Chapter 4: The Conversation We Should Have Had Months Ago
Daniel arrived twenty minutes later.
I had put the kettle on without thinking about it — an old habit, something I used to do whenever we needed to sit down and work something out.
He walked in through the back door the way he always had, and for a moment the kitchen looked exactly like it used to, except that everything was different.
He looked tired.
Not just tonight-tired.
Months-tired.
"He called 911," Daniel said, sitting down.
It wasn't a question.
"He wanted someone to come to the house," I said.
"He told the officer he could hear you crying at night."
Daniel put both hands flat on the table.
He didn't say anything for a long moment.
"I didn't know he could hear me," he said finally.
"He didn't tell me either.
He said he didn't want to make me more sad."
Daniel closed his eyes.
I set a mug in front of him and sat down across the table.
The kettle clicked off.
Outside, the neighborhood was quiet.
"How long?" I asked.
"Since about March." He wrapped both hands around the mug.
"I thought I was keeping it together during the day.
I thought I was doing okay when he was there."
"You probably were.
He's seven.
He notices things at night that he doesn't have words for during the day."
"I know." A pause.
"I hate that he was lying there listening."
"So do I."
We sat with that for a moment.
"I called a counselor," I said.
"A family one.
The officer left a card.
I made an appointment for Tyler on Thursday."
Daniel looked up.
"You already called?"
"Tonight.
After I got Tyler to sleep.
They had a cancellation."
Something moved across his face — relief, maybe, or the particular exhaustion of someone who has been trying to hold everything alone and has just been told they don't have to anymore.
"Can I come?" he asked.
"To the appointment?"
"I was going to ask if you would."
He nodded.
Looked down at his mug.
"I've been thinking," he said, "that I was doing Tyler a favor by not falling apart in front of him.
Keeping things normal.
Keeping things calm."
"Me too."
"But normal and calm isn't the same as honest."
"No," I said.
"It isn't."
Tyler appeared in the kitchen doorway in his pajamas, blinking in the light.
He looked at his father.
Then at me.
Then at his father again.
"Daddy?"
Daniel pushed his chair back.
Tyler crossed the kitchen and climbed into his lap without another word, tucking his head under Daniel's chin the way he'd done since he was a toddler.
Daniel's arms went around him.
I watched them and didn't say anything.
After a minute, Tyler lifted his head and looked at me with sleepy, serious eyes.
"Are you guys talking?"
"We're talking," I said.
"Good talking or bad talking?"
"Good talking," Daniel said.
"Really good talking."
Tyler considered this.
Then he settled back against his father's chest and closed his eyes.
"Okay," he said.
"Don't stop."
We didn't.
We talked until past midnight — about the separation, about what had gone wrong, about what we had each been too proud or too frightened to say out loud.
We talked about Tyler.
We talked about the nights Daniel had sat alone in his apartment not understanding why he couldn't stop.
We talked about the mornings I had stood in the shower letting the water run cold because I didn't want Tyler to hear me.
It wasn't a reconciliation.
It wasn't a plan.
It was just two people who had been performing fine for eight months finally putting it down.
When Daniel finally stood to leave, Tyler had fallen back asleep on the couch with a blanket over him.
"Thursday," Daniel said at the back door.
"Thursday," I said.
"Two o'clock."
He nodded.
Then he paused with his hand on the door frame.
"I'm glad he called," Daniel said.
"I know that sounds strange."
"It doesn't," I said.
"I'm glad too."
He left.
I locked the door and stood in the quiet kitchen.
On the table, the officer's card was still there.
I picked it up and looked at it again.
I had almost thrown it away when he first handed it to me.
I had almost said thank you, we're fine, have a good evening.
I set it on the windowsill where I would see it in the morning.
Then I went and sat beside Tyler on the couch, close enough that he stirred and shifted toward me in his sleep without waking.
I didn't move for a long time.
But somewhere in the back of my mind, a question had been sitting quietly since the moment Tyler said it, and I couldn't let it go.
*I miss when we were all together.*
I knew what that meant.
I knew what it didn't mean.
I knew that children say things that are true and also things that are wishes, and that a parent's job is to know the difference.
May you like
But I also knew something else — something I hadn't let myself think clearly in eight months.
I wasn't sure I had actually wanted this to be permanent.
