30. Charly
— ? —
Charly
Four months back from Italy, and my life has turned into the exact kind of thing I used to roll my eyes at other people for having.
Nothing happens. That’s the best part.
Last night we spent twenty minutes trying to pick a show, couldn’t agree, and put on the same one we’ve already seen four times.
This morning Clarence ate cereal standing over the sink and read me the back of the box out loud like it was the news.
There’s a grocery list on the fridge from two weeks ago that neither of us has done anything about.
He detonates a smoothie about once a week. He’ll load the blender up, hit go, wander out to the porch with his phone, and come back to find it’s repainted the ceiling, going, “I don’t get it, I had the lid on.” He did not have the lid on. He was on the porch on his phone. Same thing every week.
Sundays are slow and quiet. I don’t lie awake anymore waiting for the call that ruins everything, because that call isn’t coming. That part of my life is over.
After what it took to get here, boring is my favorite thing in the world. I’d pick a thousand of these regular, nothing-special mornings with him over anything else.
And underneath all of it, this week, I’ve been sitting on the biggest secret of my life.
Nine days I’ve been holding onto it. Nine days of nearly blurting it out every time he walks in the room and biting my tongue at the last second.
It’s not a bad secret, I should say that.
It’s the best news I’ve ever had. But it’s the kind of thing you only get to tell someone once, and I’m not about to waste it standing at the kitchen sink on a random Tuesday with my hands full of dishes.
So I’ve kept my mouth shut. Not a word, to him or anyone. I’ve been planning it out instead, the whole thing, all the way down to the little gift I’ve got wrapped and hidden in the bottom of my suitcase. I get one shot at this, and after the year we’ve had, I want to get it right.
***
His birthday lands that weekend, and I keep it small on purpose.
Just family for lunch, and then I’m stealing him for two days all to myself, and I won’t tell him where no matter how much he begs.
He’s a planner. He hates not knowing things.
It’s one of my favorite ways to torture him, and he loves me too much to actually be mad about it.
He’s been guessing since breakfast.
“Okay. Is it a boat?”
“It’s not a boat.”
“A motorcycle? You finally caved and you’re buying me a motorcycle.” He follows me around the kitchen while I load the cooler, close enough that he keeps almost stepping on me. “I’ve seen you looking at the one down the street. Don’t lie to my face on my birthday.”
“I have never once looked at a motorcycle. You looked at it, out loud, for ten minutes, and then narrated what you decided my face was doing.” I hand him the cooler so he’ll stop hovering, and he takes it but stays right there in my space. “Guess again, birthday boy.”
“A puppy?”
“Not a puppy.”
“A tattoo? You’re getting me a tattoo. Or getting one yourself, which would be wild, you’d hate it in a week.
” He’s grinning now, fully committed to the bit, trailing me out to the car.
“Skydiving? A hot air balloon? You’re flying me back to Italy, aren’t you.
That’s it. You’re taking me back to Italy. ”
“If I were taking you to Italy I would not have packed a cooler, genius.”
“Unless the cooler’s a decoy.” He points at me like he’s cracked the whole case. “You’re a sneaky woman. I married a criminal mastermind.”
“You married someone who loves you enough to keep her mouth shut for one day. Carry the decoy, mastermind.” He laughs and kisses the side of my head on his way past, and I let him think he’s getting warm, because he is, just not in any way he could ever guess.
If he only knew. I just smile and let him keep guessing.
Lunch is loud in the good way. My dad’s running the grill like he owns it, Rebecca’s parked in a lawn chair giving orders nobody listens to, kids are everywhere. I keep checking the time. I keep checking my bag. I keep going over tonight in my head.
I’m a bit of a wreck about it, honestly. I teared up during the toast and nobody could’ve told you why. I keep catching myself smiling at nothing and dropping it fast before anyone asks what’s up with me. If they think I’m acting weird, they probably just figure it’s because I’m hosting.
At some point I lose track of Clarence in the chaos, and when I find him again, I just stop.
He’s down in the grass with a kid on his shoulders, another one shoving a toy truck in his face, a third yanking his sleeve and yelling for him to look, look, LOOK.
He’s not overwhelmed. He’s not faking patience the way some people do with other people’s children.
He’s just down there in it, completely easy, like there’s nowhere he’d rather be and no place he fits better.
And watching him out there, my chest does a slow, complicated thing. Clarence kneeling to tie a tiny shoe. Clarence on the floor doing voices for a bedtime story. Clarence at some school play in the third row, crying before the kid even has a line, because of course he would.
Somewhere in the last year I stopped wondering whether he wanted kids and started wondering what kind of father he’d be. Standing here, the answer’s so obvious it aches.
“You’re staring,” my dad says, appearing beside me with a loaded plate off the grill.
“I’m allowed. It’s his birthday.”
“You’re not staring at him, though.” He follows my eyes out to the pile of kids climbing all over Clarence. “You’re staring at that.”
“Maybe I just like watching him be good with them.”
“Mm.” He chews, unbothered, not buying it for a second. “You’ve been wound up all afternoon. Checking your watch every five minutes. Crying at the toast.” He says it to his plate, not to me. “A father notices things.”
My heart trips. I should’ve known he’d be the one to clock it. He always was the one who actually paid attention.
I don’t say it out loud. I just lean in close, close enough that nobody else in the yard could catch it, and I tell him the thing I haven’t told another living soul.
His eyebrows go up. He goes quiet for a long second, his whole face doing a slow, careful thing, and then he decides, in a yard full of people, not to make it big.
“Huh,” he says, easy as anything, like I’ve just told him it might rain later. He goes back to his plate. “Good lunch, this. Your husband knows his way around a grill, I’ll give him that.”
“That’s all you’ve got? Huh?”
“I’m shocked, I’m happy, and you deserve every bit of it. That better?” He says it dry, but his eyes have gone bright, and he gives up the act and bumps my shoulder with his, voice dropping low, just for the two of us. “Proud of you, kid. Always have been.”
That lands harder than any speech could. My entire life I’ve been waiting to be enough for this man, and here he is, looking at me like I cleared the bar years ago and just never noticed.
“You’re going to make me cry in the middle of the yard,” I tell him.
“Then we’d match, and your mother would never let either of us hear the end of it.
” He huffs out a laugh and wipes at his eye with the back of his hand.
“Look at us. You really are my kid, you know that? Same leaky faucet for a face.” He clears his throat and steps back, all business again.
“I’ve got a grill to watch. Don’t go telling people I got choked up, I’ve got a reputation to protect. ”
He walks off pretending he isn’t wiping his face, and out in the grass Clarence catches me watching and waves, a four-year-old swinging off his arm, no idea on God’s earth that his whole life is about to tip over.
***
That evening I drive us out to the lake.
The cabin’s small and old and perfect, wood floors and a little dock and the water gone pink out the windows. Clarence walks through it touching everything, calling stuff out to me room by room.
“There’s a canoe. Charly. We have our own canoe.”
“It’s the cabin’s canoe.”
“It’s our canoe for two days, don’t ruin this for me.” He sticks his head out the back door. “Fire pit. We’re making s’mores tonight, I don’t care if it’s forty degrees.” Then, from the bedroom, his voice climbs. “Oh. Oh, now this is a nice bed.”
“I knew you’d find the bed first.”
“It’s a great bed, come look at it.” He leans around the doorframe wiggling his eyebrows at me, and I lob a pillow and get him right in the face, and he just grins wider and lets it drop.
We don’t do anything that matters all afternoon, which is exactly what I wanted. He finds a flat rock down by the water and skips it and loses his whole mind about it.
“Did you see that? Two skips.”
“It sank. It went plunk on the second one, I heard it.”
“That was a skip and then a dive. Olympic scoring. You wouldn’t get it.” He grabs my hand and tucks me into his side, walking slow, knocking his shoulder into mine on purpose every few steps just to bug me.
We end up out on the dock with our feet hanging in the cold water and his arm around me, and he tells me that joke about the duck again, the exact same one from an hour ago, every word identical.
I let him, because he cracks himself up at his own punchline every single time, and I could watch him do that forever.
The sun slips behind the trees and turns the whole lake gold, and he tips my chin up and kisses me slow, then pulls back an inch.
“Best birthday I’ve ever had. I know I keep saying it. It just keeps being true.”
“You’ve said it like five times now.”
“Six, then. Whatever.” He kisses my forehead and stays there a second. “I don’t need much, you know. Got you here, got a lake, there’s cake later. I’m good.”
And every single time he says it, I nearly just blurt the rest out right there. I don’t. The real present’s still zipped in the bottom of my suitcase, and I’ve held it nine days, and he only gets to hear it once.