  The phone seemed to ring insistently and I didn’t want Kylie woken up.  I watched as he struggled to reach inside the Velcro secured pocket of his cargo pants and pull it out.  He silenced the phone and began the struggle to put it back once more.

This is where the tension began.  This is where I started doing what I do, trying to calm him down, trying to keep life level and normal.
“
Want me to help?”

Still, he fumbled alone while I watched and tried to talk to him, soothe him, and keep him from overreacting.  I’m not sure I remember what I babbled on about maybe something about lunch, meeting Julia, the appointment and then it happened.  His hand shot toward his face and he began to bite down on the side of his index finger.  It was the universal signal he was about to blow a gasket.

“
Let me help you.”
 
Without waiting for his consent, I shoved his phone in his pocket.
“
There.”

Somehow, I had ended up on the other side of the bed, away from Kylie’s crib, which was in front of the window.  It was a definite oversight, allowing Shane to be in the middle, for me to be far away from my baby when he was this volatile.  I realized it the minute he started kicking the headboard angrily.

“Shane.  Calm down.  Relax.”

It didn’t work.  I knew it wouldn’t.  He kicked harder and more violently, this time with both feet.  I could picture the entire bed collapsing with him on it, which wouldn’t make him any happier.  We had already damaged the frame during happier times.  The iron leaves and vines in the head board had broken off long ago one night when he let me use silk ties to restrain and tease him.  We had laughed.  It didn’t dampen our mood any.  The lovemaking was only hotter.  This…was a different kind of hot.

During this rage, he injured his foot.  I sighed.  Loudly.  I knew what this meant.  He would only be more volatile now.

Sure enough, he leaned over the side of the bed near where I hovered out of arm’s reach and picked up one of his sneakers.  He launched it and it ricocheted off the wall and flew at Kylie’s crib.  Rushing past him, I hissed.
  “
Shane, Kylie is
sleeping
. You almost hit her!”

Snatching my
slumbering
baby, I walked briskly from the room and didn’t slow down until I reached the great room.  As long as we were in the same house, I wasn’t safe from his tantrum.  Sadly, this didn’t bother me any more.  It was terrible to have grown accustomed to these outbursts, but over the past five years, I had.  

Snuggling Kylie on the couch, I listened to figure out what was happening down the hall.  It was quiet once more and I hoped it meant he had fallen back asleep or calmed down.  After plugging the tubing into the surgically embedded button in her belly, Kylie’s feed was started through the feeding pump.  It had been running all of ten minutes of the thirty it was programmed for when Shane came limping out.

At the moment, he was shirtless and wearing only one shoe.  I stared at him evenly while I tried to decide what to do next.  He flopped down on the opposite end of the sofa looking confused and upset.

“Why would you bother me about going to dinner?”  He frowned.

“I didn’t.”

“Yes, you did.”  He insisted.  “You came in and you woke me up to talk about dinner.  I don’t want dinner.  And I certainly don’t want to meet Julia.”

I felt like I was dealing with a child.  “That’s fine.  I already met Julia.  We met for lunch.  You were invited.  Remember?”
 
I urged him to make sense and recall our earlier conversation.  It didn’t work.  

“And what did you do with my shoe?”  He pointed to his bare foot.

“I didn’t do anything with your shoe.  You threw it.  It’s wherever it landed.”

Gradually
, he leaned forward and used what little inertia he had created to leverage himself off the couch.  
Evidently he had decided to stumble back into the bedroom to locate his missing shoe.  I couldn’t tell you what set him off, but the walls were paying the price.  Holes were created as he punched the sheetrock near the back door and the light switch in the hall.
Still angry, the thermostat was targeted next.  Since it injured him when he hit it, he kicked a huge hole in the
sheetrock
below the thermostat.  Finally, he disappeared into the bedroom and I had to rely on my ears to tell me what was happening next.

It didn’t take long before I heard the sound of shattering glass.  Was it a picture frame?  Was it a mirror?  Like we needed any more bad luck.  There was banging and grunting, thudding and crunching.  After a brief time, there was silence.  Was it too much to hope he had tired himself out and was finally sleeping off the rage?  I listened closely, stuck on the couch while waiting for Kylie’s feed to finish.

Then I heard it, the distinctive rattling of the pill bottle being shaken or moved.  He was in the bathroom.  The rage would pass, but I worried he had finally decided to end it all as he had often threatened before. While my better judgment would have me staying far out of the line of fire, my love for this crazy man had me pausing Kylie’s feed, unhooking her, and rushing to see what he was doing.

The moment I reached the bedroom door, I stopped.  This was different.  This was so much worse than any rage ever before.  Obviously, the sound of shattering glass had come from the bedroom windows.  He had, apparently, broken them with Kylie’s IV pole.  Her crib was flipped.  There was broken glass all over my side of the room.  His side was no neater.  There were holes all over the wall and ran the width of the room.  Clearly they had been made with the vacuum, which lay on the floor in pieces, and with the IV pole, since one of the wheels was embedded in the wall while the rest of it was bent and broken in the bathroom.

“Nice,” I grumbled.
 
Once I had taken in the extent of the destruction, I rushed to the bathroom where I found Shane collecting some things.  He had a pair of boots in one hand and was stuffing them with his toiletries.  He must have stuck the pills in his pockets, since they were nowhere to be found.
  “
What are you doing?”

“Leaving.”  Shane refused to look at me.

My shoulders heaved as I tried to hide my sigh.  “Why are you leaving?”

He turned and snarled at me.  “Because you are such a bitch!”

I stepped back in surprise.  Shaking my head in disbelief, I finally responded as I moved to exit the room.
  “
Why am I a bitch?”

His hands waved angrily.  “Why did you have to bring up dinner?  You’re mean!”

Though I had managed to keep my cool thus far, my patience was beyond tried at the moment.
  “
For the love of God and for the last time, I never mentioned dinner.”
 
I stopped just inside the bedroom, turned and looked at him.  Kylie was on my hip, had been throughout the entire exchange.  She was simply watching everything unfold, completely unconcerned.  As long as I remained calm, she would too.  She could handle anything as long as she had me.

Staring at Shane, I waited for his reaction.  Without saying another word, he bent and picked up a stack of picture frames I had leaned against the wall and he’d promised to hang above our bed weeks ago.  Then he threw them at me, Frisbee style.  Luckily he was sluggish and off his game.  These weren’t the average pictures.  Nope.  Two of these were the roughly two foot by two foot wooden square frames, painted with a quote on them, a small 4x6 picture in the centers.  The other was our wedding frame, 20 inch square everyone had signed, and now was covered by glass, meant to protect those heartfelt wishes from our guests for posterity.

They came at me like giant throwing stars, separating as they drew nearer.  They flew low, hovering barely a foot off the ground.  Though I managed to dodge two, one of the three hit my calf, scratching my leg and creating what was sure to be a huge lingering bruise.  Behind me, in the hall, our wedding frame hit the wall and shattered, glass spilling out and scattering several feet.  Without waiting for him to say anything, I left the room, careful to avoid the shards of glass and chunks of sheetrock littering the dark bamboo hardwood floors.