New Year’s Day ,Tuesday, January 1
It’s a beautiful sunny winter’s day, a perfect day for new beginnings and new resolutions and remaking and re-imagining everything, but as I lie stretched out in bed, Alex’s tousled head on one side of me, Annie’s tiny forehead pressed into my armpit on the other side – when the heck did she crawl into our bed? I don’t even remember – and I hear the noise of Henry and Eddie and all the other kids downstairs, and smell – bacon? Is my dad making bacon? Oh, yes – I don’t want anything to change. I want all this. I want all this, to be all this: wife, mother, daughter, friend.
Lover.
I caress Annie’s baby-not-so-baby-any-more cheeks. Then kiss the nape of Alex’s neck. I love him. I want him. Just as he is. Just as we are.
But I want the other too. The lover. The demon. The madness.
Unsustainable. Will I be able to keep it? Keep this, and the other?
I walk down the stairs quietly, and stand in the entryway to the kitchen. The kids are all crowded around the table. My dad’s frying bacon and pancakes. He looks…very, very happy. He gives me a peck on the cheek and another ‘Look what a good grandfather I am’ look.
By the time he goes home, I know he is resolved to call the widow and ask her out for…something or other. And also that he thinks he has my permission, if not precisely approval, to do so. Did I give it? I’m not sure.
I did not withhold it, anyway.
I get a text from Marie: ‘I love you. I’m sorry about last night. And I apologise in advance for today and tomorrow. And the days after.’ I don’t write back: that’s Marie asking for space and permission to not talk to me for a while, and that I can give her best with silence.
A text from Nicola, ‘Yes!’ And then, ‘Will come get the boys by noon, promise. Yes! Yes!’ And, oh, fuck, from Jesse, again: ‘For you.’ And another: ‘I’m not suggesting you owe me. Just that – this is for you. Not her.’ I think he’s probably being sweet. I think. Possibly manipulative. I will evaluate next time I see him at the gym. I really do not want to have to get another trainer. I like him. All the more for making Nicola happy, whatever his reasons, however briefly.
Another text from my mom: ‘Had a great time at the BALL last night. Danced until 5 a.m. May the next year be full of WONDERFUL new beginnings for us all. Love, Mom.’
New beginnings?
I really don’t want any new beginnings. I don’t want anything to change. I just want a series of continuations.
Unsustainable.
I know this.
But.
For now, for today, I make no resolutions.