Reunion
I could say that I have no idea why Natalie is here. I wish I had no idea why she was here. But the truth is, I think I knew all along. I knew Taylor would never leave his wife and children. Nothing that happened between us during this trip away truly had any impact on our lives here. I should have known that.
I can’t stick around and watch this little reunion. I grab my luggage and haul it out of the building as quickly as possible, not even bothering to say goodbye to anyone. There’s already a cab waiting outside, thank god, and I toss my luggage in haphazardly before climbing inside.
During the drive back to my house, I can’t seem to rid my mind of those awful images of Taylor and Natalie. That stupid smile on her face. The way he slipped an arm around her in the same casual way he held me in bed. The tiny look I swear she shot me, as if to remind me where her place is and where mine isn’t. I’m pretty sure I imagined that part. But maybe not.
I lean back against the seat and let out a groan. Coming home was supposed to feel good. I don’t even feel good knowing that I’m going back to my own damn house now. Kate’s there, but we both agreed via a series of awkward texts that it would be best if we didn’t create some stupid farce at the airport. I couldn’t even convince myself that I missed her; trying to convince the rest of the airport that I did would have been pointless.
And we certainly couldn’t have competed with the show that Taylor and Natalie put on.
I think it’s safe to say that image is going to be forever burned into my brain. There’s nothing anyone, not even Taylor, can do to erase it.
The cab pulls into my driveway and I’m not really surprised that no one is waiting outside to greet me. I certainly didn’t expect a warm welcome home. That would have been too much to hope for even at the best of times. Kate and I have just never been the kind who showered each other with affection in public. Maybe that’s part of our problem, or maybe it’s just a sign of the problem. I think my recent tendency to have sex with men might be a bigger problem, even if Kate isn’t aware of it.
Whatever the problem is, I don’t really want some huge welcome home, and I doubt I deserve it either.
I pay the cab driver and lug my suitcase out of the back. So this is it. I’m home. With my suitcase dragging behind me, I shuffle to the front door and fish out my keys to open it. The house is just as quiet as I expected; even the three people who I know are here don’t seem to generate any noise at all.
“In the kitchen,” Kate calls out, her soft voice barely breaking the silence.
I set my suitcase by the stairs and walk into the kitchen. Just as she said, Kate’s at the counter, cutting up sandwiches for Junia and Shepherd. They both rush toward me and demand hugs, and I’m frozen on the spot. Everything has been so upside down lately that I didn’t know if they would even register that I was gone enough to miss me, but I suppose they did.
I’m such a bad father.
Of course I missed them, too, but sometimes there’s so much going on that it’s like my brain doesn’t have room to think about my kids in addition to everything else. It was so much easier when I could ignore my feelings for Taylor because nothing was actually happening, and I didn’t have to worry about Carrick and an impending divorce too. Now I have to pause for a moment to dredge up the feelings of love that I know should just be right there at the surface when my daughter tells me she’s happy I’m home.
I don’t think I’ve ever felt more awful than I do right now. Not even seeing Taylor and Natalie together felt as bad as this.
Speaking of that…
Once the kids let me go and turn their attention to the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on the table, I turn to Kate.
“So, umm, I saw Natalie at the airport earlier…”
“Did you?” Kate asks, barely looking at me as she busies herself with another sandwich. “I didn’t know if she was going to make it out there with all the kids.”
“You knew she was going, though?” I ask.
Kate nods. “Yeah… I did. Why?”
I have to ask. I dislike being in the dark almost as much as I’m sure I’m going to hate Kate’s answer. “Are umm… are she and Tay getting back together, then?”
“It’s not like they ever really broke up, is it? They’re still married, Zac.”
“I know that…”
Kate holds the finished sandwich out to me, and I take it mostly just to give myself something to do. I take a huge bite, just to fill my mouth before I can say anything stupid. Of course Taylor and Natalie are back together—whatever that really means for them. I guess it’s like all those times when she would run off to Georgia during the first two or three years. She always came back.
She really isn’t going anywhere, and I don’t know why I deluded myself into thinking that she would.
Kate glances at the kids, probably to see if they’re paying any attention to us, then says, “I’m glad they’re working things out. I’ve been so worried about her, you know, after the…”
She won’t say the word, and I don’t blame her for that. I nod, and set my sandwich down. “I guess I just didn’t realize they were even talking. Taylor didn’t… didn’t say anything.”
“She’s been texting him for a few days, and she spent the night not long before you guys left. Neither one of them really wanted to say anything until they were sure, you know?”
I nod, even though I really don’t know. I don’t understand anything about this at all, except for the part where Taylor lied to me. Okay, it’s not technically a lie if he just didn’t tell me that his wife was moving back in with him. But everything that happened between the two of us in Milwaukee… I can’t imagine any of that would have happened if I’d known about Natalie. And Taylor knew that, I’m sure. He kept that from me so that he could get what he wanted.
It’s not like I didn’t know Taylor was manipulative. And it’s not like I didn’t know that I fold pathetically when he wants something from me. But this… this is different. This feels different. And I don’t like it.
“So, Zac…” Kate says softly, in a tone that says she’s got some bad news that she’s really trying to deliver as gently as she can. “We really need to talk about what we’re going to do…”
“What do you mean?”
She crosses her arms over her chest, but it looks more like she’s trying to hug herself than like she’s angry. “Well, do you think we can patch things up the way Tay and Nat have?”
I don’t even need to consider it for a second. The fact that I just don’t want to says it all. I shake my head and Kate nods hers.
“That’s what I thought. So I think… I mean, I guess we need to figure out what the next step is. Legally, I think we’re supposed to live separately for a while, a few months or something, before we can really go through with it.”
It. The divorce, she means. Just like Natalie’s miscarriage, she can’t seem to say the word itself.
“So, umm… what do you mean, live separately?” I ask, not adding the part where that sounds like what we’ve done for the past month anyway.
Kate chews on her lip for a moment, and I know that move. That’s what happens on the occasions when she feels some guilt for whatever it is she’s about to ask of me. She sighs. “Well… you’ve still technically got that apartment downtown, right?”
Technically, I do. When we moved back to Tulsa, we—me and Ike, specifically—rented apartments in a building not too far from our office. After our weddings, we lived there for a while until we could find places of our own. It wasn’t until after Shepherd was born that Kate and I actually got this house ready to move into, but somehow it seems like a lot longer. We kept our apartment just in case we needed a place to crash after working late into the night.
And now, I guess, I’m moving back into it.
“Yeah,” I manage to choke out. “You know we kept our old apartment.”
Kate nods. “Well, I just think… maybe it would be good if you moved there. You don’t have to stay there. I mean, if you find a place you like better… it’s up to you. I just want the kids to stay here, you know? It’s the only house they’ve ever really known. It’s good to keep that, I think.”
Which means, I suppose, that she’s planning to keep the kids with her. I’m not really surprised; it’s not like she’s ever told me I’m a bad father, but she doesn’t really need to.
I glance over at the two of them—Shepherd at the table and Junia in her high chair—and I’m certain I feel my heart physically breaking. I’m only just realizing how horribly I’m fucking things up with them, and now Kate’s telling me to leave. I don’t even get a chance to fix my mistakes. It’s not as though I could fix all of my mistakes, though, and there are more than a few that I would be perfectly content to keep making.
I remember the way it felt to move into that apartment. Even though we’d lived on our own in New York for almost three years, and even though I was almost old enough to buy my own alcohol, the first day in my own apartment was the first time I felt like an adult. It was a new beginning—just a few short months later, I would have a wife. We could start a family of our own, a life of our own.
Now that I’m being exiled back to that apartment, it feels like everything has been undone. And I guess some of it has. Soon, I won’t have a wife. I’ll still have a family, though, but I can’t say that it feels like I’ll have much of a life.
I’m not angry with Kate. She’s not really forcing this on me, and I have a feeling that if I refused, she would go. But I won’t. I won’t do that to the woman who has no clue how fair she’s been with me considering all the things she doesn’t know I’ve done. I’ll take this punishment knowing that I deserve it and more.
Somehow, I can’t help feeling like I should be a lot more upset by this. I should just feel more, period. But I don’t. My emotions seem to have abandoned me. Maybe I’ve just reached by breaking point—between my marriage ending and Taylor’s betrayal, I’ve just reached the point where I can’t be hurt any more.
Which, my inner pessimist reminds me, means that soon, something else is going to come along and hurt me even more, just to prove me wrong.