A Woman’s Escape to Find Herself in Leave Me By Gayle Forman

Gayle Forman’s first foray into adult literature examines these questions with the same ease of prose and depth of character that I had come to love in her young adult fiction; the difference for me was that here, she was writing about an experience I have not yet had—that of being a mother—whereas in her previous novels If I Stay, Where She Went, Just One Day and more, I felt a kinship to her characters on a molecular, primal level, being a “young adult” myself. But now, as childhood is firmly behind me and my own marriage approaches—Leave Me read almost like a premonition.
Maribeth Klein is your typical overworked New York City mother. In her mid-forties, life is a juggling act; between micro-managing her twins’ schedules, picking up after her (also typical) disengaged husband, and trying to succeed at the magazine where her best friend is also her boss, Maribeth has let one big thing fall through the cracks—her health. She suffers a heart attack, and like many women, does not acknowledge the signs or symptoms; she simply pushes through, because that is what the modern woman has been taught to do. That is, until she has emergency bypass surgery, forcing her and her husband to reconcile the fact that their lives, as they have been living them, are over.

Forman’s stinging portrayal of Maribeth’s recovery process had me cringing with sympathy for her: her husband lets the housework pile up, refusing to take responsibility while she is sick, instead calling in Maribeth’s own mother as reinforcement. Leave Me’s real strength is in the development of its characters, and the web Forman weaves is complex and riveting, as each relationship thread is pulled taut. Maribeth’s tension with her mother for judging her city lifestyle; her concern for her children over what would happen to them if she died; her fear that she isn’t capable of being a good mother because she was adopted; her envy of her best friend, who married her way into an upper-upper class lifestyle; and her rage towards her husband for insisting that soon, “things will go back to normal”, because the last thing Maribeth could ever want is a return to the life she had before.
So, she snaps, in an act of wish-fulfillment of mothers everywhere; she writes a note, withdraws some cash, and flees. But of course, Maribeth finds out quite quickly, once she has the space to breathe and recover properly, that her recovery extends far beyond the physical, and far beyond this one heart attack. Her heart was broken before, and it is those wounds that truly need healing before she can return to her old life—if she can return to her old life.

Forman’s cast of supporting characters serve to do more than provide Maribeth with banter on her sojourn; rather, they directly impact into her character’s arc, forcing her to truly deal with the pain she has been pushing off for years. Her new cardiologist, Dr. Grant, is either a shifty crook, or a kind gentleman atoning for his own sins of the past. Maribeth seeks out an adoption counselor to help her find her birth mother, under the guise of needing to know if there’s a medical history of heart problems—but really wanting to know if there is any shared history between them, as two mothers who each left their children.
But that’s the thing about motherhood: no matter how far away from your children you are, or how distant from them you feel, you are always a mother—at least, I imagine this is the case, because this is how I feel as a daughter. Maribeth did not simply abandon her children; the novel is interspersed with letters to them that she never sends, conversations that she wishes they were old enough to have with her, memories of moments she hopes they will never forget. She was merely doing what they tell you to do in airplanes: put on your own oxygen mask first, before helping someone else. Women forget this every day: that to be a better friend, partner, daughter, or mother, we must first take care of ourselves. If we don’t think we are deserving of love, then how can anyone truly love us the way we want to be loved? What kind of examples do we give our children, if they see us sacrificing our marriages and health supposedly for their sake?

Hopefully, then, Leave Me is not a premonition for my future life but rather a flashing yellow light urging us to yield: yield to our flaws as human beings, as women. Yield to the fact that life will not always be perfect, or even in order, at any given moment. Yield to the truth that marriage—and one day, maybe motherhood—will be everything and nothing like I thought they would. Yield to the notion that I cannot be the best daughter, friend, employee, and wife all at once; that some days, it is enough to just be the best me, for me.
Whether Maribeth reunites with her family I will leave unspoiled, along with the even more important question of whether by the end of Leave Me she reunites with herself: the person she was before, the person she wants to be, and the flawed, broken, but hopeful person she is now.
Leave Me is in stores now.