The Aftermath, Gail Schimmel [sneezy the snowman read aloud .txt] 📗

Maybe I’ve learnt to live with my grief.

Claire

When Mackenzie and I touch down in Mauritius, I know I’ve done the right thing. For the first time since this all started, I feel a weight lift from my shoulders. I don’t have to worry about running into Daniel. I don’t have to worry about seeing Julia and her baby bump. I don’t even have to worry about my friends and what they’re thinking about me and how I should act. I can just be. I can’t remember the last time I could just be.

Mackenzie looks around the airport with wonder. ‘Are we staying here, Mummy?’ she asks.

I laugh. ‘No, baby. This is the airport. We’re going to a hotel. It’ll be even better.’

At that moment, I see a bored-looking man standing holding a sign with my name on it. He has two beautiful floral leis draped over his arms. I walk towards him and he perks up.

‘Mrs Marshall?’ He drapes a lei around my neck. ‘Little girl,’ he says, putting one on Mackenzie, who is entranced. ‘Welcome to Ile de Maurice. We will make sure that you enjoy your stay.’

I look down at Mackenzie, who looks so happy and entertained, and I silently thank my father for paying for the best sort of Mauritian hotel.

‘I think we’re going to have a wonderful time,’ I say. ‘I don’t think we’re going to want to leave.’

Part of me thinks that the good feelings must fade, that something must go wrong. But we get to the hotel and it is perfect and beautiful, and Mackenzie is delighted. We have a swim in the warm sea, and then I have a gin and tonic while Mackenzie has a chocolate milkshake, and we watch the sun set over the sea from the edge of the pool.

‘This is a really fun place,’ says Mackenzie.

‘And you haven’t even seen all the fun stuff there is for kids,’ I tell her.

‘It feels nice being here with my mummy,’ she says.

I’m so happy in that moment. Everything’s going to be okay. I’m going to be okay without Daniel, and so is Mackenzie. This holiday for the two of us was the perfect idea.

The perfect beginning to a new, happier chapter in our lives.

SUNDAY

Julia

Daniel’s not in bed when I wake up. I hadn’t really expected him to be, because I knew he had plans. But it feels very early, and the bed feels cold, like he hasn’t been there for a while. Daniel might be selfish about doing his own thing, but he’s even more selfish about getting his sleep. He doesn’t get up early on a Sunday for anything. I lie in bed for a moment, holding my baby bump, trying to persuade myself that my uneasy feeling is ridiculous.

Eventually my bladder persuades me that it’s time to get up. I pad through to the bathroom. Something is off, but the baby is sitting on my bladder, so I attend to my most urgent need first. I want to brush my teeth because my mouth feels dry and unpleasant, but when I reach for the toothpaste, it’s not there. And my toothbrush is alone in its cup. The toothpaste and Daniel’s toothbrush have vanished.

It feels like time is slowing down.

I open the bathroom cupboard and take inventory. Daniel’s deodorant is gone. His shampoo is gone. His razor is gone. But his other things – a spare razor, some painkillers, the special soaps he likes to stockpile – are still there. I wonder if there’s any chance I’m dreaming, but a sharp kick from my baby assures me that I’m awake.

‘This isn’t happening,’ I say out loud, but I go over to our wardrobe in the bedroom. When I started getting the nursery ready, we finally found a way to squeeze most of Daniel’s clothes into my wardrobes. This mostly involved me giving away a lot of my own clothes, and storing the rest on the top shelves in the nursery. I even took a suitcase to my mother.

At first I feel relief: Daniel’s clothes are still there, his suits lined up in a regimented row, ubiquitous jeans neatly folded over hangers. Collared shirts like a small linen rainbow. I can smell Daniel wafting off his clothes.

I open the cupboard on the side, the one with shelves. Daniel’s shelves are always organised and neat, but now the T-shirts are all over the place, and his few pairs of shorts are gone. Like he grabbed a few T-shirts from the middle of the pile and didn’t have time to straighten it up. Because it doesn’t matter.

I look at his underwear drawer. Almost empty. Underpants gone, except for a pair that are almost worn out, which I’ve been begging him to chuck. He always agrees, but doesn’t do it. The socks are still there.

I look down at where he keeps his shoes. Work shoes, present and accounted for. But his two pairs of flip-flops and his sandals are gone.

It’s like he’s left me, but only for the weekend. And not very well at that, given that even warm Johannesburg is now chilly with early-winter cold.

‘Maybe he was drunk,’ I say to no one. Then I remember all the bashing I heard when he came home last night. And that I’d thought he must have been drunk.

He got drunk and when I told him not to worry about me, when I didn’t return all the love he was showering on me, he decided to leave. Only he was so drunk, he packed for a month of warm Sundays.

This is not a problem, I think. One phone call and he’ll understand how much I need him, and we’ll laugh at all this. We’ll be telling our baby about the time Daddy packed his flip-flops in the middle of winter. This is one of those stories couples need. I’m almost happy that this has happened.

I pick up