Transparent Tuesdays

Issue 233

You guys,

I threw my book light—which was attached to my book—at the floor as hard as I could. Then I leaned over, turned off my bedside lamp, and slammed my head into the pillow. 

It wasn’t until the following night, just before I got into bed, that I retrieved my book light from the floor—hopeful it had survived—and inspected it. The plastic had split apart and would not go back together. It was broken. Of course it was broken. The force with which I threw it, the sound it made when it smacked the hardwood. What did I think would happen? 

I wanted to erase last night’s events, pretend they didn’t happen, but the book light was proof of what I’d done. 

It started with my 4-year-old. He didn’t want me to put him to bed. He wanted his Papa. Sam and I alternated each night and it had been my turn. I figured he’d settle down eventually but he didn’t. I was calm, at first. I’m always calm and patient until I’m not. 

Each time George came at me with clawed fingers and bared teeth I grabbed him forcefully by his arms and moved him to the center of the room or dropped him on his toddler bed. I yelled at him, things like, “Too bad,” or “Knock it off,” or “I don’t care,” or “Stop.” 

At one point there was a lull, and I held him and apologized for yelling and told him I understood. But then he was out of my arms and begging for Papa again, and I was yelling at him again. 

I didn’t want Sam to save me. I knew he’d already put our daughter to bed, was already back down in his office, trying to concentrate, trying to get some work done. I could handle this on my own. But it got to a point where George wasn’t slowing down. It was getting worse, and I wondered when Sam would show up. 

I don’t know how long I was in his room for—twenty minutes? Fifty?—until Sam came in. I sat on the floor, right beside the door, my back against the wall, my head in my hands. “Can I help?” Sam asked. 

I propelled myself off the floor, suddenly unable to be in that room for a second longer, and stomped out. “You just come in and save the day, don’t you!” I said, not looking at him. I couldn’t get down the steps fast enough. Sam came out of George’s bedroom and stopped at the landing at the top of the stairs. He said something then but I couldn’t tell you what, I just know it was said with kindness. I was in our bedroom so fast, the door ripped shut behind me. He could deal with George now. He could have him. 

I screamed “Fuck” three times as I paced back and forth. I checked the monitor. George was laying in bed, the lights out, as Sam tucked him in, just like that. I came out of the bedroom and into the kitchen and started forcefully cleaning up and washing dishes. It’s a wonder I didn’t break a plate.

As I stood at the sink, staring out the window at a black sky, I told myself that when Sam came downstairs I would do better. I would vent to him but be on his team. I would tell him I appreciated him coming in. 

Sam came down and said, “Are you ready to talk?” 

I wanted the answer to be yes. I wanted to be mature enough and composed enough to talk to my husband about what just happened. “I just had the worst night of my life,” I said.

“The worst night of your life? Really?” 

Couldn’t I just be dramatic? Couldn’t he just give me this right now? Couldn’t he just be on my goddamn team? 

“My worst night with George!” I yelled back. 

“I guess you’re not ready to talk then,” Sam said, and turned and walked back to his office. 

Later that night we laid in bed and I finally broke the silence between us. Everything out of my mouth was still heated, clipped, angry. Sam asked what I was so mad about. 

“I’m mad at myself for getting so worked up,” I said, as I laid on my back and stared at  the ceiling. “And I’m mad at George. I don’t even want to be near him right now.” 

“He’s four,” Sam said.

“This is supposed to be a safe space!” I yelled, again. “I’m just the worst aren’t I? I’m just a total piece of shit!” 

And that’s when I threw the book light. The book light, which was large and plastic and white and so much bigger than the tiny, slim, light paperback attached to it. It was a monstrosity of a book light but it was my favorite because of its amber glow it cast on the pages, because of its two settings, because its charge lasted for four weeks. And now it was broken. 

I had a fleeting thought the next day that I should write about what happened, that I should get the details down while they were fresh and clear in my mind. Exactly what was said, exactly how I’d acted. But I didn’t want to think about what happened because I didn’t like who I was in the story, and if I wrote it down then other people would see me for who I really was. So I chose not to think about it, even though I knew with each passing day I was letting the details slip away. 

That night, I got into bed with my book but not my book light, and read the final pages. Inadvertent, by Karl Ove Knausgaurd, was gifted to me over a year ago and I’d finally gotten around to reading it. It was a very short book about writing. 

Knausgard was an author who started out writing novels and then wrote a critically acclaimed series of six autobiographical novels. In the final pages of Inadvertent, he wrote about the moment he stopped writing fiction.

“I one day wrote a few pages about something that had happened to me, and which I felt so ashamed about that I never told it to a single person,... I sent it to my editor, he called it ‘manically confessional,’ and I got the impression that he was taken aback, for it was pretty intense, and in literary terms rather poor. But it had something, both he and I could see that.

What was it?

First and foremost, freedom. For if I took this path, if I just wrote things down exactly the way I experienced them, it was as if all my worries about style, form, literary means, characterization, tone of voice, distance, all this vanished at a stroke, as if the literary side of it suddenly became mere make-believe, and superfluous: I could simply write.”

It had been two days since I smashed my book light and it had already started to feel like a dream. I couldn’t remember what I’d done, what I’d said. But I knew, after I read and re-read the passage in Inadvertent, I had to write it, anyway. 

I bought a new book light. It’s black and sleeker than the last one but still has that amber glow I like. The other night, when I finished reading, I placed it on my bedside table. “I love my new book light,” I told Sam. 

“Remember when you threw your book light on the floor and broke it?” Sam asked with a smirk. 

I did remember. And now that I’ve written about it, I’m okay with remembering it. 

—

Until next week,

Charlie