Page 79 of Cuts Like An Angel: Part 3

“No, that’s right.”

William sat himself on the sofa.

“I laughed today,” Dana said. “I didn’t think I could do it …” she paused, “It sounds so stupid saying it out loud, but when I’ve spent all this time upset, walking with my head down, feeling sorry for myself.”

“You laughed … that’s no small thing. Honestly.”

He couldn’t imagine ever smiling again, let alone laughing if Rosie left him. If she left him for someone else, it would be much worse. His heart hurt just trying to imagine the idea.

“It was a stupid thing. Something my daughter said. God, it felt so good, Josh. Like it cleared something in me. Do you think I’m terrible? That I laughed already?”

“No. I think you’re amazing. You’re allowed to be happy you know. It isn’t a crime.”

“My oldest isn’t taking it all so well. Not the laughing. But everything, the split. He won’t speak to his father, and when he speaks to me … I don’t know, it’s like he accuses me. Like his dad, I expect, putting me to blame. If only I’d looked after my husband properly.”

“He’d have done it anyway,” William said. If his mother had done one thing, if Rosie’s parents had done something with their recent intrusion, it was to show William that people made their own choices and they did so for selfish reasons. “If someone is going to cheat, they’re going to cheat. It’s in you or it isn’t.”

There was silence on the other end, but not a bad silence, not one that made William feel he needed to fill it, or that he’d done something wrong. Dana was processing.

“Tell me about your day,” she finally said. “Tell me something good.”

He pushed himself up from the sofa and went to the kitchen. Maria couldn’t hear this. Not yet. He wanted time with the knowledge, time for him and Rosie to just smile through everything. He shut the kitchen door, and even though the television was on to deafening volumes, he took himself to the other side of the room, making it that there was enough distance between him and his mother’s hearing.

He told Dana about the shopping, about the store and the tree they’d got and the fact it was way too big but neither of them cared. He told her about Rosie’s idea with the decorations. Then he stopped.

“Isn’t a bit early to get the tree? We’re only in November.”

“Normally, yes, but Rosie needed something,” he paused.

“There’s something else,” Dana said, “I can hear it in your voice. What is it?”

William clutched the edge of the kitchen counter. “Rosie’s pregnant,” he said, and the words came out of his mouth thick and light, and unreal. He wanted to say it again to Dana, so he could at least feel them … feel them and make them real.

“Oh, my god, she is? She’s pregnant?”

“I just found out today.”

“And you’re on the phone to me? You should be taking her out. Dining her before that dreaded morning sickness kicks in or she gets too tired. Oh, William. I’m so happy for you. Both of you.” She laughed then. “Oops, there I go again, doing that laughing thing.”

William laughed with her, “I think you’re allowed to.” Another breath, another pause, and it was all a swirl that was ready to make his head want to explode. “I never thought I’d have children. Not that I couldn’t, but … well, if you knew my parents, you’d understand.”

“Not the best?”

William scoffed. “That’s an understatement. My father left when I was six. Chose the bottle over his family, and my mother … well, she loved herself the most, you know?”

It wasn’t so often he spoke of his father, or his leaving, but he could picture it. In this room. His father sitting at the table. Of course, it was a different table then. One of those Formica things that folded out, except it was always out and always full of bottles and ashtrays.

His father had sat there, stubbed out his cigarette, knocked back his glass of vodka and announced he was leaving. “My father left suddenly,” William said. “My mother always blamed me for it. Stupid now I think of it.”

“It couldn’t be your fault, though. Like you said, people make their own choices.”

William sucked in a breath and nodded even though Dana couldn’t see him. “That they do. My father made his. You know, I always used to blame myself. For years later, I thought it was me. He died when I was twelve. My mother said he’d be alive if he were still living with us, so of course, I thought I’d caused my father to die.”

“That’s a cruel comment for any mother to say.”

“Yeah …” It was so hard to see anything Maria did as cruel. It was just Maria. “My father had taken me to the park that day. It was cold and wet, but we’d gone anyway, and I’d been climbing, swinging on the bars. I got the great idea to hang from my feet and fell, smacked my head off the ground. My father took me home, and the minute my mother saw me, all hell broke loose. I swear, you’d have thought he’d slammed my head into the ground or something and done it just to piss her off the way she acted. They fought, I fixed up my own bump and then my father announced he was leaving, and that was it, he’d gone. He’s a good example of the father I don’t want to be.”

“I don’t think you could ever be like him. The man I met on the bridge, the one who helped me that night, the one who answers me and listens to my inane rambles … that man’s going to be a good dad. A great dad. Trust me.”

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