The Burning Side(77)
By the time I reach the door, I’m winded.
I go straight to the closet, kneel down, and dig out a dusty lockbox.
After the fire, we had the scantest relief that we still had our legal certificates and social security cards. Our identities had been spared.
I open the box and find exactly what I thought I remembered.
My father’s words ring out around me: It’s too late for me, but—
At this, I laugh. And I make a decision.
Part Four Embers
APRIL
September 4, 2022
I’M RIFFLING THROUGH SCHOOL SUPPLY bins at Target when Leo texts. Sadie is tossing way too many colored pencils into the cart, and Otto is going down the aisle and back up again. He technically still fits in the cart’s child seat, but try telling him that.
COULD YOU COME OVER SOMETIME SOON? NEED TO TALK ABOUT SOMETHING IN PERSON.
I bite a smile. Ever since the night in his trailer when he apologized while I doctored his foot, my thoughts have been pitifully adolescent, wanting to see him again like when we first met. Except now the stakes are extremely high—one of them with her zillion colored pencils, and the other with his propeller arms, careening down a Target aisle. Two people we don’t want to hurt more than we already have.
And why should I be smiling? Nothing has changed.
The kids and I found a furnished rental in Argyle so they could start the school year here, while Mom and Dad can start showing the house without a baby underfoot. Which means I’ve lost my built-in babysitter. So I file through my short list of trusted options, find someone who is blessedly available, and text Leo that I’ll be there around eight.
* * *
The first thing I notice is that he fixed the trailer door. The second thing: moving boxes. The third: our settlement papers, the same ones I have at home. It’s weird to imagine him here with horchata or Velvet Hammer, beside a history book or lesson plan, his socked feet beneath the table as he reviews those words about how to split our assets.
I swallow, realizing that he asked me here to discuss some of the tougher settlement terms, like how to divide holidays or eventual car expenses for the kids. Behind me, the sun rushes toward the horizon, as it does upon summer’s end.
Leo steps aside to let me in, and I notice two more things.
First, our fireproof box of documents is open on the counter. And second, Leo is smiling. Dad says there are nineteen types of smiles, only six of them happy. I try to read Leo’s, but it’s more confusing than b versus d, or who versus how.
He leads me to the table, where I sit down between our marriage certificate and divorce papers. The past decade gawks up at us as though insulted to be reduced to signature lines.
Leo nods toward the divorce screed and asks, “Is this what you really want?”
My mind races. I think of how lonely our marriage became, how I barely recognized myself, how Leo would be happier with someone else, and how the kids deserve better.
But that isn’t what he’s asking me. He’s asking if I really want to divorce him. So I answer honestly. “No.”
“I don’t either.”
I tamp down my rising hope, and I argue. “Yes you do. What about”—there could be a dozen endings to this question, a dozen reasons to dissolve this marriage—“what I did?”
The memory of Cody balloons between us, and we do not look away.
Leo says. “It felt like death.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m so sorry.”
“I know. But I also know we weren’t in a good place before that.”
I pick at my fingernail. “How did that happen?” I risk a look up at him, genuinely wanting to understand where our unraveling began.
He shrugs. “I felt like I didn’t belong in my own home.”
“Why?”
“You hardly looked at me. You never wanted me around. I thought you wanted to get rid of me like my family did.”
I shake my head. “What about when I asked you to come home from work earlier, or when I had meals on the table that you ignored, or when I would come into a room and you would go into another one?”
He frowns, like the dam of selective memory just broke and other memories came flooding in.
I continue, “I have to be able to struggle. I couldn’t just constantly affirm you.”
“Of course not, but if I was home for an hour, then fifty minutes of that was you sighing because I did something wrong with the kids, or pulling away when I touched you, or turning to the television or phone or bed when I tried to talk to you.”
My own memories expand now. I still don’t know why I’m sitting here in his trailer in front of our divorce papers, but I admit to him, “I might have been depressed.” Guilt shoots through me at the confession. Leo has no clue what it’s like to have a baby, but I don’t really understand it myself, why it was so hard for me.
He frowns. “Wish I had done what you did the night I found out about my mom. When I shut you out, you stayed anyway.” He touches my arm. “It meant a lot.”
Sadness wells up in me as I stare at our settlement papers. “Too late now.”
“Is it?” he asks. “Your parents are clinging to their memories, and my dad desperately wishes my family could have stayed together. And then here we are—with choice.” He pauses. “And time.”