What to Say Next(30)

Still, it changes everything I believed about my past. How I feel about the person I’ve lost.

“What the hell? Dad cheated on you and you were getting a divorce? How could I not have known? How could you guys have kept this from me?” I wipe my nose on my sleeve. I need to stop crying, but I can’t seem to stop the flow of water or the heaving of my shoulders. I shove the papers at her, but she refuses to take them.

“Kit, it’s not what you think. We weren’t getting a divorce. We were still talking about things. Your dad and I were going to see someone. A couples therapist,” she says, and pats the bed next to her as if she thinks I could sit at a time like this. She is neither surprised nor crying. In fact, she looks almost serene.

“When? When did you guys go to a therapist?”

“On Tuesday nights. We didn’t really take up bridge.” I used to tease my parents about their weekly card game. Told them that they should have chosen to play something cool, like poker. And they had humored me. Smiled, kissed me on my forehead, said, “Don’t stay up too late,” on their way out the door. They were actually going to talk to a doctor about my dad sleeping with another woman. Get an expert opinion on whether they could save their marriage.

So many lies.

Last week I suggested that my mother start playing bridge again. I thought it would be good for her to see her friends. She shook her head mournfully and said, “I just couldn’t without your father.”

Bullshit. All bullshit.

“I didn’t know he kept the papers,” my mother says. “I don’t know what would have happened if he hadn’t…” My mom trails off and I want to scream it out loud—Died, if he hadn’t died, Mom—but I don’t.

“But he cheated on you. How could he…?” My voice breaks and I start over. “How could he do that to us?”

“Wait, Kit. He didn’t. Dad didn’t cheat on me.”

“I’m not stupid, Mom. It says so right here.” I point again to the sheet of paper, which now lies on the floor. I should have listened to the rules and not gone into my dad’s den: a no-kids zone. With the snot and the tears and my childish temper tantrum, it’s clear to me that I did not—do not—belong in there. Even now. Even after everything.

“He didn’t cheat on me,” she repeats.

“But, Mom!”

She sighs.

“I cheated on him.” Her tone reminds me of David’s. Flat. Neutral. Matter-of-fact. Like she’s Siri telling me tomorrow’s weather. She’s not crying, and I think back over the past month, to all her tears and wails and the million used tissues she left littered in messy balls around the house. Was that all a show for my benefit?

“I like to think I was going to tell you. At some point. When you were older, maybe,” she says, and shakes her head. “Or not. Some mistakes are better kept secret.”

“What? You cheated? When? With who?” I ask, and despite myself, I hear her correction in my head: With whom. This is, of course, not what I really want to know. What I want to know is Why? and How could you? and What do I do now? That last one in particular.

She doesn’t answer. Uncle Jack comes up the stairs, two at a time, and stands in the doorway behind me.

“Kit,” he says, using the same lion-tamer voice he used on my mother just a few nights ago. I see why she stormed out. It’s infuriating.

“This is none of your business, Uncle Jack,” I say, and turn back to my mother. I wonder how long I need to wait till she tells me the truth. I will probably have to stand here forever. But it turns out my mom’s not even looking at me. She’s looking right over my shoulder at Jack, who shakes his head at her, just once, so fast I almost miss it.

Oh no, I think. No, no, no.

Because now I understand everything. My mom doesn’t have to say a single word out loud.

Just when I assume things can’t get any worse, they do. They always do.

It was Jack.

My mother had an affair with Uncle Jack.





I am no longer invisible. Eighty-three percent of the people I have walked by this morning stopped and stared and then whispered to their friends. The other seventeen percent did actual double takes, the kind I’ve heretofore only seen in cartoons where necks are bendable. I look different. My hair is short and choppy instead of hanging long and in my face. My clothes look more like what the popular guys in school wear.

I try not to think about the random fold by my left shin or that the denim feels tight and bends in all the wrong places. With each step, I miss my old khakis, of which I have three identical pairs that I’ve rotated on a daily basis for the past two years. I can smell my new hair putty, which is coconut-y and not altogether unpleasant, so long as I don’t dwell on its sticky texture. Miney applied it this morning, using a dose the volume of two quarters, and I filmed the process so I will be able to do it the exact same way once she goes back to school.

“Holy crap, Little D. I can’t believe you didn’t let me do this sooner,” Miney said this morning over breakfast, after I came downstairs and, at my mother’s insistence, stood still so they could get a look at the new me.

“You’re going to have the girls eating out of your hand,” my mom added.

As I walk down the hallway now, I think of all those montage scenes in teen movies where the main character, invariably a girl, tries on a plethora of outrageous dresses and hats, closes and opens dressing room doors in keeping with the music’s beat, and then finally emerges supposedly transformed by something as mundane as a new hairdo and a skimpy dress. What I’ve never understood is why the boys are always shocked when they get their first glance of their newly made-up date, as if the girls weren’t already beautiful despite their penchant for androgynous clothing. Do screenwriters think teenage boys lack all power of imagination? At least for me, the opposite is true. I’m pretty confident I already know what Kit looks like naked.