Page 57 of Forgotten
As I’m dropping Winnie’s clothes in the laundry one evening, I wonder if I should start a journal. Start taking notes of everything I learn, of every laugh, every cry. Write down how Ash nuzzles his nose in Winnie’s hair before brushing it, first thing in the morning. How endearing Winnie is when she yawns at exactly seven-thirty; how the sight of Ash and Winnie together makes me want to vomit my guts out every day. I want to writehow I need to be closer to Ash at night, how hugging and kissing him is not enough anymore. I crave him closer and under me, above me. Scratch that. Journaling is a horrible idea.
It’s a calm routine.
Until Friday, Winnie wakes up and in place of the sunniest girl on the planet, is a wild devil that just won’t stop crying.
“Maybe there’s something wrong with her,” I tell Ash and I receive a frustrated look back.
“She’s okay. She is a baby. Happens sometimes.”
But Winnie doesn’t stop screaming and whining and nothing calms her down, nothing cheers her up. Her big eyes are filled with tears and her little mouth is wet and drooly and frankly, a little disgusting.
Ash shoos me out of the room and even behind a door, Winnie’s shouting is deafening. I don’t get it.
I wish I didn’t hate it, but despite my best efforts, I do. I can’t stand the crying and how Ash keeps Winnie away from me that day, like she’s an inconvenience, a bug on the wall. Even more, I can’t stand how relieved I actually am.
So I walk downstairs to the basement and play my guitar, pretending I don’t mind. It’s a horrible day and it makes me wish I could just disappear. It makes me feel like I’m a terrible father, whilst not even being sure I’m a father at all.
It’s much later that Friday night, when Winnie is finally asleep, that I start breathing again.
I catch Ash closing the patio door behind him, an apologetic look on his face. He pops two mints in his mouth and takes his shirt off, throwing it onto a chair. It smells like cigarettes.
I offer him a smile, kind and understanding.
“Sorry, I, uh… Sorry.” Ash begins, but I lift a hand to stop him.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
“Yeah.”
“Sure? Sorry I couldn’t help.” I follow Ash to the couch and sit beside him.
Ash shrugs. “It’s hard, sometimes.”
“And it’s harder with me,” I acknowledge. It’s meant to be a question, but in the end it isn’t.
“Yeah.” Ash never lied to me. I wish he’d start today.
We sit in silence for a while, and I wonder if this is what parenting is: the quiet at the end of the day, the lingering anxiety a child might wake up any minute. I find Ash’s hand and start playing with his fingers. It’s the most natural thing in the world.
“Have you ever thought of-”
“Get high as fuck and get out of here forever?”
The words are rougher than I expected but yes, yep, I nod. If it isn’t exactly what I meant to ask.
Ash takes a deep breath, sinks into the couch. “There was one very bad night. I think it was shortly after she’d come to stay with us, back in April. Maybe in May. She’d been crying for days and she didn’t want to go to sleep. You were out for something and I… That night I really thought about leaving, cutting myself up and just going to sleep forever.”
A cold hand around my wrist.
“Don’t leave me.”
The memory hits me like a slap across my face. I stop breathing altogether and chase the words, hoping for more.
“You didn’t," I say eventually.
Ash laces our fingers together firmly, grounding us both in the present. “I didn’t.”
“You think about that often?” I wish I didn’t have to ask. My thumb finds the scarred tissue of Ash’s wrist and I leave a soft, supporting caress there.
