Chapter Five Bram
Chapter Five
Bram
Daddy!” Letty yells. I look up from my potting bench to the glassed-in breezeway that connects the house to the greenhouse I built the year I got divorced.
(Sometimes a thing can be the right choice—like a divorce—and also leave you feeling weird and bored after it’s done. Building a greenhouse seemed like a better alternative than a more destructive hobby, like online dating or getting into Warhammer.)
“What is it, sprout?”
Letty runs through the breezeway, my phone in her hand. “Berry was trying to show Mommy the new things we’ve put in Porcupine’s tank, and Porcupine got out, and now Hester Prynne won’t come out from under the bed.”
“Really sorry about that, Bram!” Sara’s voice comes from the phone. “I didn’t expect my hundred-pound German shepherd to be terrified of a frog.”
Letty sets the phone down on the potting bench and then tears off, probably back to monitor the dog situation with Berry. I pull off my gloves and pick up the phone to follow in Letty’s wake. “In fairness, I didn’t see it coming either. Hey, Asher. How’re you doing?”
Sara and Asher got engaged two years ago, and the minute I met the environmental researcher and activist, it was like solving for x after years of scratched-out answers.
Sara and I had made the marriage thing work for so many years because we’d been bound together by the girls, because we’d been horny enough, because we’d been even hornier for science and science was a thing we did together anyway.
But over time, our connection started to fray, cardboard puzzle tabs repeatedly forced to fit in the wrong cardboard sockets.
And from the first words Asher spoke—bitingly intelligent, charged with meaning—I immediately understood why Asher was the right puzzle piece for her, and I hadn’t been.
I’ll never be a mix of tattooed mystery and charisma; I’m not in demand as a guest on podcasts or television segments; I don’t get any joy sparring with congresspeople about climate change.
I like that people don’t notice me, that they underestimate me.
I like not arguing, I like staying put, I like anonymity.
I like rules and gentle routines and the soft quiet of my greenhouse in the mornings.
I like being the invisible person behind someone visible, taking care of them, supporting them, making sure they get enough to eat and that they get enough sleep.
Sara needs something different. A co-activist. A co-performer.
“Hey yourself,” Asher says, giving me that enigmatic curl of a smile that I know must have killed before they settled down with Sara.* “Seems like a busy Sunday over there.”
“About the normal amount of chaos,” I say as I go into the house and make for the stairs. “I did ask Maddie to come over today so I could have some time to work on the book.”
I’m tenured now, so it isn’t quite publish or perish these days, but the book is a project meant for a general audience, not an academic text, and finding time to write among parenting, teaching, and all the behind-the-scenes curriculum and committee work of academia has been next to impossible.
So in a moment of desperation—and despite having done my best to avoid extended time spent with Maddie over the last couple of weeks—I asked for a weekend shift at double her normal rate.
“You should take some time off,” Sara says seriously. “See if Joey wants to grab a drink or something. Have a Best Night Ever.”
Just the idea of a drink makes my stomach turn. “We actually hit it hard a couple of weeks ago to celebrate Sloane’s divorce, and I don’t think I have another Best Night Ever in me for a while.”
“I’m bummed I missed that.” Sara sighs. “I’ve been waiting for Sloane to leave that knoblord since the day she married him.”
Sloane is the only one of us who didn’t go to high school in Mount Astra—she went to a prestigious day school in Kansas City instead—but she and Sara have a certain bond as the only women in the group.
“And you were her divorce coach too,” I say. I can hear Hester Prynne whining as I reach the top of the stairs.
“In fairness, we quickly reached the limits of my expertise. Lucien made leaving as hard as he could on her, whereas divorcing Dr. Bram Loe was more about keeping track of filing deadlines. I think the only thing we fought over were the bonsai scissors.”
“They’re Sasuke.”* I push open the bedroom door to find Porcupine looking out onto the room from the top floor of a Barbie Dreamhouse and Hester Prynne partially wedged under one of the twin beds, quaking.
Porcupine gives a magisterial ribbit.
“They’re mine,” Sara says smugly. And then, more seriously, “I meant what I said about taking a break, Bram. I know you never let anything bother you, but it’s okay to be a little bothered and need a night off once in a while.”
It’s true that I don’t let much get to me—save for one very curvy, very feisty exception.
I have no idea why Maddie makes my jaw clench when twins, a teenager, two animals, and daily emails from the athletic liaison trying to get their athletes excused from my already very easy labs don’t faze me.
Is it the lipstick? The emerald eyes? The bratty attitude?
“You’ll be back in Mount Astra in six weeks,” I say, scooping up Porcupine. Her bright green throat quivers in silent fury. “Then life will get back to normal.”
“Yeah, but normal for you, Bram, still begs for some fun,” Asher says, adding a lifted eyebrow for emphasis.
(Asher is one of the few people to keep their brow piercings from the aughts and have it look good on them.) “You know, if the dating pool at Astra is tapped, I’m happy to introduce you to some friends of mine at NOAA.
There are a lot more fish in the sea in Kansas City than in Mount Astra.
And the commute isn’t so bad! I get through a lot of podcasts. ”
The twins crowd around me to check on Porcupine, who is, as a tree frog, currently trying to climb my hand like a tree.
“I haven’t tapped the dating pool,” I explain. “I’m just . . . not good at it.”
“You barely tried!” protests Sara. “I had a robust postdivorce ho phase. And you went on two dates that didn’t even get to second base and called it quits.”
“Three dates,” I correct without heat. I’d wanted a ho phase too; I’d started dating Sara so young that there hadn’t been a chance to explore my nascent bisexuality, and so after the divorce, I’d planned on spreading my bi wings and making up for lost time.
But something about dating felt . . . perfunctory, I guess.
Commercial, even, like I was shopping, and my dates were shopping too, and the actual date was just the part of the shopping trip where you took something off the shelf and glanced at the price tag.
I didn’t want to shop. I didn’t know what I wanted instead, but I knew that much. So I gave up, and now here I am, with an engaged ex-wife and a childcare provider whom I think about in the shower.
“Okay, say goodbye to Mommy and Asher,” I say to the twins as I start walking toward the stairs with a squirming frog in my hand.
“Bye, Mommy! Bye, Asher!” the twins sing, and then fling themselves back onto the floor to give Hester Prynne post-frog therapy.
I hear the sound of the front door swinging open, a sound my body now pornographically responds to.
Maddie is here.