But this morning, the promise of the new year crooks its finger. I’m eager, even impatient, to get started.
I ease out of bed, pull on a bathrobe, and pick up the clothes strewn across the floor with a wicked sense of satisfaction.
There’s no sign of Dorothy as I pad into the laundry room to drop the dirty clothes in the basket. Soon I’m sitting at the kitchen table sipping coffee, watching squirrels toboggan down the tree trunks while birds land and take off from the rim of the frozen birdbath.
I’ve been a busy elf. There are eggs to scramble, bread to toast, and bacon to fry. A bottle of syrup tucked in the corner of the refrigerator turns my thoughts to French toast, which used to be a favorite weekend treat. In that moment, I’m inspired to make the kind of breakfast I rarely bother with for myself and that Dorothy has never seemed interested in.
As if conjured by my thoughts, she comes into the kitchen fully dressed and made up, no doubt in honor of her son’s presence. “Oh.” She looks decidedly disappointed when she realizes it’s only me.
“I didn’t have the heart to wake him.”
She sniffs. “It’s almost ten o’clock.”
“True. But it’s a holiday.” And the surprisingly stellar start of what I hope will be an equally stellar year. “Happy New Year, Dorothy.”
“Thank you.” Another sniff. “The same to you.” She offers the pleasantry as if expecting a lightning bolt or clap of thunder. When neither of these things happen, I begin to crack eggs into a bowl. She pours herself a cup of coffee.
“I thought French toast might be more fun than the traditional black-eyed peas and collard greens.”
She nods and sips her coffee tentatively as I beat the eggs and open a loaf of bread. The pan is heating over the flame when the sound of our bedroom shower reaches us. I grin as I dunk slices of bread in the mixture, then lay them in the pan.
Mitch has almost always come home on the weekends, especially since his mother has been living here, but maybe I could go to Birmingham next weekend so that we can start looking at houses and I can see the schools I’m applying to in person.
The egg-coated pieces of bread sizzle merrily in the pan. I flush with memory of last night’s lovemaking and am careful not to look Dorothy in the eye when I ask her to please cut up some fruit. She hesitates just long enough to make me regret asking, then sighs in a beleaguered way when she pulls open the refrigerator door.
When the first pieces of French toast come out of the pan and new ones are sizzling, I set the table thinking that maybe Mitch can have a talk with her after breakfast. If we buy a house in Birmingham and create a timeline for a move there, surely that will help Dorothy commit to her own move back to Greenville.
Dorothy sets the bowl of fruit on the center of the table with a huff that I ignore. I’m checking the last pieces of French toast when I hear a buzzing in the laundry room. When it doesn’t stop, I follow the sound to where I find a cell phone vibrating madly against the bottom of the laundry basket.
“All right already!” Impatient to get back to breakfast before it burns, I raise the phone to my ear. “Hello?!”
There’s no response. I’m about to hang up when a little boy’s voice pipes, “Is this Mitchhull Wayleb’s pone?”
I pull the phone away from my ear and am about to hang up when I realize that although the cell phone isn’t one of the pair we bought together, it can only belong to Mitch. The only person on the planet who scoffs at password protection.
“Who is this, and to whom do you wish to speak?” I ask in my teacher’s voice.
“This is Mitchhull, too,” the child replies. “An I wanna speak to my daddy!”
Eight
Sara
I’m in the bedroom with no idea how I got there, stalking into the bathroom where Mitch is standing in front of a steamy mirror, shaving cream covering his face, naked except for the towel around his hips.
I barely wait for him to turn around before I’m shoving the phone at him. “It’s for you!”
“Hey! What the hell?” Mitch glances at the phone, then up at me. “Where did you get that?” He grabs the phone. “What have you done?”
“I should be asking you those questions,” I hiss. “I am asking you those questions.”
He wipes the shaving cream off his face, but he doesn’t speak.
“There’s a little boy named Mitchhull on the line. He wants to speak to his daddy.”
The color leeches from Mitch’s face. His eyes close in what looks like pain. Any shred of hope that I’ve misheard, that this is a prank or, please God, a surprisingly serendipitous wrong number, is ripped away. When his eyes open, they’re pinned to mine.
“You have a cell phone I didn’t even know existed.” Disbelief is etched in every word. “And unless this is some bizarre, tasteless joke or we’re on the reimagined version of Punk’d, you also have a child.”
I wait for him to deny it. To reassure me that this couldn’t possibly be true. Instead, he turns and walks calmly into the closet. I follow him far less calmly, dogging his heels. “After all these years of refusing to even consider getting pregnant, even though you know why it matters so much to me, how could you have a son?”
Mitch’s eyes flit around the closet as if considering avenues of escape. He drops the towel and steps into underwear and jeans, then pulls on a long-sleeved T-shirt as if getting dressed is the only thing on his mind. As if the phone call never happened. As if I haven’t asked him the most important question of our married life. As if that marriage isn’t suddenly and inexplicably on the line.
I follow him into the bedroom and plant myself in front of him as he shoves the phone in his pocket. “Answer me, damn it! Answer me or . . . or get out!” I point toward the bedroom door.
He sets his jaw, pulls his suitcase out from under the bed, then begins to stuff clothes into it. He stalks into the bathroom and comes out zipping his Dopp kit in harsh, jerky movements.
“You’re going to leave without answering?”
“You told me to get out.” His reasonable tone is even more incendiary than his silence.
“No, I asked you to explain what’s going on. You owe me an answer!” I cry. Even though we both know that not denying this monstrous possibility is its own answer.
“There would be absolutely no point in trying to explain anything given the state you’re in.”
“The state I’m in?” My “state” could incinerate an entire city.
He yanks his suitcase off the bed.
“You’re not really going to turn and run?” I ask even as he strides out of the bedroom and through the house.