15. Friday, June 15, 2012
FRIDAY, JUNE 15, 2012
T hat Friday, after an uncharacteristically busy morning, Julia checked her phone and found a missed call from Kevin. With looming dread, she put the phone to her ear to listen to his voicemail.
“Hey, Julia.” Kevin’s voice sounded hoarse. “Um…. welp… it’s flaring up again. The Crohn’s.”
For much of his life, Kevin had suffered from Crohn's Disease. It came and went in waves, sometimes with months or even years between.
Now, on the voice mail, Kevin chuffed in frustration. “I’m so sorry, Julia. Sorry for doing this to everyone, yet again. You have no idea how broken up I am to miss Father’s Day with them. Please, if you don’t mind, can you have the kids call so I can apologize? That is, if Paige will even speak to me.” Another long pause; then, his voice dull with resignation: “I’ve scheduled an appointment with a new specialist at Stanford.”
That was the end of the message. Her mouth going dry, Julia slowly lowered the phone from her ear.
“Mom?” Paige’s voice, coming unexpectedly from the open doorway of the office, made Julia jump. “Is everything okay?”
Forcing a smile, Julia faced her daughter and deflected. “You know what Aunt Brigid told me? She wants me to bring you back to the studio next Sa turday so she can finish your encaustic lesson. Would you like that?”
Paige clapped her hands and squealed. “Oh my God, I’d love that!”
Thankfully, Paige seemed to have forgotten entirely about Julia’s turn of expression. Instead, Paige spent the rest of the day grinning to herself, no doubt daydreaming of finishing the encaustic painting she had started the week before. Julia dreaded having to crush her spirits later when she told her Kevin wasn’t coming for her tonight.
Plus, she dreaded crushing William’s spirits when she told him not to come over for dinner. He did not need to witness one of Paige’s meltdowns – at least, not yet. At the moment, he was aboard The Albatross , but she knew she needed to let him know as soon as possible. She also knew she would still be too busy to take his call when he got back to the pier at four o’clock. So she dashed off a quick and apologetic text message.
Once they got home, she dutifully gathered her mother, Robert, and Paige in the living room to deliver the news. Paige’s brows dropped, and she slumped in her seat on the couch.
“Oh, that’s too bad, kids,” clucked Julia’s mother. Then, in a too-chipper tone, she quickly added, “But don’t worry, we’ll make it a fun day, anyway!”
Julia put a gentle hand on Paige’s arm. “Your dad wants to apologize to you and your brother on the phone.”
Paige glared. “That’s what you were listening to at lunch, wasn’t it? A message from Dad, flaking on us yet again.”
Gently, Julia said, “Your dad isn’t feeling well, Paige.”
“You really believe that?”
“I do. I know that doesn’t make it easier to miss out on time with him, but–”
“Why didn’t you just tell me, then?”
Julia blinked. “Tell you–”
“When you heard the message at lunch. Why did you wait until now?”
“I wanted you to be able to take some space if you needed to.”
“You think I’m going to get all hysterical again, don’t you?” demanded Paige as, ironically, her voice rose in pitch.
“Hysterical? No. Sad, angry, upset, though? Those would all be valid f–”
“ Shut up! ” Paige screamed. “Just shut the fuck up already with the stupid validating crap!”
And then, of course, Julia’s mother burst out with, “Paige! Watch your language, especially in front of your brother!”
“Mom,” Julia hissed. Beside her, Robert whined and clapped his hands over his ears, then fled downstairs to his bedroom.
Roaring in frustration, Paige sprang to her feet and stormed off to her room, slamming the door behind her.
“Are you just going to let your daughter speak to you that way?” blurted Julia’s mother, her voice shrill. “In front of your five-year-old?”
“Mom,” Julia seethed through clenched teeth. “Not the time or the place.”
“When will it ever be the right time?” her mother demanded. “It doesn’t seem like these expensive therapists and schools are helping much.”
Maybe her mother was right – maybe it was all a huge waste of time and money if Paige still found herself losing her temper at the most inopportune moments.
But no.
Things weren’t flawless, but they were so much better. Besides, as Clio kept reminding her, perfection was never the goal – only progress. Paige hadn’t run away or stolen anything since she started seeing Clio; and Julia and Paige’s communication had vastly improved – today notwithstanding.
What Julia needed, right this second, was to give Paige some space, and to do some repair work with her son.
She found Robert in his usual hiding spot under his bed. The duvet served as a curtain, covering the gap between the bed frame and the floor, so she laid down on the rug and lifted it. She found him curled up with Bodgie – his battered, treasured blanket – and Prince, the stuffed frog Kevin had given him. He sucked his middle and ring fingers like he used to when he was younger.
“Hey, Tadders,” she said gently. “I am so sorry about what happened up there. I know i t felt scary, but I promise, you’re safe, and so is everyone else.”
After a minute to think about it, Robert popped his fingers out of his mouth and crawled out from under the bed. Julia sat up, and Robert climbed into her lap. Julia kissed the top of his head and huffed his unique scent – a mixture of watermelon-scented shampoo, sunshine, and dirt. He wrapped his arms around her neck.
“Paige was mad,” he observed simply.
“She sure was,” Julia agreed, rubbing his back. “We all get mad sometimes, and that’s okay; but it’s not okay for us to yell at each other. The thing is, when we make mistakes like that, we usually figure it out later, after we calm down. So, I’m giving Paige some time to calm down, and then I’ll talk to her.”
“Well... I guess Mr. Chen says everybody makes mistakes.”
Mr. Chen was Robert’s preschool teacher. “Mr. Chen is very wise.”
“Like today – I made a big mistake.”
“You did? What did you do?”
“I ate a bug.”
Julia quirked an eyebrow at him. “You what?”
“I was picking cherry tomatoes with Grandma, and I put one in my mouth when she wasn’t looking, and it had a bug in it, and it tasted like poop and throw-up.”
“Ew!” laughed Julia. “Poop and throw up?”
He nodded soberly. “Mixed together.”
“Okay, but how do you know what poop tastes like?”
“’Cause one time I scratched my butt, and–”
“Okay, never mind! Just don’t do that again, okay?”
“The poop, or the bug?”
“Either. And for goodness’ sake,” she added, tickling his ribs until he squealed, “don’t scratch your butt and put your fingers in your mouth! Or at least, wash your hands first. That’s what you call learning from your mistakes.”
“Yeah; and Grandma told me not to eat tomatoes without letting her look at them first.”
“Wow. Grandma might even be wiser than Mr. Chen.” Julia pulled him in for another hug. After another minute, Robert drew back and looked her in the eye.
“Mommy, why doesn’t Daddy just take some medicine?”
A tiny cracked formed in Julia’s heart, but Robert giggled as she lightly tickled him again. He absolutely loved being tickled. “Working on it, Tadpole. Sometimes it takes a while to find the right medicine.”
“Why?”
“Would you believe people have been learning about bodies for thousands of years, and we still don’t know exactly how they work?”
“Thousands of years?” He scratched his face. “That’s longer than you’ve been alive, right?”
“Tadders, that’s even longer than Grandma and Grandpa have been alive. But don’t worry – Daddy’s doctors are working hard to find the right medicine.” She patted his back. “Hey, sweetie, do you want to watch a show while I talk to Paige?”
He gave a whoop of glee and scrambled to his feet, and she set him up in front of the Octonauts. Then she trudged upstairs, her dread building by the moment. From the sound of it, her mother was banging around the kitchen, making dinner. Julia wasn’t ready to face her yet, annoyed as she still was. Instead, she hurried down the hallway, hesitating at the door to the bedroom she shared with Paige. Even from the other side of the door, Julia could hear tinny sounds blasting from Paige’s earbuds.
Drawing a few slow breaths, she knocked loudly.
“Come in.”
When Julia opened the door, Paige paused her iPod and removed her earbuds.Sitting on her bed, she looked calm enough.
“Are you ready to talk?” ventured Julia. “Or would you like more time?”
Paige sniffed, setting her lap desk aside, along with her angry anime sketches. “Now is fine.”
Julia went to her own bed and lowered herself on the edge. “Do you want to say anything first?”
“Nope.”
“Okay,” Julia said slowly, remembering to breathe. She hated this feeling of walking on eggshells. “I’m sorry. ”
Paige pulled a thread from her blanket and wrapped it around the little fuzzball she had been working on for months. The fuzzballs were like her version of a worry stone, or a fidget toy. “What for?”
“Everything. For what happened just now in the living room. For your dad getting sick again. I know how hard you worked on those neckties and how much you were looking forward to giving them–”
“It’s fine,” Paige interrupted flatly.
Julia didn’t try to say anything else just yet – she just stayed present with her daughter for a minute or two. Eventually, she asked, “Would it be okay if I gave you a hug?”
“No,” Paige said immediately.
The old familiar helplessness crushed Julia under its weight. She took several more deep breaths, and made herself vulnerable.
“Sometimes, when I feel like I can’t help you, I get scared.” At this, Paige briefly glanced up, but her expression was an enigma. Julia allowed her confession to hover between them for a few seconds. “I have to remind myself to sit with that fear, and not run straight into problem-solving. To admit I’m afraid I’m a bad mom because I can’t fix everything for you.”
Paige gave a slight eye roll. “You’re not a bad mom,” she droned, as if reciting a well-rehearsed mantra.
“Oh, I know,” Julia quipped, and felt her shoulders relax a bit when Paige rewarded her with a begrudging laugh. “It’s just hard to remember it’s not always my job to fix things. I just want you to know I’m always here for you.”
“I know,” Paige said, this time more quietly and with more sincerity. She pulled another thread from her blanket and wrapped it around her rapidly-growing fuzzball.
After a minute, Julia tried again. “Would it be okay if I talk about your dad for a second?”
Paige heaved a world-weary sigh, but consented.
“Remember how Clio taught us that two seemingly contradictory things can be true at the same time?”
Paige grunted.
“I know you’re angry with your dad, and that’s valid. At the same time, I really do believe it breaks his heart when he can't have his time with you and your brother.” Paige scoffed, but Julia doubled down. “I believe him when he says he’s doing everything he can to get better.”
“Like what?” Paige snapped.
“He made an appointment with a new doctor, for one thing. A specialist at Stanford he’s never seen.”
That silenced Paige for the moment, and she went back to weaving threads into her fuzzball.
“When you’re ready,” Julia ventured, “and you’re open to talking on the phone, I think he’d like to tell you himself.”
“Okay, but I’m not ready.”
“And that’s perfectly fine.”
Paige stared down at her frayed blanket, on its very last leg.
“If you put that thing over your head,” Julia suggested, “you’ll look like a swamp monster, draped in algae, rising from the primordial ooze.”
Paige grinned, and to Julia’s delight, she draped the blanket over her head. With her eyes peeking through its gaping holes, she moaned and curled her fingers and clawed at the air.
Playful Paige made increasingly rare appearances, and Julia was so there for each and every one.
After leaving Paige’s room, Julia reluctantly wandered back to the living room. Thankfully, her mother must have still been in the kitchen, because the living room was empty. So she ventured back downstairs to the den, where Robert’s eyes were still glued to the Octonauts.
With a pang of guilt, Julia decided to just let him watch TV. When Julia was feeling like a failure as a mom, as she did right now, she usually found it soothing to gaze at the aquarium or get a little sewing done. But neither of those were getting the job done.
It had always been Kevin’s abandonment – real or perceived – that had triggered Paige’s downward spirals. She had been doing so much better lately. She hadn’t tried to run away in five months. And now here they were, rebooting the whole cycle, all over again.
But this time, Julia didn’t have to cope alone.
Locking herself in the bathroom, she retrieved her phone from the pocket of her joggers and tapped William’s name in her Favorites.
“Hey, gorgeous.” His face and gentle baritone over FaceTime were a salve to her spirits.
“Hi, sweetheart.” From his bare shoulders, she could tell he was shirtless. Droplets of water clung to his hair and his collarbones. She quirked an eyebrow. “Um, what are you up to?”
He chuckled. “I just got out of the shower, and now I’m getting ready to grab some dinner.”
“I’m so sorry,” she groaned. “You could have been having dinner with us right now.”
“It’s okay,” he murmured. “There will be other dinners.”
She beamed. “God, you’re a sight for sore eyes.”
His own eyes and smile were as wide as hers as he settled onto his couch. “So are you.”
She lifted an eyebrow and craned her neck forward, as if that would somehow help her see further down the front of him. “Are you wearing anything at all there?”
He tilted the phone down, momentarily revealing a lovely broad chest that tapered down to a narrower waist, followed by loose athletic shorts riding a bit low on his hips.
Her salivary glands twinged, as only William could do to her. “You seriously look good enough to eat. Luckily, now I’m allowed to.”
Lifting his phone camera back to his face, he growled a little at her innuendo. “Yes please.”
She shook her head to clear it. “I would love to relive the glory days of our youth and indulge in some hot phone sex right now.”
His smile widened. “The new, improved version, complete with visuals.”
“But I’d rather save all this pent-up frustration for when we’re in person.”
With a low growl, he warned, “I’ll take you pent up or any way I can.”
She wiped a hand down her face. “So! How was your day?”
His knowing laughter shimmered through her body. “Not as eventful as yours, apparently.”
The reminder deflated her spirits, dumping her right back onto Planet Earth. “I should have seen it coming.”
He sat up a little, his smile straightening. “What do you mean?”
She explained Kevin’s pattern of falling ill at the worst possible times and the effect it had on the kids, especially Paige. “I feel so powerless to help her. I can barely contain my own anger. I mean, Kevin has a chronic autoimmune disease that causes him severe pain, and he has no control over when it decides to flare up. So why can’t I find it in my heart to feel more compassion?”
Gently, he said, “Because you’re a mother, and those kids are your living heartbeat. Anything that hurts them launches you into mama bear mode.”
“Okay, my brain knows this; so why does my gut tell me I’m a horrible, selfish woman?”
He reeled back in surprise. “How does feeling protective of your kids make you a horrible, selfish woman?”
“Because I can’t seem to get a better grip on my anger toward Kevin, not even for the sake of my kids’ mental health.”
“Julie, as much as you’d like to be superhuman, and often seem to pull it off, the truth is you’re only human after all. Come roll around in the muck with the rest of us mortals.”
“Roll around in the muck, huh?” She could only grin across the ether at this man, adoration cinching tighter around her heart. Making it hard to breathe, in the best possible way. “Any time, any place.”
And then, as if that weren’t enough, his eyes and his tone both softened. “Julie, I told you six years ago – I’ll never interfere in Paige’s relationship with her dad; but I’ll love and care for her as if she were my own. I already do. You’ll never be alone in this ever again.”
She hoped the heat of her own gaze came through over FaceTime, branding him. Claiming him. She wanted to slurp those little droplets from the divots in his collarbones. “And after I get my hands on you, you’ll never walk again.”
“Hmm... I accept those terms.”
They sniggered like teenagers for a minute, then fell back to just staring, drinking each other in.
Julia sighed. “I love you, Will.”
His gaze softened as he touched his fingertips to his lips, then briefly to his phone camera. “I love you, too, sweetheart.”