I was accepted to Saybrook Institute and started in on my studies, and Rikki found a job as an administrative assistant to the vice president of sales for a large company in Oakland. All of a sudden she was gone from seven in the morning until six at night, and I had to be Ozzie and Harriet and Big Man on Hippocampus.
Kyle and I got into a routine during the week where I’d climb into his bed first thing in the morning and read Gertrude Chandler Warner’s Boxcar Children mysteries to him for a half hour before getting him ready for school. I’d make up funny dialogue and Kyle would laugh like hell the whole time. He loved it and so did I.
We could usually count on that fun to carry us right through breakfast and the rest of our morning routine without any problems at all. And it was a good thing, too, because by the afternoon the only thing we could count on was that the dad who picked Kyle up from school wouldn’t be the same dad who’d dropped him off.
To get through the immense amount of work required for a Ph.D., I forced my guys into the background while Kyle was at school, not giving them any “body time” at all, except for the meager two hours on Mondays and Thursdays when we’d all trudge off to Janna’s. The rest of the time I worked furiously, with an incessant cacophonous racket in my head.
Whether I was reading or writing, each word was a page, each page was a book, and by the time I’d drag myself away from the computer to pick Kyle up from school, my thoughts were shredded, and angry alters were leaking out. Kyle knew it, too, and got plenty used to calling for Cam to come back, just like we’d taught him.
It was unavoidable. No matter what Kyle’s day had been like, he’d stumble into my trench, through no fault of his own, and there we’d be—me trying to claw my way out to get us back on level ground, and him wondering what the hell had happened to Boxcar Dad. Usually I couldn’t dig us out; I just didn’t have the strength. Getting Kyle a snack was tough enough; helping him with second-grade math was practically impossible. Patience? Hah! Humor? Hah!
Kyle and I counted the seconds until Rikki would come home. I usually didn’t have dinner ready; I just couldn’t do it. Rikki didn’t complain. She’d just cook and chat with Kyle while he played on the kitchen floor, and I’d slink off to my own rusty cage of misery until it was time to eat. We’d reconvene at the table, and pretty soon Rikki’s wonderful lightness of spirit would dissipate the tension between Kyle and me. After dinner the evening went smoothly. Rikki would help Kyle finish his homework, run him through the kid wash, read him a story, and tuck him in. Then I’d swing in for a kiss and maybe a little more Boxcar, and it was lights out for the midget. Rikki and I usually weren’t far behind.
Rikki and I used to say that some of our best conversations took place in the dark, in that fertile place before the world ends and dreams begin. Now that place seemed like a deserted parking lot where our two cars moved a space farther apart every night.
All of my energies went toward my studies and keeping it together during the day, and I was exhausted by the time my head hit the pillow. Rikki was patient and supportive, but she was lonely. And loneliness is everything it’s cracked up to be.