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“Rex,” she explained. “I don’t want him ever hearing me say mean shit about his dad.”
I nodded. “That’s big of you.”
“I try.”
She reached for the paint roller again and I handed it to her. But she didn’t resume painting the half-finished wall. Instead, she just put it down.
“I hate that he’s so much smarter than me,” she admitted, her voice barely a whisper. “I hate that I’m going to look at this big stack of papers written in legalese and I won’t understand. And because I don’t understand, I can’t fight him. And because I’m an idiot, I’m going to lose my son.”
I watched her tear up and fight hard not to start crying.
“I just… I don’t know what to do. I mean, I can’t offer Rex the same life that his father can,” she continued. “He can afford the special, private tutors for extra smart kids and all the summer camps for geniuses and, of course, he has the house. All I can offer him on my own is… this.”
“Don’t put yourself down like that, Zoe. You’re a good mom. I can tell.”
She drew in a deep breath. She looked at the floor. “I don’t know sometimes. Maybe… maybe it was selfish of me to leave Desmond.”
“Um… didn’t he cheat on you?”
“Yeah,” she answered. “But maybe I could have tried to ignore it or something. You know, for the sake of Rex having two married parents living under the same roof. Maybe I could have just figured out a way to deal with it. For his sake.”
“That’s insane.”
“What?”
“Sorry, I… that’s just nuts. Staying with someone who’s fucking other people?” I said, getting a little exasperated. “Come on, Zoe.”
“Carter, not everyone has a perfect marriage.”
“I know that.”
“And having two parents in the same house is…”
“Hell if they don’t love each other,” I said.
She narrowed her eyes. “Were your folks…”
“No, my parents had a great marriage. Until my dad died when I was eighteen,” I told her. “But I was thinking about my brother Luke. The oldest one. He married a girl he wasn’t in love with because she was pregnant. They were eighteen.”
“Oh, God. What happened?”
“Unfortunately, they lost the baby,” I continued. “The marriage didn’t work out and they’re both with other people now. But I hate thinking about the life they would’ve had if they’d stayed in that marriage. I mean, if parents are only together for their kid, doesn’t that make the kid feel like a burden?”
She thought about it.
“And my best friend Kieran. His parents are super religious and don’t believe in divorce, but they’re fucking miserable together too,” I continued. “Separate bedrooms, icy exchanges… and this weird tension in the house all the time. Like, at any moment someone was just going to lose their mind. It’s… well, it was why Kieran was always over at our place growing up.”
“Well,” she started, crossing her arms over her chest. “I’m sorry. For both of them.”
“I’m just trying to say that there are worse things than parents divorcing.”
“I guess.”
I ran the roller through the paint again, but she stopped me.
“I think we need a break from painting,” she said. “Rex can sleep in my room tonight. Let’s leave this for tomorrow.”
“I can’t do tomorrow, actually. Kieran’s coming back from seeing some family upstate and we’ll be gone all day.”
