Reade Saunders

I told myself I was trying. That was the word I clung to – trying. A good house, a lovely baby, and a man who worked because he loved us. But each evening I felt the walls move closer, until I was phoning the police because the dark was unbearable. Hospitals too. I wanted someone to come and take over, to mother me so I could mother you.

And yet, I know I failed. Or perhaps I didn’t, perhaps Dennis failed, because he left me alone with a crying infant and a silence that roared. No, it was me. I was the one who was too thin, too brittle, too tired to be a mother. But you laughed, and your laugh was real, even if I couldn’t always hear it. I said I loved you, but sometimes I meant I needed you to save me.

By the summer, he was gone. I tell myself I let him go. I tell myself he abandoned us. Both are true. Neither is true.

Peter entered then, and with him came a kind of steadiness. He was there, and I wrote that down as if “being there” was enough. Maybe it was. Dennis still circled at weekends, and I said you were safer with him. I also said I hated it. I said both things in the same breath. I don’t know which of me was speaking.

The house went next. I couldn’t hold it. I said it was only temporary, moving to a flat above a garage by the sea, but nothing feels temporary when you are cold to the bone. I called it fun –motorbikes and wind and you clutching my waist. I called it failure – freezing nights and damp walls. Both memories sit beside each other, and I can’t decide which is real.

I married Peter that November. I said it was for love. I said it was for stability. Both are true. Neither is true.

Those were the good years, weren’t they? At least that is how I have always told the story. Peter working, me working, Ann proud of you, Dennis remarried and safely out of reach. But when I revisit the picture, I can see the shadow bleeding in at the edges. A kind of detachment, a drifting, as though I was already watching my life from outside.

Sometimes I think I adored you but could not show it. Sometimes I think I did not adore you at all, and only borrowed the language of love because it was expected of me. One of these accounts must be false. Or perhaps both are true, though spoken by different versions of me.