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Leo smiles at me, more grace on his lips than I deserve. “Just have Rex come over more and he can play with me. No problem!”
Yes, no problem. It would be so easy to have Rex as the live-in playmate for my son. He’d be so willing to, I bet. “Oh… yes, well, when he’s in town, I’m sure he’ll always be happy to play with you.”
“Why can’t he stay in town?”
It must all be so simple in his head. So confusing that we don’t follow logic. “Leo, honey, Rex lives in LA. We talked about this.”
“Yeah, but why can’t he live here? Or we live there?”
Leo doesn’t know who Rex is, which is great for my sanity. He’s going to totally flip when he finds out his father is famous. All in due time, though. “You know, mijo, Rex didn’t even know about you until recently.”
Leo’s eyes widen. “What?! But I’m his kid!”
I laugh. “Yes, I know.”
“How could he not know?”
I sigh. How am I going to make this make sense to a four-year-old? “You know how I grew you in my tummy?”
“Yeah…?”
“Well, Rex didn’t know you were growing in my tummy.”
Leo’s face is still screwed up in confusion.
“Some parents are married when they have kids. Others aren’t. And sometimes…” I can’t drop the “accident” bomb right now. Because it wasn’t an accident in the scheme of things. I’ve never thought of Leo that way. “Rex and I were friends. Good friends. And we were such good friends we made you. But Rex wasn’t living here. We both had our own lives and went in different directions.”
“And you didn’t tell him about me?”
I bite my tongue. “I tried,” I lie.
Leo’s brow is still furrowed.
“There’s a lot to the story. I will tell you when you’re older,” I say, then press a kiss to his forehead and give him one more big hug.
Leo does not hug me back with the intensity he usually does.
“Goodnight, mijo.”
“’Night, mama.”
I drag myself off the bed, turn out the light, and leave the room, giving Leo one more parting glance as he pulls the covers over his head and buries himself in a dream world where Rex has been here all along.
As soon as I close the door behind me, the tears spring from my eyes. I press my palms into my eye sockets and slide down the door until my butt hits the floor.
There is no way to know what life would have been like if I had told Rex. He might have rejected Leo right off the bat, before our baby had even met the world. Or he might have thrown himself into fatherhood and loved me too in the process.
All I can count on is what I know now.
Being a single mother, even with the help of my mother, is hard. Especially when I realize all the things I’ve failed to give Leo. Attention, a father figure, the image of love between two people.
I hear my mother’s footsteps pad into the hallways. “Ay, mami,” she coos. “Why are you on the floor?”
I’m unable to respond through my quiet sobs. My mother, though her body is aged, brings herself down to the floor next to me and wraps her arms around me, just as I had my arms around Leo moments ago.
“Life… it is not easy,” she murmurs in Spanish.
Not the first time she’s said something like that.
