12. Andrea
— ? —
Andrea
Melissa announces at breakfast that she’s having lunch with Kirk, in the tone other people use for jury duty.
“You’re what?”
“Lunch. Kirk. Today, noon, Rosie’s Diner, my choice of venue because the coffee is terrible and I want him uncomfortable.
” She salts her eggs like they’ve wronged her.
“He’s coming to that gala Saturday, and he’s coming near you, and before either of those things happens, he sits across a sticky table from me and answers questions. ”
“Mel. I’m a grown woman. I invited him.”
“You did. And you’re allowed to. And I’m allowed to conduct an exit interview for the last version of him and an entrance interview for whatever this new one is.” She points her fork at me. “You get a husband on probation. I get a diner. Everyone’s happy.”
“I want to come.”
“Absolutely not. You’ll manage him. You’ll do the face.”
“What face?”
“The face you’re doing right now.”
So I do the only reasonable thing, which is show up at Rosie’s at twelve-fifteen and take the booth directly behind theirs with a menu in front of my face, and if either of them notices the woman in sunglasses indoors, they are kind enough to say nothing.
“ - three questions,” Melissa is saying. “Answer them straight and I’ll pass the salt for the rest of your natural life. Lawyer them and this is the last coffee we ever have. Ready?”
“Ready.” Kirk’s voice. Steady. Braced.
“Question one. The morning you threw her out. She begged you to call Clarence. One phone call would have ended it, and you didn’t make it. I’ve heard the therapy version, the mother-voice version. I want the diner version. Why didn’t you call?”
A long silence. Cutlery somewhere. My heart knocking on my ribs, a fist on a door.
“Because I was afraid he’d confirm it,” Kirk says finally.
“That’s the diner version. Not that he’d lie.
That he’d tell the truth and the truth would be yes.
I’d spent six years being told it was coming, and when it finally seemed to arrive, checking felt like volunteering for the gunshot.
So I skipped the checking and went straight to bleeding, and I made her bleed with me, because a coward with a wound wants company.
” A breath. “You wanted it ugly. That’s the ugly. ”
The menu shakes slightly in my hands.
“Accepted,” Melissa says, and I hear paper flip, and God help me, my sister has actual written questions.
“Question two. It’s four years from now.
The kid’s in preschool. A woman at pickup tells you she saw Andrea having a very cozy lunch downtown with a man.
What happens in the next sixty seconds? Walk me through the sixty seconds. ”
“I ask the woman his name, and then I text Andrea: ‘heard you had lunch with so-and-so, hope he paid, love you, get milk.’” No hesitation this time. “And then I get milk.”
“You’re very confident.”
“I’m not, actually. That’s the point. Four years from now there will still be a version of me that goes cold for a second.
I don’t get to promise the cold second never comes, Melissa.
I get to promise what I do with it. The old me fed it for a week in the dark.
This one texts about milk in the daylight and lets my wife laugh at me. ”
I put down the menu, because the waitress has come to my booth twice and I’ve now ordered two pieces of pie in fifteen minutes as camouflage.
“Question three.” Melissa’s voice drops, and it stops being an interview.
“She’s my only sister, Kirk. Our mom is gone.
Dad’s in Florida with a hearing aid he won’t wear.
When it all came apart, I was the entire net, and I’m telling you, there were nights I wasn’t sure the net would hold.
So. Last question, and there’s no clever answer, so don’t build one.
” Her breath goes ragged and mine goes with it.
“If it happens again. If you break her again. What do I do with you?”
The diner clatters around them. A milkshake machine. Somebody’s kid.
“Whatever you want,” Kirk says quietly. “There’s no version of that world where I defend myself.
If I break her again, I’ll sign whatever you put in front of me, in the lawyer’s office or the parking lot, your pick.
But Melissa. I need you to hear the other half.
I’m not planning to spend our lives on my best behavior, tiptoeing, waiting for the relapse.
That’s just fear wearing a suit, and fear is how we got here.
I’m planning to love her out loud and check my work every day.
That’s the whole program. There isn’t a secret better one. ”
Silence. Then a sound I know better than my own: my sister blowing her nose on a paper napkin, furiously, as if the napkin owes her money.
“Okay,” she says thickly. “Salt’s yours. And Kirk? The pregnant lady in sunglasses two booths back is your wife. She ordered two pies. She’s had a menu upside down for ten minutes.”
I freeze.
The vinyl squeaks. And then my husband is standing at the end of my booth, arms crossed, wearing the first fully unguarded grin I’ve seen on him in a month.
“Hi,” he says.
He’s in a work shirt with the collar open and that grin is the one from before, the one from eight years of Sunday mornings, and heat climbs my neck that has nothing to do with being caught.
You’re at a diner spying on your estranged husband and your first thought is his collarbone. Get a grip, Andrea.
“This is a coincidence,” I say, from behind the upside-down menu. “I’m here for the pie.”
“Both pies.”
“Your daughter is complicated.”
He slides in across from me, and steals a fork, and Melissa drags a chair to the end of the table with a screech and steals the other one, and the three of us finish two pieces of terrible pie in a sticky booth, and it feels, for one ordinary hour, exactly the way a net feels when it holds.