Now she’s looking at me sitting in my car. She shivers. The dress your wife bought her is too small and I can see that her hips are growing, that her chest is blooming. With one hand she carefully pulls her ponytail over her shoulder and it’s more the gesture of a woman than a girl.
For the first time in her life I think our daughter looks like me.
I put down the car window and I lift my hand, a hello, a secret hello. She places the plate at her feet and stands again to look at me before she turns around to go inside. To her family. I watch for the drapes to be yanked closed, for you to come to the door to see why the hell I am parked outside your home on a night like tonight. And what, really, could I say? I was lonely? I missed her? I deserved to be the mother inside your glowing house?
Instead she prances back into the living room, where you’ve coaxed your wife from the chair. While you dance together, close, feeling up the back of her shirt, our daughter takes the boy’s hand and leads him to the center of the living-room window. An actor hitting her mark on the stage. They were framed so precisely.
He looks just like Sam. He has his eyes. And that wave of dark hair that ends in a curl, the curl I wrapped around my finger over and over again.
I feel sick.
Our daughter is staring out the window looking at me, her hands on your son’s shoulders. She bends down and kisses him on the cheek. And then again. And then again. The boy likes the affection. He is used to it. He is pointing to the falling snow but she won’t look away from me. She rubs the tops of his arms as though she’s warming him up. Like a mother would do.
You come to the window and kneel down to the boy’s level. You look out and then you look up. My car doesn’t catch your eye. You point to the snowflakes like your son, and you trace a path across the sky with your finger. You’re talking about the sleigh. About the reindeer. He’s searching the night, trying to see what you see. You flick him playfully under the chin. Her eyes are still fixed on me. I find myself sitting back in my seat. I swallow and finally look away from her. She always wins.
When I look back she’s still there, watching my car.
I think she might reach for the curtain, but she doesn’t. My eyes don’t leave her this time. I pick up the thick stack of paper beside me on the passenger seat and feel the weight of my words.
I’ve come here to give this to you.
This is my side of the story.
1
You slid your chair over and tapped my textbook with the end of your pencil and I stared at the page, hesitant to look up. ‘Hello?’ I had answered you like a phone call. This made you laugh. And so we sat there, giggling, two strangers in a school library, studying for the same elective subject. There must have been hundreds of students in the class – I had never seen you before. The curls in your hair fell over your eyes and you twirled them with your pencil. You had such a peculiar name. You walked me home later in the afternoon and we were quiet with each other. You didn’t hide how smitten you were, smiling right at me every so often; I looked away each time. I had never experienced attention like that from anyone before. You kissed my hand outside my dorm and this made us laugh all over again.
Soon we were twenty-one and we were inseparable. We had less than a year left until we graduated. We spent it sleeping together in my raft of a dorm bed, and studying at opposite ends of the couch with our legs intertwined. We’d go out to the bar with your friends, but we always ended up home early, in bed, in the novelty of each other’s warmth. I barely drank, and you’d had enough of the party scene – you wanted only me. Nobody in my world seemed to mind much. I had a small circle of friends who were more like acquaintances. I was so focused on maintaining my grades for my scholarship that I didn’t have the time or the interest for a typical college social life. I suppose I hadn’t grown very close to anyone in those years, not until I met you. You offered me something different. We slipped out of the social orbit and were happily all each other needed.
The comfort I found in you was consuming – I had nothing when I met you, and so you effortlessly became my everything. This didn’t mean you weren’t worthy of it – you were. You were gentle and thoughtful and supportive. You were the first person I’d told that I wanted to be a writer, and you replied, ‘I can’t imagine you being anyone else.’ I reveled in the way girls looked at us, like they had something to be jealous about. I smelled your head of waxy dark hair while you slept at night and traced the line of your fuzzy jaw to wake you up in the morning. You were an addiction.
For my birthday, you wrote down one hundred things you loved about me. 14. I love that you snore a little bit right when you fall asleep. 27. I love the beautiful way you write. 39. I love
