Walking through the apartment with Nyx and Ethan, they looked apprehensive. These boys were unaccustomed to living in places that weren’t expensive and new.
Their eyes lingered on the brass fixtures and colorful carpet. They were openly baffled by the wallpaper border that featured dolled up geese in the kitchen. While the home had been heartwarming with Kendrick and Lila’s belongings in it, now that it was empty, it felt old. They gave me their cursory approval with polite smiles, but I detected their nervousness.
“It’s—uhm—nice mom,” Ethan offered, with unconvincing positivity.
“Only two bedrooms?” Nyx asked, with a worried look on his face.
“Actually, you’ll have your own guest house!” I said quickly to reassure him, “I have a plan to build it on top of unit four.”
Nyx nodded, but I could still see his anxiety. I recognized the look, because it was a face of displacement that he got whenever Robert announced we were moving.
“Remember,” I said as I reached for his shoulder, “I’ll make wherever we go our home. I always have, and I always will. I just can’t build it right away, but I will make sure this is your home too.”
“Can you afford to build a guest house?” Ethan asked, concerned.
“Don’t you two worry. I have a plan,” I lied.
After taking Kendrick to the airport, I stopped by to visit Oscar and Bruno. They readily pulled out the old plans and showed them to me. The solution made me optimistic and excited, until I saw what it would cost. Even taking out the internal finishing work I could do myself; I would still need $20,000 to build it. They said they could get started on it with a $5,000 deposit. The sum felt astronomical with my current budget.
“Money will still be tight,” I said, lightly clapping my hands on their shoulders, “which is why I need your young, strong, budget-friendly backs to help me.”
Nyx laughed, “What do I get to destroy first?”
“We need to rip out this carpet and the pad, then we can sledge the tile in the bathrooms. If you have good aim, we can throw the carpet over the patio edge to the rented dumpster, but we will need to haul the tile out through the elevator.”
Ethan walked over to a bucket of tools and grabbed a pair of working gloves. Looking mischievously at his brother he said, “Ten bucks says I clear more carpet than you.”
“Twenty says you cut your ogre hands on the tack strip before you even finish one room.”
Ethan launched a pair of gloves at Nyx’s face, but he deftly caught them. They each moved into a bedroom and began to tackle the task with fury, harassing one another at every opportunity. Raising two boys had unique hurdles, one being a constant referee to their battles.
I began to disassemble the cabinets as I listened to them, their banter was music to my ears. No matter how antagonistic they appeared, they loved each other deeply. They had to. Their social roots got ripped away so regularly that their brotherhood became the only consistent friendship that they had.
Robert’s career first took us to New York, but Nyx was too young to remember the tiny apartment with yellow spots across the ceiling. That humble beginning was lost to time as we moved to Tokyo, Paris, London, and eventually to San Diego. Each home getting more extravagant as Robert climbed his professional ladder.
Nyx’s brooding began when we moved to Paris. It was the first major move that he was old enough to remember. His large network of tiny companions at his Japanese school was replaced with a vastly different European culture of kids that he struggled to connect with.
My little boy changed after that.
He became much more solitary and shifted to being with Ethan more. While he eventually made friends, it took him a long time to do so. Just before he was supposed to start high school with the small group of friends he had made, Robert announced our move to London.
This was where his rift with his father took a more deliberate turn, because Nyx believed that his father was choosing career progression over the happiness of his children.
And, honestly, Nyx wasn’t wrong.
Robert often expected family needs to shift around his work demands. Even things like birthdays and anniversaries had to be flexible to the travel demands of his job. While I rearranged the celebrations to include Robert, I always made sure to celebrate the actual day with the boys, even if it was something small.
The boys had too much instability in their lives, so I made sure I could be a foundation they could rely on.
No matter how many times they had to change schools, make new friends, and leave their favorite places behind, we always had each other. I had made it a point to not miss a single moment of their lives, and I hadn’t.
“Could you walk any slower?!” Nyx boomed, pulling me back into the moment, “What is the point of having such long legs if you shuffle around like a Shetland pony?”
Ethan’s maniacal laugh could be heard, and I craned my head to peek into the hallway. Each boy had a massive roll of carpet in his arms, but Ethan was in front and walking tediously slow just to piss his brother off.
I smiled and immediately reached for my camera.
Snapping away, I couldn’t help but notice their faces. Ethan looked devious, Nyx looked enraged, but both broke into competitive smiles as they exited the hall and raced across the living room to the door to the patio. I heard them cheer as they tossed their rolls off the roof, walking back inside with grins of delight.
“Mom,” Nyx’s grin fell at the sight of the camera, “why are you taking pictures of us?”
“Before and after shots.”
Nyx huffed, “Mom, we aren’t getting renovated, your apartment is.”
Ethan moved next to me and poked at my sides, making me snap a blurry image, “Are you giving Nyx a makeover? He needs it.”
A glove went flying through the air, but Ethan dodged it with ease. He took the camera from my hands and held it up, which immediately ceased Nyx’s next throw.
“Coward,” Nyx chided.
“Don’t be mad because I have brawn and brains,” he said smugly.
“BOTH of my sons are talented, handsome, and intelligent young men,” I interrupted, putting on my referee hat, “and maybe I just wanted to get some pictures of you two helping me make our next home together. Another beginning for our little family.”
Ethan pointed the camera at me, “Go on mom, get in there and I’ll get some pictures of you too.”
I appreciated his thoughtfulness, because I did want documentation of my active participation in the demolition process, supported by my two sons along the way.
The destruction was soothing. The process of building up a sweat while ripping away unwanted pieces of my life made me grin. After Ethan took pictures of me pulling out carpet, he got some of me sledging the old tile in the bathroom.
The boys had a competition for who could collect the tile and haul it downstairs the fastest, as they judged the fullness of one another’s buckets with harsh criticism.
“Nyx that bucket isn’t all the way full, it doesn’t count.”
“It’s just as full as yours, you dolt,” Nyx countered, “and I’m still two buckets ahead.”
The fact that they were athletes was no surprise, they had a long-established pattern of competitiveness in their lives. They hustled and argued, but eventually the dumpster was full, and the apartment was stripped.
My clean slate to rebuild was established.
And we were all starving.
“Wow, there are a ton of great food places nearby,” Nyx was investigating a place to eat on his phone. “This is a good part of the city to be in.”
I was lifted by his shifting attitude about living in the area, even if it was motivated by food. They were boys after all, feeding them had been a full-time job for me.
“Ooooh,” Ethan crooned over his brother’s shoulder, “that Mexican place has burritos the size of your big head Nyx! I could kill one of those right now.”
“You probably need two, you bottomless pit,” Nyx mumbled sarcastically.
Dirty, gross, and desperate for a big meal, we left the stripped apartment to walk towards sustenance. The boys each gave me an arm to link with, becoming a protective wall beside me as we went down the street. My heart felt so full from us being together and them helping me establish my new life.
“Mom,” Ethan began, sounding nervous, “Can I ask you about something?”
“What’s wrong, sweetie?” I asked, genuinely concerned about the nerves I heard in his voice. He jumped into championship games without flinching, so his anxiousness put me on edge.
“For my birthday,” he started, and I felt Nyx stiffen as this conversation was introduced, “Dad wants to take us to the March Madness championship game.”
I felt my heart jump into my throat. This was the moment I had been worried about.
The point at which the divorce started causing separation. The division where the boys had to start choosing one or the other, because both no longer existed. My option of being part of every moment was no longer on the table.
I swallowed and felt the resistance as my emotions started taking up too much space. I couldn’t be selfish. I needed the boys to know that they could choose to be where they wanted to go, and I would support it.
However, the idea of missing special moments in their lives made my stomach turn.
“Ethan, you love basketball,” I said, trying my best to hide any of the pain I felt, “I think that would be a wonderful way to spend a special birthday.”
“He’s only doing it to try and bribe us to be less angry at him,” Nyx said bitterly, “I don’t think we should go.”
“Your dad might not have the best intentions in spoiling you, but that doesn’t mean that any enjoyment you would experience would be fake. Good things can start from bad origins. That’s how we make the best of what life offers us.”
“I just—” Ethan started, “I’ve never had a birthday without you. The idea of you not being there is hard, mom.”
Water collected in the corner of my eyes at his words. Throughout their lives, Robert had missed events, but not me. I had never missed a single moment.
“Your dad had to miss some holidays while you were growing up,” my voice was somber as I started, but I clawed at a false positivity to encourage them, “but we always did something after he got home. After you get back, we can go on a birthday date.”
My voice was projecting a positivity I didn’t feel, but then Ethan craned sideways to bonk my head with his. The brief affectionate gesture made me feel better, even though I was still saddened at the thought of him celebrating without me.
We walked silently after that, making our way around the corner and towards the restaurant. Between us and our destination was the office building that RTK & Associates was in. I avoided coming this way, but surrounded by my sons, I felt no stress as we passed.
Despite the mirrored window, I found myself trying to look inside, searching for him. It was silly, because it was Sunday and he wouldn’t be at work, but that didn’t stop my eyes from trying to discern shadows behind the mirrored surface.
His behavior on Friday had rattled me, and I had been desperate to get away from him. Yet here I was, walking past his office, trying to get a glimpse of him.
Why was I like this?
It was like seeing him at the mediation had opened Pandora's box inside my emotional well-being. Old memories now scratching over fresh skin, a tickle at the back of my mind that I could not shake. I unconsciously pulled the boys closer to me.
“Are you cold, mom?” Nyx asked me.
“No, sweetie,” I said honestly, “I just want to be close with my boys right now.”
I’m sure I could muffle Pandora's box by stuffing it with some chips and salsa.
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