“Well, I mean I know you and Owen go to the park a lot.”
“That’s right, the park, and then if he’s playing with other kids and all the moms go off to lunch or nap at someone’s house, it’s not exactly like they include us.”
“What? You aren’t included?”
“Belle, think about it.” Thunk. “Oh, Daddy, come on over to my apartment where we can be alone while our kids nap. It’s just weird.”
I had never thought about this and feel protective of my husband, like he’s the excluded kid in the lunchroom. “What do the other stay-at-home dads do?” I ask.
“That’s what I am now? A stay-at-home dad? A SAD dad. I haven’t stopped working, Belle, not entirely. I have other stuff going on.”
I think about this and wonder about the other stuff but know not to ask. “Why didn’t you ever tell me about the playdate shut-out thing?” I ask.
“?’Cause you hardly ask anything about what goes on here all day.”
I sit watching him for a moment, letting it sink in that he sees himself in a different role than I see him in and that probably explains why he still thinks we should split domestic tasks, or that I need to thank him every time he empties a dishwasher with the same enthusiasm he would thank me for an Emergent Biosolutions or CeeV trade.
I start to say something but he puts his diaper-hands on my lips and shushes me. “It’s a little lonelier for dads who work out of the home, that’s all,” he says gruffly, and I think I hear his voice twitch.
I have a sudden urge to bed this man, germ-hands and all. When he starts throwing again, I start to fill the silences, to blab to him, telling him about work, about the finicky mortgage market, and I’m glad the kids are preoccupied with the slide in the living room. When he’s finished pitching practice he drops to the floor and begins doing push-ups. Grunting and talking is not sexy business and he only acts like this when he’s bothered by the subject matter.
“Belle, I know nothing except this. The guy who cuts my hair?” He exhales. “He has a weekend place in Miami. Our babysitter . . . humph—”
“Childcare provider,” I interrupt softly as I watch his undershorts sag below his belly, depressing me slightly. I still haven’t replaced those for him and he’s too cute to be dressing like this.
“Yeah. Whatever.” He does three more push-ups before continuing, “Our childcare provider put a down payment on her own apartment in Brooklyn and we’re not overpaying her. Do you know what her down payment was?” He heaves. “Three thousand dollars.”
“That’s it?”
“A balloon mortgage. She’ll pay close to five thousand dollars a month in only one year and I’m not anticipating her getting a massive raise. She just can’t afford to buy a place and yet a bank gave her a mortgage. She doesn’t know better.”
“What the hell kind of bank would make that loan?”
Bruce twists his face in an accusing way. “One that’s going to repackage and resell it with a shiny triple-A rating.”
Drops of sweat fall onto our cream-colored carpet and I resist the urge to put a towel under him and break his rhythm. I’m not going to Kathryn-ize this moment.
I’m so happy to be connecting with my husband, even if it’s just to talk about this stuff, even if it’s with someone who doesn’t quite understand it. “It feels like everyone is comfortable with debt up to their chins,” I say. “They think everything will go up in price and that the home they’re buying is an investment. They think they’re going to get rich.”
“You’re not seeing humans as individuals,” he tells me. “You’re lumping everyone into categories. You keep saying ‘they.’?”
“I’m not.”
“You just said”—he huffs as he does some sort of triceps dip—“they think they’re going to get rich. ‘They’ meaning who? The rest of America who wants to buy a house? It’s not the fault of the buyer that they want a piece of the dream. They’re being told they can afford things they probably can’t and it’s the banks’ responsibility to not make the loan in the first place. The guys who went to business school are educated in analyzing that stuff, not the airline pilot, the sanitation worker, the beautician, the dog-walker. They haven’t taken mortgage-lending classes. It’s up to the banks to be honest. But they don’t want to be honest ’cause they get to take the money and eventually the home too.”
I’m listening and I’m trying not to agree, trying not to think that my husband is a beautiful and smart human being and that sometimes I marginalize his opinions.