The warmth of the afternoon lingered as the sky dimmed, preserving this middle-of-May Friday after weeks of cold and rain and quarantine. I was eager to walk with him down the hill and into the village, eager to talk with him after a workday that extended well past the seven o’clock hour. I slipped on my summer flip flops without painting my nails and hurried down the stairs to find Ellie and Emma on the couch, where they typically spent the long days, lounging with YouTube montages blasting on the TV. “He’s outside,” she said. Grilled hot dogs and corn on the cob sat on the kitchen counter where no one would consume them for hours. He’d heated up the baked beans, which he knew were my favorite and placed the roses he’d given me for Mother’s Day on the dining room table. I stuffed my lipstick and my phone into the little Louis he’d bought me for Christmas along with my face mask, in case I needed it. It had become our Friday quarantine ritual to stroll up and down Campbell and S. Randolph and S. Quincy with a Copperwood curbside cocktail, our Weekend Walk and Talk.
I found him outside, returning from a short walk, a little restless, a little sullen. And he began. “I don’t think I should stay tonight.” He struggled with his words. “It doesn’t feel right.” He was rattled by a midnight encounter the night before when Ellie descended the stairs and passed through the living room where he sat watching Mindhunter and exited the back door to sob alone in the rain. She had said nothing to him. He had said nothing to her. But the sound of her sadness in the darkness had made him wonder if he could do this forever.
When he woke me from a heavy sleep, I could faintly hear her through the open bathroom window and I rushed down the stairs and into the rain where I stood with my cardigan pulled tight consoling her for twenty minutes. She was embarrassed that I’d heard her, that he’d heard her. “I cry in the shower sometimes,” I said. “I have heard you.” She replied after a pause. “Well, that’s embarrassing,” I laughed as I pulled her in for a hug. It was true that there weren’t many places to be alone in 1300 square feet, but I reminded her that my mother had eleven siblings and grew up in a house smaller than ours – and only one bathroom. She laughed and then began to cry again. She didn’t know why exactly she was crying but she promised she was OK to be alone. “One day you’ll tell stories about this little house,” I soothed and left her to her thoughts. I lay back down and listened through the open window until exhaustion drew her back inside. Only then could I sleep.
He couldn’t really connect with her and he was feeling increasingly helpless. He wanted children of his own, but my children, my two teenagers, were perhaps too grown up, or perhaps required too much work for him to bond with in a parental way. He had tried. And tried. But mentorship was difficult and the tension between Ellie and him had been there almost from the beginning. Perhaps it was because, like me, she has always had trouble connecting with people. Perhaps it was because her own father was so far away. Perhaps my distrust of men, from my father, to my ex-husband, to most of my male bosses, had become her distrust. I ignored it.
This was a familiar heaviness between us. Nothing had been easy about this partnership. Not in a year and eight months. We had had these talks many times about marriage and fertility treatment and adoption. We had had these talks about drinking and romance and money as well. And we had these talks about my children. About my daughter. All the things that seem important when building a life with another person.
I listened. I listened to this 46-year-old man describe his detachment from my fifteen-year-old daughter as he inched toward a request for time away from “us.” She has never been easy. Two rounds of therapy and she still struggles with belonging, self-esteem, direction. She can be cutting, unapologetic, willful, and controlling. But somewhere beneath the wretchedness of adolescence, there is heartache and loneliness and desperation. She goes back and forth between adoring me and despising me. Sometimes in the same day. All I can do is love her and know that someday she will emerge from the combativeness, contention, and defiance of her youth to understand how to be in the world more compassionately. “If you want to connect with her, you’ll need to be patient and be ready when she’s able and willing to let you in. Try to understand her and take a genuine interest in getting to know her.” What if he was too immature to enter into a lifetime of someone else’s children? He wondered. “You know, when you’re married,” I said, “and when you have children,” I said, “even adopted children, you never again get the luxury of requesting time away.”
I have often felt that I had more to teach him than he me, but as he stroked my back and gently offered his honest uncertainty, I recognized that I am still learning, too. Learning to advocate more and sacrifice less. And l’m learning every day to be a better parent. To be a better partner. “I cried on Wednesday, “ I confessed. “I cried in the middle of my workday after our Skype call with the adoption lawyer you hired. I cried and then I called my mom.” I wasn’t ready to think about marriage and adoption when I couldn’t yet see the four of us as a family — him and me and these two teens. And how could I start over with a baby in my mid-forties? I cried because it all felt so transactional. He hadn’t proposed to me. He hadn’t confessed his desire to parent a child with me. He had “proposed” that we get married next year, move in together in two years when Ellie was finished with school in Virginia, and start the DC adoption process immediately after, with the certainty that a year of marriage would strengthen our chances of passing the home study. I would need to sell my little house to come up with half of the down payment and uproot once again to help him build this dream. What were my dreams? I cried because marriage and adoption felt less about his love for me or our commitment to each other and more about his need to be a father. My mother told me to prepare myself.
He was beside himself for missing the signs, astonished that I didn’t feel I could talk to him. But how could I say all of this out loud when every ounce of his happiness was pinned to these plans.
We threw away our cocktail cups, the melted ice and the garnish and the remains of our ritual, and began to climb the hill toward my little house on Abingdon. “Look where we are,” he said, pausing to point out the wall just past the Italian restaurant where we’d sat together months and months before wondering if his deep desire for marriage and children and my paralyzing fear of both of those things could coexist. We had determined to try. And we had.
“The walks and the talks . . . the dinner plans and weekend plans and someday plans . . . those are enough for me right now,” I said. “I know,” he replied.
We hugged just out of view of my front door and neither of us could help but mourn our separation. “It’s just a break,” he said. But it was a breakup. And how do you break up with your best friend?
“I won’t reach out to you,” I said. “I can’t go through this with someone else.” He asked me not to shut him out as he took time to consider what he needed. For him, our coupling meant a leap toward fatherhood. For me, it was about the long, paced journey of partnership. If we happened to get to a place where marriage and children felt good and right, that would be quite fantastic, but if we never found that place, we would still have each other. I reminded him that being a father to his own son or daughter seemed more important than loving the family in front of him. Or, perhaps it was simply not enough. It wouldn’t be fair to beg him to stay.
I moved past the commotion of Ellie and Emma crowding us at the front door. He retrieved his overnight bag as I found my way to the kitchen to begin putting away the uneaten hot dogs and corn on the cob and baked beans. I did not turn to say goodbye.
When Heidi called, at her encouragement, I poured myself half a glass of Rosé and listened to her smoke a cigarette in the Texas rain as she described her new cooler and swimsuit for her upcoming road trip to South Padre Island. “Are you OK?” she asked after a time. “I will be.”
