42. Forty-two
Forty-two
The drive home from Irma’s is as blurry as the colors that fly by the windows. It’s as though my world has been flipped. My entire reality changed.
I listened to a podcast once, it was a night after the boys fought me to sleep and Lyra and I had struggled with a science project—something about batteries and wires I couldn’t figure out for the life of me. I was so mad at Camp that night, for letting me be there alone, drowning in motherhood. The frenzied monotony of it all.
Then the podcast—one on struggling marriages—said, “it always takes two people to get to where you are.” That line made me even more angry; I was doing everything and him nothing. One person was to blame, I felt that truth at a cellular level, and it was him.
Now, remembering that night from two or three years ago, I almost laugh. Because though I was drowning, Lyra and I also giggled at how hard the project was. We both declared we had to be missing pieces. And Thor, just a puppy then, fell asleep in bed with Hank. I took a photo which now hangs in the living room. It was a hard night, but not as bad as it felt. Not anymore with the rose-colored glasses of hindsight putting it into perspective.
By the time Camp got home from his away baseball game, I was exhausted from the day and everything that had to be done the next that screamed at me in the silence of the house. I couldn’t shut it off—the worrying, the overthinking, the need to get everything done and be the one to do it all the time. When he asked, “How was your night?” it turned my blood to ice. I was furious at his ignorance.
How was my night? I could have punched him in the throat for asking such an asinine question.
“Fine,” I responded, not elaborating. Not explaining how I got my ass handed to me by the concept of electricity or twin two-year-olds that only operated in chaos mode.
Looking back now, yes, he was gone late. But through his eyes, he saw a clean kitchen, a finished project on the kitchen table, and heard the word fine . He had no way to know how not fine it all felt in that moment.
In the van’s Bluetooth, I call Mave.
“Hello, June!” she chirps through the speakers, her smile evident from her tone. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“You should have told me, Mave.”
Silence.
“About baseball. The house. I’ve-I’ve worried and resented and . . .”
Tears threaten to fall, but I refuse them. I’m sick of crying. Sick of countdowns I’ve lost track of.
“Ah,” her voice softens. “Took you long enough.”
“Well, you know, what’s a few more weeks on top of the decades already wasted?” I say dryly, flipping my turn signal on as I switch lanes.
“If you would have known, what would you have changed?”
I’m silent.
“Exactly,” she answers for me. “You don’t know. You might be in this same situation because you’d be mad the other way. Marriage is just hard, Junie. If it wasn’t this, it would have been something else. Maybe if you would have known, you wouldn’t have been wounded for the same reasons, but you might still be wounded. We can’t hide from struggle.”
She’s not wrong and it’s extremely annoying. I wring my hands around the steering wheel, and she hears what I don’t say, her tone softening when she speaks again.
“Junie, he loves you, but we’re flawed people loving other flawed people. It’s all work, never easy. None of us knowing how to do it right.” A timer goes off in the background.
“Cookies?” I ask.
She chuckles. “You know me so well.”
I hear the oven door open and close followed by the clamber of the pan onto the stovetop.
“So what do I do?” I ask, feeling suddenly vulnerable. “Now that I know, what do I do? Just-just-just—what?”
She chuckles. “Well, I’d start with the sex, but that’s just me.”
The first thing I do when I get home is throw the separation agreement away. If we are doing this, really ending our marriage, it’s after a levelheaded conversation. I don’t care if he wrote I’m done in the card with the flowers. I’m not, at least not this way. Not without a fight.
Plus, who agrees to a separation with flowers?
Now, after everything, I realize that while my heart was in the right place of knowing something needed a change, my head was absolutely not. Things felt dire, I went nuts.
I make dinner. It’s another new meatloaf recipe—this one with barbecue sauce—as an olive branch to undo some of the mess I’ve made. An apology in the form of ground beef and chopped onions.
When Camp brings the kids home, I’ll invite him to stay, and we can talk. Really talk. Starting with Reed. Which, if he’s read Reed’s email, maybe won’t be so bad.
The door opens; Thor barks.
Hank barrels in first.
Then Ty.
Then Lyra.
Then . . . nobody.
“Where’s your dad?” I ask, holding the fifth plate midair above his usual spot at the table.
Lyra pauses, looks at the table then the plate in my hand.
“Umm. He dropped us off at my car, I drove us home. He’s got stuff to finish at the complex, something about the seating for the gala. And the sound system, or something . . .” Her voice fades as I deflate like flat tire with disappointment.
“Of course, right.” I clear my throat. “Boys, wash up and let’s eat.”
Then we’re around the table like we always are, Camp’s absence not abnormal but much more obvious than usual. His empty chair a symbol of everything I’ve wrecked. Every sacrifice he’s made that he never told me about, that I’ve never noticed.
More than once, I catch Lyra looking at me then the empty seat.
“Today’s Best!” Hank shouts. “Mama telling Ms. Mitchell off.”
I snort a laugh.
“Same. I bet we can get away with anything now,” Ty says, earning a glare from me that makes him add, “or not.”
“Lyra?”
She grins, blue hair framing her face, Camp’s brown eyes looking back at me. “Ice cream with Mom.”
I smile, fill my fork with meatloaf, and say, “Me too.”
After dinner, after the boys are in bed and the kitchen is clean, I stand in the middle of the living room and a quiet so deep I feel it in the pit of my stomach. The sound I always long for hurts my ears. Even Thor is silent, sleeping on his bed.
It’s as though I’m getting a glimpse into my future. Lyra leaving. The house emptying. Camp and the dog gone. Me alone. The house, a shell. Camp’s trophies, Lyra’s shoes, the dog bowl. Artifacts of a life that’s suddenly finite.
“Whatcha doin’?” Lyra walks in and stands next to me in an oversized Ledger Lake Trout T-shirt and reading glasses.
“Contemplating life.”
A laugh rumbles in her chest as she leans into me and wraps her arms around my waist. Head on my shoulder she stares at the same photos on the wall I do.
“Are you and Dad really getting a divorce?”
“Hmm,” I say, hating the sound of the word. “I don’t know.”
“Do you still love him?”
“With my whole heart, Ly.”
Then we’re quiet, looking at the pictures that show pieces of who we used to be and who we are now. Our entire evolution in small frames.
“What are you still doing up?” I finally ask her.
She straightens with a heavy sigh. “I’m working on this speech for the gala—and I suck. I can’t think of a word to say.”
“What are you writing your speech about for graduation?”
“My hero.” She grins.
Of course. Camp, no doubt, will make for an easy speech topic.
“You could use the same one, maybe? I mean, your dad is the evil genius behind the whole operation.”
Her eyebrows pinch then her expression changes, as if understanding. “Yeah, I don’t think that would fit.”
I nod again, consider the situation. The gala. Camp’s work on this complex for years, all leading to this. Him asking me to speak, me turning him down. Guilt grips my chest.
What if . . . ?
“You think Nick’s still awake?”
“Yeah . . .” she says, skeptical as she adjusts the glasses on her face. “Why?”
“Get your notebook,” I tell her, “And your phone. I have an idea.”