What you need to know:
Jennifer’s new husband cannot feel or express genuine empathy. This truth is revealed after, to get attention, he invented a story that her son was molested. Jennifer’s relationship with her former husband and with her kids is now at risk. Her greatest fear: losing her kids. Facing this possibility, she goes to see her son to discuss Rick’s recent diagnosis.
Chapter Ten
Long Division
I knock on Spencer’s bedroom door, feeling Steve’s eyes on my back.
He’s in his kitchen a few paces away, lays out bread, cheese, and turkey, making lunches for tomorrow. I look over my shoulder and he lowers his head, dips a knife into the jar of mayonnaise.
I knock again. Harder.
“Come in,” Spencer calls out.
Opening the door, I step into my son’s room with it’s high ceiling, sage green walls, and heavy oak dresser along the nearest wall. He’s in bed and tucked under the covers with two pillows propped behind his back. On his lap, his computer with a wide screen that shines that horrible light over his glasses.
“Mom! Wow,” Spencer says, closes the laptop, slides it into what sounds like a pile of papers, tosses a throw blanket over it.
My first thought is: He’s watching porn.
A computer-savvy kid like Spencer— who certainly has listened to Steve and my warnings about “inappropriate content”—might be drawn to those dark worlds. Why not? The internet allows unfettered access to that kind of trash. I cross the room knowing we need to have the big sex conversation soon, but first…Rick.
I sit on the edge of the bed, take his hand into mine, touch over the scar on the back from a fall he took off his bike a few years earlier.
“I’ve missed you,” I say, glance at the blanket over his computer. “How was school today?”
Spence adjusts his glasses, smiles the way he does with braces now, as if not to show those metal-covered teeth. “Fine. Fine. Everything is fine.”
I study him, alert to how he just quoted me to me but before I can ask, he goes on. “You did the therapy thing today, right? What’s the deal with Rick?”
Taking a deep breath, I explain in child-friendly terms: “Rick can’t seem to help the way he acts,” I say, eyes on his hand in mine. The long fingers. The ridges of his clipped nails. “It’s a disorder of sorts, I guess.”
“Can it be fixed?” Spencer asks.
“I don’t know, sweets. He says he’ll try.”
Spencer slips his hand from my mine, studies the far wall where two posters hang. One for Star Wars. The other of a UFO and the words, “I want to believe.”
“Why would Rick say that kind of thing about me?” he finally asks, looking at me again. “I thought we were friends?”
His questions arrow into my heart. So true. So honest.
I smooth his bangs back from his forehead. “He’s got a problem,” I say. “He’ll live in the suite downstairs until he can see this therapist a few times and then, well, we’ll see how it goes.”
“Do you think he’ll get better?”
“I hope so,” I say. “Maxine thinks so.”
He studies my face, then lifts his chin. “Can we come home?”
“Do you want that?” I ask. “You’d feel safe at the house?”
“I want to be with you. We both do. Jo and I talked about it. I mean…” Spencer looks past me at the closed door and then at me again, lowers his voice. “Dad is great. Don’t get me wrong, but it’s not the same.”
I want to throw my arms around him, give thanks. Without them, I’m lost. “Okay. Tomorrow then? I’ll pick you up after school?”
“Great. Perfect. Don’t be late,” Spencer says.
I laugh and he does, too. It feels good, that lightness between us. Up to now, I’ve felt buried.
I look past Spence at the lumpy throw blanket. “I’ve read somewhere that the computer’s blue light will keep you up,” I say, looking at him again. “You shouldn’t be on it before bed.”
“I’m using the night screen, Mom.”
“Oh,” I say as if I understand what this means. “So? What are you watching?”
“Math,” he says.
“Math?”
“Yeah,” he says, leans over, digs out the computer, and flips it open. He taps on the keyboard. The screen flashes to life. He shifts it around. On the screen is a tutorial video for long division.
Spencer digs under the blanket, pulls up a roll of graph paper that he passes into my hands. 57,834 divided by 765. 189,453 divided by 3425. 435,980 divided by 456.
“Why were you hiding this?” I ask, passing the roll of paper back to him.
“I wasn’t exactly hiding it,” he says, rolls the graph paper more tightly. “I’m just embarrassed. I’m almost fourteen years old. I should understand long division but my Montessori guide is useless and dad keeps telling me to use a calculator.” He tosses the roll aside, adjusts his glasses on his face. “I can’t use a calculator on a test, so why should I practice equations on one?”
I lean in, hug him, an awkward move around the screen, but he hugs me back. Thank goodness, I think. No sex talk needed tonight!
Steve and I sit on the front stoop of his house. Around us, the click and whine of the night insects, the hum of electricity through the wires slung between the power poles, the far off rumble of a plane taking off from the airport. That shimmer of light in the eastern sky.
To anyone looking at us, we are two people taking in a fine, spring evening which couldn’t be further from the truth. Instead, Steve—elbows on his thighs, chin resting on his interwoven fingers—listens to me tell my story about Rick. Again.
“So much for ‘finding my better self,’” I say, mostly to myself.
That term, “Finding my better self,” was something I said in the years leading up to leaving Steve. “I know there is a better me out there, somewhere,” I told him because I hated the person I was with him, a door-mat with no spine who let him push me to the point where, rather than talk things through rationally, I became either over-reactive or locked into a paralyzed silence.
Steve stares ahead with an unreadable expression, then finally scratches at his whiskered chin and looks over at me. “This is kind of your worst nightmare,” he says. “You’ve had your share of crazies in your life.”
“Don’t call Rick that,” I say. “Even if it’s true.”
“You know what I mean,” he says, nudges into my shoulder. “It’s great he’s going to get some help, but why is this your problem? It’s not like it happened on your watch. He’s probably been this way for years.”
I look hard at him, search for some residual bitterness toward me, but he’s being genuine. A friend. “I can’t give up yet. Can I?” I ask.
Steve rubs at the back of his neck. “What the hell do I know? I can’t even date someone who lives in the same country.” Then he chuckles at himself, or maybe at me, or life. “I have no idea how you found the guts to marry again.”
“Guts or stupidity.”
“Well. Yeah.”
A woman walks past with her dog on a leash. That jangling metal-on-metal sound. A moment later, the sound fades to quiet again.
“Not to change the subject but did Spence mention Zeb?” Steve asks. “You know, that mean kid in his class?”
“No. What’s up?”
Steve shifts on the stoop, hands raised like stopping traffic. “Don’t get upset. It’s been handled, but Zeb shoved Spence in the bathroom today. It got pretty bad.”
I stare at him for a long moment, those raised hands. “Why didn’t you call me? Why didn’t he say anything?” I turn on the stoop and study the closed front door. A whole drama has taken place but I didn’t know because of Rick. “Should I go back in and talk to him?”
“No. Leave it for now,” Steve says, lowers his hands to his knees. “But it’s time to get him out of that school.”
“When?” I ask.
“Soon,” he says.
“What about Jo?”
“We’ll leave her in Ms. Adelay’s for the rest of the year but can you get Spencer into that art school next to your place? The public school?”
“Is that what he wants?”
“He’s done with Montessori,” Steve says. “He’ll do better in a place where he can get on stage. Sing. Those nuns don’t have a clue about educating boys.”
“And public school does?”
Steve rakes a hand through his hair, gives me a look.
We’ve had this conversation many times over the years. Stay? Go? (Like our marriage, ironically). Montessori solved Spencer’s struggles in first and second grade when we discovered optical nerve damage that impacted his ability to read and do math. Curriculum flexibility helped him catch up academically while he went through a year of physical therapy sessions to mature his vision.
“It’s time, Jen,” Steve finally says.
The tick-ticking of the night around us. Cricket song. Overhead, a few stars shining through the haze of pollution.
“Okay. Okay,” I say, more in surrender than agreement. I liked Montessori, the sense of safety in the little school, the goodness of so many of the teachers but Steve’s right. Spencer’s outgrown that school.
I shove to stand and dig out my keys from my pocket in a jangle of metal on metal. Peering up at the second-floor window of Steve’s house, at what is Jo’s darkened room, I think how nice it would be to crawl into bed with Her. Heck, being Jo would be better than being me at this moment.
“Thanks for keeping them an extra couple days,” I say, looking at Steve again.
“No worries,” he says and smiles in his lopsided way. “See you Friday for the big birthday gala.”
That’s right. The birthday. I forgot all about it.
Next:
Chapter 11: Mountains Out of Molehills
It’s time to give Rick a chance to prove that his new therapy is working and that his ability to express empathy is returning. As an act of faith, Jennifer agrees to let Rick watch her daughter, Josephine, for a couple hours while Jennifer is out of town. What can go wrong?