18. Anders
Anders
Iopen the envelope on a Sunday night at the kitchen table.
It's been on the passenger seat for twelve days.
I've driven it to three visits and one emergency room.
I've looked at it at red lights. I haven't opened it because opening it meant reading it, and reading it meant deciding something, and I've been telling myself I didn't have to decide anything yet.
That's a lie. That's the same lie I told in the glider for four nights. I've been waiting for someone to tell me who I am again.
So I open it.
The lawyer does write a clean document. I've read enough contracts to know one.
Everything that's hers stays hers, which is nearly everything.
Everything that's mine stays mine, which is a truck and a company with forty-one people and no library annex.
Nora's ours. There's a schedule. Tuesdays, Thursdays, alternating weekends.
Holidays split. It's fair. It's more than fair.
If I'd been handed this by a stranger I'd have said the wife's lawyer went easy.
There's a line at the bottom of the last page. My name, typed. A blank above it.
I sit and look at the blank.
Here's what I know, at this table in the empty family home, the one thing that surfaces with an urgency so fast it almost hurts.
I want her. I want her more than I've wanted anything, more than the annex, more than the company, more than I wanted Milo to be my son.
I want her back in this kitchen with her feet on the rung of the next stool.
I want to hang the wedding photograph. I want to sleep with my hand on her hip and have her not move.
I want to spoon her and fold myself around her at night, breathing in the intoxicating scent of her, my wife, my Margot.
But wanting her isn’t enough. I have to listen to her, to give her back the one thing that I took from her when I made every stupid decision that led to her packing her bags and walking away.
Her voice. Her power.
She never got to be a part of the decisions.
Not about the money, the highchair, the party.
Not about her own kitchen. Not, God, not about whether her husband stood at the head of her bed while a doctor fought for their daughter's heartbeat. I decided every one of those. I decided them without Margot’s input.
And for that, despite how much I love her, I owe her what she wants. Her freedom.
I pick up the pen.
Twelve days and I'd told myself I didn't know what I'd do. I knew. I've known since the porch with the bracelet, when I watched her face move a millimeter and stood on the mat and didn't reach. That was the first time. This is the second.
I sign.
Anders Stenburg.
It doesn't look like anything. It looks like my signature on any old permit or contract, but in reality it is the slice of a knife tearing our marriage apart.
I put it back in the envelope and go to bed and don't sleep.
Monday I sign a lease on a one-bedroom on Alder.
I don't tell Margot. I just can't be in that house anymore, with the memories and longing. It's her house. It was always her house. The only thing I ever built in it was a crib, and I built it for someone who isn't allowed to sleep there because of me.
Dev helps me move a mattress and a chair and two boxes. He looks around the apartment, at the window with the dumpster in it and the carpet that smells like somebody's cat, and he says, "You're really doing this."
"Yeah."
"She asked you to?"
"No."
He sets the box down. "Then what the hell, man."
"It's her house. She should be in it with her daughter. Not in her mother's spare room because I fucked up.”
Dev looks at me for a long time. He's known me for years. He's seen me pour concrete in the rain and fire a guy for stealing copper and cry once, at his father's funeral, and he looks at me now like he's not sure which of those I am.
"You're going to give her the house and the kid and sign whatever she puts in front of you."
"Yes."
"And then what?”
"Then it's hers."
"And you?"
I don't answer that. I don't have one. He shakes his head and picks the box back up and we finish, and when he leaves he grips the back of my neck at the door, once, hard, the way his father used to, and doesn't say anything.
Tuesday. Two o'clock. I'm on the mat with the envelope in my hand, and Margot opens the door and sees it and her face does the thing it did when she handed it to me, braced and blank, and then she sees that it's been opened.
I hold it out.
She takes it. She slides the pages out. She goes to the last one.
She stares at it.
"You signed it."
"Yes."
"Anders."
"Can I come in? Just for a minute. Then I'll go."
She steps back. Nora's asleep in the bassinet by the window. Margot stands in the middle of her mother's living room with the pages in her hand and looks at me like I've done something she can't classify, and for once, I have.
"I don't want this," I say. “This feel wrong.”
"Then why did you sign it?”
"Let me finish. I don't want this, it feels wrong to let our marriage end.
But I want you. I want you more than anything I've ever wanted, and I've wanted some things badly, and I've done a lot of damage wanting them.
" I keep my hands at my sides. "I've been coming here for two months hoping.
You know that. You've seen it. I've been standing on that porch every time hoping you'd look at me the way you did when we got married, and hoping is just wanting with a nicer coat on.
It's still me reaching for you and not giving you a choice.”
She doesn't say anything.
"So I'm done reaching. If loving me makes your life worse, then loving you means I have to let you leave. That's all I've got left to give you. It's the only thing I can do because I love you. I will let you go, I will give you your freedom and your power back.”
I nod at the envelope.
"File it or don't. I'm not going to argue it. I'm not going to fight you anymore, Mar. I'll be there for Nora every hour that schedule gives me and I'll never miss one. And whatever you decide about the rest, that's yours. It should have been yours the whole time."
I go to the bassinet. Nora's sleeping soundly and I swear a smile flutters across her face. She looks like Margot in that moment. I put two fingers on her head, on the black hair that's hers from her mother, and I tell her how much I love her.
Then I go to the door.
I don't look back. I want to. Every cell in my body wants to turn around and check her face and see if it moved, and I don't, because checking is reaching, and I told her I was done.
I open the door. I go through it. I close it behind me.
On the porch I stand for a second with my hand on the rail. The window's right there. I could look. I don't look.
I go to the truck.
Driving home I have to face the scariest thing I’ve ever faced, which is admit that I don't know.
I don't know if she'll file. I don't know if she read the pages or just the signature.
I don't know if what I did in that room was the right thing or just the last thing, the only move I had left on a board for a game I’ve already lost. I don't know if I'll ever sleep in that house with her again or if I'll spend the rest of my life in a rented one-bedroom that smells like the last guy's cat.
I don't know, there’s no way to know. I'm going to have to live with that.
I think about her all those months ago, before she said she'd try again. I'd just told her about Becca. I'd just put the bracelet in her hand. And she'd looked at it, and looked at me, and she'd said, "I'm going to need a minute," and I'd said, "Take all of them."
I meant it then. I didn't understand what I was saying. I understand it now.
Take all of them, Mar.
I'll be here for whichever one you land on.