This Is Between Us (21 page)

We had just seen a video of a baby elephant being born. “It’s not unusual for the mother to kick the baby around until it breathes,” the voiceover said. “The mother trumpets loudly and nudges the newborn until it is able to stand and feed.”

You almost started crying as we were watching it. “Sometimes mothers can be monsters,” you said.

“They’re animals,” I said. “They don’t know what they’re doing.”

…

Sometimes I wondered if I was teaching Vince enough about life stuff. Like laundry, dishes, cooking eggs, and how much toilet paper to use. My parents were stricter with me, and made me mop and dust and garden and also wash the family car all the time. I learned hospital corners on the bed and how to cook something medium rare. They even made me squeegee the car windows when we stopped for gas. But I failed at grocery shopping for some reason. Always got the wrong cheese or milk. Couldn’t make myself buy wheat bread as a child.

Maybe I was too relaxed with Vince, like I wanted to be the cool dad. I would tell him ten more minutes on his video game and let him play for thirty. I would ask him to help with cleaning the bathroom but do most of it myself while he wiped the sink out over and over.

Then I had sudden bouts of guilt about my non-structure, his lack of chores. It became a strange, double-sided guilt. I felt guilty for wanting him to have fun, and I felt guilty for not preparing him for future responsibilities.

One day, I made him iron our nice shirts and pants. I made him spray and wipe off the
TV
screen. I showed him exactly how long to cook corn on the cob. I even taught him how to log in to the websites for the cable and electric bills and pay them with my bank card.

Before it was time for bed, I remembered one last thing that I’d never shown him: how to change a lightbulb. For some reason, this task made me especially nervous, like he was going to get electrocuted or something. I mean, I don’t even know how electricity works.

I pulled the small ladder out and had him climb up and twist the old bulb out. I showed him how to shake it gently and listen for the tiny rattle. I gave him the new one and watched him twist it in. I put my hands on his waist to steady him, though I didn’t really need to. I went to bed that night wondering if I had overloaded him with information. If it was too much for his young brain.

I wondered if he’d remember any of these things.

…

We were on the bus heading home after a basketball game. It was dark outside and the windows were fogged up. A little girl across from us drew two happy faces on them with her finger. She had on pink fingernail polish and her mom watched her and smiled. They got off at the stop before ours. You scooted over to her happy faces and quickly made bodies for them. One of them was a skinny man with his fist up in the air. A word bubble coming from his mouth said,
Go, Blazers!
You gave the other happy face long hair and the body of a naked woman. Her word bubble said,
Brandon Roy got me pregnant!

We got off at our stop, making sure to thank the bus driver without looking at him. We ran home like someone was chasing us. Our laughter cut through the fog ahead of us.

…

Maxine wanted a slushie, so she and I got on our bikes and rode down to the mini-mart. When we got there, we found out they didn’t have a slushie machine. “I thought all mini-marts were supposed to have slushies,” I said.

We rode around some more and found a 7-Eleven, but most of their machines were broken except a flavor we didn’t like. “I don’t really like Slurpees, anyway,” Maxine said. I asked her about the difference between slushies and Slurpees. “One of them is like crushed ice and the other one is like snow,” she said. As we were getting back on our bikes, a couple of girls from Maxine’s school said hi to her. They were leaning against a VW Bug and one of them tossed a cigarette to the side.

“What’s going on?” one of them asked Maxine.

“Just looking for a slushie,” Maxine said with a dramatic sigh. I thought the girls might laugh or say something mean, but they stood there, looking around like they were suddenly scared. They were probably a year or two older than Maxine, maybe juniors or seniors. For a moment, it was like I was witnessing the kind of dynamic that happened in the high school hallway. I noticed how the girls’ demeanor changed when they saw Maxine, like Maxine was more popular than they were or something. I wondered if Maxine was more revered at school than she let on. Maybe she was a bully.

We rode around the streets some more, looking for a good slushie. I pedaled behind Maxine and watched her with new eyes. She was tough, confident, and decisive. The muscles in her legs were tensed like tight ropes and a couple of lines of sweat moved through the dark hair on her arms like snakes through grass.

The next store didn’t have slushies either. Or the next. When we finally found one, at a place called Qwik-Stop, we mixed up the flavors, layering them in our cups and then dipping the scoop-like straw into them.

We leaned against our bikes outside and I asked how her slushie was. “It kind of sucks,” she said. I offered a trade, and she took mine. “Yours is a lot better,” she said, and I let her keep it. I asked her who the girls at the other store were. “I think one of them is named Daria, but I don’t really know,” said Maxine.

We got back on our bikes and rode in the direction of home. I was still trailing behind her when she looked back and said, “Hey, thanks.”

“What?” I said.

“I’m glad we kept looking,” she said. “It was worth it.”

…

I had started giving Vince driving lessons when he was fourteen. We’d circle around the huge empty parking lot of a closed-down high school. He was about a year too young to get his permit at that point, but I wanted him to get a head start.

I remember getting my first driving lessons from my grandfather when I was ten. He’d put me in his lap and let me steer as he worked the gas and brake pedals. I wasn’t tall enough to drive his car by myself then, but I was allowed to putter around on his riding lawnmower when my parents weren’t around. It had a clutch and could go up to twenty miles per hour, though it felt more like fifty. I once rolled it down a hill and broke my arm.

I didn’t tell Vince about that though.

We were driving my old Ford Fiesta, which was probably a good size for him, not too big or powerful. We drove in big circles and I’d tell him, “Turn right. Turn left. Try to park between those lines.”

By the third or fourth lesson, I felt like he was getting pretty comfortable, and I let him turn the radio on. I tested his multitasking by having him change the station and turn the defroster on while driving in a figure eight. He barely missed one of the lampposts.

“Okay, okay,” I said, and pointed to a spot to park in. I got out of the car and told him he could drive by himself around the parking lot for five minutes. “Don’t go over thirty-five,” I said. It was like a trust exercise.

I watched him cautiously drive around. I saw his face and could tell he was trying to look serious, but there was a smile pushing through. After five minutes, I jumped into his path and made him brake quickly. He was coming right at me, wheels screeching, and my heart sped up. He gripped the steering wheel in a chokehold as the car halted just before my knees.

From the look on Vince’s face, I could tell he’d thought he hit me, but I flashed him a quick thumbs-up like I wasn’t worried at all. I wanted him to feel like he had control.

…

Highway 101 was the slow way, the scenic route. We had three days away from the kids, so we decided to head south and maybe find a way out of the rain. The radio was on and we hadn’t spoken since stopping for gas. We were on a mapless, wordless journey.

“You went on a road trip with her, too, didn’t you?” you asked, though I didn’t really know about whom—maybe Sheryl, maybe one of the girls I’d dated when we were separated.

“I went to dinner with her,” I said. “I went to movies, grocery stores, art galleries, car washes, the dentist, and the foot-massaging place with her.”

“You went to the dentist with her?” you said back. You turned down the radio.

“I don’t know who you’re talking about, but yes, I have gone to places with other people.”

“Not when you were with me, though,” you said. Your seat was pushed all the way back and your feet were braced against the glove box. Your knees were straight and locked hard. I felt the fresh air get sucked out of the car through the whistling crack of the window. We were stuck, even though the car moved forward with us in it. It was a southbound machine, barely slowing for the curves.
What are we doing inside of this thing?
I wondered.

“Bringing it up is not going to help,” I answered. “Thinking about it is not going to help. There’s no reason to think about that now.” I reached over and grabbed your hand, which felt shriveled and reluctant.

“I’m sorry,” you said a few minutes later, and your hand opened like a yawn.

“I’m sorry,” I said back.

I turned the music back up. We were passing some place called Fort Dick. I was trying to think of something else to talk about. Eventually we’d have to pick a place to turn around. There were trees on each side of us, squeezing our breath out.

…

One of the very first times we were together, it was the day after a snowstorm and there was ten inches of snow on the ground. We took separate buses and met at a café, but it was closed. We decided to walk somewhere else but decided that we should go through a neighborhood where there would be less traffic. We were beginning our affair and didn’t want any of our friends to see us. But I couldn’t wait to kiss you and hold you, so I turned around and faced you as we walked down a residential street. Somehow we kissed and walked at the same time—me backward, you forward. We opened our coats and looped our arms around each other. I didn’t know if people were watching us through their windows, or if anyone would care. We were careless in that moment, something in us releasing forever. We walked like that for three whole blocks, the snow already melting around us.

I don’t think we were really concerned about getting caught right then. We knew it wouldn’t matter in the end.

…

We went out to a Christmas tree farm. Me, you, and the kids. They gave us all saws and we cut down a medium-size Douglas fir for the front room and two small ones for Vince’s and Maxine’s bedrooms. The husband and wife who ran the farm gave us all Costco-brand hot chocolate with cheap marshmallows. They were selling decorations too, but they were old and dusty-looking, like they’d belonged to someone’s great-grandmother. The wife talked a lot and said they had run the farm for thirty years now, after taking it over from his father. The husband didn’t say much, just smoked his pipe and nodded and smiled at us.

On the drive home, Vince said he had to go to the bathroom. We were about fifteen minutes outside of town, on some old road surrounded by wilderness. It was getting dark and I thought it would be fun to pee in the woods. I didn’t think I had ever peed outside with Vince before. It seemed like something he should do with his father.

We pulled over and you gave me a funny look. You turned to Maxine with a grin and said, “You ready for a hillbilly bathroom break?”

I put the parking lights on and we ventured a few yards into the trees. The moon gave us just enough light to see. “Girls over there and boys over here,” I said, pointing out some shadowy spots. We each unbuckled and unzipped behind our trees. We relieved ourselves in silence, without making jokes or scary sounds. I wondered if any animals were out there, close to us, watching us. Could they hear our legs snapping through the brush like some kind of unknown creature? Eight legs, eight arms, four hearts.

As we walked back to the car, we started howling at the moon, louder and louder. We gulped the cold fog. We scared the darkness. We laughed.

I hoped that Vince and Maxine would remember this when they were old, and maybe talk about it at some Christmas dinner.

…

We almost didn’t get to this point. On one of those first nights, when we were still married to other people, you tried to break it off and I wailed uncontrollably in the front seat of your car. I was surprising even myself by how badly I was taking it. My sobs were almost too loud for the car, but you were trying to calm me down. We were parked three blocks from my apartment.

“Don’t cry,” you said. “You’re going to make me cry, and I don’t like to cry over people.”

I wasn’t sure what you meant by that, and I remember that it almost made me angry. I thought,
What the hell do you cry over then?

We did end it that night. Only to start it again three days later.

I’ve seen you cry a lot since then. Over people, animals,
TV
commercials, sports highlights, food, clothes, car repairs, weather, haircuts, and other things. If I had any doubt about you having a heart or being open with your emotions, those doubts didn’t last.

Now it’s five years later. I want to pause for a second and think about all we’ve done. Like a moment of silence before our noise starts up again.