Eli: My mother is in tears, and it’s your fault.
Oh my God. I don’t hear from him in months, he doesn’t turn up to say goodbye to Zack before we leave, and now this?
Madelyn: We’re fine, thank you for checking. Yes, I survived the long drive with a partially potty-trained toddler by myself. Yes, Zack did settle right into his new room, and yes, he seems excited and happy about the new house.
Eli: Don’t turn this around on me. You moved four hours away from my mother, and she’s been sobbing in my ear for an hour about missing her only grandson.
Madelyn: That grandson of hers is the son that you don’t want.
I hesitate before I hit send. I would die if Zack saw that message, but I’m suddenly, fiercely angry. How dare Eli blame me for his mother’s sadness? He didn’t even want a baby—well, not truly. He didn’t want to be involved at all. If he’d wanted to be an active parent, I wouldn’t have moved.
Eli: My lawyer says I can sue your ass for taking him away from me.
Madelyn: You want to explain that to a judge? I think the fact that you’ve seen Zack three times in almost three years and that you’ve been late on 50% of your child support payments isn’t going to do you any favors.
Eli: Bitch
I should block him. End the exchange right now, but maybe it’s the stress of the move, the lack of sleep, and the severe under-caffeination of my blood that makes me keep typing.
Madelyn: You mean away from your mother? You do that. You call me names whenever I give you facts. Facts like you specifically put it in our divorce settlement that you didn’t want any shared custody, visitation rights, and thought you shouldn’t have to pay any child support at all. Ever.
Eli: Men shouldn’t have to pay for child support if they don’t want a baby and the woman gets herself pregnant.
I’m arguing with an idiot. An ignorant, prepubescent boy in a thirty-three-year-old’s body.
I flop onto the steps of the small back porch, the enormity of realizing that I was stupid enough to marry and sleep with this man hitting me afresh—like it does every single time we talk these days. Thankfully, talking is rare.
Madelyn: Funny how you told me you wanted a baby after all, we had sex, and then, boom, I magically got pregnant. All by myself. It was a whole miracle. Funny that it wasn’t on the news.
I sprinkle in rolling eye emojis, a vomit emoji, and a handful of magic wands. I don’t know whether to feel sad or relieved that Zack doesn’t have his dad in the picture when Eli acts like this—which is whenever he doesn’t get his way. Nana, AKA Nana Linda, Eli’s mother, sure talks about him a lot, and she shows Zack lots of pictures of his dad when he was growing up. The only way Zack even knows to ask about his father is because of his grandmother. I stopped mentioning Eli a long time ago, when he never showed up. When he never even called.
Eli: Don’t be an ass. You know what I mean. You wanted a baby. You knew I’d change my mind! You stopped taking your pill, so this is your fault.
Madelyn: I didn’t know. Right along with my inability to miraculously conceive unassisted is my lack of psychic powers. I guess I really hoped you meant it when you said you wanted us to try to start a family. I guess I thought you’d be serious when it was about bringing a human life into the world.
Eli: You didn’t have to keep it. I told you it would ruin our lives, and he did. We would still be together if you hadn’t had him. You’d still be sexy, too, instead of some flabby single mom who had to leave town to find someone willing to date your fat ass.
A gray wash goes over my vision, and I have to put the phone down.
Breathe.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
Zack or Eli? That’s the choice he wanted me to make.
Eli’s always been selfish. When we were dating, I thought he was just a spoiled mama’s boy, an only child, a much pampered son. He could be funny and charming, he was handsome, muscular, and in my shared group of mountain biking pals. The pros balanced the cons—I thought. I thought a lot of things.
I thought that would change. People grow up. People realize the world doesn’t exist for their pleasure.
Parenting involves splitting time, splitting attention. I remember the exact day Eli told me he wanted a baby, after two years of telling me he wasn’t ready, didn’t want to think about kids yet, wasn’t sure if he’d ever be ready. He watched his college roommate at his “Daddy Shower” and got excited by the thought oftwopeople adoring him, of being able to claim the titles of “husband and father” like trophies to put on some invisible shelf. Eli dreamed of his perfect wife and perfect child being accessories in some perfect life—and then reality hit him months later, months after he told me he was ready to start a family.
He would have to take care of someone else. He wouldn’t be the only one his wife would fuss over.
I remember the day he changed his mind, too. It was right after my first bout of morning sickness turned the bathroom into a war zone, and I asked him to make dinner.
It wasn’t that he couldn’t cook or that he never helped around the house. It was when he realized it wouldn’t be an occasional thing. It wouldn’t even be a nine-month thing. It would be a forever thing—and I finally saw what a fucking coward he was.
“Mama? Mama! It’s like a park!” Zack suddenly pushes his little face into the screen door and looks at our simple backyard with wide blue eyes.
