The Overdue Life of Amy Byler

by Kelly Harms

  Why am I trying to impress John with real cooking? I wonder silently. What is that about?

  As the pasta water simmers and the pesto whirs in the Ninja, I start to remember the things I should be talking about with John before the kids get here. Limits for the kids during their week with their dad. Rules. Parameters. “John,” I call into the dining room. “Maybe this is a good time to talk about parameters?”

  But John isn’t in the dining room anymore. He isn’t anywhere that I can see. I turn off the blender and wander into the front of the house. He’s sitting on the old gray canvas sofa, head in his hands. Next to him is a photo book the kids made for me last Christmas called “Stop Calling Us Tweens,” and it is filled with a year’s worth of snapshots of the kids doing their various things. Diving, public speaking, Halloween, making our Sunday breakfast burritos in silly toques.

  I freeze. In all our years of marriage, I saw John cry maybe three or four times. He was raised in a household that highly valued male/female dichotomy, after all. He told me once he’d never seen his own father cry. John cried when both kids were born, and he cried on the phone from Hong Kong when he told me he was never coming back. That call . . . we were both crying so hard none of our words made any sense; none even sounded much like words. “I’m sorry,” he said over and over and over again. “I’m sorry. I have to do this. I’m dying.”

  And in that weird way the brain sort of frosts over in crisis and picks out the thing that it can handle, my brain picked out John saying, “I’m dying,” and I thought, for just a second, Oh. Well, in that case. If he’s dying, then this is ok. He’s not leaving me. He’s dying. Thank god. For a second I thought he was leaving me.

  And then of course the brain defrosts just enough to let a reasonable thought peek out. He’s not actually dying. That asshole. “You’re dying? Living with me is killing you?” I remember asking. And he said, “What?” about three times because I was sniveling too much. And that he couldn’t somehow understand me through the choking sobs made me angrier, and then I just tumbled down past angry into hurt and said over and over again, “You’re a horrible person. This is a horrible thing. You are doing a horrible, horrible thing,” in a pointless chant. At some point he disconnected, but I kept the chant up for months, saying it to all my friends who would listen, to my parents, to his parents, to everyone except for two people: Cori and Joe.

  I take a deep, deep breath and sit down next to him on the sofa. “John,” I say gently, putting one hand on his back. It’s an old movement born of muscle memory rather than intention, and yet when I touch him, I wish I hadn’t. “This is not unsalvageable.” I am talking about his relationship with the children. But at my own words, unbidden, the image of my wedding ring, upstairs, in the farthest corner of my jewelry box, pops into my head. I never did get rid of it. Told myself I might need the money for a rainy day. Never mind it was pouring at the time.

  He looks up at me. “It’s been years. A fourth of Joe’s life.”

  I nod. And because of the way pain shifts time, weighs it down to an exhausted plod, it feels like it’s been half of mine. “But they’re not predisposed to hate you. They have animosity, and probably a lot of really hard questions for you. But they also are going to want—desperately want—you to be able to make this ok.” I am speaking for the kids, of course. I’m not speaking for myself. I don’t think.

  He shakes his head, defeated. Always out of ideas. Always so quick to give up. I feel my anger bubble back.

  “Don’t be lazy, John. If you don’t intend to work for this, to invest in this, don’t stay another second. I won’t let you stay another second,” I say. “Not if your endgame is disappointing them again.” Or me.

  He shakes his head. “Of course it’s not. I’m just . . . I’m daunted.”

  “I’m sure you are. I’m daunted too. But the thing is those two kids are way smarter than either of us. They’ll see right through it if we’re faking this. If you want to see them for a week and then be gone another three years, they’ll pick up on it. They’ll torture you to see if it makes you falter. They’ll push you away just to be sure you’re committed. So don’t waste any of our time if you’re not.”

  “Oh, I’m committed. I want this more than anything,” he says. “I am not trying to scare you, but I want something real with these kids. I’m a VP now, and I can work remotely all summer. It’s a short flight away to the Chicago office if something comes up. I’m not needed back in Hong Kong until September, and in the years following this promotion, I’ll have more and more freedom and autonomy. A week with the kids could be just the beginning . . . I mean, if you were open to it.”

  I blanch, taken by surprise. Every mama-bear cell of my body starts vibrating with fear. Does he intend to ask for custody? Is he trying to steal my kids?

  “Ok, back it up there,” he says, seeing the panic on my face. “You just asked me if I’m in it for the long haul. I am telling you I am. Stop mentally hiring lawyers and writing the script for the Lifetime movie.”

  I take a deep breath, then nod. He’s right, of course. How can someone I’ve been without for years still know me better than anyone else in the entire world? And how can the right answer feel so terrifying?

  “They live with me,” I say, mostly for my own reassurance.

  John nods. “They live with you. You’re their mother. I just want to . . . be their father a little better.”

  I raise my eyebrows.

  “I just want to be their father at all,” John amends.

  “Then I will help you,” I say, though it all feels so terribly unfair. Helping him repair what he did to the kids. Even though he did it to me too. “But I’m not helping you, exactly,” I clarify. “I’m helping them.”

  And that sneaky, hopeful, idiotic part of my heart whispers to herself, when she thinks I’m not paying attention, And maybe helping myself too.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Dear Mom,

  Ok, I can already guess what you would say: I’m not supposed to spend the entire journal entry complaining about the books. Noted. I’m supposed to write about my innermost feelings about what I read that week, and I’m supposed to write it this way, by hand, in a big fancy notebook, so I can learn how people lived in the olden days when cars couldn’t fly and dinosaurs roamed the earth.

  But see? See how weird it is to write a joke and not have anyone write LOL back to you? Texting is so much more natural. It’s a conversation. You know when you’re understood. And when you’re not. This, this handwriting all by yourself, is unnatural. There’s no response to journaling. It’s like shouting into the oblivion. Will you even read this? When? Are you laughing? Are you skimming? Do you have anything to say to me?

  I love you, Mom, I really do. But I don’t think you understand at all what it’s like to be a . . . what, a young adult? A new person. That’s what I am. I have been a person for fifteen years, which is time to understand the world but not time to get all creaky and jaded. And before you creak (see) to me about wisdom and experience, let me tell you, I know you and Dad went to Paris for your honeymoon, but what other experiences have you had exactly since then? What do you even DO for fun? All I ever see you do is work and hassle me and Joe.

  Which, like, ok. I can see just from writing that last sentence that your life isn’t probably all about having fun right now, and that’s not exactly your choice. It was Dad’s choice. I think it’s his fault you do nothing but work and buy groceries. If he had stayed, you’d have gone back to Paris, I’ll bet.

  If he had stayed, would we all have gone to Paris?

  So this is all to say that after careful consideration I have decided NOT to read The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, which is probably “Very Important” but definitely not “Very Interesting.” And instead I am going to read Five Days in Paris by Danielle Steel, which, let me tell you, is already off to a very exciting start. There’s a senator, and his wife falls in love with this other rich guy. You know how it
goes.

  Wow. You cannot argue with me, because this is a journal, not a text.

  Wow.

  Ok, I’m sold.

  Love,

  Your illiterate daughter, Cori

  —

  The moment the school bell rings the next day, I positively prance into Lena’s office.

  “Lena!” I hiss. “Lena. Quit doing whatever you’re doing and come get coffee with me.”

  “Can’t,” she says, bent over her computer screen. “Huge sale on RealSteal.” Lena, the former nun, the teacher of values and ethics, the spiritual leader for not just me but my kids, too, is also a consignment-sale junkie. “I need this handbag.”

  I pull up a chair next to her desk and peer into the computer. “You know, the first step is admitting you have a problem.”

  “I always wonder about that. The first step is believing you have a problem, right? Then admitting it? If you admit it before you believe it, will that do any good?”

  “You have a problem,” I clarify. “Believe it.”

  “I have a passion,” she corrects. “Look at this.” She angles the screen toward me. It’s a pretty bag, all right. It is nothing like Lena’s style, though. Longchamp. Conservative. Staid. Almost painfully classic. “In ten minutes they’re going to drop the price ten percent. I have to hit refresh right when they do so no one else gets it.”

  “I feel like your time is worth paying ten percent more,” I say, just to hear her argue.

  “And I feel like the first ten minutes after school gets out are worth zero dollars. If we go anywhere outside these walls, there will be students. Students in the coffee shops, students in the parking lot, students in the parks and gelato stores and probably even Batteries Plus, because there is literally no place they will not go at three fifteen except back into the classroom. You wanna talk to me? Close the door and get comfy while I hit refresh, because this is the only place in the entire county where none of our students will overhear.”

  I shrug. To Lena’s credit, she does actually have a pretty comfy chair, a curb find of a slipper chair she reupholstered herself with a loud floral print and a staple gun. She believes people tell you more when they’re sitting in a soft chair. Perhaps for that very same reason, she herself sits in a standard-issue “teacher chair” from Office Depot.

  “John came over last night,” I say the second my butt hits the soft seat.

  For the first time since I came into her room, Lena looks up from the computer. “Oho,” she says, eyebrows raised, bemused look on her face.

  “He cried,” I tell her.

  “Seems appropriate,” she replies, returning her gaze to the screen. “What else did he do?”

  “Complimented my cooking. And my parenting. And the kids’ grades. And their table manners. There was a lot of sucking up. It was kind of exhausting, really.”

  “Exhausting or highly satisfying?”

  Lena knows me so well. “Both, I guess.”

  “And the kids?” she asks.

  “I was watching them like a hawk. Last night and this morning. Looking for any sign of stress or upset. They seem . . . fine. Finer than me, really.”

  “Kids can be incredibly resilient,” Lena says.

  “I know; that’s what I told myself too. But after he left, there was a long time when they were incredibly fragile.” I think of the way Joe and Cori eyed John when they first walked in the door last night. They were a tough crowd, at least at first. John led off with apologies, but he’s apologized to them before.

  I flop back in Lena’s confession chair. “Three years, Lena. How does someone apologize for three years in the life of a child?”

  Lena thinks on this. “One doesn’t. One just proves he can do better. Does John have a plan for that?”

  I pause. A lot of planning got done last night, but not all of it sounded good to me. “Let me tell you about this stunt he pulled.”

  She clicks her mouse, watches the screen, and then leans back in her chair. “Go ahead.”

  “So the first half hour or so is insanely stiff. Joe and Cori are staring at John like he’s an alien invader, and I’m staring at the kids like they’re my glass menagerie, and John is looking like he is ready to break into a tap dance number, he’s trying so hard. Cori keeps threatening to go to Trinity’s house, and Joe is literally shrinking into his chair like he’s hoping to blend into the wood grain. I’m about five minutes away from pulling the plug on the whole thing. And then John reaches into his pocket and pulls out a tiny bottle of lavender oil.”

  “Lavender oil?” asks Lena.

  “Monster spray,” I say. “Joe and his phobia of closet monsters—do you remember? When he was four or five, John and Cori made a fake ‘Monster Repellant’ label and glued it onto a lavender oil diffuser with Mod Podge and convinced Joe that a whiff of the stuff would kill any monsters on the spot. That exact same bottle from all those years ago—that’s what he was carrying with him last night. John handed it to Cori and said they could use it on him at any time if they really, truly wanted him to go away, and he would go. He told them he loved them more than he loved life, and he wanted to be here, but if his presence hurt them, all they needed to do was say the word.”

  “Oh, wow,” says Lena.

  “I know,” I say. “And it changed everything. Cori looked at the bottle, opened it, and took a whiff, and the smell filled the air. It was the first time I had smelled that since Joe was little, and you know how scents work.” Lena nods. “Everything just all came back. Running through the house spraying lavender water on the tiniest dark corners and under all the furniture. Laughing and swearing we could see the monsters wither and crumble into dust—‘There goes one now! You just missed it!’ And then ending up in a pile of giggles on Joe’s bed complaining about how long it would take us to clean up all those invisible monster corpses.”

  “You were a take-no-prisoners sort of family,” Lena says with a soft smile.

  I nod. “And then Cori put the bottle next to Joe. And he put his hand on it, and for a second, he pointed it at John. And we all held our breath. And then he put the bottle down by the side of his plate and said, ‘Mom, I’m starving. Is there any food?’ And that was it.”

  “Wow. That’s pretty amazing.”

  I think about this. Yes, it is pretty amazing, if you disregard the slurry of confused and betrayed feelings about John that clouds my own view. But setting aside my own feelings—and isn’t that kind of the heart of this job I call motherhood?—my kids being able to reunite, however cautiously, with their dad after three years apart is indeed pretty amazing.

  “So that was the stunt you mentioned?” asks Lena.

  I snap out of my reverie at that reminder. “Oh, no. Nope, that comes next. We’re passing the pesto and eating the pasta, and the mood keeps getting easier and easier. And I swear to you John is watching my wineglass like a hawk. Ready to top it off at any moment. As if I’d be fool enough to get tipsy around him. Anyway, everyone is just warming up to each other, and it’s going annoyingly well. The kids are so much like him, you know, in so many ways.”

  “Are they?” Lena asks. She and John were socially friendly, but never terribly close.

  I nod. “Joe has the same thoughtful expressions. And the same instinct to flee any danger, disappear from any tension in a puff of smoke, rather than fight it out. They’re both like . . .”

  “The wizard, not the werewolf?” Lena says.

  “Yeah. The wizard, not the werewolf,” I agree. “Cori is . . . just a straight-up half woman / half tiger.”

  “A weretiger,” Lena supplies.

  “That’s not a thing,” I tell her.

  She just ignores me. “And how is she like John?”

  “The sense of humor. I guess even with him in Hong Kong they still watch all the same shows. There were a lot of Jimmy Fallon references at the table. Like, I’m pretty sure Jimmy himself was there with us and then left, and no one noticed. And they even listen to a few of the same
bands. It was kind of like a first date in some ways. ‘Oh, you like so-and-so? I love so-and-so! I saw them play live when they came over. They played “Skunky McGee!”’ ‘Wow, they never play “Skunky McGee”!’”

  “What is ‘Skunky McGee’ now?” interrupts Lena.

  “My attempt at thinking of a name of a hip band song,” I tell her.

  “You are bad at that,” she says and hits refresh.

  “Yeah,” I willingly admit. “You know you’re uncool when you can’t even make up something that sounds like it might be cool.”

  “Cool is not your area.”

  “No kidding. The thing is the more they broke the ice, the more they got all excited about the agenda for their week together. And then the conversation turned from all the awesome things they’re going to do for the week to what awesome things I’m going to do while I’m kidless. And for a while I didn’t say anything, but then finally I admitted that I might take a trip to New York, and all hell broke loose.”

  “You might take a trip to New York?” interjects Lena, almost a shout. “That’s really, really great!”

  I shift my eyes sideward. “I might,” I say. Though by now I have already applied to speak at the library conference. To get Country Day to pay for the registration, I have to do at least one presentation, so on a wild hair I decided to float the latest reading-engagement idea I’ve been trying this spring. It was surprisingly fun to flesh out a conference proposal, put fingers to keyboard, and hit send. “There’s a library conference at Columbia,” I tell her. “I thought it might be worthwhile. Plus I’ll get my continuing ed hours done early.”

  Lena frowns and loses interest. “I was hoping you were going to New York to party and have sex with strange men.”

  “Oh, yeah, that sounds just like me,” I say sarcastically. “Maybe I’ll get a tattoo while I’m there.”