Tuesday, September 6, 11:30 PM. Amy.

This is our last night here.

We’ve moved most of our things to the farm. It’s a beautiful place. The kids are happy there, Brewer is happy there. Coolidge will be happy there, Louis will be happy there. I’m pretty sure I’ll be happy there too.

But tonight I’m missing this place. I’m feeling a lot of sadness. It’s overwhelming.

When we moved here ten years ago I hated this house. We had to move, because Claire was on the way and the Charlottesville schools offered Brewer so much higher pay than we had back in Florida. It was his hometown, we had plenty of support, everybody knew him from before he left.

But it wasn’t home to me. I felt like I’d moved to the moon. Florida has (had?) its share of rednecks but this was a whole new league. Florida was hot, but this was stark and dry, and the sun stared white like an interrogation lamp; you could hear it sizzling and smell it cooking everything around you. There was no ocean to jump into to escape.

I was pretty much in hate with Brewer that year. He was the golden child at work, showing them things they’d never before seen, taking them to championships they’d never before reached. Meanwhile I was home all day, stuck inside with two screaming babies, binge eating, lounging fat and ugly, missing my family, feeling sorry for myself. While he was off being lauded for winning little children’s games I was laying there with a PhD in English Literature that was worth absolutely nothing. I resented him, and needed him, and clung to him, and rejected him—whether he noticed or not, whether he was here or not—forty-seven times a day, rain or shine.

It was Kelli that saved me, maybe saved my life, no joke.

I met her at Mother’s Day Out. She attached to me immediately. It took me longer. Later I would learn that Kelli could sense a woman in agony at three hundred yards: sense, approach, embrace, and rescue. That first day when I dropped off Garrett and Claire—it was a bitter January like none I’d ever known in Florida—she must have seen the shadowed eyes, the stoop, the elbow-dragging diaper bag of a woman at the end of her rope. Next thing I know she has me by the arm, has the stroller, the bag, a bottle that’s rolled to the floor, and is helping to get us in the door. The kids weep for my going but I can barely muster a damn.

She smiles me back out, it’s fine, they’ll be fine. (Through all of this she’s dropping off her own little ones, but they make no sound and I barely notice.) Now she asks if I have plans. I’m not sure, might go to the park. Oh, it’s awfully cold; do I like coffee? Love it: got me through my doctoral program. Doctoral program?—flatteringly surprised. English literature, I say, not good for much. Well it sounds great for conversation, she says, I’m partial to Austen myself. That’s my area of concentration, I say, dissertation on “Virtue Ethical Interpretations of Mansfield Park,” rather boring. Sounds fascinating to me, she says, let me take you someplace, my treat, and tell me all about it.

So we go: local coffee shop, easily overlooked. Wicked good caramel apple latte. She listens, she smiles, she understands. Husbands don’t understand, she says, we bear a heavier burden. Oh you’re Brewer’s wife, yes of course we all knew Brewer, ace forward, king of the prom, heard he was back, glad he married well.

She nursed me back to health those weeks, some kind of health of how I see the world, myself in the world. Brought me into her circle of friends, her Bible study, which were much the same thing. Introduced me to Angel and Dawn and Misty and they began to teach me how to laugh again, to take a deep breath, to know that Brewer’s every glance—like their own husbands’—was not the rising or setting of the sun: a clue, maybe, for a conscientious wife to follow, but not an omen to loom over her days.

Boy, I could murder a good latte right now. When we were up in Colorado, it was one of the things I looked forward to coming back to.

That was a decade ago. That makes it sound so long, and I suppose it was, more than a quarter of my life. That was the beginning of a sweetness that began to touch our lives, to touch this house, and now touches my memory of this house.

Later the sweetness would grow bland again, flavorless, dull. The salt would lose its saltiness; it would become good for nothing except to be thrown out and trampled by men.

Kelli helped me through the thing with Alan. When I told her, I was afraid she would disown me, but she was the first one I told anyway. She didn’t. She didn’t even seem surprised. Sad, but not surprised. She kept embracing me, like she always did, and asked what I was going to do. Tell Brewer, I said. I had already cut it off. And all through those months, May, June, July, she walked me through things with Brewer, helping me understand how he was feeling, how I was feeling, what I ought to do next.

God, Kelli, where are you? I miss you so much.

I miss my Mom. I miss her voice on the phone. I miss Dorothy, little Dorothy. I miss April. We were never close, April, but I miss you like hell.

Hell is not knowing whether your family is in heaven, or in the belly of an alien mothership, or vaporized by a government weapon gone wrong, or standing right now beside your hospital bed praying you’ll wake up from this terrible nightmare.

It’s 2 AM. I got up to make myself some Suisse Mocha. It’s no latte but it’s pretty nice and I’ve no real hope of sleeping tonight anyway.

I tried standing outside and looking at the stars. I couldn’t bear it. It felt like God was staring down at me, or the aliens were getting ready to suck me up. I had to get a roof between me and them.

Earlier tonight, the kids begged for us to sleep in the farmhouse, but Brewer and I had already agreed that tomorrow (well, tonight I guess) will be our first night there. I think Brewer needed the closure of staying here one more night as much as I do. And there’s still a lot left to do. I want to wash the bedclothes before we move them over.

I’ll miss this house. It’s small, it’s cramped, it’s dirty. But it’s us. It’s the last place where everything was normal. We made it through potty training here. Made it through COVID. We had wonderful Christmases here, birthday parties. It’s the only house Claire or Trevor have ever known.

Still, it’s not as if we’re leaving forever. We’re not selling the house to anyone; we can come back any time. I don’t know: big changes are always hard for me, ever since I lost my dad. In some way, saying goodbye to this house is saying goodbye to everything past. Brewer would say—probably will say—that it’s also saying hello to everything future. Brewer’s always living in the future. That’s his talent. Maybe my talent is always living in the past.

I’ve been feeling better this week, more energy, not so much nausea. Maybe Brewer’s right. Maybe now things will start to smooth out.