One #2
I make him his usual: crackers and sliced apple, peanut butter in a bowl of its own so it doesn’t touch anything. The knife scrapes the apple skin and my own hand shakes, just for a second, which is humiliating.
Leo eats like he’s been rescued from a desert island, not public school. I sit at the kitchen table, which is just visible from the laundry room door if you leave it open half a foot, and I watch him talk at me about a dinosaur documentary he saw in Science Enrichment.
“Did you know there’s a Spinosaurus that’s bigger than a T-Rex? It had a sail on its back. Do you think it could eat a whole T-Rex in one bite?”
“Maybe half,” I say. “Depends if the T-Rex had time to run away.”
“Spinosaurus was a fast swimmer too. T-Rex would be in trouble near water.”
“Tragic,” I say. “Poor T-Rex.”
Leo nods, grave. “That’s just how evolution works.”
I want to ask if he knows what the word means, but he’s already off, constructing a battle scenario on the fly, narrating the entire thing while his hands build the scene out of crackers and apple slices. When he bites the apple “T-Rex” in half, he grins, peanut butter gluing his teeth together.
At some point in this, I check my phone. There’s still nothing from Ethan. I put the phone face down, deliberately, like that will keep it from judging me.
We do homework. “We” is generous; I mostly watch as Leo deciphers the same five spelling words they’ve had since Christmas. When he gets to “forgive,” he pauses, tongue caught in the gap where his bottom tooth fell out last week.
“Is it F-O-R-G-I-V-E?” he asks.
“Perfect,” I say, and realize too late that I sound like I’m talking through a speakerphone from inside a well.
“Is Dad coming home for dinner?”
The question doesn’t surprise me, but the word yes does when it comes out of my mouth so calm, so uninflected, that for a moment I wonder if maybe I believe it myself.
“Yes,” I say again. “He’s just working late.”
“Can we have pasta?”
“We always have pasta.”
“But it’s so good.”
I start water in the old, battered pot. I check the time again: 5:12.
Less than an hour to go. I unload the dishwasher, reload it, wipe down counters that do not need wiping.
Leo disappears to his room and comes back with a book, which he reads upside-down on the couch for about four minutes before deciding to construct a Spinosaurus out of recycling bin supplies.
There are whole dissertations to be written about the ways children intuit the mood of a house.
Some days Leo is noise, kinetic energy, questions layered over questions.
Today he’s something else: watchful, hoovering closer than usual, like if he makes enough noise it will drown out whatever is happening in my head.
I let him. I keep checking the laundry door, half-expecting the panties to sprout legs and walk into the kitchen like the world’s worst surprise guest.
At 6:05, my phone buzzes. Ethan: Running late. Be home soon.
I don’t reply. There’s no playbook for this.
No strategy that doesn’t make you look either insane or pathetic.
I finish cooking the pasta sauce. I pretend to watch tv with Leo for the last twenty minutes before Ethan’s key turns in the lock.
His voice follows, pitched to broadcast normalcy: “Hello? I’m home! ”
He sets his bag down in the entryway, like always, and comes into the kitchen loosening his tie with one hand. He smiles at Leo, ruffles his hair, then looks at me.
And something changes in him.
Maybe he sees it on my face, or maybe he’s just not as good at pretending as he thinks. There’s a pause, a slight hesitation, and then his eyes drop to the pot on the stove.
“Smells good,” he says, voice pitched a little lower. “Sorry I’m late.”
“Can you help Leo wash his hands?” I ask, resisting the urge to ask him about the panties. “Dinner’s almost ready.”
“Sure,” he says, like nothing is wrong at all.
I watch him lead Leo to the sink, listen to the way he narrates every step of the process like a cooking show host. There’s a moment, a single, bright, utterly detached moment, where I think about how I will write this later, how it will sound in the book, how I can turn even this into something almost funny if I just edit it right.
I drain the pasta. I plate it. I carry everything to the table, and when I sit down, I realize my own hands are so tightly clenched around the fork that my knuckles are white.
We eat. Leo talks. Ethan interjects at all the right moments, asks about school, even laughs when Leo makes a joke about “dino-mite” that isn’t actually a joke but is delivered with enough confidence to pass for one.
The whole time, I’m staring at the man across from me, waiting to see if he will admit, even in a single flicker of expression, what’s waiting for him on the dryer twelve feet away.
He doesn’t.
After dinner, Leo disappears to play video games. I let him. I tell myself it’s a parenting compromise. Ethan loads the dishwasher. He stands with his back to me, shoulders set in the posture of a man who has spent a decade learning how to look busy at exactly the right moment.
When he finally turns, I’m already standing. The kitchen light turns his face gold, and for a second he looks exactly the way he did in college, open, unguarded, like there was still a chance I was the smartest thing that ever happened to him.
I say, “Can we talk in the laundry room?”
He hesitates, then nods. “Sure.”
We make our way inside. The panties are still there. I pick them up and hold them at chest level, like the evidence they are.
Ethan looks at them, then at me.
His face does something. Not exactly the dramatic thing I was expecting. Not the sudden horror or apology that I would expect either. He looks… angry.
“Seriously?” he says. “Harper, come on…”
He pauses when he looks at me. I don’t know what my face is doing, but it's enough for him to change tactics.
“Look,” he tries, “that’s not…”
I don’t let him finish his bullshit.
“Not what? Not what I think? Or am I just not worth the trouble of inventing a better lie?”
His jaw flexes in irritation. “I can explain.”
I shake my head. “I really hope you can, because the alternative is that you’re either the world’s laziest adulterer, or you have something you wanted me to see.”
His shoulders drop, just a little. He tries to laugh, but it sounds more like a cough.
“We’ve been through this before,” he says. “You’re jumping to conclusions. We… Harper, we can’t keep doing this every time something looks bad.”
“Every time?” My voice comes out louder than I mean, and I regret it, but I don’t stop. “This isn’t every time, Ethan. This is the first time in nearly ten years I’ve implied that you cheated, AGAIN!”
He takes a step forward. “It’s not what you think.”
“Then explain it,” I say. “Because from here it looks like you fucked someone else and brought home her panties like a fucking souvenir.”
His hands go up, defensive. “I haven’t… it’s not like that. I just…”
He exhales, and suddenly all the practiced therapy-voice is gone. Just a man with nothing left to spin this story in his favour.
“I’m not happy,” he says, flat. “I haven’t been happy for a long time.”
There’s a silence and I can physically feel my heart break.
“I forgave you once,” I say, choking back either tears or rage, I am too far gone to know which I am feeling. “That was supposed to mean something. We built something from it that took years. And you just threw it away? Again? For what?! Is this woman really worth the cost of us? Of your family?”
He closes his eyes briefly before he opens them again. And when he does, the resolve in his eyes makes me almost take a step back. It’s as if he doesn’t care what I think about this.
“I know,” he says. “I know. But you… you made it work. You made us work. You’re the only reason any of this lasted, and I’m grateful, I am, but I don’t know how to be this person anymore. It wasn’t even about her. Just me.”
I want to hit him. I want to shake him. Instead, I just stand there, the panties dangling from my hand like a flag of surrender.
He keeps talking, and this time he doesn’t bother with soft words.
“I don’t want another kid,” he says, and the way he says it is so matter of fact it almost doesn’t register with the buzzing that seems to have started in my ears.
“I didn’t want to keep pretending. You wanted it, so I said okay.
Because I want you to be happy. But it’s not enough.
I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to say. ”
I put the panties down on the dryer. I straighten them out, smoothing the lace with one hand, and I look at him. Feeling the urge to just curl up at the words he is spewing at me. As if it’s my fault his dick went walk-a-bout.
“So you cheated because I wanted a second child?”
He shakes his head. “No. That’s not… I cheated because I’m an asshole. Because I’m weak. Pick whichever answer makes this easier for you to understand.”
None of it will. Those aren’t answers at all. We stand there, not looking at each other, looking at the red fabric between us. Ethan is many things, but right now, coward is the only word that I can think of to describe him.
He says, “I’ll pack a bag. I’ll stay at a hotel for a few days. You can tell Leo whatever you want.”