Blood Orange Night: My Journey to the Edge of Madness by Melissa Bond

Author:Melissa Bond
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gallery Books
Published: 2022-06-14T00:00:00+00:00

CAVE-IN

Summer 2011

IT’S SUMMER AND I’M RAMBLING into the phone. “I can’t do it anymore,” I sob to my mother. Sean and I have been in the new house for five months and I’m unraveling. I speak in choppy, disjointed sentences.

“I swear, Mom, I can’t. I sleep and then I don’t. I’ll be up for two, sometimes three days and Chloe just had the stomach flu for a week and shit—Sean just wadded up her onesies and threw them into the trash—it was so gross, puke to the rim of the Tupperware and all over me and the couch—and yesterday Finch couldn’t say ‘puffin’ and the speech therapist wrote in her little notebook and it was like he got a D on his report card—a fucking D—and I came home and cried. I just can’t do it, Mom… I feel like I’m…”

“Sweetie…” My mom’s voice is urgent. I know she will try to find an answer, a clean package that will explain the unexplainable.

“And my stomach hurts all the time, Mom. I’m so skinny. I’m the same weight as when I was twelve. That’s fucked-up, isn’t it? Who weighs what they weighed when they were twelve?”

“Honey, you’re overwhelmed…”

“But my muscles and my jaw aches… even my skin hurts… I can’t wear anything but super-baggy sweats and I can barely push the kids one block in the stroller… That’s not normal, is it? Sometimes it feels like there’s a flame all over my body. Even inside my body, like I’m on fire from the inside. It’s crazy. And Sean… I dunno. Sean… I’ve stopped telling him anything. We hardly talk anymore.”

“Honey…”

“I’ve been taking the pills, but I don’t know if they work anymore. And I take a lot. The doctor increased my dose two times, but… something’s really wrong. I just…”

“Sweetheart, stop.” My mom’s voice is intense and worried. “You need to call someone. You need help. You have a child with special needs.” She says this last sentence as if it’s the key, the element of overwhelm that explains everything. And I hang on to this. Yes, I think, it is harder with Finch. I almost forgot. I love him so much, it doesn’t seem to matter but everything takes three times as long and his slow accumulation of language sometimes leaves us exasperated. I need help. It’s peak landscape season, so Sean’s gone from eight in the morning until five at night, and when he comes home, he’s grumpy and exhausted. He eats, plays with Chloe and Finch a bit, and we’re done. Most days I’m too exhausted to feel lonely, but I am. Lonely. I’m lonely and so tired and I feel sick all the time. Jesus. If only Finch could say “puffin” and understand. If only he didn’t sneak out to the street to run ecstatic down the middle of the road. What kid does that? What kid is that fearless? We went to visit the new neighbors next door, the ones from Bosnia, and he walked into their house and flopped on the couch as if he owned the place.

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