The Light Pirate(4)
“‘Disgusting’ is a mean word,” Kirby murmurs, still arranging the wood.
“Well, it’s true.”
Kirby steps back to count the pieces. He knows he should say something more to Lucas, but he can’t think of the right thing. All this animosity between him and his ex-wife, Chloe, has splattered onto his sons, and now onto Frida, too. He knows it’s his fault, but not seeing how to correct it, he goes on hoping it will be resolved without his intervention. These tactile preparations, however, are the kind of thing he does best, so instead of turning his attention to a conversation about feelings with a little boy who doesn’t want to have it, he looks to his checklist. The sandbags have all been stacked. The lawn furniture has been taken in. Only the windows are left now. He knows he’s overdone it with the sandbags. They’re piled higher than is useful, but he wants Frida to see that he has been listening to her. It is his visible testament to how very seriously he’s taking all of this, both the hurricane and his pledge to keep her safe. He hoped she would notice this gesture and soften, but it’s clear she’s still upset. It irks him, especially after he’s tried so hard to be patient with her, to be understanding and gentle about what she’s been through. He shouldn’t have snapped earlier, but it frustrates him that she isn’t getting better. If anything, she’s getting worse. The nightmares, the crying jags—it’s as if hurricane season has snatched away all the progress she’s made since Poppy. They’ve made. And now, the boys are back for the weekend, clamoring for his attention, not to mention a baby coming next month, a mortgage to pay, a new work crew to navigate…and first, these windows to cover. There’s a charge in the air; he can feel it pulsing. Whether it’s the hurricane coming closer or the chemistry of his many responsibilities colliding, he isn’t sure. The source hardly matters to him. All he knows is that he’s exhausted.
When he met Frida, the divorce was still new enough to sting and his determination to do better was at its peak. With Chloe and the boys, he hadn’t paid enough attention. He didn’t see it then, but he sees it now. The constant traveling, the overtime, those fleeting weekends after sixteen-hour days of storm duty when all he could do was sleep—it added up. At home, he became a visitor. It shouldn’t have surprised him when Chloe filed the paperwork, but it did. She became an enemy when he wasn’t even looking. Probably because he wasn’t even looking.
With Frida, he was determined that it would be different. He let the erratic contract work go and found a steady municipal job. Swallowed the pay cut. Bought a little house a few hours south from his boys with what was left after the divorce. Frida was still grieving the loss of her mother when they came here, but beginning to emerge from the shock of living through Poppy. She was getting better, and so was he. They were tender with each other. No one had ever been curious about his inner life the way she was. She wanted to know where he’d come from and how he felt about it and what he yearned for. It made him feel known, and that was new. Chloe had tolerated him—up until she didn’t—but Frida savored him. They painted the house a crisp white before the boxes were even unpacked, just the two of them out here in the yard with rollers and a ladder, sweating in the midday heat, feeling the proximity of all that death they’d left behind in the floodwater and at the same time, preparing for new life. Creating a way forward.
It was a different kind of partnership for Kirby. She convinced him that knocking down the wall separating the kitchen from the dining room would make the house better, then she wielded her own sledgehammer, pregnant and nauseous but determined to share the labor. And she was right. She started sketching out an addition they could build someday—another bedroom for when the boys came to visit, with a big screened-in porch where they could sit and watch the egrets hunt for grasshoppers. That’s the Frida he married: making things better at every turn. Making him better. He thought it was mutual, but lately it feels like they are both falling apart.
“Dad,” Lucas says, sensing that his father’s attention has wandered. He’s eager to help, to be on Kirby’s team, but Kirby is still thinking about his other team. He wants to reconcile the woman he remembers scrabbling across this roof as easily as if it were the deck of her mother’s boat with the doom-obsessed stranger sullenly washing potatoes in the kitchen. He wants to understand her, but he’s too tired, too irritated, to wrap his head around the transformation of these last few months. “Dad!” Lucas insists. “Can I?”
“Have at it.” He lets Lucas climb under the porch for the last few window coverings, just to give him something to do. Watching his oldest sort through the plywood, lining the pieces up against the siding, he notices that Lucas is organizing them so that they’re grouped by room. “That’s good,” Kirby says, “putting them in the right order. Efficient.” Lucas beams.
Kirby knows that Frida is having a hard time with the boys, Lucas especially. If it were a matter of acting out, a kick, a punch, a tantrum, that would be something he could handle. But these nuances Frida seems so upset about…it’s not his forte. He can admit that he got so carried away by the clean slate of this little white house that he neglected making the boys feel like it belonged to them, too. His life with Chloe and the boys and then his life with Frida felt separate. He didn’t think about how to integrate them. But what’s done is done, so he goes on hoping that patience is all they need. They’ll go back to their mother’s in a few days and he’ll redouble his efforts with Frida then. One problem at a time. For now, it’s just a matter of getting through the weekend.