Monsters (35 page)

“Stace,” he says. “I don't know what I'm supposed to say here. I don't know what you want.”

I lean into him, lean my head against him, and I feel his lips press against my forehead. I close my eyes and press my palm flat against his chest, count the dull knock of his heartbeat.

Twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two.

“All of it,” I say. “I want all of it, Tommy. I want you.”

W
HEN
I
WAKE
in the morning, I haven't seen Tommy in almost three weeks, but he's flying in tonight. The house feels empty without him, and of course I barely slept. When I walk out, I hear Bear's collar rattle as he stretches, steps down off the couch. He's too big to be on the furniture, and his nails are already leaving marks, but Tommy breaks all the rules for everyone. He keeps letting him up.

I have an hour still before the boys will be awake, so I make coffee, sit at the counter, fire up my laptop. Erin sent me final edits on the third manuscript two days ago, and I need to look through her changes. She's not asking a lot, shifting the order of a few of the poems, changing a line break or two. She doesn't like a few of the titles, but I'm not going to change them. It's going to press no matter what I do. I could drop a grocery list into the middle of it, and she'd still take it.

In any case, next week is Thanksgiving, so I need to be done. Jenny and her crew are all meeting us in Turks and Caicos for the holiday. Neither she nor Tommy is completely looking forward to it, though I think things are warming up. Over the summer, they spent
a week with us, and she spoke to him without scowling on three separate occasions. And only once during the whole trip did she call him a fucking dick. It's possible she was holding back though. The kids were around a lot.

When my phone rings, I almost don't catch it. I've plugged it in to charge on the other side of the kitchen, and it's on silent, but I hear it vibrating against the counter.

“Hey,” I say, cradling the phone with my shoulder. I move to refill my cup. “Shouldn't you be on a plane?”

“Just boarding,” he says. “How much did you miss me?”

“Very little,” I say.

“How's the writing?”

“It's good.” I take a sip of the coffee and wander back to the glass door. It's early, but the sun's already up, throwing the shadow of the house across the patio, the pool. “I wrote a villanelle.”

“That's a good form for you, all uptight and obsessive.”

“I'm hanging up now,” I say, and he laughs. He sounds happy. He's always happy when he comes home, and happy again when he leaves. It's the in-between we're still figuring out, how to make it through a Tuesday.

•   •   •

In Omaha, on an afternoon as beautiful as this, I would have walked the mile to the boys' school and they would have run ahead of me on the way home, Stevie begging to take the short cut across the golf course.
Absolutely not,
I always said.

Instead, I'm pulling up to the guard station at the front gate of their school. There's a sticker on the front window of the car, so the guy just waves me through. What their school does not have is a
uniform, which strikes me as a terrible injustice every time I see Ben trudging out of the school in his black jeans and T-shirt. Who keeps buying him these black jeans? Probably Sadie.

“For thirty-five grand, they should get a uniform,” I'd said after Tommy brought me to look at the campus last spring. They'd given me all these glossy brochures on clubs and activities, and I had them spread across the coffee table in the great room.

“It's not that kind of school,” Tommy said, handing me a glass of wine. “And what matters is the education they'll be getting.”

“I'm just saying,” I said as he sat down next to me, “I wouldn't mind that sort of safe, parochial image.”

“They have great security there.”

“You know what I mean,” I said.

“You want me to send them to religious school?”

“No.” I shook my head, took a sip of the wine. “Maybe. I don't know.”

Tommy put one hand on my leg and rubbed his thumb across my thigh. “Ben'll be twelve soon. You can't keep them home with you forever.”

“I know that,” I said, though I didn't appreciate him saying it. I hadn't wanted them to start a new school when we moved in March, so we'd just hired a tutor, and I kind of liked watching them doing their schoolwork in their bathing suits out on the patio.

“He needs to get out, get away from you, make some friends, maybe find a girlfriend.”

“I hate you,” I said. “I hope Sadie elopes with that fat boyfriend of hers and you end up a grandfather.”

“Jesus, Stace.” He laughed though. “That's a little below the belt.” Tommy actually likes the fat boyfriend, probably because he is fat and completely adores her.

“Mom!” Ben pounds on the glass of the passenger window, and I startle. I hadn't even seen him come out. “Unlock the door.” He rolls his eyes dramatically. “Jesus, Mom,” he says as he opens it and climbs in.

“Watch your language,” I say. “Where's your brother?”

“No idea.” He slouches down in the seat, his thumbs folded around the phone in his lap.

“Who are you texting?”

“Sadie. She wants to know if Dad's coming home tonight. Her dad, I mean . . . Tommy.” He fidgets a little, clicks the screen to black.

“He is.” I reach over, smooth a curl of his hair, and he ducks his head away. It's pretty much what I expected. I pull my hand back, look past him out the window for Stevie.

“How was school?” I say.

He shrugs. I've never been good at this part. I've never had to be. Michael was the one with all the canned speeches about family. He'd put his hands on Ben's shoulder and say,
We have each other, and that's what matters.
He used to say that one a lot, and I always thought,
That's such bullshit. It's not that easy.

“You know he loves you, Benny.”

“Who?” he says, and he turns toward me like he really needs the answer. Like he needs me to tell him what I haven't been able to say.

“Both of them,” I say. “Tommy. And your dad. They both do.” I run my fingers through his hair again, and this time he lets me, tilting his head into it.

Stevie pops the handle on the back door, and Ben twists away from me, rubbing one fist across his eyes.

“Hey, Mom,” Stevie says. “You know how to make salt dough? Because I have to make a map. It's due tomorrow.”

Fuck.
I glance to the left behind me and pull onto the circular drive.

“Salt dough?” I say.

I look at the clock. Tommy should have landed by now.

“You know who you should ask?” I click the call button on my phone, and it starts ringing through the speakers.

“Tommy!” Stevie squeals as soon as he picks up. “Mom says you can help me with my homework.”

“Homework? Must be math. Is it like a worksheet?”

“No, I have to make a salt map.”

“A salt map?” he says. “Great. Yeah. Okay. And your mom says? Can you put her on the phone?”

“You're on speaker,” I say.

“Right,” he says. “Why don't you pick up the handset, baby?”

“I can't,” I say. “Because I'm driving. It's the law.” I pull through the gates and into the line of cars turning right.

“Pick up the handset,” he says again.

“Oh god, you know, the traffic here. I better go.” I can't even keep the laughter out of my voice, and Ben snickers in the seat beside me.

“You are such . . .”

“I love you too,” I say, and then I touch my finger to the red circle on the screen.

“Good one, Mom,” Ben says.

He turns to face the window, but I catch the slow lift of his lips, the start of a smile. Behind me, Stevie's humming to himself. He kicks his feet against the back of my seat, and I don't even tell him to
stop.

A tremendous thank-you to my agent, Susan Golomb, who said in our first conversation,
You have a lot of work to do.
A million thanks for taking me on and making me do it. Thanks also to Krista Ingebretson, Scott Cohen, and everyone at the Susan Golomb Literary Agency and now Writers House.

Thanks, of course, to my editor, Tara Singh Carlson, and to Helen Richard. You are such smart, generous readers. Thank you for helping me shape this book.

To my earliest readers, Anne Mancini, Anne Freimuth, Ken Brosky, Stephanie Austin, and David Mainelli, thanks so much for your insight and encouragement. Endless gratitude to Katie Benns, Sarah McKinstry-Brown, and Jen Lambert. You've each read more drafts of this than any person should have to suffer through. Thanks for never telling me to fuck right off.

Thanks to the friends and family who encouraged and supported me and put up with my anxieties—those of you listed above, and also Ken Freimuth, Michele O'Donnell, Susie and Dennis Stieren (“life insurance, trust account, annuity”!), Marni Valerio, Rebecca Rotert, Steve Langan, Karen Shoemaker, and Natalia Treviño.

Thanks to my sons, Devon, Ashton, and Brandon, for putting up with a mother who is too frequently caught up in her own head. I owe you a trip to Disneyland.

And to David, who puts up with the most and hasn't left me yet, you make everything possible.

Liz Kay
holds an MFA from the University of Nebraska, where she was the recipient of an Academy of American Poets Prize. She is a founding editor of Spark Wheel Press and the journal
burntdistrict
. Her work has appeared in such journals as
Willow Springs
,
Nimrod
,
RHINO
,
Sugar House Review
, and
Beloit Poetry Journal
. She lives in Omaha, Nebraska, with her husband and their three children.

 

lizkay.net
twitter.com/LizKay09
instagram.com/LizKay09

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