28. Maren
— ? —
Maren
The rocket chicken nuggets are shaped wrong.
I’m standing in the frozen foods aisle at Stop & Shop, staring at a bag that promises ROCKET-SHAPED FUN!
but the rocket looks more like a lumpy potato with fins, and I know, I know, that Rowan will notice.
He notices everything now. Last week he spent twenty minutes explaining why the rocket on his new pajamas had the wrong number of fins.
My phone vibrates in my pocket.
Rhodes: Running 10 min late. Traffic on Storrow.
I text back without thinking: The nuggets are wrong. Getting the other brand.
The three dots surface, then die.
Rhodes: The blue bag ones? He likes those.
I stare at the message for longer than I should.
Rhodes knows which brand of rocket chicken nuggets our son prefers.
Rhodes knows that Rowan’s favorite cup is the green one with the frog on the handle, that he needs Mr. Zorp tucked under his left arm specifically, that the nightlight has to be the moon one because the star one is “too pointy.”
Rhodes knows all of this because he’s been here.
Every day for the past three weeks. Sometimes twice a day.
He shows up for breakfast when he can, always for dinner and bedtime.
He sits on the floor and builds block towers that Rowan immediately destroys, reads Aliens Love Underpants in voices that make Rowan laugh so hard he hiccups, washes dishes without being asked and leaves his laptop bag by my door because it’s easier than carrying it back and forth.
There are his work papers sitting on my kitchen counter right now, next to a half-finished crayon drawing of what Rowan insists is a rocket but looks more like an angry carrot.
I grab the blue bag of nuggets and head for checkout.
We get home a little after five. I’ve barely set the grocery bags down when Rowan spots him through the front window.
“Mommy! Rhodes is here!”
Rowan barrels past me the second I open the door, launching himself at Rhodes’s legs with the full-body commitment only toddlers possess. Rhodes catches him like he’s been doing it for years instead of weeks, swinging him up onto his hip with an ease that makes something twist in my chest.
“Hey, buddy. I heard we’re having rockets for dinner.”
“Rocket nuggets!” Rowan holds up three fingers. “I’m gonna eat three rockets.”
“Three? That’s a lot of rockets.”
“I’m very hungry.”
Rhodes catches my eye over Rowan’s head, and the corner of his mouth twitches. It’s such a small thing, that shared look, that silent acknowledgment of our son’s dramatic declaration, but it feels like a knife sliding between my ribs.
This is what it could have been, I think. Four years ago, if everything had been different. If he’d been here. If I hadn’t left.
I turn away and head for the kitchen. “Dinner in twenty minutes. Rowan, go wash your hands.”
“Rhodes, come see my new space book!”
“Hands first,” I call out. “Then book.”
“But-”
“Rowan.”
He sighs like I’ve asked him to climb Everest and slides down from Rhodes’s hip. “Come on, Rhodes. We have to wash hands.”
I watch them disappear down the hallway, Rowan’s small hand wrapped around two of Rhodes’s fingers, tugging him toward the bathroom.
The water turns on. I hear Rhodes ask about the new book, something about the rings of Saturn, which Rowan has very strong opinions about, and Rowan launches into an explanation that’s fifty percent facts and fifty percent imagination.
I put the nuggets in the oven and set the timer.
My apartment is small. Two bedrooms, one bathroom, a kitchen that opens into a living room barely big enough for a couch and Rowan’s play corner.
I chose it because it was mine. Because every piece of furniture, every picture on the wall, every chipped mug in the cabinet was something I picked out for myself, by myself.
Now Rhodes’s jacket is hanging on the hook by the door. His laptop bag sits next to my bookshelf. There’s a pack of his preferred sparkling water in my fridge because I bought it without thinking last time I was at the store.
God, I hate it.
I hate how easily he fits into the spaces I carved out in his absence.
I hate that Rowan asked this morning if Rhodes was coming over, and I said “Yes” without hesitating, and Rowan just nodded like that was expected. Normal. Obvious.
Worst of all, I’ve started listening for his knock.
Dinner is loud. Rowan counts his nuggets (four, not three, because he’s “extra hungry”), debates the merits of ketchup versus honey mustard, and explains to Rhodes that the moon isn’t actually made of cheese, it’s made of rocks.
“Did you know the sun is a star?” Rowan asks, brandishing a nugget.
“I didn’t know that.”
“They did. My book says.”
“That’s pretty cool.”
“Mommy, did you know?”
“You told me yesterday,” I remind him. “And the day before that.”
Rowan considers this. “Well, it’s very important.”
Rhodes hides a smile behind his water glass.
After dinner, it’s bath time, then pajamas, then the nightly negotiation over how many books we’re reading. Rowan tries for four. I counter with two. We settle on three, which was his goal all along, he’s figured out how negotiation works, which is either impressive or terrifying.
Rhodes reads the first one. I read the second. Rowan requests that Rhodes read the third, and I pretend not to notice the small, sharp sting of it.
By seven forty-five, Rowan is asleep, Mr. Zorp tucked under his left arm, the moon nightlight glowing soft against his ceiling.
Rhodes lingers in the doorway. I linger behind him. We both watch our son’s chest rise and fall.
He’s close enough that I feel the heat coming off him, close enough that when he whispers I end up watching his mouth shape the words.
I’ve been doing that all night, cataloging him.
The way his shirt pulls across his shoulders when he bends over the bed.
The scratch in his voice when he reads the space book in a villain’s growl and Rowan shrieks with joy.
I hate that I notice. I notice anyway.
“He’s out,” Rhodes whispers.
“Finally.”
We back out slowly, pulling the door almost-closed behind us. The apartment feels suddenly too quiet, too still.
“I should-” Rhodes starts.
“I’ll clean up the kitchen,” I say at the same time.
We both stop.
“Let me help,” he says.
I should say no. I should tell him I’ve got it, that he can head out, that I’ll see him tomorrow. That’s what I’ve done every other night, found reasons to shuffle him out the door before the quiet stretches too long.
But tonight, I’m tired. And the kitchen is a mess. And the thought of washing dishes alone while I listen to the silence feels exhausting.
“Fine,” I say. “You dry.”
We work in silence for a while. I wash. He dries. The clink of dishes, the rush of water, the soft thud of plates being stacked in the cabinet. It’s rhythmic. Almost meditative.
Outside, the storm that’s been threatening all evening finally breaks. Rain comes down in fistfuls against the kitchen window. The old building creaks around us, and the lights dip, a brown flicker, then steady.
“He’s starting to trust me,” Rhodes says after a few minutes.
I scrub at a spot of dried ketchup. “Yeah.”
“That terrifies me.”
I glance over. His back is to me, shoulders tight under his henley, and I can’t see his face. But his voice has that raw quality it only gets when he’s not performing. When he’s saying something he’d rather swallow.
“Why?”
“Because I know how much damage I can do.” He sets a cup in the cabinet. “To someone who trusts me.”
The ketchup spot won’t come off. I scrub harder. “That’s dramatic.”
“Is it?”
I don’t answer. The water runs too hot over my hands, almost scalding, but I don’t adjust it.
“Maren.”
“I heard you.”
“I wasn’t asking if you heard me.”
I turn off the faucet. The silence is sudden, heavy. “What do you want me to say, Rhodes? That you’re a terrible person? That you’re going to destroy our son? I don’t think that. I never thought that.”
“Then what do you think?”
And then the power dies.
The refrigerator shudders into silence. The kitchen drops into black, the only light the storm-gray of the window and a streetlamp down the block still fighting the dark. Neither of us moves. I can hear him breathing a few feet away. I can hear the rain.
“Stay there,” I say. “I have candles somewhere.”
I don’t move to get them. Neither does he.
“You want to know what I think?” Rhodes says into the dark, and his voice is different now, stripped, the way people only get when they can’t see your face.
“I think I lie awake in a hotel across town and picture this kitchen. This one. You at the sink, Rowan’s drawings on the fridge, the light on.
I had all of that once, and I was too busy to sit in it.
It’s not the big disasters that get me. It’s the ordinary nights I threw away because I assumed there’d always be more of them. ”
I don’t say anything. I can’t. The dark makes his honesty unbearable, and he knows it. That’s why he waited for it.
He reaches past me to set the last glass down, and the move brings him flush against my back. His hand finds my hip. Not a grip, just his palm, warm through my shirt, and I feel it everywhere at once.
I turn around. That’s my mistake.
Now we’re chest to chest in the dark, his mouth close enough that I can feel the warmth of his breath, and my body throws the switch before my brain can stop it. Heat drops low in my belly and pools between my thighs. My mouth goes dry. I press my legs together and it doesn’t help.
His thumb moves against my hip, slow, and every nerve I own lines up under it.
“This is a bad idea,” I whisper.
“The worst,” he agrees, and doesn’t move away.
Leaving him has a choreography. I know every step. My body refuses all of them. I’m staring at his mouth instead, at the lower lip I used to bite, wanting it so badly and so specifically it scares me.
My fingers curl into the front of his shirt. I don’t remember deciding to. I pull him down and stop.