“You asked me to come back home and be around for the girls. Get them dinner.” My confusion turns to recollection of my frantic call to Simon to be with Coco and Lou since I had no idea when I would be getting back. Panicked women can make stupid decisions. “I made them fettuccine with alfredo sauce. I used oat milk. They loved it and didn’t even realize it wasn’t real cream. There’s a cow over in Caliente thanking me right now.”
“I bet they noticed but didn’t say anything. They didn’t want to hurt your feelings and send you running. Again.” I collapse onto the couch, spent by the sheer unpredictability of the previous day and the early morning of this next one. “And don’t you forget, you left our home.”
Simon puts his hands up claiming no blame. “Hey, I’m here at your request, Toni.”
I look over at my sorta-spouse, vigorously shake my head, and then refocus on the six-foot familiar foreigner in my living room. Simon’s been gone for so long, yet has occupied so much of my thoughts, that his being here seems like a figment of my imagination. Putting on the dutiful dad act by stepping up for the girls this evening makes me wonder what he wants from me. Or worse, from them.
“It’s two something in the morning. Why are you still here?”
Simon ignores my time check.
“I had wine with dinner. There’s plenty left. Can I get you a glass?”So, he’s drinking wine again. Maybe he was all along in his pursuit of clean living but hid it from me behind his air of Zen zealotry. Either way, at this moment I appreciate his return to hitting the bottle.
I loudly suck the last of the cheap chocolate out of my teeth and nod. A half glass will quiet my anxiety and prep me to crawl into bed to sleep away the ordeal of my last twenty-four hours.
Simon waltzes back into the living room with two glasses. I should have specified I wanted one glass, to myself, by myself, while Simon scurries off into the night. The mandala beads around his wrist clink on one of the glasses, keeping time as he walks to the couch.
“Here. I can tell you need this.” Simon hands me a distinct overpour. “So, what happened tonight?”
I purse my lips, considering if I want to bring Simon into this evening’s events—or any aspect of my life. I take a long sip to buy time to formulate in my head how much talking I want to do, or if now is the time to force Simon to start talking. And if he does talk, am I evenready to hear anything he has to say? I take one more drawn-out sip to allow my slow-firing synapses to adjust and to make Simon squirm.
“Why are you back here?” I press further, my eyes narrow, and I straighten my legs, pushing the heels of my feet hard into Simon’s thigh, my body taking up the majority of the couch. He is not swayed by my attempt to shove him off the sofa and out of my house. To speed up the process of unwinding, I take two more big gulps from my glass, as if pinot grigio and my favorite, Diet Coke, are the same refreshment. Almost immediately I realize a single bag of M&M’s in twelve hours is not absorbing the alcohol at the rate I am consuming it. I feel a little liquid courage, with a side of lightheadedness, mollifying my mind and—more concerning—my judgment.
“If you don’t want to talk about tonight, how about telling me what’s up with the dozens of jars lining the kitchen counters? They smell pretty good.”
Ah. So, we’re both evading. I can keep playing that game straight up. Vamos.
“Nope, we’re not going to talk about that either,” I state, finishing off my wine and picking up Simon’s to pour half of what he’s barely touched into my glass.
The grown-up grape juice is loosening the muscles in my neck as I roll my head left and right. My shoulders have been frozen in fear, stuck near my ears since Mrs. Eisenberg collapsed in the ladies’ room. Relaxing into the equivalent of an alcohol massage, my shoulders drop back into place as a wash of fatigue settles heavy in my limbs. I may never leave this couch.
With my eyelids closed, my feet sense a disturbance on the other end of the sofa. I crack an eye and spy Simon burrowing into the well-worn cushions. I’m too drowsy to warn him not to get comfy, he’ll be leaving soon.
“Thank you for getting here so quickly for the girls,” I offer, in momentary truce. “How’d you manage to make it back in such a shorttime? Your folks are a good forty minutes away,” I mumble, with as much vigor and interest as a stoned koala drifting off to sleep.
“I’m not staying with my parents. I’m in an Airbnb only a mile or so from here,” Simon reports, reaching over to untie my shoes. “I wanted to be as close to Lou and Coco as possible. And to you too.”
Images of Lou and Coco sleeping at their father’s aseptic short-term rental when I thought they were at the Antonellis’ roll through my fatigued mind. If I had an ounce of strength, I would kick him hard for doing that to me, and then kick him a hundred more times for everything else he has done to us.
Simon continues, “Anyway, it’s a week-to-week rental. Seems to me I should be staying here, in my own house.” Simon’s green eyes bore into my droopy ones. “The place the four of us belong.”
My jaw drops open.What is he getting at?
Catching my disbelief at his gall, Simon adds, “I mean, I’m happy to stay on the couch. I just want to be under the same roof with you and the girls, like it used to be.”
I kick Simon hard, but his body doesn’t flinch, and his eyes stay locked in on me.
“Wait, wait, what the hell are you saying?” I question, now lucid, but also confused where this is going. As Simon begins to pull off both my socks, I’m thankful, for once, I let Lou paint my toes Lovely Lilac Unicorn. I told her it is the most Silicon Valley nail polish name ever, but my tech joke was lost on my budding beautician.
“I’m saying”—Simon looks around the four corners of the room—“I should be here, Toni. We’re still married. Yes, I lost my way for a while, but I found my way back. And you’re still my wife, and I’m still your husband.” Simon’s claim comes across like he owns something. “And I still own this house.”There it is.
“Add real estate to the list of things I don’t want to talk about tonight. It’s been one hell of a day, Simon, and I’m not in the mood to start with you.”
“We’re dancing around the things we need to discuss, Toni. Us and why you’re getting home close to three a.m. You decide where we start,” Simon declares, like I owe him any explanation. He’s at least smart enough to pour the rest of his wine into my glass.
Or you can leave,I think to myself but don’t say out loud, because even if it is the wrong person, for all the wrong reasons, having another adult in the house at the end of this supreme disaster of a day feels better than being alone. Even if it is Simon.
Not having the energy to discuss us, which I know would roll into the hours when Coco and Lou wake, I plan to skim the events of my day, then send Simon on his way. I put my feet in Simon’s lap and wiggle my bare toes because, well, the very least he can do is rub them. Without hesitation, he wraps his sizable hands around my left foot and uses the strength of his thumbs to massage my instep. With every pressure point, I appreciate how Simon’s touch gained in intensity and confidence when he began his yoga journey. My toes unfurl and my head lolls in the middle of recounting my trip to the ER with Mrs. Eisenberg. I choose not to mention Ash.
