Not To Us Read Online Free PDF Page B

is busy trying to fill the coffee maker with ground coffee in the water section.
    “Mathew, I got it.” I move over to him and brush my lips across his forehead. My thirteen-year-old gives me a wistful smile and I try to smile back, but fail.
    “Morning, Mom. I’ve packed the lunches.” My middle child proudly shows me three paper sacks filled with lunch items for himself and his two siblings.
    “Thank you, sweetie.” I glance over at my sullen, sixteen-year-old son, Nicholas. “Good morning, Nicky.”
    “Is it?” He looks over at me with barely veiled disdain, taking in my much disheveled appearance. “Exactly, when are you going to get it together, Mom? It’s been three months.”
    “Two months, twenty-nine days,” I answer. “Tomorrow’s the day.” There are audible sighs of relief from all three of my children.
    I smile over at Nicholas with a smile that I didn’t know I could manage. He grins back at me, now. My first-born is still my baby. “Love you, Nicky,” I say now.
    “Love you too, Ellen Kay Bradford.” I laugh at his impertinence — my son, the charmer. He got this from me, not his father, Robert. “I’ve got a basketball game tonight, Mom, at 4:30 P.M. Will you come?”
    I haven’t been out socially, well, for eighty-nine days. I can feel my oldest child staring at me, projecting his will on me, waiting for my reply. I resist the urge to stammer an automatic no , as I’ve done for almost three months, now.
    “I’ll be there,” I say, before the word no transfers from my brain to my lips. I give him another weary smile and he beams back at me.
    “Great, Mom. I’ll see you at the game at 4:30 p.m. I made varsity. It’s no big deal.”
    It is, in fact, a big deal. Huge for Nick and I know this. I already start berating myself to keep my promise to him and make this different than the other eighty-nine days that have passed us by, in which, I have miserably failed my children and myself, at every turn.
    “Nicky, I’ll be there. I…will…be…there.” I pull him to me and give him a brief hug, before he awkwardly pulls away from me. Emily is grabbing me at my waist and Mathew hovers nearby. “Shall we go watch your big brother play basketball tonight?”
    I receive excited nods from my two younger children and realize how much my mental absence has affected them all. I feel bad. I blame Robert and Carrie. The sudden anguish must appear on my face as all three of my children each come closer to me, as if to hang on to me, in case, I might just fade away.
    “I’ll be there,” I whisper.
    The moment ends. The living room clock chimes eight o’clock signaling arrival of the school bus in less than three minutes. The boys grab their backpacks and lunch sacks. Emily and I watch them race up the long driveway to catch the bus. It’s just us girls, now, my daughter and me. I openly sigh, while my daughter gives me an intense, appraising stare.
    “Were you going to change?” Emily finally asks.
    I look down at my open tattered bathrobe, a gift from Robert on our third anniversary, and my Huskies football t-shirt faded to a light purple from too many washings, and a pair of ugly boxer briefs of Robert’s and little else.
    I had, in too many days to count now, slid into the car in this very outfit. I get the distinct impression from her today that was not going to happen, nor would be acceptable to her.
    “I’ll change,” I say with an edge of defensiveness.
    I race up the stairs and clumsily pull on skinny jeans and a white angora sweater, brush my hair and clip it back in a ponytail, and line my lips with plum-shaded gloss. Studying my face in the mirror, I scrutinize the emaciated forlorn woman staring back at me. I start adding a little foundation, blush, eye shadow and mascara. I try to remember the last time that I actually got dressed and put on make-up. I touch my long blonde hair and finger-fix the tendrils on each side into place and spray a little hair spray to keep it