Chapter 36
LEO
SUNDAY I’M BACK AT LEXINGTON Avenue to pick up Sadie and Otto.
We thought I might take them to the science museum, but we thought wrong.
When I arrive, Sadie begs to go to “the park with the roundy-round.” She means Klyde Warren.
Last time we were there, she almost made herself sick on the merry-go-round, and she loved every minute of it.
April shrugs from across the room. We’ve not said hello. She’s in a blue cotton dress, and I wonder what her plans are while the kids are away. She thumbs something sticky from Otto’s chin and says, “They have those water features to stay cool. Up to you.”
I look down at Sadie. “Okay, but you can’t stay on the roundy-round the whole time.”
She jumps up and down, raring to go.
They already have shoes on, so I take Otto’s bag from April and confirm, “I’ll bring them back mid-afternoon.”
“Otto might nap in the car.”
Sadie stops cheering. “You’re not coming?”
April looks down and says gently, “I’m not.”
“Why?”
“I just have things to get done around here.”
“What things?”
April glances at me furtively as she says, “It will be fun to have special time with Dad.”
But Sadie digs in. “I want us all to go.”
Here’s the thing about kids: they’ll break your heart. They’re somehow dictators and powerless at the very same time.
April says over Sadie’s head. “I don’t want to take your time with them.”
This is how it will be. We haven’t even started a settlement, but time is one more thing to be divided, and we can’t put off explaining this to our daughter forever.
Sadie is standing between us, one hand in her mother’s and the other in mine. So I find myself looking at April and saying, “If you wanted to join?”
She nods, and Sadie resumes her cheering.
At the park, I trail Otto around, grateful that April can monitor Sadie on the merry-go-round. By the time we finally go to the food trucks for lunch, I’m looking forward to a few minutes to sit.
We take our food to a bistro table beneath the tunnel of shade trees.
In the distance, there’s a sound check happening.
On the synthetic grass, college kids toss a Frisbee.
And beside us, a group of silver-haired women discuss the new exhibit at the art museum across the street.
Our kids cram their faces with food, quiet in the warm breeze.
April swallows a bite of her street taco and says, “So, Josie got her results.”
“Yeah, she texted me. Good news.”
“Oh.” April refolds the end of her taco. “Yeah.”
After a few more bites, I ask, “Have you thought about getting tested?”
Frowning, April eyes the kids. “ ’Course I’ve thought about it.”
“And?”
“And it’s a personal decision I haven’t made yet.”
Sadie is watching us, and she’s at that age where she understands more than we know. So I phrase it carefully. “It’s not entirely a personal decision. It impacts two other people.”
April stops chewing her bite, then starts again slowly. “Two people who already exist.”
It’s another form of Cameron’s question: What would it change?
Then Otto makes a break for it, darting toward the grass.
April hops up. “I’ll go.”
As she does, I focus on Sadie. “Good quesadilla?”
She takes a big bite and grins. Then she runs after her mom and brother.
In the quiet of the shade trees, one of the silver-haired women pauses by our table and leans toward me. “You have a beautiful family.”
I follow her gaze to them. April is scooping Otto up as he obliviously bulldozes through the game of Frisbee. They all laugh, even the guys with the Frisbee. April looks over at me and shrugs, smiling in the midday light.
I throw away our trash and jog to catch up with them, determined to give our kids some memories that are good enough to break through if their minds should one day fade, dios libre.
For the rest of the afternoon, we splash through the water feature, take turns on the roundy-round, and play in the sun until our noses turn pink.
Back at my trailer in the evening, I slip my shoes off and unbutton my shirt, exhausted. I ignore my dirty dishes and fall onto the couch with a book.
Thirty minutes later, there’s a knock at the door.
I open it to find April, cheeks flushed from the heat. She must have driven here with the windows down. She loves doing that on a summer night.
She holds out my phone. “This somehow got into Otto’s bag.”
“Oh!” I take it. “Thanks.”
She scans the trailer.
I follow her gaze. “Want to come in?”
She bites her bottom lip like she does when she can’t decide. “For a minute,” she says.
I step to the side, clicking the wonky door latch behind her. “Here, I’ll give you the grand tour.” I gesture to my left. “The sitting room.” I gesture to my right. “Sleeping quarters.” I gesture behind me. “Kitchen.” I shrug. “And that shall conclude our tour.”
She smiles, on the edge of a laugh. It’s hard to be with her after a bad day, but it’s much harder to be with her after a good day.
“You want some water? Horchata?”
“You made horchata?”
I hesitate. “I have a lot of time in the evenings.”
“Well, I’ll have some of that, no question.”
I pour two glasses, a pinch of cinnamon on top, and we take them to the futon. April takes a sip that leaves a faint residue above her mouth, and she says, “I always thought we should make horchata more often. I know you loved Izzy’s.”
I run a thumb over my own lip, uncertain how I feel about going down a trail of should-haves right now. She tucks a leg beneath her, angling toward me. “Hey, how’s that girl, Jasmine?”
Ah. I forgot I told the Russos about Jasmine.
One of my recent students. She’s in her third trimester, and some of us teachers have been trying to get her stocked with baby supplies.
It can mean a lot when someone keeps up with a kid like her over the summer.
All I can see when I look at her is my mother—what a child she was when she had me at seventeen.
Jasmine’s baby will be here soon, and she doesn’t have a driver’s license, a car seat, or a crib.
She doesn’t have a diploma or her final set of molars.
I set my horchata down, stretch an arm across the back of the couch, and prop a socked foot on the coffee table. “She’s not great,” I say. “I hope they let her keep the baby, but she’ll have to agree to live with her parents, and I’m not sure she’ll do that.”
April takes another sip. Second nature, I reach to thumb her lip clean and she closes her eyes, pained.
I pull away fast and recite the facts to myself: she doesn’t want you.
She cheated. I down the rest of my horchata like a shot as April stands and carries her glass to the sink. “That was delicious, thanks.”
I clear my throat. “Thanks for bringing my phone all the way out here.”
She struggles with the front door, so I reach over her to unstick it, and then I watch her disappear into the night.
Wrangling the door shut, I sigh. There are so many people in the world, is what I tell myself.
I’ve never been more aware of this than I am now that I’ve scrolled through dozens of Ricos and Anas, none of whom are my Rico or Ana.
It was April for a time, but it could have been anyone.
It could still be anyone. Kim told me just last week that she’ll be here after the divorce is finalized, and that she can be patient.
She said it with a syrupy gaze. Kim is gorgeous and good—maybe better than April.
But at the end of the day, the allure of novelty doesn’t compare to the power of shared history.
The time Sadie found a dead mockingbird and the three of us buried it together, laying it in soil and covering it with wild primrose.
The day we pointed a flashlight at the tightened skin of April’s lower belly to get Otto to turn his head down before birth—and it worked.
The night I proposed, sliding a ring onto April’s finger.
Her nose crinkle and hard-earned laugh. Her devotion to reading despite its recalcitrance.
The care she has for her students and family.
The heat of her inner turmoil, her horchata-damp lip.
I keep waiting for the relief of divorce to set in, that anticipation of getting my life back. But it hasn’t happened for me. I mostly just…miss her. I miss days like today, and I miss the life we had together, and I miss being able to trust her.
Suddenly I am reading The Little Prince again, huddled in our hall during a windstorm. It is the time you have wasted for your rose…
What then is a jilted gardener to do with the rose that outgrew him?
Three minutes later, another knock, ardent.
I open it, my heart quickened by the memories of our shared life.
The flush of April’s cheeks is deeper. “Tell me why you gave up on us.”
My body tightens. Her question turns my memories on their heels, and pain rushes to fill the holes of love. “You know why.”
I envision her face with Cody, her eyes in slits of pleasure, that intimate expression which should have been reserved for me.
I hear the long silence after that harrowing scene, the wait for a resolve that could never come.
Because the only satisfying resolve would be to undo it, and that’s not possible.
She holds up a hand and shakes her head, glaring at me. “I mean before him.”
“What?”
“Oh, please. You were gone before you left.”
I pluck at rising emotions like guitar strings: confusion, anger, hurt. “Don’t rewrite history. You wanted me out.”
“I never said that.”
“Sometimes you don’t have to say things.”
“Sometimes you do!”
“What is it you want to say, then?”
She throws up her hands. “That I’m mad at you! It feels like you’re the only one of us who’s allowed to be hurt, like we’re not allowed to remember anything you did wrong.”
“Don’t act like it’s the same.”
“I’m not! But that’s exactly what I mean—you’re not taking any responsibility.”
“So now I’m responsible for your affair?”
She huffs and turns away, shaking the two-by-four porch of the trailer as she marches down one, two, three shallow steps. Over her shoulder, she says, “Forget it.” Says, “I’m an idiot.”
I watch her storm off, blue dress billowing, and I slam the door shut.
You were gone before you left. I was pushed away; what else could I have done?
I pace to the shower, drop my clothes in a heap, and run the water punishingly hot.
I want to scorch off the pain. In a choice between two hells, I’d rather be apart than unwanted.
I splash scalding water onto my face and clench my jaw.
She gave up on us. I build my case against her, corroborating my own memory.
Then in one swift motion, I shut the shower off, along with my burning stream of questions.