The Burning Side(37)
Restraint becomes second nature. It doesn’t go well when I try to be close, and it doesn’t go well when I try to take care of the kids. One minute April asks me to get Sadie’s cup and a snack and a clean towel for her bath, but the next minute both Sadie and April are exasperated because I got the cup that leaks, or didn’t cut the grapes small enough, or mixed up which laundry basket was clean and which was dirty. April is particular and she’s independent; I’m an inconvenience and a burden. The only meaningful contribution I make is grocery shopping. But half the time, April gets the food delivered. So I take solace in work because people want me to be there.
When April comes to the school for her interview, Otto is strapped to her like a kangaroo. She will be a shoo-in, and it feels good to have snagged this interview, to prove my worth in her life. And it’s better to see her at the school than in the pressure cooker of our house.
After she meets with Cody, she waits in the hall for my class to let out, Otto gnawing on her finger. She looks wonderfully awake as she tells me about the position. It can be as part-time as she wants; she can bring Otto; Cody already offered her the job. She starts Monday. And I’m optimistic that this could change everything.
* * *
Over the next few months, we work with Cody as he floats around the district schools. April floats schools too, and I love the days when she’s at Argyle High, like when we met all those years ago.
When Cody comes up in conversation, it’s like we’re talking about two different people. I see him as his crisp polo shirts, his Monday morning talk of bogeys and birdies, his oil-tycoon father, and his habit of dismissively saying “No habla espa?ol” to Spanish-speaking students. April, however, sees a skilled boss, a man decorated with advanced degrees, and a strong leader who is clever with puns. Throughout the semester, they become close. And it’s embarrassing to admit how it feels to see her admiration of a man like him. A man with blond hair and disposable income. A man with two shiny, married parents who stop by for the occasional lunch.
Since our house is near the school, it’s common for co-workers to come by. They drop off books, pick up folders, compare notes about students, or bemoan budget cuts. They like our shutters, our bathroom tile. They ask where we got our coffee table, our woven light fixture. They drink glasses of sweet tea and reach their fingers into ramekins of mixed nuts. Usually, we love it.
I don’t know why Cody comes over on this particular day, whether it’s his first or second or twentieth time in our home. Our home, with the fixtures I installed. The sink I repaired. The walls I painted. The wife I laid back onto our marriage bed.
All I know is that during my off period, I realize I packed a lunch but forgot it at home. I picture it on the top shelf of our black Frigidaire: turkey and provolone on thin sandwich rounds, dabbed with mustard. And so I go home.
Sadie is at school. Otto is napping. And April is in the living room in unbuttoned jeans and a bra—the pale pink one with daisies along the underwire. Cody Blanchard’s lips are on her skin, and she’s gripping his polo, her body arching toward him, her face full of pleasure. His hand is inside her jeans.
They jump apart. The clock stops. The world.
My memory fractures: red faces, flat words, and Cody with the audacity to lift April’s shirt from the floor and hand it to her as though she should cover up for her husband.
The clearest thought I have is that my son is in the house; I cannot yell because my son is in the house. I probably wouldn’t yell anyway, because what would I say? I’ve been so respectful of her body, her need for space, and now—
Now.
I want to transport to any time other than now. I want to think about anything else: the chipping paint, my staff meeting, some war of old, or the sandhill cranes I saw on my morning run. But I blink the wars and cranes away as I get lashed by the daylight in my own living room, here with April and Cody. I want to set the house on fire.
But I don’t. I go back to school, my veins bulging with betrayal.
I teach my classes; I do not remember them. My sandwich is still in the fridge at home. Co-workers talk about the news, the rain, the flaky croissants in the faculty lounge. This is a private apocalypse.
I drive around for a long time and come home very late, after the kids are asleep. April is at the kitchen table, her face puffy, which evokes something like rage in me. Something I’ve never felt toward her until today.
Everything in our house feels different. The lighting. The air.
She looks at me. “We should talk.”
When someone says that, it means they want to say something. And I don’t want to hear the sound of her voice for even one second. “The last thing I want to do is talk to you.”
Her lip quivers, and my rage grows.
She sits there and watches me get a glass of water. A box of crackers. Some blankets. I take them into Otto’s room, shut the door, and stretch out on the floor. He’s been sleeping in our bed anyway. April doesn’t try to follow me. My stomach growls, but the cracker box sits unopened beside me through one of the longest nights of my life.
All at once, I’m a boy alone in a single-wide; I’m a teenager pretending not to hear my aunt’s elongated sighs; I’m a man watching my wife yank her shirt on after taking it off for another man. My stomach twists, pressure flooding my skull, memories bludgeoning me from the inside. And all of a sudden, it is not sudden. Infidelity is like death: it proves the sickness.