She can see his small hands dripping with egg batter. She can remember bringing him over to the sink and carefully wiping a wet paper towel over his fingers. Another memory comes then: the smell of the top of his head. His clean scalp: Benny smell, she used to call it. Like popcorn or bread. She relishes these thoughts returning, and she thinks in that second: I would do it all again. If I could go back, knowing what I know, I would do it again. God, he changed her in so many ways. He altered her DNA forever.
She hands Addie a small wooden spoon that is the perfect size. “We need to mix this up,” she says, and pats her head. Addie is smiling and looking around. She is having fun. They are laughing together, oohing and ahhing as the batter spills occasionally onto the counter. She wishes Alex could see. Then he’d know that after all these years, maybe she was starting to be all right. Which isn’t to say she’d been one of those miserable, bitter people. She was fine, good enough. They could go out with friends of theirs or clients he was entertaining, and she could smile. She could talk about the bluebird at their bird feeder or a story about a hurricane on the news. They could go to Bermuda or to New York City on a mini vacation, and they could sip cocktails and go on day tours and play gin rummy in the hotel room and be okay. They were managing. She has been all right for a while, able to put on a smile and make it okay. But now she feels a difference—a level up, better than she’s felt in forever. She remembers how Benny’s toys would be sluggish but still work, but if she replaced the batteries, they’d move with a new life. She wants to kiss Addie’s head. She wants to hug her gratefully.
How many years she just stared, stayed silent. Alex had his job, his big company to go back to. After Benny’s funeral, he stayed home with her for four or five days where he watched the news, the weather, Jeopardy, and they ate what people brought them, but then he slipped back to his work. She remembers how she’d whisper things to Benny in the empty house （Where are you? Are you okay?）， how she looked at Toby, their small white dog, every time his stare went somewhere else. “Who do you see?” she’d say, hoping, hoping he was sensing Benny. She remembers walking outside and staring at the quiet fish pond, and when she couldn’t take it anymore, she remembers trudging back upstairs to bed. How the sheets welcomed her, how the pillow felt like the only thing that could save her. When someone called, she usually let the phone ring and ring, enjoying in some odd way its echo in the empty house.
How many days Alex would come home and find her like that. He tried to bring her sister, Ruthie, over to help. He held the phone to her ear with her father on the line. He suggested she take a class in European history at the University of New Haven. Or a knitting workshop at the community college. He brought home brochures for aqua aerobics, for a creative writing group at the library. He’d sit at the foot of the bed and hold her ankle and suggest a trip to Hawaii, a drive to the casino. His sincere eyes. His patient face. How he wanted her to keep going the way he kept going. How he knew sadness could swallow people like them with no other children, with no nieces and nephews.
The affair wasn’t her fault. Of course.
It wasn’t her fault.
Was it his?
He did what he did. He was desperate, too. She never hated him for it. She hated what he did, but she didn’t want him to leave. She couldn’t bear losing another person. She sometimes was surprised she wasn’t angrier, but their circumstances were unlike anyone else’s. She knew he knew it was a mistake. In a way she enjoyed the hurt. It felt good to hold on to it, didn’t it?
If her faith taught her anything, it taught forgiveness. She focused on that.
He told her everything: the woman he was with, the child he found out about years later. When she asked him to, he never mentioned it again. She didn’t want to rock the boat, she didn’t want to change how she felt about Alex. She could pretend it didn’t happen if there weren’t reminders. He did what he did: visited the girl, sent her money. Whatever. He kept it away from her. They buried all that, too. They could bury anything.
Until months ago when he brought it all up again: the daughter had grown, and was having a baby of her own. He wanted Kay to give her a chance. He knew how it could help her, which seemed ridiculous at first. His love child. For years, Kay felt bitter that this new child got to live instead of Benny. Their lives were connected, she was an offshoot of Benny dying. “Trust me,” he said. “You’ll like her.”
She wants to call him now and tell him something has shifted in her. After all this, after the world ripping their son away, she finally feels something about being alive that she hasn’t felt before. Life, this up and down life. What a gift, isn’t it? Maybe it’s the thought of poor Greg. Isn’t it what Greg is fighting so hard for? For life. For this small girl in the kitchen with flour on her hands. This day where Freddie and Greg are doing their best to win. This spring sun outside, the little wishing well in their side yard with the trickling fountain. Yes, she would definitely do it all over again. She and Alex had that boy for fourteen years.