3. LAURA

David,

 

My life is perfect. I repeat that to myself every morning. I say it in the same way other people say “I’m beautiful” to their reflection in the hope that one day the mirror might hide their flaws rather than emphasize them. I say it until it’s the only thought left in my head. I look around me and I see beauty everywhere. I see it in our lovely home and its perfectly maintained garden. I see it in the cool winter sky, clean and clear. I see it in the warmth of your embrace when you return from work and run through the door to meet me, kiss my neck, hold me, smell me, drink me. But most of all I see it in our children, who are the spitting image of Nancy and me at their age, one brunette and one blonde, one harder and one softer, one who cares and one who loves not to care.

My life is perfect. And do you know what, David? My life is perfect on the outside, it’s true. You’ve given me everything I ever wanted and more. When I was young, I dreamt of meeting a man like you, making a life with a man like you. That’s what makes this note so impossible to write and impossible for me to ever make you understand. In truth, I don’t want you to understand. If you were ever to suffer the terrible emptiness I feel in my heart nearly every day, your first instinct would be to shield your loved ones from that feeling and I am the same. What I have is a physical affliction, I know that now. I mean – God, if any of you were to ever feel this way, it would destroy me. This feeling burns through everything good and pure and rational inside my body and the idea that a single drop of this poison might fall on you or the kids – it drives me out of my mind.

Despite your care, my dearest, despite the devotion of Anna and Eve, I’ve felt alone since Nancy died. I’m not sure how to explain it without sounding like a madwoman or drunk on some kind of romantic memory of her, but I know it’s neither of those things. She could be terrible, my sister, but she was a part of me in the same way my limbs and my mouth are part of me. She remains as physical to me as any living, breathing human being. When I walk through the rooms of this house, I sometimes see her walking next to me. Sometimes she’s there in the garden, as a young girl, asking me to play with her and turning her nose up when she sees how old and stale I’ve become. Other times she’s the age she was when she died, sitting across from me in the living room, watching the tv, combing her hair in that distracted way that annoyed you so much.

She was cruel to me once upon a time, it’s true, when we were growing up and she was my keeper. Now all she wants is my company. It’s almost as if she knows I’m the senior one by virtue of surviving her, that I’ve taken her place, and all she can do is watch.

Of course, after reading this, you will believe that I am clinically insane. I don’t blame you. Maybe you’re right. My actions will prove it decisively, I suppose, in the medical sense. I know that if someone told me the same story, I would think they were mad. But I am inside this story, it is my story, and I am certain that my sister is alone as much I am alone. It doesn’t matter if I never meet her again, because we are made of the same material, we are the same person, and I have to follow her wherever she goes. You, Anna, Eve: you are strong individuals. None of you really need me. I know saying that will make you angry, but I want you to look beyond your visceral reaction and see these things with the clarity I do. You will do much better without me. I will get much worse if I stay.

I was never built to be a mother, David, not physically or mentally. I could at least fake the mental side of it! I remember when we first met, you insulted me, you said “you’re a wiry girl with wiry hips.” I liked your cheek, darling, but you were right. I’m the framework of a woman, not a woman. I barely survived Joanne, our little girl that never was. When I was bloody on that table in that white disinfected frozen operating room, I was happy because I thought I was going to die. I’d given you what you wanted and I thought I would get what I wanted. That’s fair, isn’t it? A fair swap? In the early days of the pregnancy, I thought Joanne would have Nancy’s soul. I thought she was coming back to me. When I saw her dead in that operating room, I wanted to be dead alongside her.

I know as I write these words I risk being sadistic. Telling you everything is sadistic, but I think you’ll be better able to move on if you at least understand how far this has gone. Also, I love you. I do love you. I want you to know.

I’ve been seeing a psychiatrist privately over the last few years. My father has been footing the bill because I didn’t want you to know about it. Madness runs and runs in our family, so it didn’t come as any surprise to him that I was having problems. I told him that I needed help after Joanne, the permanent scars it left me with, etc, etc. I could no more tell my father the full truth than I could you, but we reconnected over this little arrangement and it was good to know him again before the end. I think he’s lonely. I’d appreciate it if you keep in touch with him after I’m good and allow him to see the children regularly. He’s so boyish since mum died. I keep on expecting him to trip over his own shoelaces or drop food on himself.

I made him promise not to tell you about the psychiatrist, so please don’t take it out on him. He did what he thought was right under unfortunate circumstances. You’re a strong minded man and he looks up to you a great deal. It would crush him if you looked to him for answers. I mean that, by the way: he does look up to you. The way he speaks about you is as much from admiration as love. He had us girls and we had our secrets. As you never fail to remind me, you don’t have any secrets, you don’t see the point in them. He admires that about you. I admire that about you.

For what it’s worth, I don’t believe the doctor was much use. He periodically dosed me with valium, which is why you haven’t found me wandering around downstairs at night lately, but he’s never prescribed me anything heavier. He believes I cope. Even when I tell him I don’t think I can make it through the day, he tells me the awareness of that inability is itself an ability of sorts. I shake my head, we talk, he talks, I talk, and the whole thing begins again He tells me I’m a strong woman. I tell him that I don’t even feel like a woman anymore. He nods. He repeats how strong I am. I feel like I’m being patted on the head by a benevolent uncle.

I’ve never told him about feeling suicidal. I don’t feel it's any of his business. I’ve told him about everything else that’s happened to me in my life, all of my thoughts, how I feel, and if he cannot deduce the logical conclusion of those facts, then I don’t feel he deserves to know something that private. That didn’t stop me from feeling like I was cheating on you with him, you know, telling him the things I couldn’t tell you, so I’m glad that I don’t need to do that anymore. Guilt is such a tawdry emotion.

You, the arch rationalist, would be appalled if you knew of the excesses of the last few years: acupuncture, healing crystals, hypnotherapy, fad diets, astrology, I’ve tried them all. I can see your expression change as you read this note; I can feel the blood boil in your body. Admitting to madness and hallucinations is bad enough, but indulging in alternative medicine is beyond the pale. And yes, your intuition was correct; the fringe therapies are dispensed by con artists and the mentally ill, and populated by the desperate and deluded. But I am desperate, David, and if any of those therapies had worked, I would have grabbed on to the consolation with both hands. The lowest point was when I went to an evening with a psychic, a television taping of his show, and he started to talk to me about Nancy. I knew he was lying and manipulating me, but it was good to remember her in public, there in a crowd with all of those other grieving family members. People came up to me afterwards and congratulated me. I talk to her all the time as if she was still alive, so I took their congratulations in the spirit in which they were intended.

So this is the truth, the truth I’m still putting off telling you: when I look at the children, they are strangers to me. They look so strong, so vibrant, always chasing after new things to do and words and phrases and ideas. I am not made of the same material, David. They’re growing so quickly and I’m fading, becoming weaker. Being around them feels unnatural, a kind of obscenity. They deserve someone much better than me. Sometimes when it feels at its most forced and one of them batters me with their attention, I feel like baring my teeth. I feel like screaming at them until they hate me.

The truth: I like doing mechanical jobs like ironing, cleaning and cooking because it stops me from thinking about my life, about Nancy dying. Sometimes I iron a shirt, wash it again and then iron it again rather than do anything which requires me to use my brain. I spend most of the hours you’re at work hiding in bed staring up at the ceiling and forcing myself not to think about the same things over and over. I get up to do an hour of housework and then collect the kids from the school, but other than that I don’t actually do anything. If I watch television, it feels like a broadcast from an alien race, but I realise that it’s me that’s the alien peering in. If I meet other mothers, I feel like scratching their eyes out. Do you see how bad I’ve got, how animalistic?

Another truth: when you find me late at night, wandering about or snacking at the dining room table, when the bed is empty and you worry that I’ve left you or done something stupid and you come looking for me, the reason I back away is for your own safety. Sometimes when I can’t get to sleep, I look at you lying out asleep and I hate you with all my heart. I hate how easy you make it look. I hate that you think having a family is so self – explanatory, even though men visit families rather than live through them. I want to smash in the side of your face. She’s there in those moments, Nancy, but she looks so placid and that makes me even more vicious.

More truth, more truth – I am no good at sex. We laugh about it and you come, but I hate it. I hated it even more after the children because I didn’t like the way I looked. And we laughed about it, and we laughed about it, and then it went on exactly the same way. Why was that okay with you? Why?

I’m sorry. I don’t want to be mean. I’m the mean one, not you. I miss her so much, David. I miss myself with her. I’m glad that I got the chance to know you, to feel your love, but it’s not enough. I’ll be dead by the time you read this note, but I’ve been gone for some time. It doesn’t even feel like I’m doing anything particularly important killing myself! I am just ticking a box or taking out the rubbish. I know what they’ll say about me: I did a terrible thing. I ruined a family. I destroyed my children. Don’t defend me. I’m not human. Just know that I loved you.

 

Please let me go. Please let me die. Please understand. Better that I kill myself than I kill someone else.

 

Goodnight, my love. I hope you find someone that you love as much as me, but this time someone who deserves your love.

 

Your rose,

 

Laura