Chapter 23 – Jenny
“Josh, honey?” I say, quietly stepping into my son’s bedroom.
“Hey!” he says. “Mom, did you know that a day on Venus is two hundred and forty-three Earth days long!?”
“Wow,” I say. “That’s a very long day! Can you imagine how long you would be at school?”
“Yuck!” he exclaims as though this were an actual potentiality.
“Honey, I need to ask you something,” I say, coming and sitting beside him on his bed. Josh’s room is a very comforting place. I did my best to make it that way for him. I look at the soft Christmas lights on his bed and the posters of dinosaurs across the wall, the names of which I barely even remember but he can recite with ease. It’s important for Josh to have a comforting place to come back to.
He has a high functioning form of Autism, but there are always concerns. He didn’t even like having to leave to visit his father at first, and when Colin showed himself to be unreliable and unable, or unwilling, to take the kids as often as he should, I was almost relieved because it meant putting Josh through less stress.
And now here I am coming to tell him that we’re going to have to uproot the whole family. I told Ty he would be okay with it, and I truly think he will be, but I’m his mom and I worry.
“What do you think of Ty?” I ask him.
“I like Ty,” he says with a broad smile.
“Yeah? What would you think about having him around more?”
Josh thinks, twisting his lip and tilting his head. I always say he looks like a little professor when he does that, and it brings a smile to my face every time.
“I’d like that!” he finally says.
“Yeah?”
“He likes to read my books with me,” he says. In a lot of ways, I envy Josh. He’s still able to take pleasure in the little things in life in a way that I wish I could. In a lot of ways, he’s an inspiration to me. That might be an odd thing for a mother to say about her child, but he is. He has such an amazing enthusiasm for things in life that I never was interested in. The natural world fascinates him, and he can spend an entire afternoon with a book and be perfectly happy.
“And what about this place? Do you like this place?” He looks at me like he’s confused. “This apartment. Our home. Do you like it?”
He takes a long time to think again, but finally shakes his head.
“No? Why not?”
“It’s loud sometimes,” he says with a grimace. “The neighbors.”
“They are pretty awful,” I say, commiserating. He’s not wrong there. “How would you feel about moving?”
“Where would we go?” he asks me.
Valid question, I think. I hadn’t even thought about that!
“Somewhere nice,” I tell him. “Somewhere without noisy neighbors.”
Even if I don’t know exactly where we’d be going, I know Ty would never ask me to leave with him if he didn’t have some place lined up. I’ve never doubted his ability to take care of me, and I don’t doubt it now. If he asked me to leave, then he must have a plan.
“Can I bring my dinosaur posters?”
Everything you can’t leave behind … Ty’s words echo in my mind.
“We could get you some new dinosaur posters! Ones you haven’t had before? How about that?”
Josh nods enthusiastically, as though he hadn’t thought of that option.
“A Deinonychus!” he shouts, naming yet another dinosaur I don’t know.
“Okay! Now, this is what I need you to do for me, okay? I need you to take all your favorite clothes, and put them in here,” I say, pulling a rolling suitcase from Josh’s closet. “Just your favorites okay!? And your best toys too. Can you do that for me?!”
“Okay!” Josh says excitedly.
“Now I’m going to go talk to your sister. But I’ll be back. And when I am, I want that suitcase packed okay!?”
“Okay, mom!” he says, standing tall and proud.
I step out into the hall and close Josh’s door behind me. When I turn to head to Ella’s room, I find her already standing in the hall looking at me.
“We’re moving?” she asks me.
She was listening, I realize.
“Yes,” I tell her. No use sugar coating things.
“And when were you going to tell me?”
“I was coming to see you now.”
I can’t read the look on her face. She’s a teenager, and she can be moody, and I’m expecting the worst. But when she opens her mouth to speak, I can’t believe what comes out.
“Thank God,” she exclaims.
“What!?” I stutter, completely taken aback.
“This school sucks,” she groans. “The girls are all drama queens, and I cannot wait to get out of there. Where are we going?”
“Well … I’m not really sure yet,” I admit. “We’re going with Ty. Are you okay with that?”
Ella just shrugs. “As long as it’s not here. How could it be worse?”
“But Ty,” I press her. “You’re okay with Ty?”
“He seems cool,” Ella replies, and I feel like a weight has been lifted from my chest. “It’s about time you saw someone, mom. I mean, how many years has it been?”
I’m shocked. Here I’ve been spending all this effort keeping men away from me and from my family, worried about the impact I would have on my kids, all the while my own daughter has been worried about my love life!
“It has been a while,” I admit, laughing softly.
“So you want me to pack up too?” she asks.
“Yes. Anything you can’t live without.”
“I mean, this is pretty weird, mom,” she remarks. “What are we like going into witness protection or something?”
“I know, honey. I’m sorry. It will all work out though. I promise.”
I pat her on the back and head back into my room to get my things together.
This is all going to work out, I tell myself. I do believe that.
I look down at the bed where Ty and I slept, still unmade from this morning. This will be a familiar sight if all goes well. I’ll go to sleep with him, and I’ll wake up to him.
If everything goes well …
I don’t even know what is going to happen. All I can do is put my faith in Ty, and hope he comes through.
He will.
He has to.