Page 57 of Give & Take

I want you looking only at me.

But after a moment, Raphael nods. “Sure.”

Sure? What does that mean?

It doesn’t matter. I need out of this conversation. I also need to get going if I don’t want to be late for work. I head for the door. “Don’t forget dance lessons start this week,” I say as I reach for my shoes. “Thursday nights, over at the community center. I’ll be taking them, but they keep asking about them, so it’s just so you know.”

I feel like an idiot. Why am I telling him this?

“Okay,” he says simply.

Okay. Everything’s totally okay.

Chapter 17

Lana

We were supposed to meet Mike in town at the diner for lunch and mini golf. I promised myself I wouldn’t vanish when he was in town, and planned the day to show the girls we could co-parent like champs. When he shows up. But Mike asks if we can hang out at the house instead, because he’s got a surprise for the girls.

And like an absolute caricature of himself, Mike shows up with a box as big as a small car.

After a dramatic unboxing, he finally reveals what it is. It’s called a “Deluxe Inflatable Splash Pad.” But what it really is, is an outrageously outsized inflatable village. It’s practically a theme park with three separate pools, a castle with turrets, and inflatable rainbows and palm trees. Everything sprinkles water.

“Sorry, I know it’s a little overboard,” Mike says a half hour later as the kids go inside to get changed. He has to shout to be heard over the whine of the pump. But he doesn’t sound sorry at all. He has his hands on the hips ofhis khaki shorts as he struts around the backyard, his Oakley sunglasses cutting into the flesh at his temples.

“A little?” I ask. “It takes up the whole yard!”

“What can I say? I love my girls.” He whistles as one side of the castle starts to lift off the ground, like this is a new convertible he’s checking out and not a colossal abuse of plastic.

I know I’m being ungenerous. The kids are obscenely excited. And Mike does love his kids. This is just a very large symbolic piece of his half-assed style of parenting. On Monday, he’ll be gone and this thing will probably be filled with holes and the tears of my girls.

Ungenerous. I know.

While he walks around, yammering about the quality of inflatable goods, I take the opportunity to study my ex-husband, blatantly comparing him to the man we’ve been spending so much more time with than him.

Mike is tall, at 6’2, but still shorter than Raphael. He’s got a bigger frame than him though, but he doesn’t use it effectively. He kind of lumbers around, hands in the pockets of his khakis. He still has most of his hair; it’s a muted sandy brown. He’s still ostensibly handsome.

But somehow he seems so…banal. Like he’s just the shape of a person. A man I could walk by on the street and not give a second look to. Even if Raphael weren’t so beautiful, he’d still be so much more of a presence than Mike ever was. Raphael just takes up more space in the world, and not in an intrusive way.

I only half-listen as Mike goes on about his firm, where he’s a partner now. He talks like I should caredeeply about the place that indirectly ruined our marriage. The small-p politics of the office. An ex-partner going through a messy divorce. A paralegal who botched a D-list celebrity’s case. But as he talks, all I can think isI once loved this man. I once agonized over him letting an actress kiss him at a party. I was so deeply hurt. I could tell he liked it, even though he had to have known it was a laugh for her. He’d eventually peeled her off of him, which I really thought was something to hold onto at the time. But right now, I can’t figure out why I ever felt the way I did about him. He has no personality beyond work. He name-drops TV stars constantly. But worst of all now is how he talks about how much the kids have grown because he hasn’t been here in real time watching it happen.

That is a choice.

I realize a pause has occurred in his talking.

Mike looks at me expectantly.

“You with me now?” Mike says, looking at one of the turrets currently erecting itself. “It’s a real castle. What little girl doesn’t love a castle?”

“Nova,” I say drily.

Mike looks confused. “Since when?”

“Since two years ago.”

Mike blinks. “Really.”

If we hadn’t met in law school, I’d be surprised he passed.

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