“Yes. We’ll figure it out, as long as it’s a reasonable amount.”
“Are you going to call her?” he asked, sounding worried. He thought she should. She couldn’t just disappear out of their daughter’s life, and he was afraid now that she would.
“Thank you for the support money. I’m not going to call her for a while. Why don’t you explain things to her for now?” Carmen said, knowing she could count on him and escape her responsibilities entirely. He hadn’t expected her to be this extreme, and to sever her ties with them almost completely, and he knew he was right to assume it was about a man. “I’ll let you know where to send the check,” she said blithely.
“You should call her from time to time,” he urged the woman who no longer wanted to be his wife, or even Alex’s mother.
“Yeah,” she said vaguely, “I’ll try…and Eric…I’m sorry…I just couldn’t do it. It was killing me.” He almost felt sorry for her when she said it, because he knew it was true. It was killing him too. After eight years of torture, he felt dead inside.
“I know,” he said in a low tone. And now their daughter was the one who would be hurt, essentially losing her mother at seven. She wouldn’t understand that it had to do with her mother and what she was incapable of doing, and not with anything Alex had done wrong. Those were complicated, subtle concepts for a child her age.
After he hung up, he sat staring out the window, thinking about the conversation. He knew he shouldn’t have been surprised, but he was in a way. It had gone badly for so long that he was used to it, and hadn’t really expected it to change for better or worse, although he had known in his heart of hearts that she might leave one day. And now she had. At least he no longer had to dread it, or fear he would lose Alex.
He left work early that day and picked Alex up at school himself. He called Pattie to let her know, and she heard an odd tone in his voice immediately.
“Is something wrong?” She liked him and thought he was a good father and compensated well for Carmen’s failings with the child.
“No…yes…” He took a breath. “Carmen wants a divorce.”
“Is she back?”
“No, she’s in Miami. She’s thinking about moving to Vegas or L.A. I guess she has a new man in her life. But it was only a matter of time before she did this anyway. I hoped she’d wait till Alex was older, but she’s made up her mind. She’s not coming back.”
It dawned on him that she hadn’t asked him to send her clothes. Maybe she didn’t want the respectable things she wore in Boston. Maybe she wanted to throw away everything about that life, including him and their daughter.
Pattie had expected it for years, but she sounded worried. “Does she want custody?”
“No, she’s giving me full custody.” Pattie was relieved as soon as he said it. “I’m glad, but it’s going to be tough on Alex. Being abandoned by your mother at her age is a lot to try to understand.”
“Let me know if there’s anything I can do,” Pattie said kindly.
“We’ll be okay,” he said as much to reassure himself.
“I know you will. But Alex may react to it for a while.” She was young for such a major blow, even though Pattie had always felt that Carmen was an inadequate mother, and she had proven it to all of them now, without a backward glance.
Eric was waiting outside school in his Volvo station wagon when Alex got out with the others. She didn’t see him at first, and then he called out to her and waved and she ran toward him and got into the car. She looked at him solemnly for a moment, and a sixth sense told her what he hadn’t said yet. He was still searching for the right words to break the news.
“Mom’s not coming back, is she?” she said immediately. She could read it in his eyes. He hesitated, and then he nodded. There was no escaping the truth, and he didn’t want to lie to her. In some ways it was like a death, except she’d said she would come back for a visit one day, but he didn’t want to promise that either, knowing Carmen as he did. She was unreliable and flighty and might not even miss Alex. Out of sight, out of mind. “Will I ever see her again?” Alex said, white-faced with a look of panic.
“Yes,” he said clearly, “but I don’t know when. She doesn’t know where she’s going to live, but she said you could come to visit when she settles down, or maybe she’ll come to visit here.”
“Will I live with you?” Alex asked, as tears filled her eyes for a woman who had never been a mother to her, but she loved anyway.
“Of course. You’re stuck with me forever,” he said as he leaned over and put his arms around her. “I love you. Mom just needs her own life, that’s the way she is. It’s not about you or anything you did wrong or could have done differently.” He wanted desperately to get the point across to Alex, and hoped he was.
“I know,” Alex said bravely, wiping the tears off her cheeks as he started the car. “Maybe she wasn’t ready to be a mom.” She was trying to find a reason why it hadn’t worked out, for either of them.
“Maybe. But we have each other, Al. We’re going to do fun things together, read lots of books, go to baseball games, we can take some trips.”
“Can we go to visit Mom, wherever she is?”
“Sure,” he said as he drove home. “And for now, let’s read all the Nancy Drews, the whole series. How about that?” Even at her age, she knew what he was doing, he was trying to make the best of it and cheer her up. She smiled at her father and nodded.
“I’d like that. And then can I read some of your mystery books?” She knew how much he enjoyed them, and he told her about them sometimes.
“Maybe when you’re a little older.” He listed all the things they were going to do together in the immediate future and the coming months, and tried to make her mother’s defection sound like an opportunity and a blessing.
“Are you getting divorced?” She startled him with the question. “Sally Portman’s parents got divorced last year. Now she spends weekends and Wednesday nights at her dad’s.”
“I think that could happen, not the weekends and Wednesdays, but maybe Mom and I will get divorced since she doesn’t want to live here with us anymore.”
Alex nodded sagely, trying to absorb it. “Do you think she’ll get married again?”
“I don’t know,” he said honestly.
“Will you?”