The Enchiladas I Took to His Ex

Supper

The enchiladas came out bubbling. Kaden came back in a pair of flannel pajama pants with tractors on them, and he ate three, which was a record, and he told me about his baseball coach, who was making them run laps in the gym because the fields were still under snow.

Watching him eat, I felt something in my chest go tight and then loosen.

Crystal watched him too. When he went back for a fourth and she told him no, save some for lunch, he made a face at her, and she made one back, and for a second they looked exactly alike.

“He’s a good boy,” I said.

“He’s the best thing I ever did,” she said. “Even if I did it with Shane.”

We both laughed. It surprised me, how easy it was.

Before I left, she wrote her cell number on the back of a care center appointment card and handed it to me. I put mine into her phone. I saved hers as Crystal, Kaden’s Mom.

“His birthday’s the twelfth of April,” she said at the door. “He’ll be eleven. I was going to do something small. Maybe the bowling alley.”

“Can I help?” I asked. I had not planned to say it. It just came out of me, standing there with my coat on.

She hesitated, and I saw her think about it, and I saw her decide.

“Yeah,” she said. “I’d like that. I’ll call you.”

Kaden hugged me at the door. He had never hugged me before. It was quick and hard and over before I could hug him back, and then he was gone down the hall.

I drove home on the interstate in the dark with an empty foil pan on the passenger seat, and I did not turn on the radio once.

The Phone Call

Shane did not know I had gone. I did not hide it, but I did not tell him either. For three days we moved around each other in the house like two people sharing a motel room.

He apologized again on Thursday, more carefully. I said I heard him. He said he would make the furnace money back with overtime. I said we would see. He asked if I wanted to go to the fish fry at the Legion on his next night off. I said maybe.

Crystal called me Friday at five-thirty, right on time. She had the night off, which was rare. I was at the kitchen table with a legal pad, and she had a legal pad too, and we spent half an hour arguing happily about whether eleven-year-old boys still liked cake or only wanted ice cream cake.

We settled on both. Bowling for two hours. Pizza from the place by the lake. Six friends from his class, plus his cousin from Fulda. Crystal would do invitations. I would do the cake, because I had a sheet pan and she did not.

“Should we do a theme?” I said.

“He’ll say no theme. He’ll say themes are for babies.”

“So Twins.”

“Oh, absolutely Twins.”

We were both laughing when the back door opened, and Shane walked in. A line had gone down at the plant, and they had sent half of second shift home.

He stopped in the doorway with his coat half off.

He looked at me. He looked at the phone, propped up against the napkin holder on speaker. He heard Crystal’s voice coming out of it, saying “and blue frosting, but not dark blue, because it stains everybody’s teeth.”

He did not say anything.

“Crystal,” I said, “Shane’s home.”

There was a pause on the line.

“Hi, Shane,” Crystal said. Her voice was perfectly even. Not angry. Not friendly. Just even.

“Hi,” he said.

“We’re doing Kaden’s birthday,” I said. “Bowling. The twelfth. We’ve got it covered.”

“Okay,” he said, slowly. He looked at me like he was trying to read a sign in a language he almost knew.

“I’ll let you go,” Crystal said. “Jessica, I’ll text you the list.”

“Sounds good,” I said, and I meant it, and Shane heard that I meant it.

She hung up. The kitchen was quiet. Shane finished taking his coat off and hung it on the hook by the door, very carefully, like it was something that could break.

“You went over there,” he said.

“Wednesday.”

“With food.”

“With enchiladas.”

He sat down across from me. He put his hands flat on the table. He looked older than he had a week ago, or maybe I was just finally looking.

“What did she tell you?”

“That she almost lost the duplex in January,” I said. “That she borrowed money from her mother. That Kaden spent three nights a week at the neighbor’s eating boxed macaroni while she worked doubles. That he thinks you’re in trouble because of him.”

Shane’s face changed. All of it at once.

“He said that?”

“He asked me at the door. First thing.”

Shane put his elbows on the table and his face in his hands, and he stayed like that for a long time.