INTENTIONAL LOVE: SHOW UP

DADDY ARE YOU COMING

Point of View — Maya

Three days after the anniversary, David comes home.

He didn't stay for long anytime he's back.

On Wednesday evening,he walks in through the door. And he gives me a kiss on my cheek.. He came with a suitcase with him. He does not bother to open it. He looks really tired. The tired look on his face is something I have seen for so long that I do not remember what he looks like without it. The airport and coffee smell were still on . This is the kind of smell that people get when they travel a lot. He is also very exhausted. This is the kind of exhaustion that comes from moving too much.

He puts his bag down at the bottom of the stairs. Then he loosens his tie. After that, he asks what we are having for dinner. He asks in an easy way like he is used to coming home to a place that is always ready for him.

I tell him what we are having for dinner. Dinner is what we are having. I told him about it.

I head back to the kitchen.

He showers. He comes downstairs in fresh clothes, looking slightly more like himself. He sits at the table and eats the food I put in front of him and tells me about the Chicago deal and the board and the new acquisition that is taking most of his hours right now. David's words fill the kitchen. He talks with his hands when he is really into something. I sit across from David. I listen to him. I nod my head. I ask questions at the right time.

I am good at listening to people like David.

I have always been good at listening to people like David.

Ethan moved downstairs wearing his pyjamas. He hears David's voice, and the room suddenly changes.

David gets up from his chair. Ethan runs to him.

David lifts him up. Hold him close. Ethan laughs loudly. I sit at the table. Watch David and Ethan, and I feel two things at the same time.

David stays with us for two nights.

In the morning, David is gone before Ethan wakes up.

I found a note from David on the kitchen counter. It says he had to leave and he will call us tonight and he loves us. I fold the note. Put it in a drawer with some old cards from David. Then I make Ethan's breakfast. The morning goes on.

That was December.

Then January. It is really cold.

David. I go a lot in January. He stayed with us for two nights. Then he leaves. He always brings a suitcase and leaves before we get used to him being. Ethan starts waiting for David to come home. I see Ethan listening for the door and looking at the hallway when he hears footsteps. Ethan is waiting for David like he did on his birthday. Waiting. Watching. He has just gotten quieter about it.

Four year olds should not be quiet about things.

By February, I had stopped putting his note in the drawer with the others.

I have started putting them directly in the bin.

It is a small thing. It probably means nothing. I tell myself it means nothing. But there is a difference between keeping something and letting it go, and somewhere between December and February, I crossed a line I did not announce to anyone, including myself.

The morning it happens is a Tuesday.

Ordinary in every way. Cold thin light. Ethan's cartoon is playing in the living room. I am in the kitchen making Ethans lunch for school. I am cutting Ethans sandwich into triangle shapes that Ethan insists on. I always have to cut the crust off. The kettle is boiling behind me while I do this.

David called the night before. Brief. He is in Boston for the week. He might be back by Friday. He will try. I said okay, and we said goodnight, and that was the whole of it.

Ethan appears in the kitchen doorway.

He is in his school uniform with one sock on and one sock in his hand and his school bag already on his back the way he wears it around the house sometimes just because he likes it. His hair is combed because I did it ten minutes ago, but one side has already gone back to doing its own thing the way his hair always does.

He watches me cut his sandwich for a moment.

Then he says it.

"Mama. Is Daddy coming to my school?"

I keep cutting.

"What school thing, baby?"

"The reading thing." He holds up one finger the way he does when he is being very serious. "Miss Adaeze said the parents come and sit and listen. She said, "Bring your mummy or your daddy." She said Friday."

I set the knife down.

I picked up his lunch box. I put the sandwich in. I put the little packet of crackers beside it.I put the apple in the box. Then I close it. Then I press the latch down. The apple box makes a loud click sound in the kitchen.

I say, "I will be there." I turn around. Smile at him. I say, "I will definitely be there," to make sure he knows.

He looks at me with his brown eyes.

He asks me. " Is Daddy coming?"

The question just hangs in the air between us in the kitchen. It is a question. He asks it in a way kids do. There is no anger in his voice. There is no blame. He just wants to know if his dad is coming to his school reading on Friday. The school reading is on Friday. He is asking me if Daddy is coming to it. He is asking me because I might know if Daddy is coming.

I crouch down, so I am at the same level as him.

"But is Daddy coming."

The question just sits there in the kitchen between us. Simple and clear the way only a child's question can be. There is no sharpness in it. No accusation. Just a boy who wants to know if his father is coming to read at his school on Friday. He is asking me about the person at home who might know the answer.

I crouch down to be at his level.

"Daddy is working in Boston this week." I say it gently. "But I will be there. And I will sit in the front row and listen to every single word."

He looks at me.

He does not look disappointed exactly. That is the thing that gets me. He does not crumple or protest or ask why. He just absorbs it. The way he has learned to absorb it. Like a small person who has quietly, over time, adjusted the size of what he expects so that the disappointment fits better when it comes.

He nods once.

"Okay." He says.

Then he sits down on the kitchen floor and puts his second sock on.

I stay crouched where I am for a moment after that. Looking at the top of his head. His dark hair, David's hair, sticking up on the one side. His small hands worked the sock over his heel with complete concentration.

I stand up slowly.

I go to the counter. I pick up my phone. I opened David's name. I started typing before I had fully decided what I was going to say.

“Ethan has a reading day at school on Friday. He asked if you're coming.”

I sent it.

I put the phone down.

I get Ethan's coat from the hook and his shoes from beside the door and I bring them to him and we do the whole routine, coat zip, shoes on, check the bag, anything forgotten, and by the time we are done my phone has lit up on the counter.

I read his reply while Ethan was putting his shoe on.

"I will try my best to make it. No promises. I will really try."

I will do my best.

No promises.

I put the phone in my pocket.

I take Ethan to school.

On the drive, he talks about the reading day with seriousness. He has practised his page. He knows all the words. He wants to do the voices the way I do at bedtime. He asked if it was okay to do the voices. I tell him it is very okay, it is the best thing and he smiles at the window with his little profile lit up by the morning and my chest fills with something so large and so tender it almost hurts to hold it.

I drop him at the gate.

I watched him walk in

As I drove home, I thought about David's message. I will try my best. I have heard those words before. I know what the words I will try to look like when they become something and what the words I will try my best look like when they dissolve. I know the words. I will try my best the way you know whether you have lived through times.

I got home.

I sat in the car outside the house for a moment before going in.

I look at the door in my house. The house I have kept for five years. The windows I look out of every morning. The garden with the wall I have watched cracking since June, wider every month, no one coming to fix it, just opening further in the quiet.

I get out of the car.

I go inside my house.

I walk to the kitchen drawer.

I opened the kitchen drawer.

I move things aside until I find the business card at the back where I put the business card the first time and did not throw the business card away the second time and have not touched the business card since December.

The business card.

I turned the business card over.

The question mark is still there in my handwriting, but I stopped reading the question mark as a question weeks ago. I read the question mark now as something entirely. A period. A full stop. The end of a sentence that's been going on for a long time.

I grab my phone.

I dial the number on the business card.

It rings twice.

A woman picks up.

I open my mouth to speak.

The words that come out are really calm and clear. They're not at all like the jumbled mess I thought I'd say. They even scare me a bit.

Because they don't sound like they're from a woman who's totally falling apart.

They sound like a woman who has finally made up her mind about the business card and what the business card means to me.