So Much More (27 page)

Including me.

“What are you doing here?” My voice sounds hopeful, something I learned a long time ago not to give Miranda because she uses it like a weapon. She can impale me with my own hope.

No one answers. Instead, the kids all look at Miranda like she alone holds the magical answer, which makes sense because she always wields the power.

“I moved back to California.” The words make sense, but they don’t give anything away.

Hope surges again. “What does that mean?” I want to yell,
Just tell me I get my kids back!
But I wait.

“Loren and I split up.” She would’ve said,
I left Loren
, if that were the case because she loves to gloat, which means he kicked her out.
 

I want to point my finger and laugh so fucking loud in her face, but I don’t want my kids to see that sort vengeful display. I need to talk to her alone, because if she’s teasing me with my kids and doesn’t intend to share custody, or preferably give me full custody, I’m going to go mental on her. “Hey, why don’t you guys grab your bags from the car and you can spend tonight in your room,” I tell my kids. I don’t give a shit if she had other plans tonight. You don’t dangle the carrot and expect me not to grab it with both hands.

My kids are out the door and down the stairs before she has a chance to revoke my offer.

I don’t have much time before they come back up, so I go back to what I originally wanted to shout, but I ask it quietly instead, “Just tell me I get my kids back?” A lack of volume doesn’t downgrade ferocity. I’m showing all my cards. I don’t have one up my sleeve, which is how you should always play with Miranda, but I don’t have time for a test of wills or a pissing contest.
I want my kids back!

I hear a car door slam, and she looks back out into the parking lot and then back to me. “Can we talk after they go to bed?”

Talking after they go to bed would require Miranda staying here, which I am not all right with, but if it means there’s a chance I get my kids back I’ll do anything. I step back from the doorway so she can step in. “Fine. We’ll talk after they go to bed.”

When she sits down on the old couch, she looks out of place. She’s shiny and fake perched atop comfy and real.

The kids lug up their suitcases, and I help them get to their room. We talk for a while, and even though I saw them only a week ago, there’s no shortage of conversation. When Rory and Kira both start yawning we hunt for their pajamas and toothbrushes, and they all get ready for bed. After I hug and kiss them goodnight and close the door behind me, I step out into the hallway and my happiness is put in a chokehold. Miranda is still sitting on the couch just where she was almost two hours ago. There’s a bottle of wine in her hand. She must’ve brought it with her or went to the liquor store while I was with my kids. It’s half full. And there’s no glass in sight, she’s drinking straight from the bottle. She watches me walk into the room and pats the cushion next to her. “Sit.” She’s not drunk. She could always hold her alcohol better than me.

I sit on the other end of the couch leaving maximum space between us.

“You’re not using your cane,” she says it like she’s surprised.

I nod. “I’m having a good day. When I’m having a good day, sometimes I don’t always use it when I’m home. It makes me feel free. The numbness is gone for now, and the pain only amps up when I overdo it.” And then I shut up because I’m oversharing. She doesn’t care, oversharing only gives her ammunition that she’ll stockpile until she needs it.

She extends the bottle toward me. “Have some, Seamus.”

“No.” Denying her feels so damn good, even something small and inconsequential.

She retracts it and takes a long swig, unoffended. “More for me.”

Bitterness floods in when I realize I’m sitting here forced to engage her. That’s when I rise and walk to the kitchen where I take a shot of tequila, followed by another, and I return after I pluck two beers from the fridge—both for me.

“Remember when we first started dating, how you used to write me love letters?” She’s talking to me, but she’s not looking at me. Her eyes stare out across the room, glazed with the image of her memories.

I’m not going to talk about that. My mind says it before my mouth does, “I’m not going to talk about that.”

She drops her head back against the couch cushion and rolls it until she’s looking at me. The alcohol is starting to soften her purpose, and when I look closer, I see age encroaching on her features. Lines on her forehead and at the corners of her eyes that I’d never seen before. “Why not?”

I down several big gulps of beer before I answer, “There’s no point. We need to talk about my kids.”

She shifts in her spot and sits sideways bending her knees and pulling her feet up next to her. “I was leading to
our
kids. It all began with a love letter.” She’s not being snotty like I would expect, she’s talking reasonably, truthfully, which scares me a little.

“And it all ended with a hate letter, divorce papers.” I take another drink and then tip the neck of my bottle in her direction. “Oh, and you fucking someone else because he wasn’t broken. Let’s not forget that.”

She swallows back some more red. It seems we’re trading drinks and words. “I was wrong. I’ve made a lot of mistakes.” She’s still scaring me with her levelheadedness.

“You sure as hell have.” I can feel the muscles in my neck tighten when I say it. I want to hurl the word abortion at her. My insides are shaking with rage. I’ll save it for a time after we negotiate custody.

She blinks a few times, probably trying to ward off shock, but doesn’t respond.

I turn my head and look at her, really look at her, and I’m disgusted. How can a woman be so ugly on the inside? I don’t know what else to say because everything running through my mind are curse words and insults and condemnation, none of which will change anything. I shake my head, and my lips move without my command. “What the fuck, Miranda?”
 

The tears start rolling; it’s a silent, unnerving, trail of emotion. She never cries. Miranda’s always been stoic and unfeeling. “I’m sorry.”

I blast her with my anger. It’s a biting whisper, “Sorry doesn’t change anything.” I hate arguing quietly, not that I’m a yeller, but it would give me an outlet for this fury. Subduing this exchange downgrades its intensity and feels like it skews things in her favor.

She shakes her head. “Don’t you think I fucking know that, Seamus?”

I’m stunned. I don’t believe her, and I have to laugh. “No. No, I don’t think you do.”

“I’m taking depression medication,” she says to illustrate her point.

I shrug. “You fucking devastated me, Miranda. Annihilated me. You don’t get my sympathy.” I pause. “And you sure as hell don’t deserve my empathy.” I pause again and then continue with the verbal blitzkrieg, because I can’t hold this in any longer, “Fuck you and every single one of your piss poor choices.”

She’s still crying and was taking the assault on the chin until that last insult. She sniffs and wipes her running nose with the back of her hand. “You wouldn’t say that if you knew.”

I can’t listen to her for one more second. I stand. “You need to get out. Go home. Wherever that is.”

“I can’t drive,” she counters.

I know that. “Call a cab. My kids stay here where they belong.” I don’t wait for her to argue. I walk to my room, and I grab my pillow and blanket, and I lie down on the floor in front of the kids’ room and sleep just in case she tries to get crafty and sneak them out before I wake up. I know I’m paranoid, but I just got them back. There’s no way in hell I’m losing them again.

Sick and tired of feeling the ugliness

present

“Sorry, Daddy.” Wakefulness is instigated by these words coupled with a little girl’s socked foot stepping on my cheek.

I open my eyes to a fuzzy image of Kira’s sweet face inches from mine. “Are you okay, Daddy?”

I smile at the concern in her wrinkled forehead and drawn eyebrows. “I’m okay, darlin’.”

She wraps her arms around my neck and squeezes. “You shouldn’t sleep on the floor in the hall.”

I wrap my arms around her, and my body seconds her words. “I know, I shouldn’t.” I’m too old to sleep on the floor, and my body aches.

“It’s dangerous.” And then she releases me. “I gotta pee. I’ll be back. We can watch cartoons.”

“Sounds like a plan.” And just like that, everything’s back to the way it used to be. To the way it should be.

Until I put the blanket and pillow back in my room and walk to the kitchen.

And Miranda is sitting at the table drinking a Starbucks coffee, eating a bagel, and reading a newspaper. Like she belongs here. She’s wearing different clothes than she was last night and she looks wide awake. Sleep was always something she could do without; she thrived on four or five hours a night. I always envied that. “What are you doing here?” I feel like I need to walk back out into the hall and walk back in and hope this is all an illusion.

She takes a bite of her bagel and talks tightlipped through it, pointing to the counter behind me. “Breakfast.”

There’s an Einstein Brothers Bagel box with enough food in it to feed an army, three tubs of flavored cream cheese, six bottles of fruit juice, and a large Starbucks cup. I can’t remember her ever buying food for anyone but herself. As I pour the contents of the lukewarm Starbucks cup into a mug from the cupboard and walk it to the microwave, I say, “I thought I told you to leave last night.”

She shrugs as she swallows another bite. “I fell asleep. Then I left. Then I came back. With food. Your food selection is pathetic.”

Punching buttons on the microwave, I defend, “Oatmeal is good for lowering cholesterol.”

“I hate oatmeal. It tastes like wet sawdust.”

I know she doesn’t like oatmeal. I know she thinks it tastes like wet sawdust. And I don’t care. I shake my head. “Why are we talking about oatmeal, Miranda? What are you doing here?” I ask again.

She’s picking at her bagel. Stalling.

“Daddy, what’s for—? Mommy, what are you doing here?” Kira asks. She looks confused.

I jump in before confusion takes over, and Miranda says something to make this worse. I want the answer to that question. Kira doesn’t need to be encumbered with it. “Bagels, darlin’. Pick one out and we’ll put some cream cheese on it, and eat in the living room while we watch cartoons.”

She does as I ask and we take our breakfast to the living room to sit in front of the TV and go through our early Saturday morning ritual that I’ve missed so much.

Fifteen or twenty minutes into “Adventure Time” Miranda joins us. She walks in quietly, which is unlike her, usually she’s showy and has to be the center of attention. She sits on the floor cross-legged. Kira tracks her but doesn’t say anything, and when Miranda settles, she rests her cheek back against my arm and loses herself in Finn and Jake on the screen.

All’s quiet, uncomfortably so, but still quiet until Kai and Rory join us. They’re both eating bagels, and Rory has cream cheese smeared on his lips and cheeks in the shape of a smile, the residue left after the huge bite he’s just taken. “What are you doing here?” the boys ask together. I almost laugh, because we’ve all asked her, verbatim, that same question now within the span of an hour.

We’re all staring at Miranda waiting for an answer. Her cheeks are reddening and her eyes look glassy when she whispers, “Breakfast,” and then stands and walks to the bathroom.

Rory shrugs, unconcerned, and continues to devour his bagel as he sits next to Kira on the couch.

Kai, on the other hand, looks saddened when he sits down next to me. I put my arm around him, and he rests his head against my shoulder while he finishes his bagel.

Miranda returns five minutes later. Her eyes are red.

“Thanks for the bagel, Mom.”

Kai just schooled me.
 

On compassion.
 

And forgiveness.

I’m not ready for forgiveness; the wounds are too fresh. For all I know forgiveness may never come. But compassion is something we should all be willing to show. Treating people badly in reaction to how they treat us plays into the ugliness in the world and perpetuates it. Treating people well, not in the hopes that they’ll change, because sometimes people never change, keeps our hearts and minds free from the ugliness. I’m so fucking sick and tired of feeling the ugliness.