AllFreeNovel
Share Us
After Marcy and Millicent had left and Tyrian was dry, fed, and sitting in the living room beside his overnight bag awaiting his father’s arrival, Kerry sat across from her son wondering if she should say something. Try to prepare him. It was only months ago that Tyrian had stopped asking for his father in the middle of the night. His therapist said it was his way of asking why his parents weren’t together anymore. Why Daddy was no longer available for post-bath back rides and pre-bedtime stories. They lived in separate places, and Daddy was only seen every fourteen days and sometimes further apart than that. His little heart was breaking, and nighttime tantrums were all he could do to express the pain. The therapist had said it would stop and it had. But that was no consolation for Kerry’s own heartache, the incessant motherly pangs she felt right at her center anytime anything with the boy seemed out of place. This was motherhood.
She looked at Tyrian’s lanky arms and brown skin as he tapped away at something on his iPad. He looked just like his father. A curse her own mother had promised.
“Things might be different at Daddy’s house this weekend,” Kerry started, careful not to speak with too much purpose.
Tyrian didn’t look up. He kept tapping on the iPad. Then, just as Kerry was about to come up with some other way to say what she was meaning, he asked, “How?”
Somehow, Kerry wasn’t ready for this prompt. She’d already decided that she wasn’t telling Tyrian about Val or the wedding. That was Jamison’s job.
“Well,” she started. “Well . . .”
Tyrian looked up at her with Jamison’s eyes.
“Just different. I just don’t want you to be surprised.”
“Why would I be surprised?”
Tyrian hadn’t seen any of the news footage from the courthouse. There was only one television in the entire house and it was in Kerry’s bedroom.
“Just by anything new. I want you to keep an open mind. Okay?”
Tyrian shrugged and disappeared into the iPad again.
“And remember that Mommy and Daddy love you and we will always be here for you.” This last line was stated only so Kerry could hear it. Tyrian was no longer listening, and if he was, he’d probably wonder why it was the hundredth time he’d heard his mother say this. Since the divorce, the boy associated the string of words with loss and preparation for something horrible. Kerry was about to repeat herself, but luckily for both of them, the doorbell rang.
Tyrian was at the front door pulling it open before his father could respond to Kerry’s rigid, unneeded request of identification: “Who is it?”
“Daddy!” he squealed in a way that diminished the actuality of each of the twenty-four-hour periods in the fourteen days since he’d last seen his father a
nd Kerry had been left with the duty of caring for him on her own. Somehow, it always seemed she was greeted less cheerfully when Tyrian returned home.
The boy was fast in his father’s arms, his face buried in his great chest. Jamison looked at Kerry, surprised. He was the superhero. Again. Just for showing up. And this was fatherhood.
Kerry looked at the clock. He was two hours late. She wouldn’t mention it again.
“Hey, lil man!” Jamison laughed, returning Tyrian’s hug. “You got bigger!”
“Bigger? Really, Daddy!”
“Yeah, I’m sure of it. Heavier, too!” Jamison lifted Tyrian’s skinny little body higher in a pretend struggle that made Kerry laugh with him. “What you feeding this boy, Kerry?”
“No pork!” Tyrian affirmed.
“That’s right,” Jamison said. “The black man doesn’t eat the white man’s pork!”
“Don’t tell him that,” Kerry insisted with a scowl.
“Why? It’s the truth! Ask Brother Farrakhan!”
“Because he goes to camp and says these crazy things and I have to explain it to his teachers.”
“All right! Fine, Mommy,” Jamison drawled and rolled his eyes with Tyrian. “Well, whatever it is, keep it up. You’re about to be a bodybuilder with all of these muscles, man!”
Jamison rolled Tyrian’s arm up and pinched the peak of a budding prepubescent bicep. He growled and grimaced at Tyrian, who immediately repeated the wild gesture.
“You ready to go?” Jamison asked as he put Tyrian down.
“Yes!” Tyrian ran into the living room to get his bag and iPad.
