Chapter 11 #5
I heard them before I saw them, two sets of feet hitting the stairs at full speed. Bakari came around the corner first, and Nina was right on his heels in her socks, sliding the last three feet of hardwood.
"TEE TEE!" They hit me at the same time from two different angles, arms wrapping around whatever part of me they could reach. Both of them were talking over each other at a volume that suggested they had been saving everything up since the last time they saw me.
Kylo got bumped clean out of the doorway and had to grab the frame to catch himself.
“So, y’all don’t see me huh?”
Layla clapped her hands from the hallway. "Can we let Auntie Laurie in the house please? Can we do that? Can we let the woman inside?"
Neither of them moved.
I looked down at Bakari and Nina holding onto me and decided whatever I had been practicing to say in the car could both wait a little longer.
***
Kylo got the kids down somewhere around nine, which was a miracle in itself considering Nina had tried to negotiate three separate extensions and Bakari had come downstairs twice claiming he was thirsty.
By the time the house finally went quiet Layla and I were already on the couch with a bottle of Malbec between us and our legs tucked underneath us.
It felt good. It felt like something I hadn't realized I had been missing until I was sitting inside of it.
We caught up the way sisters catch up when they haven't had real time together in too long.
It was fast at first, and we kept interrupting each other.
We laughed at things that probably weren't that funny but we had a dark sense of humor.
Layla told me about Nina's teacher situation and Bakari's basketball drama that I had missed three installments of. Nina tried to take over the class since she thought the teacher wasn’t doing it right and Bakari ended up fighting his teammate since he was being mean to his lady friend.
I listened to all of it and let myself just be her sister for a little while without anything else attached to it. Maybe she really did miss me.
Out of nowhere, she got quiet and sighed to herself.
“What’s on your mind?”
She was looking down into her wine glass, turning it slowly by the stem. She had a smile on her face that didn't reach anything above her mouth.
"We had therapy today," she said.
I turned toward her a little more. "How was it?"
She kept looking at the glass. The smile stayed but something behind it shifted. Shook her head as if she was answering a question she had already asked herself a hundred times.
"This shit is hard," she said. "I knew marriage was hard. Everybody says marriage is hard and you nod and say yeah I know, but Lauren —" she paused and took a slow sip, "I didn't know it was this hard."
I stayed quiet and let her have the floor.
"I wish I never stepped out," she said, softer this time.
I watched her for a moment before I asked it. "You never told me why you did. Why did you feel like you couldn't get what you needed at home?"
Layla looked away toward the quiet screen.
Layla was dramatic, had always been dramatic, but she was never careless.
She thought things through, she considered Kylo and she considered those kids in everything she did, which was exactly why it had never made sense to me that she had made that choice.
"He, uh —" She stopped, and started again. "He got into some business with Dad."
I paused my drink halfway to my mouth and looked at her. "You mean —"
She nodded before I could finish, exhaling through her nose.
The frustration moved across her face like it was fresh all over again.
"And what really pisses me off is Dad even pulling my man into that bullshit when I had been keeping his nose clean. Kylo was doing good. He was focused, he wasn’t depressed anymore…
But with his disability, sometimes he says yes to things before he even fully processes what he's agreeing to, and Dad knows how to talk, and —" she stopped herself and pressed her lips together.
"He wanted to make money because I work so much. I know that's part of it."
I nodded slowly, turning that over in my head.
"So you don't think the ADHD is the problem," I said carefully.
"No," she said. "Kylo having ADHD was never the problem.
The problem was him making a decision that affected our whole family without talking to me first. Without even pausing long enough to think about what it would mean for us.
" She looked back at her glass. "And I get it, I do, impulsivity is part of how his brain works and it's not malicious, it's just how he moves sometimes — but it still hurt.
It still felt like I didn't matter in the equation. "
I let that sit for a second before I said anything.
"Can I say something without you taking it wrong?"
She waved her hand like go ahead.
"What you just described… him making an impulsive decision that made you feel invisible and unimportant in your own marriage —" I paused, "— that's real, and it's valid, and you had every right to feel hurt by it…
But stepping out was you making a decision that affected your whole family without talking to him first either.
" I said it gently. "I'm not saying that to come down on you.
I'm saying it because I think somewhere in you, you already know that, and that's part of why it's been so heavy. "
Layla didn't say anything right away. She looked at me for a long moment and then looked back at the TV, and I could see her actually sitting with it instead of deflecting.
“Did you know I had to take a few psych classes back in the day?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Yeah, apparently eye issues can stem from mental disorders.”
“Really?”
I nodded. "Yes… Times have changed since then but I do remember a few things.”
“Things like what?”
“When you’re with someone who has ADHD," I continued, "the work isn't about punishing them every time their brain does what their brain does.
It's about building a system together where the big decisions require both of you before anything moves.
Therapy is the right place to build that, and the fact that he's going with you means he's trying, Lay… I think that speaks for something. It speaks louder than his mistakes.”
She nodded slowly, but her eyes glossed over.
“I know,” she said quietly. “I know he is.”
We sat with that for a moment and I let her have it without filling the silence.
Since my baby sister needed to breathe, I swirled my wine and said, “You know what the secret is, right?”
She looked at me. “What.”
“Consistency and praise.” I said. “They need a routine they can count on and they need to hear that they’re doing a good job or their brain will literally go looking for that feeling somewhere else. You basically have to treat your husband like a golden retriever who pays the mortgage.”
Layla stared at me for a full three seconds and then dropped her head back against the couch and laughed so loud, I had to hit her thigh.
“A golden retriever,” she repeated.
“A golden retriever with a fresh lineup,” I said.
“Think about it. They’re loyal, loving, easily distracted, need affirmation three times a week minimum, and will absolutely wander into the wrong yard if they get bored and nobody’s paying attention.
” I took a sip. “The yard in your case being whatever our father was selling.”
She pressed her lips together trying to stop laughing and failing completely. “Lauren, oh my God.”
“I’m serious though.” I pointed at her. “It’s not a joke as much as it sounds like one.
When an ADHD partner feels competent and appreciated at home, they stay focused.
When they feel like they can’t do anything right or like they’re always a step behind, they go looking for something that makes them feel capable.
That something was Dad.” I paused. “Which means part of the solution is making sure Kylo knows what he’s good at, specifically and out loud, on a regular basis. ”
Layla looked at the ceiling for a long moment with her wine resting on her chest. “So I gotta compliment my husband into staying out of the streets,” she said slowly.
“Essentially.”
“That is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard in my life,” she said.
“And yet.”
She turned her head and looked at me.
“And yet,” she repeated quietly.
I let that breathe for a second before I kept going, because I wasn’t done and she needed to hear the rest of it. My sister was so stubborn and entitled, sometimes she needed a loving reality check.
“Can I take it a step further?”
She gestured with her glass.
“Think about how we grew up,” I said. “Every single time we messed up, Mom and Dad got us out of it. Every time. They barely asked us questions, and didn’t give out any real consequences.
We never had to sit too long inside anything uncomfortable because there was always a net underneath us. ” I paused. “Kylo didn’t have that.”
Layla got quiet.
“His parents weren’t built like ours in that way.
They were strict, they had expectations, and they didn’t have the resources to cushion every fall.
He came from a world where if you stumbled you felt it, and you got yourself up, and you kept moving.
Nobody was rushing in to fix it for you.
” I turned my wine glass in my hand. “That was his whole life. Until he met you.”
She looked at me but she didn’t say anything.
“Lay, when you first got with him, you could not stop talking about that man.”
“That’s not true.”
“Girl, the second you gave him some, that man was all on your mind.”
“Laurie, please”