An Accidental Mother (14 page)

“Don't come in!” they yell loudly
.

I open the door. “Good job,” I say
.

I close the door and this time I knock on it using the secret knock
.

“Come in!” they call out
.

A while later we are just about finished wrapping the gifts. I ask Michael to take the rolls of paper downstairs and put them away in the hall closet. He walks out and closes the door. Then we hear a knock on the door: three times. I look at Elizabeth, and she looks at me
.

“Don't come in!” we yell
.

Michael opens the door and peers in. “I was just testing you!”

Michael: “Kate, I made up a joke. Do you want to hear it?”

Me: “Sure.”

Michael: “What does a knight watch on television?”

Me: “Hmmm, I don't know. What does a knight watch on television?”

Michael:
“The Knightly News.”

I am searching through the kitchen drawer, trying to find the scissors. I'm trying to recall who might have used them
last. It doesn't take me long to figure out where they might be
.

Michael is going through a phase in which he is constantly building things with tape and cardboard. I march up to Michael's room and find the scissors on the floor among a pile of boxes, tape, string, construction paper, and empty toilet-paper and paper-towel tubes
.

I take the scissors downstairs, where he is parked on the sofa, watching cartoons
.

“Michael, I need to talk to you about the scissors you stoled.”

“Kate,” he replies, “is it okay if I tell you something?”

“Yes, what is it?”

“‘Stoled' isn't a word.”

Jim told Michael over the weekend that we are breaking up. We hadn't planned on telling him yet, but Michael had an inkling that something was going on and began to ask questions. When Jim confirmed that we were separating and they would be moving to a new house, Michael had many more questions. Jim told Michael that I would always be a part of his life, but Michael wanted to know more: Where exactly would they live? Where would he go to school? Would Elizabeth still get to see me? Jim answered the questions as best he could. When asked about moving, Jim
told Michael he would still have his own room and that I had promised to buy him a set of new bunk beds. Jim told Michael that perhaps he and I could pick them out together.

I had been out of town for the weekend, and Jim called to tell me what had transpired when I was just moments from pulling into the driveway. We cried together on the phone as he described their discussion and advised me to be prepared for questions when I arrived. I had only a few minutes to pull myself together, but I walked into the house and immediately offered bear hugs and kisses, telling Michael how much I had missed him. But he did not ask me a single question about anything.

We all ate dinner together, and Michael and I did the dishes and put away the clean laundry. Then we sat side by side while I watched television and he played one of his electronic games. I asked him to take a bath while I got his backpack ready for the school week. I tucked him into bed. But he did not say one word about what he and his father had discussed.

The next day I thought Michael might question me on the way to the bus stop or while getting ready for school. But again he did not. After dinner we took out his homework and everything else he needed to do for the evening and spread it out on the counter. It wasn't until we were sorting through his Cub Scout book to determine what badges he had earned that he turned to me and said, “Kate, when are you going to buy my bunk beds?”

Stunned, I replied calmly that as he and Daddy were camping this weekend with the Cub Scouts, perhaps we could go together the following weekend.

Michael turned his head, covered his face with his hands, and began to cry.

I began to cry, too. I pulled him toward me and held him, and we cried together. When I could compose myself, I told him I loved him more than anything. I told him I would still see him all the time and talk to him whenever he wanted to. He pulled away and looked up at me with tears rolling down his freckled cheeks while I told him I would love him forever and
that I will still love him when he was grown up and had children of his own.

His tears stopped falling but still rimmed his eyes.

“Some things will change, Michael, but a lot of things won't. I'll still tell you to turn off your bedroom lights and put your clothes in the basket. I'll still tell you to close your drawers, and you'll still have to help empty the dishwasher. We'll still go shopping at Target together, and you'll still ask me one hundred times if you can get something, and I'll still give in and buy it. We'll still go to the movies together, and we'll still go out to dinner. You'll still have to throw the ball for Max, and we'll still buy carrots for George and Jasmine.”

A glimpse of a smile began to appear. But then it faded quickly. “Kate,” he said, “it stinks that I have to change school districts.”

I wanted to laugh, wondering where on earth he had picked up such an expression. But I reflected on just how perfect it really was. “You know what, honey? It does stink. But you know how sometimes we go
camping, and other families show up who we haven't met before, and then you make new friends?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I'm sure that when you go to your new district, you'll make new friends, but then you'll still have your old friends over here, so you'll actually end up with twice as many friends. And now you'll have a bunk bed for your friends to stay in if you have a sleepover. So even though some things will change and there will be some things that you may not like, there will also be good things that will happen.”

The tears were drying, and he nodded slightly.

“If you want, we can pick out some really cool sheets to go with your bunk beds.”

“Okay.”

Then silence, each of us waiting for the other to either continue or stop.

“You know how much I love you, right?”

A nod.

“More than anything in the whole world. And if
you have any more questions or want to talk about anything at all, you just let me know, okay?”

“Okay.”

I waited for a while longer, but it seemed he had nothing more to say.

“Do you want to finish going through your Cub Scout book?”

Another nod.

Within minutes he was back to being a normal nine-year-old, as though our sad conversation and tears were a thing of the distant past.

When he turned his attention to his homework, I told him I had to go to the bathroom. I shut myself in and cried a thousand more tears, none of them doing anything to release the sadness I was feeling. How could life go on for me without Michael in it every day? And how would Michael deal with these changes?

Jim and I had both been previously divorced and were well schooled in surviving a separation. For us, I knew relief and hope would follow the grief and resentment that come with an ending. But I was sick
with the stress of wondering what kind of chaos and sorrow would fall upon Michael, now being thrust into an unknown future.

How could we convince Michael that we would do our best to make everything okay, especially when his real mother had disappeared from his life when he was only two years old? Would this cause him to worry that I might disappear, too? Would he be forever damaged by the many changes in his short life and develop a never-ending fear of abandonment? Or could we, with love and understanding, help him to overcome the odds? Would he believe what I said or find any comfort in thinking that many aspects of his life would not change? Could I give him any peace at all by attempting to retain our rituals as best I could, even if most of them were small or silly?

When I tucked him into bed that night, he asked me, as he had nearly nightly in the last six years, what he should dream about.

“Tonight why don't you dream that you're on your camping trip … and that you get all of your Cub Scout badges and all of your arrows … and you have more badges than any other kid at camp?”

Lately my stories were too boring for him, and he would often ask for a second or third version. Tonight he simply replied, “Okay,” and smiled.

I tucked the blankets up to his chin and kissed him again on the forehead.

“Kate?”

“Yeah, honey?”

“Are the rats going to go with us?”

“Yes, they're going to live with you, honey. They're your pets.”

“Will you still get to see them?”

“Yes! I will come over and hold and kiss George whenever I can.”

“Kate?”

“Yes?”

“When I leave, I'm going to call you every night and ask you what I should dream about.”

A short while later, alone in the living room with my second round of tears in the works, I was still able to muster a smile. It seemed that my commitment to keeping as many things as I could the same, to preserving our many rituals, would not fall on my shoulders alone but would instead be a joint effort between me and the boy already asleep in the room upstairs.