This time, when she said she was drowning, leaving you for good, you should have believed her, but how were you to know this time would be any different from last year, when she packed her bags, drove to Kohl’s, came home with more bags and bags and bags full of maternity clothes, having burnt a hole through your savings; how were you to know that it wouldn’t be like last July when “leaving” meant turning on the garden hose to full blast, allowing it to flap around your precious vegetable garden like the flailing tube man at Buckey’s Used Auto Sales, and going to visit her mother in Ohio; how were you to know that when she said “leaving” this time she meant strapping the baby in the SUV, and driving, driving, driving until she hit the coast; how were you to know that when she sent a postcard from Malibu:“We’re happy here,” written in bubble letters, she was not happy, hadn’t been since the baby arrived, since the pregnancy really; how were you to know that she wasn’t just moody and hormonal and female; how were you to know that all that shower sobbing, plate tossing, hair pulling wasn’t just for show; how were you to know that she couldn’t see a way out, couldn’t keep swimming; how were you to know that when she would walk into the ocean, baby in her arms—she wouldn’t try swimming at all.
