“Suddenly my daughters weren’t kids anymore. They were props. Props in matching outfits who had to smile on command or risk ruining the aesthetic.”
I could hear the frustration creeping into his voice.
“I pushed back. Asked if maybe we could dial it back a bit. She looked at me like I was speaking another language.” He picked up his wine again, drained half of it. “From her perspective, nothing had changed. She was doing exactly what she’d always done. I was the one with the problem.”
“But you kept pushing,” I guessed.
“Yeah. And we fought more and more until we were both miserable.”
“How long did that go on?”
“Couple years. Then one night we had a massive fight because the girls got offered a commercial. I said absolutely not. She said I was being ridiculous. And then she just...” He paused, like he was choosing his words carefully. “She said maybe we wanted different things now. And that we should think about what that meant.”
“She asked for the divorce?”
“She brought it up first. Yeah.” He met my eyes. “And I felt relieved. Which told me everything I needed to know.”
“And then what?”
“I let her keep the house and we split custody 50/50. For a while it worked really well and I felt like we’d struck a pretty good balance with the girls. But after about six months, things started to shift.”
“How do you mean?”
“Our custody arrangement includes first right of refusal.”
“What’s that?”
“If one of us needs a babysitter, we have to offer the other one first, before anyone else. Turns out, Nat needed a lot of babysitting done. I never said no if I could help it. It was when my custody time went from 50/50 to 70/30 that I decided to change things up. I want the girls to have as normal a childhood as possible, like my parents gave me. Which means a normal house in the suburbs, normal schools, all that.”
“That’s awesome.”
He scrubbed a hand over his face, suddenly looking exhausted. “It’s good in theory, but it’s not quite turning out how I wanted.”
That made me frown. “No?”
He shook his head. “Because Nat has such a small window of time with the girls, she needs to capitalize when they’re there. So it’s all make-up, outfits, photo shoots. All the shit I was trying to get them away from.”
“That’s not awesome.”
“No, it’s not. I think they’re tired of it. Audrey’s started refusing to smile for photos. Alice hates the dresses. Nat bribes them with ice cream, but I’m not sure how much longer that’ll work. I think the girls are miserable and I have no fucking clue what to do about it.”
Knots of anxiety curled in my stomach and I turned away, rinsing the knife again, just for something to do.
“I’m worried that if I put my foot down, she’ll change our arrangement. At least right now it’s only every other weekend and the one or two weekdays. It seems manageable. But then I wonder, maybe I’m being too rigid about all this. A little make-up doesn’t really matter does it? Nat thinks I’m being too controlling and that I’m the problem, but the girls…”
The smell of the garlic suddenly seemed cloying. The lights too bright. Memories swarmed in, almost overwhelming me.
“You have to stop it,” I said, my voice shaking a little.
“You think?”
“When I was a kid, my mom got me on the pageant circuit. I didn’t love it, but it wasn’t the worst. Until I started winning.”
He was watching me so intently that I almost wavered. But no, Audrey and Alice deserved for him to hear my take on this, so I dragged in air and pushed on.
“Becauseeverythingramped up. More shows, more outfits, more… everything. I fucking hated it. To this day, the smell of hair spray makes me dry retch.”Okay, back up. This is getting way too deep. “I asked my dad to make my mom stop. You wanna know what he did?”
“Tell me.”
