Chương 2
I had laughed at some of it because fighting every battle seemed exhausting.
I had swallowed the rest because Nathan always looked ten years old when his mother cried.
The light changed.
He didn’t move until the driver behind us tapped the horn.
At home, I took off my shoes and found a mug in the sink with dried oatmeal stuck around the rim.
I washed it.
Nathan stood in the kitchen doorway.
“You don’t have to clean right now.”
“I’m washing one mug.”
“I know.”
“Then let me wash one mug.”
He nodded.
I scrubbed harder than necessary.
The baby shifted under my ribs, and I leaned against the counter until the pressure passed.
Nathan came closer but stopped a few feet away.
“Can I see your wrist?”
I held it out.
Four red crescents were fading around the inside.
His expression changed again.
This time I didn’t protect him from it.
“She shouldn’t have touched you.”
“No.”
“I should’ve gotten up sooner.”
“Yes.”
He flinched.
I turned off the faucet.
“I’m not trying to punish you.”
“It feels a little like you are.”
That made me angry enough to laugh once.
Nathan immediately looked ashamed.
“Okay,” he said.
“Bad thing to say.”
“Very.”
“I know.”
“No, I don’t think you do.”
I dried my hands.
“For months, every time your mother crossed a line, you asked me to understand why she crossed it.”
He leaned against the refrigerator.
“She’s scared.”
“I know.”
“She lost Dad, and then my sister moved to Arizona, and now with the baby—”
“There.”
He stopped.
“That’s what I mean.”
I pointed toward him.
“You’re doing it while apologizing for doing it.”
His eyes dropped.
The refrigerator hummed behind him.
Somewhere upstairs, our neighbor’s vacuum cleaner bumped rhythmically against a wall.
Nathan pulled out a kitchen chair and sat down.
“I don’t know how to do this.”
The anger in me loosened slightly.
“Do what?”
“Have her be wrong without feeling like I’m abandoning her.”
That was more honest than anything he had said for weeks.
I sat across from him.
“You don’t have to abandon her.”
“It feels like that to her.”
“I’m not talking about what it feels like to her.”
He nodded slowly.
“What does it feel like to you?”
He picked at a loose corner of the grocery-store coupon sitting on the table.
“Like there’s always an emergency I’m supposed to prevent.”
I said nothing.
“If she’s upset, I fix it.”
His thumbnail tore the coupon in half.
“If she’s lonely, I visit.”
Another tear.
“If she and my sister fight, I call both of them.”
He looked at the scraps.
“And if she’s angry with you, I explain you to her until she’s less angry.”
I felt something cold settle in my stomach.
“You explain me?”
His face told me he had heard it too late.
“What have you told her?”
“Nothing private.”
“Nathan.”
“Nothing like that.”
“What have you told her?”
He stood and walked to the counter, then came back without doing anything there.
“When we argued about moving in with her, I told her you were anxious about having people around after the birth.”
I stared at him.
“That was private.”
“I didn’t give details.”
“You told her I was anxious.”
“I was trying to make her understand.”
“And what did she hear?”
He didn’t answer.
I already knew.
She had heard weakness.
She had heard an obstacle that could be corrected.
I pushed my chair back.
“What else?”
“Emily.”
“What else?”
He looked toward the hallway.
“I told her you were worried she wouldn’t respect our parenting decisions.”
Despite everything, I almost admired the absurdity.
“You told the person I was worried about that I was worried about her?”
“I was trying to solve it.”
“That seems to be going beautifully.”
He gave a short, miserable laugh.
Then his phone began vibrating on the table.
The screen showed MOM.
Neither of us moved.
It stopped.
A few seconds later, it vibrated again.
Then came a message.
Nathan turned the phone facedown.
“No.”
I watched him.
“No what?”
“No more managing everybody.”
The phone vibrated a third time.
He left it facedown.
For the first time since I had known him, his mother called and Nathan allowed the phone to ring until it stopped.
The silence afterward felt less like victory than the first unfamiliar room in a house we had not yet learned how to live in.
Nathan’s phone stayed facedown through lunch, through the hour we spent pretending to sort baby clothes, and through the first three times someone knocked on our apartment door.
On the fourth knock, he stopped folding a yellow sleeper and looked at me.
“Do you think that’s her?”
“I think if it’s a delivery driver, he’s unusually committed.”
Nathan rubbed his palms over his jeans.
“I’ll handle it.”
The phrase would have reassured me a month earlier.
Now I watched him walk toward the door and wondered what handling it meant.
He checked the peephole.
His shoulders lowered.
“It’s Carol.”
I opened the door before he could decide whether that was better or worse.
Carol stood in the hallway holding a foil-covered casserole dish and wearing the same navy coat she had worn to church.
“I brought food,” she said.
Then she looked at Nathan.
“And information, which is less appetizing.”
Nathan stepped aside.
Carol entered and immediately removed her shoes without being asked, placing them neatly beside ours.
“I hope this doesn’t contain raisins,” I said.
She blinked.
“The casserole?”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Good.”
Nathan stared at me.
I shrugged.
“I hate raisins in savory food.”
Carol nodded solemnly.
“A reasonable moral position.”
For half a second, the three of us smiled.
Then Carol put the casserole on the counter.
“She’s calling people.”
Nathan’s smile vanished.
“Mom?”
Carol gave him a look.
“No, the Pope.”
He sat down.
May you like
“What is she saying?”
“That Pastor Reed humiliated her publicly, that Emily provoked her, and that you’ve been manipulated into cutting off your family.”
