Chapter 10
JENNA
He came home a little after nine and stood in the kitchen doorway in his coat with the keys still in his hand.
"It's the moth," he said.
I had the corn dish half made, a bag of frozen corn open on the counter, and I kept my hands down in it, because I didn't know what I'd do with them if I took them out.
"You told her."
"I told her."
"What did she say?"
"She said she spent three hundred and forty dollars."
"And?"
"I said that was her choice."
I stopped moving.
Eight years I'd waited to hear somebody say a version of that sentence out loud. I'd stopped expecting it somewhere around year four. Here it was on a Wednesday morning before nine thirty, out of a man in a work coat.
"You said that."
"I said that."
"Word for word?"
"Word for word. And then I said some other stuff, about your six weeks." He set the keys down on the counter, then moved them again, over by the fruit bowl, where they don't go. "She said it's your hobby. I said it's your time."
I took my hands out of the corn and dried them on the towel, slowly. I could feel him watching me, waiting for something.
"Thank you," I said.
"Okay."
"I mean it. That was hard, you did it, and I know exactly how hard it was."
"But," he said.
"But why did it take eight years?"
He leaned against the doorframe and looked at the floor a while.
"I've been trying to answer that since Saturday."
"Try out loud."
"Because it was easier."
"Because what was easier?"
"Because Mom cries. Mom cries, and she does the thing with her chin, and then she calls Karen and tells Karen a version where she's the one who got hurt, and then Karen calls me. That's a whole thing. It goes on two weeks. Every time."
"And me?"
He didn't answer.
"Say it. Come on. You've got it, I can see you have it."
"You don't do any of that," he said.
"No."
"You say it's fine. You say Grandma's is beautiful.
You put the thing in the bin, you make dinner, and by Sunday you're normal.
" He was looking at me now. "There's no cost. There's never been a cost, Jen, that's the honest answer.
Mom's costs two weeks and you cost nothing, so every year I paid the cheaper one. "
The furnace kicked on under the floor. That's what I remember — the furnace kicking on, and me standing there with a bag of corn going soft on the counter.
I'd known it. Sideways, out of the corner of things, for years, the way you know something you've decided not to turn and look at. Hearing him say it in my own kitchen on a Wednesday morning was better. It wasn't gentler.
"Say that again."
"I don't want to say it again."
"Say it again anyway."
"You were easier," Eric said.
"Yeah."
"I'm not proud of it."
"I don't need you to be proud of it. I need you to know it's what happened."
He nodded. The corn had gone to water in the bag, so I tipped it into the colander to drain and stood there a second with both hands on the edge of the sink.
He picked the empty bag up off the counter, folded it in half, put it in the trash.
Four seconds of work, and he did it because he needed a job.
"Here's the part I want you to actually get," I said, and my voice did something I hadn't planned, went thin in the middle, so I stopped and started again.
"Every year I made it easy. On purpose. I swallowed it in front of Lucy because I wasn't going to have a nine-year-old carrying a grudge against her grandmother on Halloween.
That was a choice. That was me doing work. "
"I know."
"And every year, the way you thanked me for doing that work was to give me the loss again."
His jaw moved.
"You kept handing me the bill," I said, "because I was the only one who'd pay it without a scene."
He didn't say anything for a second. Then he crossed the kitchen and didn't touch me, which was the right call, because I'd have come apart.
"Yeah," he said.
"That's it. That's the whole thing."
"How mad are you?"
"I don't know yet. I've been mad since Saturday and I've got a corn dish due at five."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the honest one." I turned around and leaned back against the counter so I could see him.
"Here's what I've got. I'm not going to be over this by tonight.
I'm going to stand in your mother's kitchen at seven o'clock and feel every one of the last eight years, and I'm going to be pleasant, because it's a party and there's a kid there. "
"Okay."
"And I don't want you checking my face all night."
"I wasn't going to — "
"You were absolutely going to. You'll look at me every twenty minutes to see if I'm all right, and if I'm not smiling you'll decide the whole thing failed." I shook my head. "Don't. I get to be however I am tonight, and it isn't a report card on you."
He didn't like it, but he took it.
"What would tell you it's real?" he said.
"What?"
"Not tonight. In general. What would have to happen for you to believe it's actually different."
Nobody had ever asked me that, and standing there with the towel in my hands I found I had nothing ready.
"I don't know."
He waited.
"That's the truth." I hung the towel on the bar. "Ask me again the next time it costs you something."
I watched him want a number, a date, something he could put on a list and cross off. Then I watched him decide not to ask for one.
"Okay," he said.
"One more thing and then I'm done."
"Go."
"Tonight is not a test of Lucy. If she gets tired at eight and wants out of that harness, she gets out of it. If she asks about the dress, nobody makes a face."
"Agreed."
"I mean it. I don't want one single thing about tonight to be about proving I was right, because then she's carrying it again, and the whole point was that she doesn't."
"Jen." He waited until I looked at him. "Agreed."
"Okay."
"Five," he said. "She said five, not five thirty. Oven's full at five thirty."
"Of course she did."
Then I laughed, and it came out wrong, half a sob, and I put my hand over my mouth. Eric put his hand on the back of my neck the way he does, and we stood there like that with the corn thawing.
"Is she going to come tonight?" I said after a while. "Or is this the year she doesn't."
"She'll be there. It's her house."
"Right."
"She'll be there, and she'll be a hundred percent pleasant to you, and she won't ask you one question about yourself all night."
"That's what I figured."
"You want me to say something about that?"
"God, no. Let her have the party. She's earned the party."
"I'm not fixed," he said.
"No."
"I'm going to want to fix it with her tonight. I can already feel it. She'll be cool with me, and I'm going to want to go make it okay."
"Probably."
"So tell me if I start."
"I'm not going to be your supervisor, Eric."
"That's not — " He stopped. "No. You're right. That's another job for you."
"Yes it is."
"Okay." He took his hand back and straightened up. "Then it's mine."
"It's yours."
We told Lucy together at eleven, which was the right way to do it, and which took under a minute. She was on the couch in her school clothes with her feet up on the arm, because it was a teacher in-service day and she'd been horizontal since eight.
"Hey," Eric said. "Costume's decided."
She sat up so fast the blanket went on the floor. "Which one?"
"The moth. You're wearing the moth tonight."
She looked at him, then at me, then back at him. "To Grandma's?"
"To Grandma's."
"Does Grandma know?"
"I told her this morning."
"Was she — " She stopped herself, which is a new thing she's started doing this year and which I don't love watching. "Is she mad?"
"She's a little annoyed with me," Eric said. "That's between me and her. It's got nothing to do with you, and I don't want you doing anything about it — not tonight, not at the door, not at all. You go in there and you hug her and you eat her food."
"Okay."
"Say it back."
"It's between you and her." She pulled her knees up. "Am I supposed to say something about the dress?"
"You can say whatever you want about the dress. You love the dress. That's fine."
Then my daughter lay back down on the couch, pulled the blanket over her head, and said, from underneath it, "Oh my God, thank God."
That was the whole reaction. Three days of diagrams on a laundry step, and she went under a blanket like somebody had finally turned off a noise. Eric heard it too. I watched his jaw go.
"Can the face paint be at three?" she said from under there. "It takes a while, and I don't want it to be a thing at four."
"Three's good."
"Can Dad do the wings in the truck? In the car they bend."
"Dad's doing the wings in the truck," Eric said.
"Is there anything to eat."
"There is an entire house of food, and you are lying under a blanket."
"That's a no," Lucy said, from under it.
"Get up."
"In a minute."
"Lucy."
"I'm processing," she said.
"What do you need today?" Eric asked me.
I actually thought about it, because he'd asked a real question, and if I said nothing out of habit I'd deserve whatever came next.
"I need somebody who isn't me to carry those wings into your mother's house. Through the door, past everybody, in front of her. I'm not doing that walk."
"Done."
"And I need you standing where I can see you when Lucy comes in. Not in the garage — in the room. So if your mother has something to say about the dress, there's a person to say it to who isn't me."
"Done," he said. "Both."
"That's what I need."
"Then that's what happens."
He wrote blanket on the back of his hand with a pen off the counter, which is a thing he does instead of trusting his phone, and went out to the garage. I stood at the counter with a bag of corn that had gone completely soft, which meant starting over, which is exactly what I did.
I made that corn dish twice on Halloween. Nobody ever knew.