Chapter 54
APRIL
IT’S HARD TO EXPLAIN WHAT it is about a sibling that can make someone think, We’re polar opposites, but she gets me.
My phone screen is so full of eggplant emojis that I almost regret texting Jo. I type, BUT WE HAVEN’T TALKED THIS MORNING. MAYBE HE’S CHANGING HIS MIND?
An eye-roll emoji and the words, ARE YOU CHANGING YOURS?
No. I’m definitely not. But—
Sadie dashes into the room and jackknifes herself onto my bed. “Otto wants pancakes!”
I squint. “Otto wants them, huh?”
She spreads out like a starfish. “And me too. Please please!”
I laugh. “That’s what I thought.” I get out of bed. “Come help me make them.”
By the time we’ve eaten, cleaned up syrupy messes, loaded plates into the dishwasher, and gotten dressed for a back-to-school haircut, it’s after ten and I still haven’t heard from Leo.
All the long days and nights of his silence come screaming back, leaving me to wonder how much staying power an apology can really have. It’s important, but it’s not magical.
When I still haven’t heard from him after Sadie’s haircut, I text him a picture. WHY IS OUR DAUGHTER A TEENAGER?
He responds immediately. SO BIG.
And then: SORRY FOR BEING MIA THIS MORNING. CAN I brING LUNCH OVER?
SURE.
I set my phone down and then pick it back up. CAN’T WAIT.
Leo arrives with bags of Wendy’s, and we distribute nuggets and fries. We try for the millionth time to get Otto to say “apple juice” instead of “apple Jew.” And then we do what parents so often must—we spend our lunch talking about unicorns, snails, and letters at the top of the coconut tree.
When Otto goes down for his nap and Sadie goes for “quiet time,” we know our window of privacy is short.
So I quickly blurt, “Did you change your mind?”
Leo frowns.
I continue, “Last night meant a lot, but I get if it was the heat of the moment.”
“No,” he says. “I made a choice. I want this even when I don’t want it.”
I smile, that pop of relieved love like a firecracker in my chest again. I imagine emailing my lawyer with the subject line, Never mind. Or maybe: Reconcilable differences.
“But—” Leo says, and we sit down at the table.
He meets my eye. “We need help. This can’t be like before. It can’t.”
“You mean like couples therapy?”
“Something.” He shrugs. “Because we need help with our individual stuff if we want to help us.” He pauses before saying, “It doesn’t seem like Cody was really about Cody, or even about me.”
My cheeks heat with the familiar rush of shame. “What do you mean?”
Leo’s tone is painfully gentle. “You sort of stopped…valuing yourself.”
My head snaps toward him in surprise, like I thought I had him fooled, like that has nothing to do with anything. But he’s right: I wasn’t okay after our babies were born. And I didn’t have a good reason for that, which perpetuated my self-loathing.
I ask, “How does someone even get help with that?”
He traces my arm. “Therapy? Movement? Friends? Rest?” He pauses. “A week at a nude beach?” The levity earns him a laugh.
“Between the babies and isolation, it was a perfect storm, wasn’t it?”
“I don’t know, I think it’s just life.” He takes a breath and adds quietly, “I won’t do this again if there’s another Cody. The only thing harder than divorcing you is trusting you again.”
His words settle on my body. A body that, he’s right, I don’t value. When I think of that day with Cody, I feel removed. But if I imagine walking in on Leo with someone else, I can’t breathe. Sick with regret, I watch a ray of sun stretch through the window and land on him. It lands, even, on me.
“Yeah,” I say. “We do need help.”
He threads his fingers through mine. A long love has seasons of glaring uncertainty, and we haven’t known what to do with those. We mistook the ends of chapters for the end of the story.
“You know,” I say. “Mom thinks therapists aren’t worth their salt.”
“Well, don’t tell her this, but the woman can be wrong.” He considers. “Or maybe she’s right—but shouldn’t we try?”
I nod. Depression and joy can both be uncomfortable, yet we have to allow for them in their turns.
“What about you?” I ask. “You say we need help, but we’re just talking about my issues.”
Leo inhales. “I thought I wasn’t impacted by my childhood, but of course I was. I believed my parents’ abandonment was about me and would happen again.” He clears his throat. “I know it’s small, but I actually saw my dad this morning.”
My mouth falls open. “What? How?”
“I went to Waco.”
“Oh my gosh, what happened?”
“I had questions, so we got breakfast and talked.” Leo looks at the table. “I’m embarrassed to say that I got in my car and cried like a baby afterward.”
This undoes something in me, some kind of brewing storm.
Underneath my seeming apathy is a powerlessness that feels like a black hole.
I could not stop the fire from consuming our house.
I cannot keep my children from flames or divorce or the hundred other terrors to come.
I cannot stop my dad’s brain from shrinking.
And I cannot erase my husband’s childhood abandonment.
I can’t stop him from seeing his father and crying alone in his car.
I shake my head. “I’m so sorry.”
“No, it was good. And it’s good you found him. Sorry I acted like it wasn’t. I always thought my parents just didn’t want me, but there was so much else going on. I wouldn’t have known.”
Leo scoots our lunch trash into a pile, and I add a stray fry.
After a beat, we move to the living room and lie on our backs on the floor. I close one eye. “Think we can make shapes out of the ceiling popcorn?”
He plays along. We see animals and books. A tea kettle. The Eiffel Tower.
“I have a question.” Leo props himself on an elbow, facing me. “Want to write to other former students like we’re writing to Jonathan?”
“Yes,” I tell him. “I do.”
It’s like a new vow not to forget ourselves.
It can be easier to lay a life down than to hold on to it, and losing ourselves was the first step toward losing each other.
I match Leo’s elbow-prop and say, “But first I want to hear about this morning with your dad. What did he say? How do you feel? Tell me everything.”
He slides a hand beneath the hem of my shirt. “I will.” But then he’s kissing the curve of my neck, his fingers on my skin, leaving me to guess whether he’ll travel up or down, because either way—
Otto is suddenly at our feet, and we jump apart. He pops his thumb out of his mouth and asks sleepily, “What you do?”
We laugh, lifting him up with his bedhead curls. What you do is his all-purpose catchphrase. If he drops a banana: what you do. If Sadie bumps into him: what you do. If Grandpa B gives him a shiny new toy: oh, what you do!
Sadie hears the commotion and is upon us with a dive-bomb.
Leo and I smile over their heads. What you do. We don’t know. Where we’ll live. How it will end. How to find a therapist, or if Mom will roll her eyes at that, or if Dad will turn on us when he runs out of memories. If Leo’s family will have any place in his life. We know so little.
But we do know that we can see the shape of a dog in the ceiling popcorn. A ball cap, if we angle left. A refrigerator, or so Sadie claims as she contorts herself. Otto has no clue what we’re pointing at, yet he joins right in, grinning ear to ear.
And in this way, we lie scrunched together on an apartment floor, shifting our perspectives.