66
claire
We join together at Skip and Elisa’s once again, to celebrate the last day of school. I smile, listening to the kids’ excited voices as they chase each other across the freshly cut grass, reveling in the noise of happy children.
Chris stands beside me, a smile on his face. The golden boy shimmers in the sunshine, the way he once did, and I swear that man’s happiness can light a room.
He turned in his resignation at work this morning. He told me what he wanted to do a few nights ago while we were lying in bed. “I want to form a new company. There’s this guy at work named Seth—he’s a software engineer from the implementation team—and we’ve been talking about it for a while, discussing every possible scenario. We’ve mapped out timelines and gone over the budget a thousand times. I feel like we have a pretty solid business plan.”
“So it would be a partnership?” I asked.
“Yes. Seth’s not very expressive—he’s really more of a head-down programmer—so he would design and create the software and it would be my job to sell it.”
“What about the start-up costs?”
“They’d be fairly low. And we wouldn’t have any overhead, at least at first. We’d work out of our homes. I don’t know if you’ve noticed anything about our bank accounts.”
“I’ve noticed that they seem to have a nice balance in them.” I never stopped economizing. I never changed the money-saving habits I formed when Chris was unemployed. I still shop at discount retailers. I clean the house myself. And I maintain a fairly high volume of freelance assignments. Chris spent next to nothing after he went back to work because his expense account paid for everything when he was on the road. Our financial situation has never been better.
“Enough for us to get by for at least a year, maybe longer,” he said.
“No insurance company is going to cover me individually.”
“We would apply for group health insurance. As long as we have at least two employees, we can do this. In the meantime, we could extend my health insurance benefits like we did when I got laid off. We’d all be covered for eighteen months. It will be expensive, but we’ve included the premiums in the estimation of our operating costs.”
I could hear the excitement in Chris’s voice, but I proceeded cautiously. “A start-up requires a lot of time. Hours upon hours. How do I know we won’t be trading one problem for another? Even if you’re home, you could be too busy.” I thought about the office door being closed all the time. The late nights and weekends spent working.
“I know that. A start-up isn’t easy. And I’m not going to lie. There’s a ton of competition in this market. I’d still have to travel, but not nearly as much. Eventually, we’d hire people to do that. We wouldn’t have to answer to anyone but each other. But I can’t promise you this will work, Claire. It’s a huge gamble. There’s a good chance we’ll fail.”
I gave him my blessing anyway. If Chris didn’t take his career into his own hands, he’d never be free of the possibility of a layoff, or a less than desirable work situation, or a temperamental boss. If we had to economize even further, we would. At least Chris would be working toward something he believed in.
So now we wait and see. Sink or swim. Fingers crossed.
Chris and I find drinks and settle into a couple of empty chairs on the patio. Julia and Justin arrive with their girls. Two months out of rehab, Julia’s sobriety is still tenuous, the thread connecting her to this new, sober life as delicate as gossamer. She relapsed, but just once. She’s thirty-three days sober now, and she fought for every single one of them. I’m praying for thirty-four.
I thought Justin might cut and run, abandon her in her desperate time of need, but he didn’t. After Julia joined AA she told him he was free to go. That if the other woman was who he really wanted, there was no reason for him to stick around. But he did, and I hope that he stays. Her daily affirmations, Justin’s support, and her daughters will help her stay the course, but the decision not to drink will always rest on Julia’s shoulders. I believe she has what it takes.
Bridget can’t be with us tonight because she’s working at the hospital. She does three twelve-hour shifts a week, from 7:00 P.M. to 7:00 A.M., relying on Sebastian to keep his brothers out of harm’s way. Her child care arrangement isn’t ideal, but her boys don’t seem to mind. They moved into a three-bedroom apartment, and Bridget pays the rent, and all other expenses, by herself. She hasn’t heard from Sam in more than a month. It turned out that gambling was more important to him than Bridget and the boys. He didn’t show up for his initial court date after Bridget initiated divorce proceedings, and she hasn’t been able to reach him since. It’s as if he disappeared.
“Claire,” Elisa says. She sounds a bit frantic. “Can you help me for a second?”
I look up and see that Elisa does indeed have her hands full. She holds eleven-month-old Lauren with one arm and balances a plate of burgers for the grill in the other. Four-year-old Layla, who is so frightened of being alone that she is never far from Elisa, clings to her leg, making it almost impossible for her to walk.
According to a social worker, a neighbor reported Layla and Lauren sitting in their front yard unattended, Lauren dressed in only a dirty diaper despite the fifty-degree temperature. The police found their mother inside the garbage-strewn home smoking a crack pipe. The kitchen cupboards held only a box of stale crackers and a container of formula with enough left in it for a few more feedings. Elisa broke down sobbing when she told me that. She and Skip hope to make the transition from foster parents to adoptive parents, and I’m keeping my fingers crossed that it works out. Someday, those little girls will realize just how lucky they really are.
I jump out of my chair and walk toward her. “Do you want me to take the burgers or the baby?” I ask.
“The baby, for now,” she says, handing a sleeping Lauren to me. She stirs a bit, but I hold her close and she closes her eyes again.
Elisa grabs Layla’s hand. “Let’s go drop off these burgers, okay?”
Layla nods eagerly, appearing happy to be asked. Happy to be taken care of at all.
Julia sits down beside me and strokes the baby’s head. “She’s precious,” she says.
I look at Julia and smile. “She is. Do you want to hold her?”
She nods, so I hand over the baby. She looks down at Lauren and then out into the yard, to where her own girls are playing. “Children. They’re so helpless,” Julia says. “It’s our responsibility to take care of them.”
I know at this moment that her remorse runs as deep as an ocean. “Yes,” I agree. “But they’re resilient, too.” I reach out and grab Julia’s hand and she squeezes it. I squeeze back.
After dinner, we put on some music. The sun goes down and the candles Elisa lights and places in the lanterns that hang from the trees, and the full moon, create a magical glow. Justin stands and extends his hand to Julia. I swallow the lump in my throat, and it’s all I can do not to burst into tears when he holds her close and sways to the music. Watching them restores my faith in a lot of things. I feel hopeful, not just for Justin and Julia but for Chris and me. Daniel, too. I read in the newspaper that he’s been moved to a rehab center and though he’ll have a long road ahead of him, he’s expected to make a full recovery.
Chris pulls me to my feet. “Dance with me,” he says. He holds me close and I lay my head on his shoulder.
Chris knows me better than anyone ever has or ever will. This is the man I’ll grow old with.
Skips dances with Layla in his arms while Elisa holds Lauren and smiles, and now I do tear up, just a little. The remaining kids join hands and do something that looks a little like ring-around-the-rosy except they laugh, and instead of falling down, they run faster and faster.
Chris and I got lost somewhere, and I don’t think we’ve completely found our way back yet, but we’re close.
Losing him would have been one of the worst things to ever happen to me. And the best thing I can do is put my whole heart back in his hands.
So I do.
At the end of the evening we gather our children and Chris laces his fingers together with mine.
“Let’s go home,” he says, and the word means something different than it did a year ago. It isn’t just the place we live. It’s the life we built together. The one we came very close to tearing down.
I hold his hand tight and say, “Home.”