The psychiatrist believes most of his behavioral challenges stem from an underlying anxiety.”
Well, I basically knew that—I knew Dylan was afraid of a lot of things, that situations and people and even grapes made him anxious. Yet somehow it felt different, hearing it from Susan.
“Underlying anxiety about what?” I asked.
“We can go over this next week, Beth. I really don’t know that it’s an appropriate conversation to have over the phone.”
I didn’t press, even though I wanted to. Of course Dylan had anxiety. He’d been scared of so much ever since he was small, just a toddler. Susan wasn’t telling me anything I didn’t know, so why did it feel so different now?
It was a question I didn’t want to examine too closely, never mind actually answer. I didn’t want to be alone with my thoughts spiraling through me, and so I texted Mike and asked him if I could come to his mother’s for Thanksgiving after all. I didn’t entirely want to go, but I definitely didn’t want to be alone, wondering if I was the worst mother in the world.
So now I’m here, in the passenger seat of Mike’s Toyota, driving towards his mother’s house in Windsor, about twenty minutes from West Hartford, having no idea what to expect.
It’s a bright yet bleak day, the grass all withered and brown, the trees stark and leafless. It’s always been a difficult time of year for me—this month sandwiched between family holidays where the world stops as everyone comes together. I haven’t had a family holiday in years; my mother has invited me to New Hampshire a couple of times and I went when Dylan was a baby, but it felt too difficult after that and she didn’t seem particularly heartbroken when I said no. My father, of course, never made the invitation.
“So it will just be you, me, and your mom?” I ask a bit anxiously as he heads down the I-84.
“Well…” Mike gives me a sheepish smile. “My sister and her kids will be there too. But they’re very relaxed.”
“You didn’t tell me that before!”
“I thought it might make you nervous.”
“Well, it does,” I say a bit tetchily. “So it would have been good to know beforehand.”
“Beth.” Briefly, Mike rests his hand on mine before returning it to the steering wheel. “What’s wrong?”
I look out the window at the brown, barren landscape of almost-winter. “I’m just tired. And nervous.”
“Something else,” Mike says astutely, and I wonder how we’ve leapfrogged to this stage of a relationship, where we sense each other’s moods, where we care so much. I don’t think Marco and I ever got there. I doubt he even tried. It makes me feel even more anxious, and I wonder if I should have agreed to this Thanksgiving. It feels like a step too far.
“Have you told your mom and sister about me?” I ask, my face still turned towards the window. “About Dylan?”
“No. I didn’t think it was my information to share.”
“Thank you.”
“But they wouldn’t judge you. I don’t judge you.” He pauses, an unhappy silence. “I feel like I shouldn’t have said that thing about you being intense, back at Barb’s.”
“You were just stating your opinion.”
“I didn’t mean it badly—”
“I know.” I draw a raggedy breath. “Anyway, it’s probably true. You’re not the only one to say it. Susan said the same thing. She… she sort of implied that his anxiety is… my fault.”
“What?” Mike looks outraged. “Beth, that can’t be true.”
“Why would they have taken him away from me otherwise?”
“Because they’re dumb,” Mike says robustly, and suddenly I am laughing, a creaky, unpracticed sound.
“Yeah,” I agree, shaking my head. “They’re dumb.”
He smiles at me, and I smile back, and even though I know that’s not the real reason, I feel it in my gut, today I need to believe it. Today, just for a few hours, I need not to live under the shadow of my own failure.
Mike’s mother, Deb, lives in a hundred-year-old house of white clapboard with a funny little round tower room in front, on a street near the center of Windsor with a lot of pickup trucks and barking dogs leashed on chains. It’s a funny mix of quaint and hick, and as we get out of the car, she comes to the door, wreathed in smiles.
She’s completely hairless from the chemo—her head as smooth and shiny as a new egg, her eyes lashless and browless, but her smile makes up for it all because it’s the kindest, homeliest thing I’ve