Page 60 of Single Dad Problems
"It's seven twenty-six," he said. "You're not up. That's two minutes off the schedule. I'm flagging it."
I sat up like a woman pulling herself out of a swamp. "I'm up. I'm up. Breakfast in four minutes. I have not failed you."
"You haven't failed me yet today," he corrected, and walked off toward the kitchen.
I made him breakfast and we sat across from each other at the little guesthouse kitchen table that wasn't ours, and I drank a coffee I could not really taste, and watched him eat in his careful Oliver way, and the love I felt for this small particular human went through me like a hot wire, the way it always did.
"Math?" I said.
"Math."
I pulled out the worksheets I'd printed at the library the day before. He uncapped his pencil with ceremony. We worked through about fifteen minutes of fractions in which I learned that my son has been quietly understanding fractions for at least two years and was being polite about letting me explain them, which is somehow harder than it had ever been when he was just one of twenty-two kids in my class. As his teacher I could be a teacher. As his mother trying to be a teacher I could be neither correctly.
Then, without looking up from his page:
"Mom. When am I going to see Noah and Beth and Emma again?"
The bottom dropped out of my stomach.
I had been waiting for this question. I had rehearsed twelve different answers in twelve different shower-mind monologues. None of them came out of my mouth.
"Soon, baby," I said. My voice sounded weird and bright, like a song from a commercial. "Soon."
He looked at me with that flat level Oliver look that has been reading my face since he was two years old. "Returning to school would offer me appropriate peer interaction and access to specialized curriculum I cannot replicate at this kitchen table." He paused. "I miss them, Mom."
It was the gentlest, most reasonable knife anyone had ever put into my chest. I opened my mouth to say something, anything, and could not produce a single word, so I just nodded and squeezed his hand and watched him go quietly back to his worksheet.
Twenty-three minutes into fraction worksheet number two, the guesthouse door blew open without a knock.
"GOOD MORNING TO MY VERY BEST FRIEND AND HER VERY BEST KID." Tessa swept in with her hair in a giant bun on top of her head, holding a brown paper bag the size of a small toddler. "Today's the day. Get up. Vaughn is twelve seconds behind me and he's coming for the boy."
"Tessa."
"Don't Tessa me. You have been telling me you'll take a test tomorrow for six tomorrows in a row. Today is no longer a tomorrow. Today is a today."
The blood drained out of my face and pooled approximately in my left elbow. Oliver looked up from his fractions with mild interest.
"Mom," he said. "Aunt Tessa is using her loud voice. Why is she holding a paper bag."
"Adult business, my man," Tessa said. "Boring. You'd hate it."
The screen door creaked and Vaughn filled the doorway, all of him, looking like a tattooed mountain in a flannel. "Hey buddy. There's a bread emergency down at the pond. The ducks have started a small political movement. I need backup."
Oliver looked at me. He looked at Vaughn. He looked at his worksheet with the studious squint of a man weighing whether emergency duck politics outranked second-grade math, and apparently they did, because he marked his place with the gentleness of a librarian retiring a rare manuscript, closed the book, stood up, and announced, "Finally. Something is happening." Then he walked over to Vaughn, who held out one massive hand like he was inviting a small dignitary to dinner. Oliver took it. The screen door slapped shut behind them. I was alone with my best friend and a bag full of pee tests.
"Now." Tessa grabbed my wrist and physically hauled me off the kitchen chair. "Bedroom. March."
"I'm not ready."
"You've been not ready since pancakes, twin. Move."
She dumped the bag on the bed I wasn't sleeping in. Five boxes. Five different brands. CVS. Walgreens. First Response. ClearBlue. Some off-brand one with a generic-looking woman on the front that I sincerely hoped was at least eighty percent reliable.
"I went scientific," Tessa said. "Three different drugstores so the cashiers wouldn't piece it together. I have been carrying these around in my trunk for three days waiting for you to be ready. You are out of ready. Now please go pee on all of them at once. You can use a cup if you want, that's how I did it. In retrospect, the cup was a lot."
I picked up the First Response box. My hand was shaking.
"What if it's positive."
