The Burning Side(56)
She smiles, on the edge of a laugh. It’s hard to be with her after a bad day, but it’s much harder to be with her after a good day.
“You want some water? Horchata?”
“You made horchata?”
I hesitate. “I have a lot of time in the evenings.”
“Well, I’ll have some of that, no question.”
I pour two glasses, a pinch of cinnamon on top, and we take them to the futon. April takes a sip that leaves a faint residue above her mouth, and she says, “I always thought we should make horchata more often. I know you loved Izzy’s.”
I run a thumb over my own lip, uncertain how I feel about going down a trail of should-haves right now. She tucks a leg beneath her, angling toward me. “Hey, how’s that girl, Jasmine?”
Ah. I forgot I told the Russos about Jasmine. One of my recent students. She’s in her third trimester, and some of us teachers have been trying to get her stocked with baby supplies. It can mean a lot when someone keeps up with a kid like her over the summer. All I can see when I look at her is my mother—what a child she was when she had me at seventeen. Jasmine’s baby will be here soon, and she doesn’t have a driver’s license, a car seat, or a crib. She doesn’t have a diploma or her final set of molars.
I set my horchata down, stretch an arm across the back of the couch, and prop a socked foot on the coffee table. “She’s not great,” I say. “I hope they let her keep the baby, but she’ll have to agree to live with her parents, and I’m not sure she’ll do that.”
April takes another sip. Second nature, I reach to thumb her lip clean and she closes her eyes, pained. I pull away fast and recite the facts to myself: she doesn’t want you. She cheated. I down the rest of my horchata like a shot as April stands and carries her glass to the sink. “That was delicious, thanks.”
I clear my throat. “Thanks for bringing my phone all the way out here.”
She struggles with the front door, so I reach over her to unstick it, and then I watch her disappear into the night.
Wrangling the door shut, I sigh. There are so many people in the world, is what I tell myself. I’ve never been more aware of this than I am now that I’ve scrolled through dozens of Ricos and Anas, none of whom are my Rico or Ana. It was April for a time, but it could have been anyone. It could still be anyone. Kim told me just last week that she’ll be here after the divorce is finalized, and that she can be patient. She said it with a syrupy gaze. Kim is gorgeous and good—maybe better than April. But at the end of the day, the allure of novelty doesn’t compare to the power of shared history. The time Sadie found a dead mockingbird and the three of us buried it together, laying it in soil and covering it with wild primrose. The day we pointed a flashlight at the tightened skin of April’s lower belly to get Otto to turn his head down before birth—and it worked. The night I proposed, sliding a ring onto April’s finger. Her nose crinkle and hard-earned laugh. Her devotion to reading despite its recalcitrance. The care she has for her students and family. The heat of her inner turmoil, her horchata-damp lip.
I keep waiting for the relief of divorce to set in, that anticipation of getting my life back. But it hasn’t happened for me. I mostly just…miss her. I miss days like today, and I miss the life we had together, and I miss being able to trust her.
Suddenly I am reading The Little Prince again, huddled in our hall during a windstorm. It is the time you have wasted for your rose…
What then is a jilted gardener to do with the rose that outgrew him?
Three minutes later, another knock, ardent.
I open it, my heart quickened by the memories of our shared life.
The flush of April’s cheeks is deeper. “Tell me why you gave up on us.”
My body tightens. Her question turns my memories on their heels, and pain rushes to fill the holes of love. “You know why.”
I envision her face with Cody, her eyes in slits of pleasure, that intimate expression which should have been reserved for me. I hear the long silence after that harrowing scene, the wait for a resolve that could never come. Because the only satisfying resolve would be to undo it, and that’s not possible.
She holds up a hand and shakes her head, glaring at me. “I mean before him.”
“What?”
“Oh, please. You were gone before you left.”
I pluck at rising emotions like guitar strings: confusion, anger, hurt. “Don’t rewrite history. You wanted me out.”
“I never said that.”
“Sometimes you don’t have to say things.”
“Sometimes you do!”
“What is it you want to say, then?”
She throws up her hands. “That I’m mad at you! It feels like you’re the only one of us who’s allowed to be hurt, like we’re not allowed to remember anything you did wrong.”
“Don’t act like it’s the same.”
“I’m not! But that’s exactly what I mean—you’re not taking any responsibility.”
“So now I’m responsible for your affair?”
She huffs and turns away, shaking the two-by-four porch of the trailer as she marches down one, two, three shallow steps. Over her shoulder, she says, “Forget it.” Says, “I’m an idiot.”
I watch her storm off, blue dress billowing, and I slam the door shut.