What If We’re Gonna Have Eight Kids

The Language of Leftovers

The radiator still clicked.

That was the same. Three weeks in and I still noticed it first — the clicking, then the gray light, then the smallness of everything. The window was still the only window, still west-facing, still gray in December. The bookshelf still listed slightly to the right because Ethan's engineering textbooks on the bottom were heavier than my children's literature on top, and physics did not care about our aesthetic preferences. The shower still ran cold for thirty seconds. The refrigerator still hummed through the wall.

Everything was the same except for the laptop.

It sat on the kitchen table like it had always been there. Silver. Open. The screen glow was the first thing I saw when I came in the door, before I took off my coat, before I dropped my bag on the floor by the mattress — box spring situation unresolved, still on the landing, now decorated with a neighbor's potted plant that someone had placed on it and nobody had moved. The laptop was on the table. Ethan's fingers were on the keys. He did not look up when the door opened.

"Hey," he said.

"Hey."

I stood in the door for a moment. The apartment smelled like reheated pasta. The container was on the counter — Tupperware, the blue lid with the chip in the corner, the one from the set my mother had given us. Inside: rigatoni from two nights ago. Ethan had put it in the microwave and forgotten about it, probably. The microwave had that reheated-pasta smell, the kind that clings to the inside of your nose and stays there.

"How was school?"

"Fine. Caleb got sent to the principal's office for biting."

"Caleb."

"He bit Tyler."

"Tyler seems biteable."

I laughed. I put my coat on the hook by the door — the only hook, the one that held both our coats and sometimes a scarf and sometimes my tote bag, stacked like a closet in miniature. The laptop's screen glow shifted. Ethan was scrolling through something. A spreadsheet, maybe. The rows were too small for me to read from the door.

The rigatoni was still on the counter. I got a fork.

---

The lesson plans were due Friday.

I spread them out on my end of the kitchen table — the end that did not have the laptop. Construction paper. Phonics worksheets. A pile of hand-drawn flash cards I was making for the letter M. Monkey, moon, mouse, map. I drew the mouse twice because the first one looked like a potato with legs.

Ethan was on his end. The apartment was small enough that our elbows almost touched if we both leaned forward at the same time. They did not touch. His elbows stayed with the laptop. Mine stayed with the mouse that was not a potato.

The radiator clicked. Someone upstairs walked across their floor — heavy footsteps, deliberate, like they were trying to make sure we heard them. Outside, a bus went by. The window rattled the same way it always did.

I drew a moon. A crescent, because circles are hard. Then a map. A treasure map, because five-year-olds like treasure. An X where the treasure was, a dotted line for the path. The pirate had an eyepatch and a peg leg and a smile that was too big for his face.

"Does this look like a pirate?"

Ethan looked. At the flash card. At me. Back at the laptop.

"Sure."

"Is that a yes or is that a 'I didn't actually look' sure?"

He looked again. This time for two full seconds. "It's a good pirate."

"Thank you."

"Can you pass me the — actually, never mind."

He reached across. His arm passed in front of the flash cards. I watched his fingers close around the coffee mug — my coffee mug, the white one with the chip on the handle, the one from Target that had cost three dollars and ninety-nine cents. He took a sip without looking away from the screen and set it back down on my side of the table. Near the moon. Near the mouse that was a potato.

The keys resumed. Fast, then slow, then fast. The screen shifted. Rows and columns. Numbers. I did not know what the numbers meant.

I went back to the pirate. Then I put the pencil down and looked at Ethan for a second. He was frowning at the screen, his thumb scrolling, his whole face lit up blue-white. I picked the pencil back up.

"It's fine," I said. Not to him. He didn't hear me. I said it to the pirate.

---

It was eleven when I finished the last flash card.

Mountain. The M words were mountain, monkey, moon, mouse, map, music, and I had drawn a mountain last because mountains are hard and I wanted to get better at them by the end. This one had snow on top and a little flag, like someone had climbed it. The flag was waving. I was proud of the flag.

Ethan was still typing.

The apartment was dark except for the laptop screen and the one lamp I'd turned on when it got too dark to see the flash cards. The radiator had gone quiet. Outside, the streetlight was doing its thing — orange, steady, the only light on the block that didn't flicker.

I stood up. My back cracked. I'd been hunched over the table for — I checked my phone — three hours. Three hours of phonics and pirates and mountains, and in that time Ethan had gotten up once, to go to the bathroom, and the laptop had stayed open the entire time, and the typing had not stopped.

I made coffee.

Not because I wanted coffee. It was eleven at night and caffeine at eleven meant staring at the ceiling until one, which meant being tired at school tomorrow, which meant being less patient with Caleb, who bit people. I made coffee because it was something to do with my hands. Because the apartment was quiet and the typing was the only sound and the quiet was the kind that presses against your ears.

The kettle took four minutes. I stood there and watched the water not boil and listened to Ethan type and thought about nothing. The radiator clicked once, then stopped. The window was black. I could see my reflection in it — a shape, nothing specific, just the outline of a person in a kitchen that was too small for two people who were not touching.

I poured the coffee into two mugs. Mine: the white one with the chip. His: the blue one from the set my mother had given us, no chip, no crack, the good one. I carried them to the table.

His eyes were on the screen. The numbers were still there. A new column had appeared — something highlighted in yellow, like a warning or a target. His fingers moved. I set the blue mug down next to the laptop, on the side away from the flash cards. The mouse, the moon, the pirate, and the mountain were on my side. The laptop and the yellow column were on his.

"Thanks." His fingers kept moving. "Just a few more minutes on this."

He did not look up.

I held my mug in both hands. The ceramic was warm. The coffee inside was too hot to drink. The radiator had gone quiet. The apartment was the size of a large closet and we were the only two people in it and his shoulder was eight inches from mine and I could have reached out and touched him and he would not have noticed.

I stood there.

I don't know how long. Long enough for the coffee to cool to drinking temperature. Long enough for Ethan to scroll through three more screens of numbers. Long enough for the radiator to click twice more and then go silent.

I drank my coffee. I set the mug in the sink. I turned off the lamp.

"Night," I said.

"Night." His fingers kept moving. "Love you."

The typing stopped. Just for a second. Then it started again.

"Love you too."

I got into bed. The mattress was on the floor, still no box spring, still fine. The sheets were cold. I pulled the blanket up and stared at the ceiling — there was a water stain in one corner, shaped like a cloud, or a fist, depending on how you looked at it. The radiator was quiet. The laptop clicked from across the room.

It was fine.