Leaving The Woods

         I woke up suddenly this morning. Something shoved me viciously off the sailboat in which I had been drifting under an apricot sun and I landed sprawled in a frozen bed in the half-dark. It might have been the rain skittering like so many beetles across the roof boards, or more likely, the familiar squall of the baby from across the hall.
        Three years ago, when I moved out to the woods with Bobby, I had thrown out the shabby trappings of my town life in the sure knowledge that my new life would be perfect. I never dreamed that I would actually come to miss my triple-volume alarm clock which had - usually - forced me out of bed early enough to be two minutes late for work every morning. Thing is, that clock had a snooze button and this damn baby doesn't.
        Of course I had to get up to the baby because Bobby had already left; he's been a logger for twelve years and his system is hardwired to consciousness at four am. Another stupid thought I'd had in the beginning was that I'd get used to it too. He always laughed at my disorientation when he came to rouse me with strong coffee and a few sunrise kisses, but he hasn't woken me on purpose for at least six months, and the last time he did it, I didn't appreciate him complaining so loudly about unwashed underpants before dawn so we argued for days.
        Groaning, I dragged myself into Davy's room and changed his diaper on autopilot. He's my son and of course I love him, but dear God I can't wait til he's old enough to get rid of his own waste!
        Now I don’t have younger siblings and my older brother takes no interest in any of the three kids he's fathered on different women, so I never realised how disgusting baby-care can be. Or how exhausting. Bobby, maybe with reason, thinks I make too much of it; after all, he's out hoisting tree trunks twelve hours a day while I just sit around and rock the baby. On the other hand, he’s asleep by nine every evening and I haven't gotten the hang of that either. 
         Nights were my best time at college and I never slept before three, so mornings are my ghost hours from long habit so it always takes me and Davy a while to make it from bedroom to bathroom to kitchen for a late breakfast.  On our arrival this morning, I finally worked out what had woken me: there was a note pushed under the back door.
        It wouldn’t be momentous to anyone else, but it shocked me to the point of fear.  We don’t get mail. Bobby collects it weekly from a post office box in town because the mail company won’t come out this far. This house is five miles from the nearest neighbour and past two from the closest paved road so somebody had worked real hard to get here in appalling weather to ... slip a note under the door? If a message was that important, wouldn't you knock on the door and say it in person?
         “What we got here then, baby boy? ”  The parenting books Bobby’s sister gave me reckon you’re supposed to stimulate children as babies so their brains develop faster. Davy needs to grow up a scholarship genius or he’ll be in this hell-hole forever, since neither me nor Bobby will ever afford a decent education even if we both hoist tree trunks twelve hours a day for the next eighteen years.  So, I talk to Davy a lot, and when he learns to talk back I’ll have real conversations in daylight, but he wasn’t much help this morning. He just gurgled from his high chair while I inched my way towards the scary note on the doormat.
         I picked it up to consider without opening it. It was scrappy paper, flimsy and greasy-looking, and not much improved by being forced under a dripping door.  My name was scrawled on the front in ballpoint, and half the ink had slipped off the surface leaving the letters only partly formed.  My heart was beating in my ears louder than the rain still crashing against the roof. 
         Surely I was afraid only because I wasn’t used to hearing from anybody for days at a time.  I should be happy that someone had tried this hard to get to me. “Right?” 
         As I looked at Davy for reassurance, he grinned in that rare way that turns me gooey with gratitude.  I opened the note knowing it would change my life for the better.
         “BOBBY IS HAVING AN AFAIR WITH VICKY TAYLOR.”
         My first thought was that whoever this was they couldn’t spell.  I didn’t have a second thought until after my legs gave way and I banged my ass on the freezing floor tiles.
         Heat rose in me like soup bubbling, thick and savory with fury.  I looked around my kitchen in disgust.  I hated this place, it was a dump.  I hated Bobby, who treated me like dirt.  Mostly, I hated myself and I wanted the old me back, the one who laughed and sang and cooked properly.
         I had twenty dollars under the tea caddy and I called a cab for the first time since I’d had Davy.  In the half hour it before it arrived, I moved quicker than I had in months, stuffing our one suitcase full of Davy’s clothes and toys and dumping my two pairs of wearable jeans and a few t-shirts in on top. 
         My mother has begged me to leave almost every time I’ve seen her since Christmas and she’s right.  Bobby will find the note, unchanged, on the table when he gets in and he’ll have to take that as my only explanation. Whoever delivered it and whether it is true or not, I have taken my child and I won’t be coming back.