Page 60 of Learning at 40

Anna sits on a stool at the large island, holding a mug of something in her hands.

“You’re up late,” I say, startling her. As she turns to me, her eyes are puffy. Her face red.

“I couldn’t sleep.”

Stepping up to the counter, I help myself to the stool next to her.

“Calvin?” When River showed the movie in her yard, the older boys were absent. Not that I was in a frame of mind to thoroughly pay attention, but the previous year the boys attended everything we did as a group.

“He’s growing up, caught between a boy and a man. We’re going to have our ups and downs. Right now, it’s a down. He isn’t speaking to me.” The corner of her mouth weakly quirks. “But he will when he needs something like gas money or his laundry done.” Her jest is half-hearted, but she knows him best. And I know he’s a good kid. He’ll circle back to her because he loves his mom. He’s just missing his dad.

“How was your rendezvous?” Her voice attempts to tease me, but she doesn’t have the heart for it. I guess she knows I’ve been sneaking out of the house every night.

“It didn’t happen. We had a fight.” Was it an argument? Or was it all one-sided? My accusations. My crime. I don’t have the bandwidth in my brain to even mention the appearance of my father to Anna.

She turns to face me, giving me a sympathetic look. While I expect her to tell me River and I will work it out, she doesn’t.

“There’s a misconception that Ben and I never fought. We came across as the perfect couple to everyone, right?” She swipes a hand through her long dark hair, but it falls back into place around her face when she releases it. “But Ben and I weren’t perfect.”

From the outside looking in, it might have often seemed like they were the ideal couple. In reality, they were like many couples, and being part of their inner circle of friends, I’d known of some troubles. Finances. Sex. The top two things that cause divorce. Ben would say those issues ebb and flow through all marriages, making Anna and Ben not extraordinary, but just ordinary people. Ordinary as a couple.

“He was such a great man,” I mutter, staring down at the countertop. “Ben knew how to be a husband and a father.”

Anna turns her head to look at me, but I don’t look up. “Zack, there’s no manual. Ben didn’t know how to be those things any more than I knew how to be a wife or mother. I knew I wanted those things, but I didn’t really know how to be them until I was each in their own right.”

“I was a shit husband.”

“Don’t say that. You were with the wrong woman.”

“We fought all the time.”

“Fighting is normal.” Anna sighs. “It’s how you handle those fights, though. Pick your battles. Apologize if you were wrong. Listen to the other side. You don’t have to agree on everything. It’s called compromise.”

My forehead lowers for my clasped hands as my arms brace on the counter. “I’m terrible at it.”

“I don’t think so,” Anna says beside me. “You’ve just never had to do it. You bulldoze into a situation and take over. You did this with your mom, and you did it with Jeanine. You married her because you thought you had to. You stayed with her because of the boys.”

I tip my head still on my hands and stare at Anna. “What do you mean I did it with my mom?”

“You thought you were the new man of the house. With Noah off to college almost immediately after everything happened, you thought it was your responsibility to take care of your mother.”

I slowly sit up. Had I done that? “I was only fifteen,” I defend.

“Exactly. It wasn’t your place to take over. You just did.” My mother had never worked a day in her life, so I got a job. I worked throughout high school, applied for loans for college, and continued to work when I could. Anna’s dad gave Mom the loan to set her up, but I paid it off.

“What do you know about my marriage?” I’m not stupid enough to think Ben never told Anna things I’d told him, but I still couldn’t imagine them wasting time discussing my situation.

“You were afraid to walk out of that marriage. Afraid you’d be a disappointment like your dad had been.”

“It was more than a disappointment,” I huff.

“You were ashamed of him, and what happened and how it ultimately affected your life, but from that point on . . . you bulldozed. You weren’t ever going to be in a position of no money, no home, or a broken family. No matter what.”

Weakly, my mouth curves at Anna’s assessment. “You do know me well.”

“There’s a bonus to being shy and quiet.” Anna certainly was that as a child and teenager, but she came into her own with Ben. There’s a saying that a couple can be the yin and yang of one another, drawing out the missing pieces, complementing the other half. Ben pulled Anna out of her shell. She kept him balanced. “It allowed me to listen and observe.”

She smiles softly at me. “You’re a good man, Zack Weller. River knows it. In fact, she said it when we went out for margaritas and manicures.”