Two Kisses for Maddy_ A Memoir of Loss & Love - Matthew Logelin [22]
Liz was exhausted and went to bed.
“I’ll be in a little bit,” I said, lying to her. I knew that there was no way I could sleep that night, but I didn’t want to tell Liz why. What if they came back? I wanted to be prepared for them if they did. I was in full alpha-male mode, ready to protect my family.
Problematically, I didn’t have any real weapons that would effectively hold off a gun-wielding revenge seeker. I did have a baseball bat, a couple of kitchen knives, and a belt with a heavy buckle that I could whip at them if they walked through the front door. I brought my arsenal with me into the living room, just in case, and stayed awake all night on the couch, staring out the picture window toward the street.
It wasn’t until the sun came up that I realized how ridiculous I was acting. This was not a movie, and the burglars were not going to come back for retribution. I put my weapons away and crawled into bed with Liz. “Glad you could make it,” she mumbled without moving, and then fell back asleep.
Less than an hour later, I woke up to her phone ringing. I pulled a pillow over my head and tried to go back to sleep, but she smacked me on my back, so I rolled over. With the phone still up to her ear, she hit the mute button and said, “They caught the guys and they have our stuff at the police station!” We were both ecstatic. I listened as she finished up the phone call, telling the officer on the other end that we were on our way to the station.
When we got there, we were introduced to an extremely friendly burglary detective.
“I used to live on your street, just up the road from your house,” he said. “It’s a pretty safe neighborhood.”
I don’t know why, but his statement made me feel better. He directed us to a couple of tables set up in the middle of the room.
“On these tables are things we’ve recovered from several burglaries. Do you recognize anything as yours?”
Liz glossed over the items then looked up at the detective and said, “You didn’t happen to recover any jewelry, did you?”
“No, we didn’t. What are you missing?”
“Several necklaces from Tiffany’s and some gold bangles that my husband bought for me in India and Nepal.”
“We’ll let you know if we find anything.”
I felt sick again. The police had almost everything else, including a deck of cards we picked up at the King Tut exhibit at LACMA a few years earlier, and a plastic case filled with gold-foil stickers used to seal thank-you cards. But no jewelry. I grabbed Liz’s hand.
“I’ll replace everything,” I told her again.
She just looked up at me and smiled.
Sitting at the edge of my wife’s hospital bed just a day after she had brought our child into the world, it seemed obvious to me that now was the perfect time to begin to her collection of new memories. I felt that I should go, right now, and fulfill this promise I had made to her. But as soon as I ended the call with my mother, Liz said, “You’re not leaving me.” She was stern.
“But Liz, I need to get some lunch. I haven’t eaten in more than twenty-four hours and I’m fucking starving!”
Trying to plan a surprise for this woman hadn’t gotten any easier. I knew I’d be gone for less than an hour, and I figured that she would be asleep while I was out anyway, so what would it matter?
Liz’s eyes widened, and I could hear her breathing through her nose the way she always did when she was trying to control her anger toward me—this was also a pretty good indication that she was about to let me have it. “Matt. Don’t you dare leave me here alone! What if the nurses are ready to take me to see Madeline and you’re not here?”
Shit. I really wanted to do something nice for her, but as she yelled at me I realized that my plan really couldn’t have been more thoughtless. Here was my wife, about to stand up for the first time in five weeks, about to hold our baby for the first time ever, and I wanted to go buy her something to make her think I was the perfect husband. But to be the perfect husband,