Chương 13
Claire looked at her attorney. “Remove it.”
The man crossed out the paragraph.
After the papers were signed, the attorneys left them alone while copies were made.
Claire walked to the vending machine.
“Do you want anything?” she asked.
“No.”
She bought crackers. The package caught on the metal spiral.
Claire stared at it.
Daniel almost stood to shake the machine. For two years, he had fixed stuck windows, opened jars, carried boxes, and once dismantled a hotel dresser because her earring fell behind it.
Claire pressed the refund button. Nothing happened.
“They designed this to teach humility,” Daniel said.
She looked at him, then laughed once. It was the first familiar sound she had made.
“I paid two dollars for that lesson.”
“You could hire a consultant.”
“I fired those.”
The humor faded without becoming grief.
Claire returned to the table empty-handed.
“How are they?” she asked.
“Better in some ways.”
“Ethan hates me.”
“He is angry.”
“That is a kind answer.”
“It is an accurate one.”
“And Lily?”
“She asks about you.”
Claire looked down.
Daniel continued. “She also asks about the wedding cake.”
“There was a lot of cake.”
“I heard.”
“The staff donated it to a shelter.”
“That was good.”
“My mother wanted it delivered to her house.”
Daniel could picture Judith confronting five tiers of fondant in her dining room and felt a mean flicker of satisfaction.
Claire noticed.
“You can laugh,” she said.
“I’m trying not to.”
“She would have frozen it.”
They sat in silence.
Finally Claire said, “I have been trying to understand whether I wanted a family or wanted to be seen having one.”
Daniel did not answer.
“I don’t expect you to help me with that,” she added.
“Good.”
She nodded.
The lawyers returned with copies.
At the elevator, Claire held out a small box.
“I found this in my mother’s safe.”
Inside was Daniel’s silver wedding band.
He had forgotten it existed.
“Waverly Hall gave it to her with the other ceremony items,” Claire said.
Daniel closed the box.
“I thought it belonged to you.”
“It was supposed to.”
The elevator doors opened.
Claire stepped inside, then turned.
“I am sorry I made your children prove they belonged.”
The doors closed before Daniel found an answer.
He kept the ring in his desk for three weeks. It had cost nine hundred dollars and could not be returned because the inside was engraved with the wedding date.
One afternoon, he took it to a jeweler and asked whether the engraving could be removed.
“It can,” the jeweler said. “Might leave a shadow.”
“That’s fine.”
“What do you want engraved instead?”
“Nothing.”
The jeweler rolled the ring beneath a lamp. “People usually want something.”
“I don’t.”
He sold it for less than a third of what he paid and used the money to replace the back door of the house.
The old one had swollen in wet weather and required a shoulder to close. Martin offered to repair it, but Daniel chose a new door with a wide glass pane and a lock Lily could see turning.
She inspected the installation from the kitchen.
“Is it the back door?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Do we have to use it?”
“Sometimes. To go into the yard.”
She thought about that.
“Can we leave it open?”
“When the weather is good.”
The installer glanced at Daniel but said nothing.
In November, Ethan’s class received an assignment called Our Families. Each student was supposed to bring a photograph and speak for two minutes.
Ethan left the instruction sheet folded in his backpack for four days.
Daniel found it while looking for a missing permission slip.
“Were you going to tell me?” he asked.
“I don’t want to do it.”
“You may be able to choose another project.”
“That makes it obvious.”
“What picture do you want?”
“We don’t have one.”
“We have thousands.”
“Not new ones.”
Daniel opened his phone. There were photographs from soccer, breakfast, the zoo, Lily asleep beneath the kitchen table, Ethan holding a trout and looking disgusted. In most, one child was missing because Daniel had taken the picture.
“We can ask Aunt Nora,” he said.
“No.”
“Grandma?”
“No.”
“A stranger with a tripod?”
Ethan gave him a tired look.
Daniel sat beside him on the couch.
“What is the difficult part?”
“Everybody knows.”
“About the wedding?”
“About Claire. About Mom. Mason said I have a broken family twice.”
“He has two homes.”
“He says that’s different.”
“It is different.”
“That doesn’t make ours not broken.”
Daniel looked at the blank television.
“Some parts are broken,” he said.
Ethan’s expression shifted. He had expected a correction.
Daniel continued. “We are still a family.”
“Because you say so?”
“No. Because we keep doing the work of one.”
“What work?”
“Arguing about homework. Buying cereal. Showing up late to soccer. Making Lily brush her teeth twice because she lies the first time.”
From upstairs, Lily shouted, “I can hear you.”
Ethan smiled despite himself.
Daniel said, “We can take a picture. Or you can bring one of you and Lily. Or you can tell your teacher the assignment is bad.”
“It is bad.”
“It may be.”
Ethan took the phone.
He scrolled for a while, then stopped on a photograph Nora had taken at the gas station after the wedding. Daniel stood beside the car holding Lily’s apple juice. Ethan leaned against the door with his tie loose and his hair flattened on one side. Nora’s thumb covered part of the lens. None of them looked happy.
“Not that one,” Daniel said.
“Why?”
“It was a terrible day.”
“We were together.”
Daniel looked at his son.
Ethan returned to the photographs and chose another.
It had been taken in September through the kitchen window. Daniel was washing dishes. Lily sat on the counter wearing a construction-paper crown. Ethan stood beside the open back door holding Nora’s dog by the collar while rain blew inside.
The image was crooked and slightly blurred.
“That one,” Ethan said.
Daniel had it printed the next morning.
The class presentations took place on a Thursday. Parents were not invited, but Ethan’s teacher emailed Daniel afterward.
Ethan spoke for one minute and fourteen seconds. He named Daniel, Lily, Nora, Lorraine, and Martin. He mentioned his mother Rachel and said she had died when he was six. He did not mention Claire or the wedding.
When another child asked why his family photograph was blurry, Ethan said, “Because nobody was ready.”
In December, Claire requested permission to send the children holiday gifts.
Ethan said no.
Lily asked what the gifts were.
Daniel told her he did not know.
“Then how do I decide?”
He asked Claire’s attorney for descriptions. The gifts were a wooden animal set for Lily and a model glider for Ethan. Lily accepted hers. Ethan did not.
Daniel worried the difference would cause resentment. It did not. Ethan helped Lily arrange the animals and complained that the zebra’s legs were uneven.
On Christmas morning, Daniel burned the cinnamon rolls because he was outside helping Martin jump-start Lorraine’s car. Nora scraped off the black bottoms and covered them with icing.
“They taste normal if you commit,” she said.
Lorraine disagreed and ate two.
Ethan gave Daniel a small wrapped box. Inside was the printed family photograph from his class assignment in a cheap black frame.
“You already gave this to school,” Daniel said.
“They scanned it.”
Daniel ran his thumb along the frame.
“Thank you.”
“The teacher said families should have pictures in the main room.”
Daniel looked toward the fireplace. The wall above it remained empty.
He did not hang the photograph there immediately. He leaned it against a lamp while they opened gifts. Later, Lily carried it around and got icing on the glass. Martin cleaned it with the corner of his shirt. Nora insisted the frame was crooked when Daniel finally placed it on the mantel.
“It is the wall,” Daniel said.
“It is not.”
“The house settled.”
“The house did not settle three degrees to the left.”
Ethan stood in the doorway watching them argue.
“Leave it,” he said.
Nora stepped back.
Daniel looked at the picture. Rain blurred the yard behind them. Lily’s crown leaned over one eye. Ethan held the dog too tightly, and Daniel’s sleeves were wet from dishwater. The new back door had not been installed yet. The old one stood open because it would not close.
No one in the photograph faced the camera.
No one had been arranged.
May you like
No one had been removed.
Daniel left it crooked.
