En Passant

          

Acid

 

 

We were married for five years, got divorced five years ago. He paid slight alimony for half that time, was never late. He married the chick he was having the affair with, and I married her fiancé. Rebound Effect. Such is life. Birth is the only life event that is not a rebound, and even there Hindus believe differently. We bound from life force to life force. In life, we reel from one incident to another, one emergency to the next, one unexpected exigency to one plan gone awry.

I saw him yesterday at the Kroger. I was shopping with my five year old daughter Alice. I turned my head but too late for him to not know I had seen him.

 

He smiled and said, “Hello, Chasten.” Chasten was a pet name, and entirely inappropriate. But I would not show my temper in front of Alice.

“Hello,” I said, but not meaning it. What I meant was, “What for?”

“You look good,” he said, genuinely, non-sexually, which angered me further.

“Thanks,” I said and scanned the shelf for fictitious items.

“Is this Alice?” Stupid question.

“Yes,” I answered, still scanning the shelf. I never asked for child support. Never told him I was pregnant. She uncomfortably resembled him, and not just in lips and locks.

“Hello, Alice,” he said to her. I was internally boiling.

Alice ignored him. She ignores everyone, including me, unless she’s in the mood for attention.

“Well.” This was to me. “How are you doing?”

Disheveled and dull. “Fine,” I said.

Alice suddenly clung to my legs. I patted her head. He looked at her, then me. He had changed in the past decade. Typical changes: a little more girth in the middle, a little less cover on top. A few wrinkles, mostly around the lips, which disappeared when he smiled. He always smiled a lot. He was smiling now.

“Good, good, I’m really glad to hear that, Chasten, I really am.” The smile seemed sincere, which perturbed me. I did not smile.

All of a sudden Alice felt sociable. “Mommy, may I get something?” Routine. Every trip to the store I got her something for behaving. Too early in this trip to determine if she had earned it. “We’ll see,” I said.  She pouted and sulked, but quietly, to my relief.

“I happen to have an extra bag of invisible rainbow sand,” he said. He had children of his own now, I had heard. No doubt he sprinkled rainbow sand on their heads every night.

Alice looked at him curiously, uncertain who he was addressing.

“Don’t,” I said. My tone alerted Alice, and at that moment, more than anything in the world, she wanted the invisible bag of rainbow sand.

“What’s it for?” she asked.

“Why, rainbow dreams, of course,” he responded immediately, before I could intercede.

“Rainbow dreams?”

“Don’t,” I said again.

He acknowledged my plea. “Well, your mother can tell you all about them later.”

“May I have it, Mommy?” she asked.

Having children has taught me patience, it really has. But I was boiling.

“No!” I regretted it immediately.

Alice began bawling. He at once said, “She’s right, Alice. Only parents can sprinkle rainbow sand.” I knew it! “This only works with my children.”

“It won’t work on me?” Alice asked.

“I don’t know,” he said, looking at me. Bastard.

“It’s just pretend, Honey. He’s funning you.” If I had have had a long darning needle . . .

 

“I bet your mother has some at home for special occasions.” Just like we’d never been apart. Usurper. Bastard bastard bastard.

 

“Do you, Mommy?” She looked up at me with clear eye, dead seriousness in the child’s face. She resembles him a lot.

“We’ll see,” I said. “We need to hurry up.”

He shifted back and forth from one foot to the other. “Well,” he mustered.

“Good seeing you,” I lied, and began walking away.

I was halfway down the aisle when he said not quite imperceptibly, “You haven’t changed a bit.”

I kept walking, did not turn back, and he couldn’t have been sure I heard him. The remark worked its way down my gullet like a slow-eating acid.

My daughter was whining again. “But Mommy! I neeeeed it!” She’d seen a Barbie doll. I ignored her with a “We’ll see” which engendered much wailing and gnashing of teeth.

 

I make so many mistakes. I lose my temper just when I know I am being patient. I fear I will do something that she’ll remember un-fondly when she’s my age, that one moment’s non-thought that I’ll never remember having not done will set her course a degree different, that with each passing year she’ll continue on the course, getting farther and farther from true north. It happens. It happens all the time.

   

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