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My twelve-year-old who’s waking me up so I can drive him to practice before his first day of seventh grade.
All summer, I resented how slowly time trudged by. I selfishly wished it would pass in the blink of an eye like the months before it seemed to. But alas, oh-so-typically, when there were very few moments I wanted to savor, I had all the time in the world to do so. I had all the time in the world to wallow in a house that isn’t mine over a man who never was, like a pathetic, pregnant lump.
Now, though, I find myself willing it to slow down again. I’d live the entire wretched summer a dozen times over just to keep August starting middle school a non-emotionally crushing length of time away.
I sniff and swipe beneath suddenly damp eyes as I follow my kid out of not-my-bedroom, down not-my-stairs, and into not-my-kitchen. I sniff again when, without getting on his tiptoes or anything because I swear he had a growth spurt this summer and is suddenly eight-feet-tall, and reaches into not-my-top-cabinet with ease, retrieving not-my glass and fill it with water from not-my-tap. I sniff, three times for good measure, when he tips prenatal vitamins that are actually mine into his palm before transferring them to mine. “Did you sleep?”
When I hum a non-answer, he sighs in such a grown-up way, I sniff yet again.
Rationally, I know twelve isn’t exactly a milestone age. He’s not quite hitting the teen years yet—and thank God for that. But it still feels momentous. After the year we’ve had, after the summer we’ve had… I don’t know. It feels like a milestone. It feels big.Hefeels big, he acts big, like a big, freaking aged boy who makes sure his mother takes her vitamins and scolds her shit sleep schedule and has basically been the only thing keeping her sane lately.
In an effort to remain the responsible parent in this relationship, I make his lunch while he makes breakfast. Pancake batter is hitting a sizzling pan in steady intervals when my phone rings. Neither of us check the caller ID before August lunges to pick up—only one person calls this early in the morning, and we both know they’re not calling for me.
August answers, eyes nervously flicking my way as he darts out of the room, his footsteps creaking halfway up the stairs. He tries his best, bless his little heart, but this is a big house. Big houses echo. Quiet as he may try to be, he’s never quite quiet enough. I can’t hear the soft conversation word-for-word but I hear enough. I hear his soft tone. The ‘miss you’ that always ends the call, verbal affection my kid doesn’t so easily give.
Like I do every morning, I resist the urge to curl into a ball on the floor and cry. I stop myself from imagining the man on the other end of the line, likely on his way out the door, maybe driving to whatever stadium he’s playing in today. I grapple with my emotions, try to decide whether I’m grateful for the daily calls or resentful because after everything he’s done, everything he’s said, a phone call is the least he can do. The bare minimum. They don’t make up for him not being here. For missing August’s birthday.For missing this, I think as I palm my belly, feeling the familiar soothing kick.
Only when the acrid scent of something burning and the front door slamming shut do I snap back to reality, discarding the burnt pancakes with a curse just in time for Amelia to amble into the kitchen. Any lingering tears are quick to dry, if only because the sight of her is so irrationally enraging; she’s just as pregnant as I am yet she carries it a hell of a lot more gracefully. We have the same small, slight frame yet only one of us has kept it. We both have freaking gargantuan baby daddies yet I’m the only one showing it. We’re both steadily hurtling towards the final weeks of pregnancy yet only I am roughly the size of a baby elephant. There’s a decade age gap between us and I’m telling you, gun to the head, no one would guess Amelia as the older one. I would resent her—okay, occasionally, I do—if I didn’t like her so much.
And if she wasn’t waddling towards me with a Tupperware of something mouth-watering, probably made by that husband of hers.
Swallowing a moan, I snatch the outstretched container like a rabid animal, barely pausing long enough to identify it as the Brazilian version of French toast before digging in. “Are you sure you’re not into a, like, sister-wife situation?”
Amelia snickers as she eases herself onto a kitchen stool. “Sorry. My husband doesn’t share.”
It’s a harmless joke, one that I brought on myself, yet it still manages to wipe the smile off my face. Or rather the one on Amelia’s face does that—her happy, content, lovesick smile.
I avert my gaze before I start lamenting over the happy, content, lovesick smile I barely got to show off before everything went to shit.
“Where’s August?”
“On the phone.”
A soft ‘ah’ escapes Amelia, her delicate features morphing into an expression I’ve grown to despise. “Don’t,” I half warn, half plea. “Please, not the face.”
“I’m not making the face.”
She is totally making the face. The ‘Oh, You Poor, Lonely Lady’ face. The ‘I’m So Sorry My Brother Left You’ face. The ‘You Won’t Talk About It So I Will Convey My Emotions Via Sad, Pitying Expressions’ face.
I hate that face. That face makes me sick to my stomach with mortification and bitter resentment and some other ugly, unhealthy things that I try so hard to eviscerate because feeling so many horrible things makes me think of this book I used to read to August. The Twits. The thing about being so young when I had him; I was just as impressionable. So when I read a quote about ugly thoughts creating ugly people, it really stuck in my teenage brain. It must still be stuck pretty firm–along with that typical, teenage girl way of thinking being ugly was the worst thing in the world–because just the thought of that book allows me to mentally side-step the negative emotions The Face conjures up and paste on The ‘I Swear I’m Okay’ smile.
Fat lot of good it does; Amelia snorts at the sight of it. “You’re not okay.” She slices through the air with a dismissive hand. “And neither is my brother.”
I reign in a snort of my own. Doubtful. From the looks of things, Cass is living the dream. Playing baseball again like he wanted. Jogging shirtless through the streets of San Francisco. Chumming it up with his new teammates.
Drinking in bars with random beautiful women.Woman, actually. Just the one. A very pretty, very leggy blonde, who I dare not ask anyone about because I genuinely fear the answer.
I know first hand how badly, how skillfully, the media can twist shit but c’mon. Some things just speak for themselves. There’s only so many ways you can spin what a picture very clearly shows. And ones of Cass lately? Well, they show he’s moved on just fine. They show how much he meant it when he said it was all fake anyway.
“He shouldn’t have left.”
Amelia’s tone is soft yet her words sink like stones to the bottom of my belly, spoiling my breakfast in a split second. Using the dirty Tupperware as an excuse, I turn my back to Amelia, rinsing it in the sink as I shrug. “I left, technically.”
“He shouldn’t have let you. It’s not right.”
At least that we can agree on. It’s not right. Nothing is right. Living in his house without him, being apart, none of it feels right. It’s been two months and it hasn’t gotten any better.
But it’s for the best, I keep reminding myself. Everything is better this way for everyone.
