We tell him
I suppose Friday night was our last Shabbat dinner as an intact family.
After lighting the candles, I reached out to give the boy his blessing.
“Blessings don’t work because God isn’t real,” he said.
“OK,” Beth said. “We’ll skip the blessings.”
It has become strange to me how she’ll make these pronouncements and expect me to agree. Were most of our arguments founded on that?
It was a nice enough dinner, though Beth and I both knew that the following day would be The Day We Told Him.
Of course, Beth and I slept late, and the boy got up early.
I’ve been sleeping on the sofa bed in the sun room for a while now. It’s not comfortable at all, but it’s better than the damn air mattress I had been using. The boy comes in in the morning and jumps over me and wants me to wake up. I got up, put the bed away. We puttered around a bit.
Beth and I sat on the front porch. Our neighbor across the street was working on her lawn. I wanted to talk to Beth about what we would say, who would start.
“You’re the one who’s doing this,” she spat. “You tell him.”
She tried to rehash the last seven years, but I wasn’t into it, and I think she was just going through the motions.
“Sweetie,” I called, “come to the living room. Mamma and I need to talk to you.”
I sat in my usual chair and Beth sat on the couch. We should have both been on the couch. I held him.
“You know that Mamma and Dad fight a lot —” I started.
“Not that much,” he said.
“Well, we’ve been working very hard to stop, but we haven’t really been able to.”
My voice was breaking. Beth, of course, said nothing.
“You know how your therapist helps you with your feelings? Well, we have someone who has been helping us. And we’ve been trying very hard. But we can’t fix it.”
He’s bewildered.
“Sometimes Moms and Dads can’t live together anymore. So I’m going to live in a different house. It’s close by, and has a room just for you.”
It began to sink in. He got angry.
“If you’re leaving,” he said, “I’m not going to live here either!” He went up to his room to get his wallet and out the door to climb his tree.
We let him sit in his tree for a while. At one point I said to him, “I love you and Momma loves you, that never changes.”
“I KNOW!” he yelled. “You’ve been telling me that for a million times!”
And then we had lunch.
I went to Sandwich Shop, like I do almost every Saturday, to get some sandwiches. I brought them back, along with the usual chips and drinks. We sat down to eat. The three of us. It was like it had been the week before and the week before that: the three of us eating together. Mom and Dad being civil to each other, but not intimate. The only difference was that now Dad had a new house.
At some point, the boy asked “Can I go see your house?”
“Sure,” I said. “I need to pack up some things and take them over there.”
We went upstairs to the bedroom – Beth’s bedroom. She and they boy lay in bed watching “Hemo the Magnificent.” Beth fell asleep. The boy watched, and I watched now and again while I took my clothes from the closet and the dresser. All of my clothes fit in two medium sized boxes.
Once everything was in the car, I asked the boy if he wanted to come. I told Beth we’d be gone for about an hour and a half – she knew what we were doing,
We drove up to my house. I pointed out the familiar landmarks to show him that my new house was in his neighborhood.
“I wish you had bought Patrick’s house,” he said. Patrick was one of the boys who lived next door. His family just moved, and their house was for sale.
“Well, Patrick’s house is nice, but it’s too old for me. My house is a little newer. See the Park (the town green)? Now we make a left here instead of a right like when we go to your therapist’s office. And my house is on a secret street. You almost can’t see it if you don’t know where it is.”
That interested him.
I turned onto my street. It’s terribly narrow at first then opens up. (No, Dr Freud, we don’t need you here.) I turned to the driveway and said, “This is my house. Let’s leave the stuff here, and you and I can look around.”
“Yes,” he said. “Show me around.”
We went up the stairs and I pointed to the mezuzah. “See, it’s a Jewish house already.”
He bounced in and started looking around. The office, the kitchen, the dining room, the living room.
“It’s nice,” he said.
“Let’s go upstairs. See if you can find your room,” I told him. “It has a balcony.”
He went up and found his room right away. And he loved the balcony. The first thing he wanted to do was to make paper airplanes and launch them from there.
We stayed in the house for a while. We assembled an Ikea nightstand and a lamp. We examined every closet. He loved hiding in his closet. (The one in his room in Beth’s house is pretty small.) He looked in the refrigerator, took out some hummus and pita and made himself at home at the table.
A little while later we went back to Beth’s house. I did more packing. He took a bath.
After his bath, he said to me, “Dad, can you put me to bed one last time?”
That killed me. Beth smirked. “I’ll still put you to bed a lot, sweetie.”
He was tired, and had a hard time. I read him a book called “When My Mom and Dad Forgot to Be Friends.” (Yes, they have books for everything.) In the book the girl says that she thought that it was her fault her parents forgot to be friends. I asked him if he thought that sometimes.
“What do YOU think?” he said.
“I think you might. But it’s not your fault at all. Mom and I love you, and it’s not your fault.”
“Will you ever come back to live in this house,” he asked.
“I don’t think so, sweetie,” I answered, and I knew I should have been more vague. He got upset all over again.
I hugged him and stroked his forehead. “Moms and Dads get divorced sometimes, but parents and children never ever do.”
In the end he wanted Beth to lie with him. That’s not unusual, even before. But she told me that it took him a long time to fall asleep and that he woke up several times in the night.