13 Flipping the Script

13

flipping the script

Alexander

Somehow, I managed to make it to Wednesday. I spent the last three days juggling pickups for the boys, afterschool activities, homework, meals, laundry, everything. It’s a small miracle I was able to get into the clinic and work at all. My mom came through for me in a big way, even though she still works full-time as a kindergarten teacher, she was able to swing over, pick the boys up from school, do homework with them, and then start dinner. If Dani knew I had enlisted my mom, I’d never hear the end ofit.

Dani loves my mom, and she knows I wasn’t coddled by my parents. Still, she’d have to make a comment about how I can’t do it on my own. Anyway, I feel like Dani has the boys overbooked. She’s constantly telling me they need more, but they rarely spend any time being bored.

It’s Wednesday now, time to swap houses, I guess. I got out of the clinic early and was able to bring the boys to baseball practice; poor Noah sitting on the bench in a sling. I feel terrible. I also feel tired and generally irritated today.

Is this going to be my life? Picking up, dropping off, cooking, folding clothes nonstop, while juggling clinic calls? It’s insanity.

Movement in my periphery catches my eye. Dani is walking down the ramp toward the baseball field bleachers, except that it doesn’t look like her at all. Her dark hair is gone. The only Dani I’ve known is gone. I can only recognize her from the way she walks. It’s a fast saunter, her hips swaying rhythmically, and she has a heel-to-toe motion that’s more dramatic than most people’s, like her feet are rolling a stamp over the outside of someone’s hand. Even in her most casual attire, she always has a splash of her eccentricity on display. Today she’s in jeans and a T-shirt, a rather soccer-mom-ish outfit for her, except that she has a bright orange belt on. It’s impossible for her to look plain. She’s carrying a travel coffee mug and a pile of sheets. They’re our bedsheets.

Oh god.

I get up and meet her at the bottom of the bleachers.

“Hey,” I say.

“Hey.”

“Are those the bedsheets from the apartment?” It wasn’t meant to be a snide comment.

“Yeah, Alex, they are. I went to a laundromat and washed them for you this morning because they were stiff. I haven’t been to a laundromat in a hundred years; I forgot how it all worked, so that was interesting. It took way longer than I imagined, so I figured I would bring them here since you’re going to the apartment straightaway and I would’ve had to drive thirty minutes—”

“Fine, whatever,” I tell her. I get the logistics. She doesn’t have to write a goddamn novel about it. “You know they have a laundry room in the apartment complex?”

“All the machines were taken. Are you mad that I did you a favor?” she asks with a deeply furrowed brow.

“No, just had an irritating day. Sorry.”

As I take the sheets from her left arm, she simultaneously drops the mug of coffee in her right hand. It doesn’t have a lid. The mug hits the ground and coffee splashes up all over the sheets.

“Oh no, dammit!” she says. “I’m sorry. Oh shoot, now you’re going to have to wash them again.”

She bends to pick up the mug and drops it again. She’s frazzled and for a moment I actually feel sorry for her, watching her fumbling around. “You okay there, butterfingers?”

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me today, just completely out of sorts,” she says.

“Don’t worry about it. I am too. I’m gonna take these to my car,” I say, holding up the sheets. “Your hair looks nice, Danielle,” I say, even though I’m still shocked. I would never tell her this, but she looks better with dark hair.

“Thanks. I don’t know if I’ll keep it. It’s kinda weird…like not me.”

“How was your alone time?” I ask.

“Fine.”

She isn’t going to tell me what she’s been doing over the last three days. I need to get used to that.

“And the apartment?”

“It’s great. It’s all good.”

We’re just looking at each other in awkward silence. I shrug and say, “Well—”

“I didn’t do much. Just shopped, got things for the apartment to make it feel more like home. I slept a lot. I got some writing in and started organizing the records and going through them. I left them near the cabinet on the floor. Will you just leave them alone? I’m putting them in order.”

“Sure.” I know there is more to it, something she’s not tellingme.

“I met the neighbor just across from us.” There it is, that word, us. Danielle pauses, then goes on. “Her name is Candy. I think she might be preparing to become our Mrs. Kravitz.”

“Great.” It’s the last thing we need. “Did you explain our situation?”

“No, I caught her running out the other day. I didn’t have time. You can tell her if you want.”

“I’m not telling her anything.”

I catch a minuscule huff from Dani. I am an avoider; it irks her.

“I’m gonna go say hi to the boys,” she says.

As she walks away I head to my car to deposit the coffee-splattered sheets. On my way back she’s walking toward me with her phone in hand. “Alex, I need to call Connie. She has news for me. Can you stay a bit longer?”

“Yeah, sure,” I say, even though I know I don’t need to stay if she’s just going to be on the phone.

“By the way, did you remember to give your mom that soup pot she left last time? It’s so big, it takes up half the cabinet.”

“When would I have given it to her?”

“When she was at our house the last three days,” she says, not irritated, more matter-of-fact.

“How did you know?”

She takes a deep breath. “Alex, I talk to our children every day. I’m glad you didn’t ask them to lie for you. I don’t care at all that your mom was helping you out. To be honest, it was a comfort knowing she was there. Until you get your feet wet, I do worry about you juggling it all.”

“I’ve juggled it all before,” I snap back.

Calmly she says, “You’re a good dad. I’m just saying it’s a lot to handle, and no, you are not used to doing it one hundred percent on your own, if that’s what you’re implying. I could tell from twenty feet away that you’re exhausted. Your hair is going in every direction; you clearly haven’t shaved in three days, the boys look like ragamuffins, and…” She doesn’t take her eyes off mine when she says, “You have an enormous green stain on the bottom of your shirt. What is that? Pesto sauce?”

I start laughing uncontrollably then. She smiles as I laugh like a lunatic. “You’re right, Dani,” I say between hysterical bursts of laughter. “You’re right!”

“You’ll get used to it,” she shoots back. “I need to call Connie. I guess you can go. You don’t need to stay.”

It occurs to me that I’m going to have the apartment to myself for four days…no kids. I glance at the boys and then back to Dani, who looks impatient. Her eyebrows are arched, waiting for me to reply. I’ve always wanted to be at their practices, not just their games, but Dani always had that covered. “No, I want to stay. Go ahead and call Connie.”

Dani walks away and stands in the shade of a massive jacaranda tree. If she didn’t have a phone to her ear, it would look like a painting. The huge violet bunches of flowers almost appeared to be floating around her.

Making my way back up the bleachers, I position myself so I can still see her out of the corner of my eye. Across from her, through the chain-link fence I spot Noah glaring at me. He looks down at his arm and back up. I mouth, “I’m sorry.” He shrugs and then focuses on the field, where Ethan is practicing with the team .

From my periphery I notice an abrupt movement. I look over to see Dani jumping up and down with excitement. She puts her hand to her face, over her eyes. From twenty yards away that’s how I know she’s crying. I’m watching her as she continues talking excitedly. She glances up and catches me staring. I look away quickly and pretend I’m not interested.

I’m watching the baseball practice, but my mind is somewhere else. I notice Dani is walking up on my right side. I look over. She’s scrolling through something on her phone. Her cheeks are red and she’s wearing an expression that is not quite a smile, but not a frown either. It’s the flattened lips that convey satisfaction. When she looks up at me finally, I say nonchalantly, “Good news?”

“We’ll see. You know how dizzying the ups and downs of this business are.”

Tell me, Dani. Tell me everything.

I’m scolding myself inside for caring. This is exactly the kind of thing that wore me out and pushed me away. Her job was dizzying, for everyone. The constant highs and lows; all the good offers that fell through, the colleague drama, and worst of all, the inadequacy she always felt as a writer, which she took out on me. Asking me day after day for years to read early drafts she had written…drafts of just about anything, from the three books she had started but never finished, to silly short stories, spec scripts, even personal letters. Sometimes it was just convoluted pages that merely constituted her stream of consciousness the night before, after having too many glasses of wine.

If I said anything to Dani that remotely resembled criticism, she would fly off the handle, even if it was meant to be constructive, so I learned to say nothing at all.

Still, like it was muscle memory, I wanted to ask her what Connie had told her that had her jumping under jacarandas at the kids’ baseball practice.

She continues scrolling through her phone as she takes a seat next to me. I look over at her and she looks up. “What, are we supposed to sit on opposite sides of the bleachers now? That’s weird,” she says.

“Nobody said that,” I tell her.

“You gave me a look.”

A second later her phone buzzes. “Hello?” she says. “Yeah, yeah.” Her voice is getting higher and higher. I have no idea who she’s talking to. “Yes, I’ll be there!”

She’s more excited than I’ve seen her in a long time. She hangs up and turns to me. For a moment, I think she’s going to tell me her good news and then she says, “What’s your mom’s schedule like tomorrow…or can you just stay until tomorrow night and we’ll switch then?”

“Why?”

“Because I have an important meeting, Alex.”

“I have patients all day tomorrow. I’ll be at work.”

“They go to school at seven-thirty in the morning, as you know, and their school is five minutes from the clinic. It’s just this once. I’ll be with them four days a week from here on out and you’ll only be doing three. Do you even have clients that early?”

“Patients, not clients, and their school is more like twenty minutes from the clinic.”

“Whatever…do you?”

“No, but who’s going to pick them up? I have patients at two-thirty in the afternoon, back-to-back until eight o’clock at night to make up for my limited schedule the last three days. As it is, you were supposed to pick them up today from school and I covered that. Remember, it was promised that this arrangement would only affect my schedule two days a week.”

She’s staring at me, her eyes are as big as sand dollars. “Are you serious, Alex? Throw me a fucking bone. You could hear me on the phone with Connie.”

“You didn’t tell me anything,” I say, but instantly regret saying it.

She’s very calm. I can tell she’s mad, even though she’s not hysterical. Noah is watching us from ten yards away in the dugout. He looks sullen.

Dani smiles at him and he smiles back. “You know what?” she says. “I’ll figure it out, though I think you should consider this…I also work and have a job, and sometimes I have to show up for it. Not very often…but sometimes…like tomorrow, when there is a meeting that could potentially bring my career back to life. Do you feel that canceling one afternoon appointment and bringing the boys to your office will be detrimental to your entire career?” She cocks her head to the side. This is classic Dani, trying to make me feel like an idiot.

“Dani, I’ll stay with the boys again tonight. I’ll cancel my appointments and take them and pick them up tomorrow, but remember you were the one who said you wouldn’t be there to help me out, and now you’re the one asking for help.”

She takes a deep breath and very calmly says, “Honestly, forget I asked. You’re right! It’s my problem. I can pay a babysitter. That’s what you are anyway. Actually, you’re worse. You’re a babysitter who outsources his work to his seventy-year-old mother.”

Ouch. Why did I let this conversation happen?

She stands, turns on her heel, and heads for the dugout. I consider stopping her and insisting that I go back to the house with the boys. I also consider wishing her good luck and asking what the news is. There is so much resignation in her. This is a Dani I have only seen in the last few months. A Dani who doesn’t care enough to fight.

I sit, contemplating what to do. The practice is wrapping up. Dani is still standing near the dugout with her back to me. She looks thinner. Her hair is different. Her personality seems different too. She’s moving on, I guess.

As I get up from the bleachers, I look up and see that both boys are watching me. I wave goodbye to them. When Dani turns around to see what they’re waving at, I instantly look down to avoid eye contact. I make my way to the car and don’t look back. I’m so tired, mentally and physically. I don’t have the energy to antagonize her, but I want to. I want to rile her up. I want to scream, Why aren’t you burning up inside like me?