I signed the application before I could talk myself out of it.
For the next two weeks, I stayed first at the hotel and then with my friend Carol, who had spent twenty-six years teaching second grade and had perfected the art of asking one direct question and waiting through any amount of silence for the truth.
“Did they ask you to come back because they miss you,” she said one evening, “or because they miss what you did?”
I looked down at the tea in my hands.
“I don’t know.”
Carol did not rescue me from the answer. “Then wait until they show you.”
They showed me quickly.
On the third day, David called from his office. I finally answered because I was tired of watching his name light up my screen.
“Mom, the electric account says the automatic payment was removed.”
“Yes.”
A pause. “Why would you do that?”
“Because it is your electric bill.”
“You’ve always paid it.”
“I did.”
“And the internet?”
“Yours.”
“The grocery account?”
“Yours.”
His breathing changed. “So this is punishment.”
“No, David. Punishment would be shutting off services that belong to you. I didn’t do that. I stopped paying for a household you told me I did not belong to unless I served it.”
He had no immediate answer.
Then he said, “Rebecca is really upset.”
I almost laughed, but there was nothing funny in me yet. “I was standing on a sidewalk with one suitcase and no home. Did you tell her I was upset?”
Silence.
That silence told me more than an apology would have.
A week later, David asked to meet me at a coffee shop. I agreed because I wanted to know whether my son understood what had happened, not because I was ready to go back.
He arrived ten minutes late and looked exhausted. His shirt was wrinkled at the collar. There were dark shadows under his eyes I had never noticed before because I had usually seen him after I had placed dinner in front of him.
He did not apologize at first.
He complained.
The contractor wanted a deposit. Groceries cost more than he expected. Rebecca had missed a work call because a package delivery required a signature. Chester had chewed the corner of a rug after no one walked him before work. The laundry had piled up. They had eaten takeout four nights in a row.
