It was their toughest year to date, when Eve’s husband attempted his first and only antidepressant. When Eve’s job required her to fly to the east coast for a conference and then a two-day client meeting. When the preschool called twice about their son in the same week: Little Paul, just three, had invented a game called Catch ’em and Kiss ’em and another called Alcoholic Dolphins. Little Paul began walking up behind seated kids and smacking them on the back of the head hard with his lovie, a stuffed bunny. Standing before Eve, who was seated in a small chair, the preschool director asked Eve if “anything was happening” at home and she’d answered, “Not really.” The director described the way Eve’s son responded tearily to being chastised. “Poor thing,” Eve said, picturing him so confused.
“This is the problem!” the looming director said. “He is the one behaving inappropriately!” Eve had been too drained to chastise her son on the way home, as she had promised the director she’d do. Instead, she offered him frozen yogurt with sprinkles for dinner. Her husband was working late again.
Happening in the home: The weekend before, their father had left the dining room without a word and walked out the door. He’d been gone for four hours before he responded with a text in response to Eve’s teary messages. He’d taken the highway to the 5 South and kept going. Eve pictured him, stony-eyed, fields blazing past on both sides. “He’s not coming back,” she said aloud to herself, hunched on the toilet. It was Eve’s worst fear. Then looked up to see Little Paul in the doorway with his stuffed bunny.
Her husband texted again: he was on his way home. Before he returned, Eve tucked Little Paul in and booked them all on a package trip to Honolulu. A change of scenery would cheer them. She still believed that with force of will, she could helm some kind of turnaround for her husband. Bind them all into a loving unit.
It turned out to be a cheery boutique hotel, where the staff left four Saran-wrapped rolls and four Hawaiian sodas on a tray outside their door early each morning. A room so small they could barely walk around, with their brand-new suitcases and boogie boards lining the walls and leaning against the mattresses. Her husband swam with Little Paul. Eve barbequed, had her nails done. This beautiful place, even the smallness of the room, provided a closeness, a respite from their lives at home.
Years later, now a single empty nester cleaning the garage, Eve would come across little Paul’s sweet shorts and sandals. His suitcase had never been unpacked or re-used. The hope, the helplessness of those years jolted Eve. The tiny t-shirts, with chubby colorful renderings and little sayings on them. The miniature ukulele and the dried puffer fish on a string. That unopened can of sweet passion fruit soda, too sweet for even the fat-cheeked boy year old who loved smoothing sunscreen on his parents’ shoulders in the perfumed and velvety breeze, the muzzled sun.
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