“Oh, but I need more Fifi cuddles,” Kendall demands. She adds a playful growl and tickles Sophia’s waist, and the room fills with the kind of giggles that can only come from young children, all giddy and from the belly. Sophia manages to escape Kendall’s grasp, and she goes flying up the stairs to her room.
“Wash your hands and come back down for lunch,” I call over my shoulder. My loose instructions are met with urgent pitter-patter and the light slam of a door. A stamp of urgency rather than frustration.
And then it’s just Kendall and me in our kitchen.
It looks like she’s been washing the dishes with the water still filling the sink and the suds-covered sponge sitting at the edge.
“Do you need some help with those?” I ask. The question floats in the air, and it doesn’t dissolve into an act of chivalry or consideration. It turns sour and bleak right in front of us, leaving an aftertaste we’ve both grown accustomed to.
She turns her back to me before shaking her head and saying, “I’m good. I’m almost done anyway.”
We don’t generally keep a spotless house, but it also isn’t overly cluttered. It looks lived in. There may be a few envelopes of unopened mail sitting off to the side on the kitchen counter, but no towering stacks collecting dust. Occasionally, a bin of Kendall’s craft supplies are tucked under the island on a stool instead of in the hallway closet where she keeps the rest of her classroom stock, something she’ll go back to while she preps for the upcoming week. Our smaller appliances aren’t tucked away in cabinets but instead, neatly lined up against the slate-colored backsplash. So there isn’t anything to keep my hands busy. No mess for me to clear away in an attempt to stay in the same room as my wife, just in case she decides to change her mind. Maybe even hand over the sponge and watch me scrub away the remnants of food on our ceramic plates and silver utensils while she tells me about her therapy session.
She shuts off the faucet, and I realize I’m just standing there. I’m watching her with her shoulders hunched over the sink, her movements almost lifeless. I catch her reaching for the dish towel as I turn to the fridge, shifting my focus to lunch. I return to the island as she wipes the counter with a sponge, and she eyes the fixings of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in my hands.
“Did you go to your parents’?”
I nod, smearing a peanut butter-covered butter knife over the soft bread. “Josh left the pressure washer there, and I thought I’d get it out of their garage.”
She nods back, smiling politely. A custom that’s gradually turned into a sharpened thorn between us. Civil glances, avoidance techniques, affable gestures of keeping respectable distances. All so we don’t disrupt the teeter-totter our home balances on.
“How’s your mom?” she asks, twisting the dish towel in her hand into a wrung-out cotton twine. “How’s hot yoga going?”
“Yeah, she’s enjoying it. Retirement has really broadened her hobbies,” I respond with an allaying smirk. “You talked to her recently?”
“Just in passing when she’s dropping off Sophia,” she explains. “She asked me if I wanted to go with her last weekend.”
A jealous pang pokes my sternum, hitting the hard bone with the pesky reminder that I don’t remember the last time I told Kendall something in passing. Something menial like asking her if I heard about the latest celebrity gossip or a joke I couldn’t wait to tell her. If she’d like to joinmefor some strenuous exercise.
“How was your therapy session?” I ask cautiously.
“It was fine.” I hear the heedfulness in my wife’s voice. The charitable way she treads just as softly as I do with the heel of her palm braced against the counter. “My therapist thinks I should?—”
“Daddy! Mommy! My tooth is wiggling!”
It’s like a bucket of ice water doused over the smallest flicker of a spark.
“Wow,” Kendall exclaims, crouching down to get a better look into Sophia’s gaping mouth. “Looks like someone’s going to get a visit from the tooth fairy soon.”
Sophia giggles and turns to swipe a triangular-cut slice of peanut butter and jelly sandwich. She jets off to the living room, and I hear the TV turn on, the sounds filtering into the kitchen in the wake of what little remaining amity we have no choice but to let go up into a ribbon of smoke.
CHAPTER FOUR
Kendall
THEN
“So…youwere talking to James at the party.”
I watch Sylvia stir in her fifth packet of sugar into her coffee. The color is that perfect creamy brown color that can only be achieved from multiple single-serve cups of non-dairy creamer. A long wooden stirrer scrapes against the bottom while she softly blows away the light wisps of steam drifting off the top. She peers at me over the lip, patiently waiting for my answer.
“Uh, yeah. I guess we were chatting for a minute.” I secure a plastic lid over my own cup of coffee, holding it gingerly in my hands to avoid getting burned.
The sweltering summer heat settling into every hidden crevice on my body has me wishing this coffee was iced. Luckily, our professional development meeting will be over in just a few hours. Sylvia and I have been here since the morning, and we’re both ready to call it a day.
Sylvia showed me where her classroom is when we got here fifteen minutes before our meeting started. It’s just two doors down from where I’ll be spending the upcoming school year. I don’t have a key to my room yet, but I was able to see inside Sylvia’s. She told me it’s pretty much the same. A smart board mounted on one wall. Shelves lining one corner to make roomfor a reading nook. Two identical bean bags stacked on top of each other. Mason jars of paint brushes that sit hard and dried from not being touched over the summer.
I hear children squeal with delight, the sounds filtering into the multi-purpose room from the black top. The summer day camp is happening outside, and the kids are scattered over the playground and lunch tables. A glimpse of what I have to look forward to once the summer is over.
