Dominic calls me as I’m leaving Brady’s building. The sound of the ringer is a shrill reminder my time is not my own. I can’t run through the city streets calling Brady’s name like a silver screen hero. My life doesn’t work like that. The movie is over, and I'm back to reality.
“The boys want to come to your place again,” Dominic says. He sounds stressed. In the background, a child is crying.
“Are you okay with that?” I ask. Jacob, who has an ingrained skepticism of authority figures, has not been pleased by the idea of new teachers and discussions about extra tutoring. The more we talk about it, the more desperate he gets. First he flat-out refused to go see the new school. Then he bargained for an hour. Then he went for tears that were still going by the time I had to drive back into the city for the night. And he is making everyone else’s life miserable as a result, but Dominic’s especially. I offered to take them last weekend, to give Dominic a break, but two weekends in a row makes me worry—and interferes with my plan to show up at Brady’s yoga class tomorrow if I have to.
But the sound of crying is rising, and so is the pitch of Dominic’s voice as he tells me to pick them up as soon as I can, so I say, “I’m on my way.”
When I get there, Dominic has bags under his eyes, the boys are holed up in their room, and when I knock on the door, I’m met with an angry chorus of “go away!” which is not something we’ve ever dealt with before.
“Guys?” I say softly. “It’s Daddy.” And the door is pulled open, and the crying starts all over again as they wrap themselves around my knees, wailing into the fabric of my shorts. Dominic looks a little weepy too. “Okay,” I say, smoothing a hand over Jacob’s hair. “Okay. Let’s get your pj’s and some other things in a backpack and you can come to my place for the weekend.”
If anything, Dominic looks weepier when the boys cheer and disappear back into their room to pack.
“I can stay,” I say. “We can work this out.”
“No.” He shakes his head. “It’s been the same all week. I’m sorry. I just can’t right now. Maybe tomorrow. I’ll call you in the morning.”
The drive home is quiet and awkward. Karter actually falls asleep while Jacob stares out the window like he’s on his way to prison. We order a pizza, and everyone goes to bed early. The boys sleep late, past eight o’clock, and we’re finally getting peanut butter on toast at nine. I glance at the clock. Brady is at yoga. The studio isn’t far. I could say we have to run an errand.
I send a text instead.I have the boys this weekend. I miss you.
I don’t get a reply. I’m desperate to see him, but I deserve his silence.
“So!” I say, forcing some enthusiasm into my voice. “What do you want to do today? We could go to the science centre. Or take the ferry to the island and ride in the amusement park. What do you think?”
The boys give each other a look, and I brace for a whole new fight, but instead Jacob asks, “Can we stay here? We can do some puzzles and play some games.”
The request nearly breaks me. God, even when Brady’s not around, I’m still thinking about him. Before, the idea of not doing something special while Karter and Jacob were here would have sent me into a tailspin. Now, I stretch my smile a little farther and say, “Sure.” Brady told me not to stress, and he is definitely the smart one in our relationship.
“He’s not dying. I didn’t die. For fuck’s sake, Nash, I started my own business at twenty-five.”
Jesus, I miss him. I miss his swagger and his confidence. He’s so proud of what he’s built, and he has every right to be. And he didn’t need fancy schools. He managed even after his parents split. He’s been amazing since the day we met, and there’s a very good chance I blew it with him.
I try to teach the boys Monopoly, and suddenly Jacob’s challenges are so clear. Before, I thought he got bored quickly. Now I can see how much he’s covering for the words on each card that he can’t read, while his brother marches over the board, snapping up properties with a confidence that would make even the most ruthless Toronto real estate maven proud.
“Do you want to be on my team?” I ask Jacob. “We can play against your brother together.”
He looks skeptical. “Can I be on Karter’s team?”
I have never been so glad to lose a board game to a pair of seven-year-olds in my life. They’re unstoppable. Karter reads the cards, Jacob counts out the money, the houses, and eventually the hotels too. I take another page from Brady’s book and teach them to use the calculator on my phone as the rents start to stack up. Jacob’s gleeful “pay up, Daddy!” when I land on the Park Place hotel for the second round in a row is the best thing I’ve heard in a long time.
We go down to Sugar Beach in the afternoon, and things actually start to feel normal. The park is busy, but we find a spot under one of the pink umbrellas. Sugar Beach isn’t actually a beach, just an urban park full of sand. The boys have fun chasing each other around the splash pad as the fountains shoot water in spurts.
I could have brought Brady here. The twins play pretty independently. Brady wouldn’t have felt ignored. Now that I’ve had a second to breathe, away from Dominic and his questions and his emails, I realize Brady could have come with us today, and we could have talked through some of what’s been going on.
Except there’s still no reply to my text. I take a picture of the boys and send it to Dominic. He replies almost immediately.Looks like fun. Are they doing better?
I’ll see if they want to come home tonight.
Dominic sends a thumbs-up. Hopefully he got some rest.
Karter flings himself down on his towel, lying in the sand next to me. Jacob has met another boy, and they’re playing a complicated-looking racing game that involves going from one side of the splash pad to the other while keeping at least one limb touching a jet of water at all times.
“You don’t want to play?” I ask Karter.
He shakes his head.
“Want a snack?” I say. I may not always feel like father of the year, but too many hunger-fueled meltdowns over the years have taught me the value of being prepared. I hand Karter a little string cheese. He wipes his sandy legs off with his towel, then opens the cheese and begins to meticulously peel it and lay the strings on his now clean thighs. I’m not sure how hygienic that really is, but the thigh-cheese hill isn’t the one I’m going to die on today.
