Two Kisses for Maddy_ A Memoir of Loss & Love - Matthew Logelin [78]
On the morning of Madeline’s first day, I spent twenty minutes thinking about how Liz would have dressed her, and none at all thinking about how her father would be presenting himself. She was in a brand-new, pink long-sleeved onesie with flowers, and I in my usual outfit: a plaid shirt with pearl snap buttons, jeans, and a pair of vintage Nikes. I was stylish in certain parts of Los Angeles, but next to the parents of the other children, I probably looked like a college student.
When we arrived, I sat in the car for fifteen minutes, alternating between sobbing and thoughts of just taking Madeline back to the house. Shit. Could I kidnap my own kid? For the first time in a long time, the tears were not about Liz’s absence. They felt different. They felt more normal, more common—the kind of sadness natural to parents abandoning their young. Which was exactly what I felt like I was doing.
When I handed Madeline over, she went to her teacher without a fight, which made leaving her there even more difficult. We had developed an incredible bond, and I was worried that by leaving my daughter with someone new, we would somehow lose that. I finally understood Liz’s fear that she wouldn’t be as close to Madeline because I’d been the one to change her diaper and feed her first. I tried to tell myself that I was being ridiculous and that this day care would be the best place for her while I was working—the only place for her—but leaving her that first day felt almost impossible. I walked out and closed the door behind me, crying like a motherfucker.
Walking through the familiar doors of my office gave me anxiety, too. When I arrived there a little while later, my head started pounding and my heart was pumping so hard that a doctor would have been able to check my pulse in even the smallest artery in my body. I had imagined work as a place that wouldn’t—couldn’t—change in my absence; I was looking forward to a reintroduction into what I remembered as a bustling office with jokes between colleagues who acted casually but managed to complete their assignments somewhat professionally, balancing sneakers-and-jeans attire with a secretly impressive work ethic. My family life may have imploded, but in my mind, the desks at Yahoo! were still organized in the same configuration, the same friendly faces occupying the spaces above them. I thought I would walk in to a bunch of back slaps, a couple of hugs, maybe a few congenial nods. Three I’m sorrys, two Welcome backs, and one or two Hey, Matts.
I could not have been more wrong. I realized almost immediately that things at Yahoo! had gone on without me—everything here was business as usual. It was like I had been transported to the days before Madeline was born and Liz died, when the only thing I should have been worried about was what to eat for lunch that day.
Some facts about my job had stayed the same: my salary, which building I would be in, my phone number. But everything else had changed: my old responsibilities had been reassigned to somebody else, which I knew, since somebody had to manage the outsourcing while I was at home. There had been a slew of layoffs, turning what had been a social, busy space into a decimated department with rows of empty cubicles. My desk had been relegated to a desolate corner, where I sat alone.
Every day after I handed my daughter over, I sat in the corner of the room at work waiting for someone to give me something to do. My coworkers had been amazing and understanding during my time off, but now that I was back here, some of my colleagues were less sure how to handle the potential awkwardness of my situation. They had sent me kind e-mails when I was away at home, and now it felt like they were ignoring me. They weren’t doing it to be cruel—for all I knew, it was the way they thought they could be the kindest.
Sure, I was never a “big man on campus” type,