HIS MOM went all in on not being sorry, not trying, by going on a trip with the guy. Not that she told Kyle about it, but Jacob’s dad having a meeting in L.A. “all of a sudden” and then the next morning his mom leaving a note to say she was going to a home goods trade show to do some buying for Baker & Najarian? He knew what it was.
It was a sign of just how many fastballs of shit had been coming his way that this new one barely affected him. One thing at a time. First, get through the school day knowing he was going to see Nadia and Mateo. Maybe not together, but around. He managed it at first by ducking and dodging the way he had back at the beginning of this whole thing; then, between fifth and sixth period, he passed by Mateo in the hall and couldn’t avoid him. They made eye contact and Kyle gave him chin nod that he hoped said ’Sup and also I guess you’ve had your eye on my girl for a while now and so be it but don’t expect me to congratulate you.
After school, he did a conditioning workout with the girls’ volleyball team.
“Don’t you guys have a game at Cabrillo today?” Alissa Wilkinson asked while she spotted his bench presses.
“The team does.” He exhaled, pressed up slowly. At the top of his move, he said, “I’m taking a break.”
“Is it your shoulder? It seems fine.”
“No. I bailed—I went AWOL,” he said, lowering the bar. “Got myself kicked off, basically.”
“Why’d you do that?” She stood over him, ready. “You’ve got two left.”
“Honestly,” he said, grunting, “I don’t even know anymore.”
He finished his set and they switched. Alissa put her hands on the bar as he helped her unrack it. “Well,” she said, “there’s always next season.”
At home, Kyle walked through the house.
“There’s always next season” was a stale phrase he’d been hearing most of his life, but maybe now was the time to embrace it, start thinking ahead. Taylor was in finals and then she’d be home soon after that, and then it would be summer. And the farm. He didn’t want to let his mom’s choices rob him of at least enjoying that, their last time.
He looked at the calendar hanging on the fridge under the Doctor Strange magnet he’d gotten one Christmas in his stocking, from Grandpa Baker. That was the movie they’d all gone to over Thanksgiving that year.
He got out his phone, opened Emily’s thread.
When did you say the next SAT is?
He was behind in geometry and biology. Doing okay in Spanish and U.S. history. In real trouble as far as American lit. He could write decent papers, but the time and focus it took to do the reading was what was killing him. He had to stop getting sucked into the vortex of all this shit he couldn’t control.
Last year his mom had religiously checked on his grades through the school portal and stayed on him. Even as recently as right before the trip to Martie’s birthday, she’d taken him out to dinner and helped him strategize how to maintain his good grades and improve his bad ones. Kyle doubted she was even looking now. And did not doubt that his dad didn’t even know how to look, or that someone was supposed to.
Emily replied.
I don’t think I said, but you can look it up online. You have to register ahead of time, though. You know that, right? Like a month ahead?
A vague memory of unopened school emails with subject lines about test registration lurked somewhere in the parts of his brain he had not been paying attention to. He found the College Board website and looked at the dates. The registration deadline for the next test had just passed.
Shit.
I think I missed it???? Did I miss the SAT?
Keep scrolling. You can take it in late summer or even up to late fall senior year. Or the ACT. Either one.
But you already took it.
I’m weird and enjoy tests. She added a shrug emoji and then asked, Are you okay? Do you want to FaceTime?
He heard his dad’s truck in the driveway, then the garage door opening.
Honestly I don’t think I could handle it right now. Three crying-face emojis. He added: haha ha
His dad came in through the mudroom, holding two pizza boxes. “Bringing home the bacon,” he announced.
It was a joke he’d been telling as long as Kyle could remember, because the family’s favorite pizza had Canadian bacon on it. Only the way he said it now was joyless, and three out of five members of the family weren’t there to eat it. He put the boxes on the island, then emptied his pockets next to them. Wallet, keys, some coins, a piece of gum, a few business cards, his phone, his Swiss Army knife. He unhooked the tape measure from his belt, then took off his belt and added it to the pile and, finally, peeled off his Baker & Najarian polo and tossed it toward the laundry room.
This was all stuff he never would have done if Kyle’s mom was there.
Kyle looked at him there in his undershirt. His dad stared back. “I’m real tired, Kyle.”
“Okay.”
His dad went over to the sink and tried to pull a paper towel off the roll with one hand; about six unspooled. “Goddamn it.” He opened the fridge and got out a half-empty two-liter bottle of cola and a carton of milk. He liked to mix them, which everyone else in the family thought was gross.
He brought the milk and the soda and the six paper towels to the island, got two plastic tumblers out of the cupboard, and sat across from Kyle and opened the top pizza box.
“So we’re eating our feelings now?” Kyle asked.
“That’s right. You want a brown cow?”
“No. Just . . . cow.”
Kyle thought, Okay, maybe we’re finally going to talk. Really have it out and make a plan for whatever was going to happen next. But his dad got out his phone and scrolled and tapped and scrolled and tapped while he ate a piece of pizza in about four bites, so Kyle kept working on his homework. Emily had answered his cry-faces with Seriously though, are you okay.
I met the mom yesterday, Kyle replied. The guy’s wife. She was picking up the kid and she was really nice and pretty and idek wtf is wrong with adults.
He slid a piece of pizza out of the box and watched his dad. Something about the way he tapped and swiped was different than whatever his dad normally did on his phone, like read news and sports scores.
Aaaand now I think my dad might be on Tinder or something.
Emily sent a scream face.
“What are you doing?” Kyle asked.
“Nothing.” His dad put his phone facedown and got another slice.
There were so many things Kyle wanted to talk about. Like, did they owe it to the wife to tell her what was going on, and how much longer were his parents going to wait to decide if they wanted to separate or divorce, and did either of them even have a conscience or, like, any ideas about maybe how to do the right thing in this situation? Like, hello? Anyone?
All of those questions somehow came out as, “Are you on a dating app?”
“No.”
“A hookup app?”
He gazed at Kyle in this way Kyle didn’t remember his dad ever looking at him before. Like they were in a challenge, caught in what Ito called a hitter’s count, advantage batter, and Kyle was the batter.
“Don’t worry, Kyle. No one wants me.” He shoved the folded piece of pizza into his mouth like someone was about to take it away from him and chugged his brown cow.
“Don’t make yourself sick, Jeff,” his mom would say if she wasn’t on an overnighter with her boyfriend. “Remember your blood sugar,” she’d say. “Remember how you feel after too much cheese.” And if it were a year ago, she would have kissed Kyle’s dad on the top of the head as she moved around the kitchen, putting some salad on the table with the pizza.
Two years ago, Taylor would have been there too, making their dad stay off his phone and teasing him about being addicted to fantasy football.
Five years ago, it would have been Kyle and Megan and Taylor fighting over the biggest slice of pizza, Megan trying to make Kyle laugh so that milk would spurt out of his nose while their mom passed out napkins and made them go around and say something about their day at school.
His dad would have been smiling when he came in and said, “Bringing home the bacon,” and his mom would have rolled her eyes or maybe patted his belly or opened a beer for him or said, “My hero,” like she used to whenever he came home with dinner and she didn’t have to cook.
Ten years ago there would have been bedtime reading and kisses good night.
Where had it all gone? When a family falls apart, where does the old family go?
“Dad,” Kyle said. He didn’t even know what he was going to say. Only that he wanted to keep talking while he had his dad, had him sitting still and paying attention.
“Go ahead. Tell me what a chicken I am. Tell me how I’m weak and letting you down. Tell me I need to fish or cut bait.”
“Yeah, all of that stuff, but—”
“Tell me again what you know about being married for thirty years.” His dad stood up, grabbed a pizza box.
“God, Dad, I just want to know, like . . . is this who we are now?”
“I hope not, Kyle, and that’s why I’m paralyzed, okay? Because I really really hope not.”
Later, he texted Emily.
just kind of had it out with my dad
In a good way? she asked. Like do you feel better?
Not really. crazy-face emoji. but I’m okay, he added, before she could feel like he wanted her to fix it.
You’re really going through a lot this year, Kyle. I’m sorry.
He stared at that. The acknowledgment meant everything. Sometimes that’s all he wanted or needed through every little and big shitty thing. For someone to say, “Hey, that’s a lot, that must be hard.”
But he guessed he couldn’t expect people—Nadia, Mateo, Coop—to say it if they didn’t know. He didn’t want to be like his dad, with this situation or anything else, keeping it all in and putting a bunch of work and pizza on top of it and hoping that things he wanted to change would magically change.
Kyle wanted to be the kind of person who could tell people things, and have the kind of people in his life he could tell them to. Like Emily.
THANK YOU, he wrote back. The words seemed totally inadequate. He wrote them again anyway. Seriously, thank you.