Should Have Known Better

Then I realized that their arms were to their sides and not around my neck. Cheyenne had one hand in her pocket. She was wearing jeans I hadn’t bought her. I hadn’t bought any of the things they were wearing.

“I’ve missed you guys,” I said. “Missed you a lot. Didn’t you miss me?”

“All right, everyone, let’s go into the sunroom to get some lunch,” Reginald said loudly, trying to usher us with swinging arms.

“No!” I argued. I looked back at the twins. “Didn’t you miss me? Didn’t you miss your mama?”

“Dawn, just come and eat.” My mother put her hand on my shoulder. “They’re probably just hungry.”

R. J. looked down at his feet.

I sat there on the floor before them for a minute, but then I got up.

I felt so defeated. I wasn’t expecting a whole lot. But hugs. Kisses. I miss you—those weren’t expectations. Those were just standard. These were my children. They had to miss me. They had to want to touch me.

Reginald explained that Sasha had gone shopping. Elka, the cook, had made lunch. A year later in therapy, I’d describe his voice, his body language, even his scent as pedestrian. He was flat. Detached. Like a tour guide showing us around a funeral home or a host who didn’t exactly want to have the party.

He was saying something as we walked. Pointing to things.

My mother smiled and held on to her purse.

And just when I was about to lose myself and scream that this was all my nightmare, R. J. came walking up beside me and took my hand.

I looked down at him and he smiled. A tear rolled from my eye. I squeezed his hand and looked forward at Cheyenne following so closely behind her father’s footsteps, he nearly tripped. She looked nervous. Very far from me.

A moon-shaped pool provided the center for the sunroom. It was pink with S. B. painted into the floor in black.

“That’s not a pool for children,” R. J. explained cautiously. “It’s for adults. Daddy and Sasha use it at night and—”

“Come on, son, let’s sit down,” Reginald stopped him. “I know your mother wants to talk to you guys. Not hear about that little pool.”

R. J. stopped talking about the pool, but after we took seats around a glass table that was nice enough to be in someone’s living room, Cheyenne made sure we heard about everything else in the house. There was “her” room. She was painting it “lavender.” There was the game room. She couldn’t wait to show her friends. And Sasha had already told her she could have a slumber party in the movie room.

“I don’t think your friends can come this far,” I said. “Maybe we can have a slumber party at our house. Don’t you miss our house?”

“Sometimes,” she mumbled.

“We don’t have a movie room, but we have our living room with the big pillows on the floor. The purple beanbag from your room. Don’t you think they’d like that, too?” I asked.

“Maybe.”

Elka, whom I identified by a name stitched in red into the white dress she was wearing, set a platter of sandwiches on the table.

“Salad for you?” she asked me.

“No, I won’t be eating,” I said.

“Salad for—” She’d turned to my mother.

“She won’t be eating either,” I said.

Reginald was the only one who reached for one of the sandwiches. He insisted that the twins eat and when they didn’t fill their plates, he did it for them.

“Don’t be shy because your mama’s here,” he said before biting into his sandwich. He looked at my mother. “They’ve been eating up a storm since I got them,” he explained with his food in his mouth.

“Oh, I’m happy they’re healthy,” she responded awkwardly.

His cell phone started ringing on the table. Still chewing his food like a horse, he picked up the phone and looked like he was reading a text message.