INTENTIONAL LOVE: SHOW UP

Point of View — Maya The birthday cake had been on the table for an hour without Ethan looking at it. Not even once. At the age of four, he encountered an impressive three-layer chocolate cake topped with blue frosting , but he wasn't looking at it. Instead, he kept staring at the door. Whenever it opened, his whole little body lifted from his chair as if something had pulled him up by the shoulders. Subsequently, someone else would come in. And he would descend again. Slowly. Quietly. Similar to a tiny balloon that someone continually lets the air out of. He did not cry. He didn't voice any complaints. He just observed the door. Maya observed him. She hesitated in the doorway between the kitchen and living room, holding a juice cup meant for another person, her yellow dress tidy and beautiful, her hair done, her smile prepared. The area was filled with people. Kids dashed around the balloon creations she had taken two hours to put together that morning. A mother chuckled cheerfully by the window. Melody performed. The food was arranged. Everything appeared just as a four-year-old's birthday celebration should look. All items apart from the chair. The chair at the top of the table. The one she arranged with the uniquely gold-edged plate that morning. The one she had extracted a bit, just so, to keep it prepared. The one that had stayed vacant since two o'clock, when the first visitor came. Chair belonging to David. She kept assuring herself that he would arrive. She continued to remind herself as she decorated the cake. She reminded herself once more as she secured the final balloon. She had tallied. Ethan had gazed up at the door opening three times now. He discovered on three occasions that it wasn't his father. Every time he went back to his seat, he did so slightly more gradually than the last. He grabbed his party horn. He exhaled into it a single time. The boy next to him exhaled and chuckled. She felt that something was missing but stayed polite still. Her child was having fun and a great time at his 4th years birthday party inside the room. She was celebrating him inside the room. Maya left to the kitchen before anyone caught her mode changing. Within the kitchen, the scent of the jollof rice and the vanilla cake permeated the air. She inhaled through her nose and exhaled through her mouth while placing her hands on the counter. Her attention was on those two matters. Her gaze then landed on the covered dish resting on the counter. David's meal. She wrapped it an hour earlier to keep it warm for his late arrival. She promised herself he would arrive late. She had arranged for it late. Being late still indicated that he was en route. She stared at that plate for quite a while. Suddenly, her phone vibrated in her pocket. She extended it. The screen displayed David's name. Her thumb lingered over the answer button, and an emotion surged through her momentarily, heat and chill arriving at once, crashing together in the middle of her chest. She responded. Using her shoulder, she swung the back door open and entered the garden, where the air felt cooler and the party music faded into a distant, muffled beat. "Hello." She maintained a calm tone. After that, he uttered the word. "Sweetheart, I truly apologize." He talked fast. The manner in which someone conveys an apology they had prepared beforehand, quick and polished, like a bandage being ripped off smoothly. Maya remained silent. He mentioned that an emergency had arisen. The board had contacted an hour prior. He had to catch a flight to Chicago that evening. It couldn't be delayed. He had made an effort to delay it, he truly had, but this agreement , if he didn’t appear tonight, everything would fall apart, and they were discussing. "Alright." She spoke in a soft voice. He halted. "Is that alright?" His tone changed. More gentle now. More attentive. "Darling, are you?" "Everything's okay, David." She was gazing at the tiny fissure extending across the garden wall before her. She observed it that morning when she went outside to flail the tablecloths. She continued to gaze at it now. "Attend your meeting." He claimed he would compensate Ethan for it. She ought to inform him that Daddy felt very sorry and that he would bring him something genuinely special that week. Everything he desired. She ought to inform him — "I will inform him." She expressed it in the same manner she had expressed *okay*. Level. Luminous. Carrying nothing. "Maya." "Have a safe flight, David." She terminated the call. She remained solitary in the garden. The melody flowed through the window behind her, and within the house, someone laughed so loudly that the sound escaped through the small opening of the door and faded into the fresh air. She quietly counted to ten. Single. Two. Three. She did not feel anger. She acknowledged that now, and it unsettled her a bit. She anticipated rage. It would have been understandable to be angry. Anger could have seemed like something tangible to grasp. Still, nothing like that was available. She fills heaviness in the center of her chest, looking like a stone. Four. Five. Six. Her phone was kept in her pocket. She looked at the garden wall again. At the division. Moving straight through its center peacefully Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten. She opened the back door. She moved inside the building. The party's embrace surrounded her instantly, the noises, the music, the aroma of dishes, the vibrant assortment of balloons. She walked directly through the kitchen and into the living room, holding the small portable microphone from the side table. She tapped it two times. She knocked on it twice. Her voice sounded clear, warm, and completely steady. "Okay, everyone." "Now it's time to chant the birthday melody." The space exploded with noise. Kids hurried into place. Grown-ups grabbed their devices. Someone dialed down the music. Another person nudged Ethan ahead in his chair, and his expression , his expression, did something that silently broke Maya apart as she remained there grinning. It was illuminated. Totally. Completely. Like the sun emerging unexpectedly from behind a cloud. He overlooked the door. At that moment, he completely overlooked the door. She approached the table and ignited every candle individually. Four tiny fires. They shook in the air conditioning and then remained steady. She moved away. Everyone was now singing, while Ethan sat up straight with wide eyes and an open mouth and both hands spread flat on the tablecloth beside his plate. He looked at her. She winked. He smiled so wide she could count every one of his small teeth. Then his gaze shifted. Just for a moment — a short, silent moment. They moved sideways to the vacant spot next to her. Chair belonging to David. He gazed at it. His grin remained unchanged. It stayed precisely in its position. Yet something stirred behind his eyes, a subtle and personal burden that seemed out of place in a four-year-old's expression during his own birthday celebration. He then glanced at the candles again. He took a breath. He exhaled. As the four flames came out at once, and the room filled with applause. Maya laughed and rejoiced with the others, and she didn’t look at the empty chair again for the entire evening. After four hours, the last guest had left. The balloons were collected in the corner. The dishes were cleaned and arranged. The remaining food was stored in containers in the fridge. A bag near the entrance contained the rolled superhero decorations. The house was calm in that unique manner that follows a gathering , not deserted, but tranquil, as if the rooms were sighing. Ethan lay in bed. The birthday boy slept off with his birthday crown on his head, and Maya found it hard to take it off him. She lifted his blanket to his jaw end and paused for a moment in his entrance, watching. His chest rising and falling.The golden paper crown sat slightly on his head. She switched off his light and left downstairs. She was now seated at the birthday table in the silent kitchen. The cake was before her , all three layers of chocolate, blue icing flawlessly preserved, the tiny superhero figurine still upright on top since no one had sliced around him, She hadn't been able to bring herself to move it. The kitchen light had been left off by her. The only light in the house was the little lamp in the entrance, extending to the table's edge where her hands lay. She didn't start crying immediately She sat with her hands held tightly in her lap. She just sat. She remained in silence, with the vacant chair next to her, with the covered plate still on the counter that she had never revealed, with the charred stubs of four candles embedded in the frosting, with the gold-rimmed plate she had prepared that morning and no one had used. She remained with everything. And then a change occurred in her heart. Calm and deep. Like an object that had maintained its form for ages ultimately realizing it was too weary to continue. She covered her face with her hands. And she cried. Not the orderly type. Not the film type, with a solitary tear marking a smooth path down one side of the face. The genuine type , the miserable, quiet, trembling kind that begins deep in the belly and pushes its way up through the throat with no other option. The type that seems like something is shattering while simultaneously striving to remain quiet. She cried for Ethan while observing that door. She cried for the dish she had covered and kept heated. She cried for the split in the garden wall that she observed that morning and couldn't stop pondering over. She cried for the word “okay”she repeated thrice on the call and felt completely empty while uttering it. She cried until there was nothing remaining. She stood up straight. She cleaned her face using the back of her hand. She inhaled. She gazed at the cake. She gazed at the vacant seat. For the first time in four years of being married, a thought emerged that she had never been permitted to enter before. It arrived silently. Without prior notice. It positioned itself in David's empty chair and gazed at her unwaveringly without shifting. She stared at it. She wanted it to leave. It did not leave. It stayed concealed in darkness and silence, observing her as if it had been waiting patiently for a long time for her to finally allow it to enter. Her hands became completely motionless in her lap. As the idea did not concern David. It wasn't concerning the forgotten birthday, the trip to Chicago, or the pressing board meeting that required immediate attention. The idea revolved around her. It was posing a question to her. A solitary, hushed inquiry she wasn't ready to respond to. Not this evening. Maybe never. She pulled her chair away. She remained upright. She glanced away and headed for the stairs, ignoring the table, neither the cake, the candles, nor the vacant chair. She ascended the stairs. She checked on Ethan. The crown remained on his head. She smoothened out his blanket. She headed to her room. She perched on the side of the bed. In the faint light, she observed David's side, the pillow still displaying the contour from when he had last rested there, three weeks prior. The novel rests on his nightstand, a section of a receipt indicating his location on page forty-two. He had been stuck on page forty-two for six weeks. She leaned over and grabbed the book. She stared at it briefly. She flipped to page forty-two and located the spot where his bookmark was placed. She read it a single time. She put the book down again. She rested on her side of the bed, gazing at the ceiling as the question from downstairs trailed her up, quietly settling in the room's corner, lingering. She shut her eyes. And the line from page forty-two remained with her in the dark. “The most dangerous moment in any life is not when everything falls apart.” “It is the moment you stop feeling it when it does.”