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On Watching American Beauty Yesterday, when Andrew came home, I was in the kitchen, nursing the baby, or rather keeping her from crying by allowing her to hang from my breast. This had taken up much of my day. Sitting in the corner, I knew my mood by the feel of my face. It was hanging from my skull, limp and heavy, lifeless and ugly. Andrew had arrived with a bouquet of roses. I wanted to be happy about that, but wasn’t. They were roses he was obliged to buy for his charity group fund raiser. It happens every year around this time. I attempted a smile. It came out a sneer. Eleanora started screaming from somewhere in the house. Izzy had probably hit her or taken her blanket or called her a poopy butt (his favorite word, he tells me). I didn’t care. My expression fell again to despondence. Andrew seemed scared. I had to get out of the house. I held the baby out to him and announced I was going for a walk. Smartly, he did not protest. Outside it was already dark, turning chilly. I went down the hill to the grocery store. I thought the walk would turn my mood. I gave myself a pep talk. You have no reason to feel sorry for yourself. Just look at how lucky you are, with three beautiful children. Enjoy, people tell me, because they grow up so fast. But how can I enjoy them when I want to throw them in the trash? I walked back up the hill. I came in, put down the groceries. Dinner’s ready, Andrew told the kids. Eleanora whined about not getting the bowl she wanted. I gave her the sausage from mine. She still whined and Andrew scolded me. Why didn’t I just give her the bowl she wanted? I grabbed my hair and walked out. Grabbed my hair! These are desperate measures, the sign of one falling to hysteria. In the dining room, I paced twice and returned to the kitchen. What is it that causes a person to sink below the surface, to feel that the world is collapsing on them, that they are suffocating? When I was in the Peace Corps in Central Africa I found myself one night on the edge of the bed, pulling my hair, rocking back and forth. I objectively and calmly observed that I was going crazy, spinning down the vortex of a whirlpool, with no chance of stopping it. The next day I swore off the anti-malaria medication the government had issued me. One of its side effects was vivid dreams. But I had had those all my life. The other, which they didn’t disclose, which I had to discover on my own, was slowly slipping into insanity. But all I am taking now are vitamins and an occasional swig of wine. It could be worse, I tried to tell myself. But that is no consolation when feeling defeated by life. It doesn’t matter that I could have married an abusive husband or birthed unhealthy children or been stabbed in the eye with a pencil. Melancholy never requires a good excuse. Eleanora would not stop whining. She sat in her chair, her face reflecting mine. She cried, for no reason at all, it seemed, and rubbed her eyes. I could relate to that. Andrew carried her up to bed. When he came back down, he asked me if I was upset with him. Yes and no. I was sad, angry, frustrated. Even the stew was making me mad. At least you have stew to eat, I told myself. And then I got mad at that. I felt like Eleanora but I couldn’t cry, or wouldn’t. Eating helped. And then I made a pumpkin pie. Izzy knew something was wrong because he sat quietly on the kitchen floor and wrote his alphabet and hummed and didn’t cause a bit of trouble. “I want to go to sleep now,” he announced and with unprecedented independence, put himself to bed. So Andrew and I sat on the couch together, passing the baby back and forth, bouncing her between bites of pie. We watched a movie we happened to have, American Beauty. In it are two mothers. One is a real estate agent. We see her opening the door of an empty house, demanding of herself that she will sell this house today. She scrubs and vacuums and readies the place all the while repeating her sales mantra. At day’s end, despite her chirpy demeanor, she has not sold it. She closes the door, leans against it and sobs. Then she slaps herself saying Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! The other mother, married to a Marine Corps sergeant, is despondent. We only see her a few brief times in the movie, but in each she has a hollowed face, an empty mind. She asks, “What did you say?” when no one said a thing. Her son returns home from school to find her at the dining room table, sitting, staring, unmoving. How long has she been sitting like this? Years? The son breaks her trance to introduce her to his new girlfriend. The mother turns and sees her. “Oh my,” she says. “You have to excuse the mess.” The girl looks around, spooked by how immaculate the house is. The first time I saw this movie, years ago before I was married, I thought both these characters despicable. Now I know exactly how they feel. I am that mother who has lost her will. I am that woman whose desire to succeed makes her crazy. “Why are you so joyless?” her husband asks her. Naturally, she takes offense at this comment. He starts to kiss her for the first time in months. She gives in, but abruptly stops to alert him that he is about to spill his beer on the couch. It’s just stuff! He erupts. And I cringe. I, too, had noticed the beer, tensing, hoping it wouldn’t spill. When I was young, trying to imagine what I would be like at some undisclosed point in the future, of course, I never imagined these two characters. Why would we want to envision our uglier parts? How could I know that deeper, darker things develop over time, that tucked among the lilies lurk unsightly weeds, parts of a personality that only emerge when you have your own children, when you have a spouse, when you have been around for awhile. Excerpt from My Last Child’s First Year, a book of essays by J. K. Dane
Joanna K. Dane is a writer and illustrator. Currently she is working on a collection of essays, My Last Child’s First Year. She lives with her husband and three children in Chippewa Falls, WI.
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