Other People's Houses(57)

Anne would have given her right arm to play Littlest Pet Shop with Kate as if nothing was wrong, but she tried not to show it. She waited for Charlie to give her permission to visit her own house, a house that was half in her name, a house she could choose to forcibly occupy if she wanted.

Charlie was wrestling with competing desires: On the one hand he wanted Anne nowhere near his house, but he also wanted his kids to feel safe, loved, and on his side. He was so ashamed of this feeling that he immediately said Anne could come. Of course.

“I want to ride with Mom!” Kate said, jumping up and down. “Did you get a new car?”

Anne shook her head. “No, I walked here, we can all just go home together.” The words came out smoothly, but she suddenly needed to use the bathroom, her gut twisting at the thought of walking into her house.

But her face showed nothing, and together they all walked to their car, just like it was any other Saturday.



* * *



? ? ?

Walking into his house behind his wife, Charlie nearly lost it when Anne went to hang her keys on the hook, then realized she didn’t live there anymore. Like a sound wave her pain passed back from her to him, the whole moment lasting maybe half a second. He wanted to cut out this connection to her like a tumor. He wanted to wind back his arm and throw a ball of shared history arcing out over the ocean, an unheard splash, unrecoverable. But he couldn’t forget loving Anne any more than he could forget a second language spoken every day for a decade. She was in the curls of his brain. His eyes had recorded and decoded her tiniest expression. They’d seen and codified her fear, her caution, her passion, her childbirth, her laughter. His hands had touched her intimately, aroused her, held her hair while she threw up, carried her into their first house, wiped her brow in fever, handed her diapers and wipes, brought her coffee. He’d smelled her perfume, her blood, her hair, her bad morning breath. He’d heard her voice, possibly every word and tone her larynx was capable of. She was talking now, asking the kids if they were hungry, as if she was still their mother, which of course she was, and always would be. Suddenly he hated her with each and every one of the senses that had loved her so thoroughly for so long.

“I’ll get them a snack,” he said roughly, pushing past her, aware he’d made her step sideways, knowing by that brief touch that she’d lost weight, that she was barely holding it together. Get out of my head, he wanted to scream, disappear from the earth and never have existed, all of you.

“Is there raisin toast?” Kate asked. He smiled at her and nodded. For a moment he had the mad thought he was cheating on his children by pretending to be OK when, in fact, he was clinging to sanity with only the tiniest sliver of fingernail. He wondered if this was how Anne felt, if the distance between her inside and her outside had been that yawning a chasm. Well, he was holding it together for the kids and she should have, too, the bitch.

He pulled two pieces of raisin bread from the bag and put them in the toaster, pushing down the lever hard enough the first time, rather than having to do it over and over as so often happened. See? Broken on the inside, capable on the outside.

The kids had run upstairs to change out of their soccer stuff, and Anne watched her husband standing by the toaster, apparently guarding the little machine from attack. He’d made it stay down the first time; she could never do that. It was fussy, that toaster, maybe the fifth one they’d had in as many years. How come they couldn’t make toasters that lasted anymore? Her grandparents had had the same toaster her whole childhood, one with enamel sides with blue flowers on them, drawn by what must have been a drunken artist with a shaky hand, his blue pencil wavering as he drew those long stems and petals.

Charlie was angry, she could see it in his shoulders, and she ached for him more than she’d ever ached for anything. The toast popped and she watched him butter it for Kate with quick, efficient movements, getting the butter to the edges, no further. He loved his kids so much, and he would never love her again. He turned and carried the toast past her, the cool breeze of his passing sweetened by the smell of raisins.

“Charlie,” she said, her voice breaking.

“Toast,” he replied, walking out of the room.



* * *



? ? ?

She waited for him in the kitchen, but he didn’t come back. Looking around she noticed how much tidier it was now that she no longer lived there. Who would have guessed she was the messy one? She went upstairs but her bedroom door was closed, so she went to Kate’s room. Kate was out of her soccer uniform, but had clearly been interrupted by the arrival of the toast, because she was wearing leggings and socks, but no top. Anne brushed toast crumbs from her daughter and pulled a little sweatshirt over her head. Then she sat down in the glider where she’d rocked this child from birth, and pulled Kate onto her lap.

“How’s school? Anything fun happen?”

Kate nodded, her smooth hair brushing Anne’s chin. “Ella got a kitten. We wanted to call it Yellowy, but her mom called it Butterscotch.” She pulled her head away from Anne and looked at her. “Isn’t that a dumb name? What does that even mean?”

Anne was surprised. “It’s a kind of candy. And kind of a color, too, sort of a browny yellow.”

“Ohhhh . . .” Kate nodded again, light dawning. “I get why it’s a good name then.” There was a small pause. “Why can’t you be living with us anymore?” Kate’s voice was soft. “Daddy can go away and you can come back.”