The Split

I threw the bag in and crawled up. It was hot inside. Our summer had gone from cold to hot in a matter of days. The window shutters are stuck so I pry them open and a breeze quickly flows through. I don’t care so much about the breeze. It’s the routine.

When I open the bag, I see that my sandwich got a little smashed by my soda can. I pop the top on the soda and gulp down about half of it. The sandwich can wait. I’m not really hungry anyway.

I rest my back against the boards on the wall and remember the day I helped my dad put them up. As a carpenter, my dad always brings home pieces of stuff from his job, wood, nails and even paint. I didn’t know what he was planning until the day I heard hammering outside and went to see what the banging was all about.

It didn’t take a rocket scientist to know what he was doing. I ran as fast as I could to base of the tree where he had mounted a makeshift ladder of nailed boards. When I looked up, I could see where he had already started the base of a floor. My surprise and delight were immense, neither conflicted with the other.

Though I’m an only child, I still blurted out, “Is this for me?” I can still remember the look my dad gave me. It was joy. I knew I had asked a silly question. “Of course it’s for you,” he said. It seems like years ago now. Yet, sometimes three years can seem like a lifetime.

The breeze has stopped and there’s a crushing stillness. Like my life feels right now. Like it’s been jolted into a void that I can’t crawl out of.

This morning I had showered, dressed and headed down to the kitchen. I could hear my mom and dad talking before I reached the doorway. I wasn’t sneaking or trying to hear what they said. It just happened. Now the words come back to me in a wave. “What will you do?” It was my mom who said it but what my dad said next set the icy thudding in my heart, bashing me as hard as those nails pounded into that tree trunk. “I’ll get an apartment.”

My anger came hard and fast. I didn’t think to ask, ‘What does that mean?’ I knew and I just wanted away from them. I ran to the back door, yelling as I slammed into the screen, “You’re splitting up and you don’t think I would need to know that!” My bike was propped up against the railing. Ignoring my dad calling after me I hopped on and headed down the driveway. I can’t remember the exact words now but I think I said ‘I hate you or ‘I hate both of you!’

I rode for hours while I tried to put together what just happened. Tears flowed down my cheeks and my nose ran rivers. I didn’t wipe it away and I didn’t care if anyone saw me. I thought about my friends whose parents were divorced. Every one of them lived with their mom. Some with a step-dad and some with both a step-dad and a step-mom. All of them living together in their two different houses. They talk about it like it’s no big deal. I don’t want a different house and I don’t want a house with some other pretend parent living in it. But I don’t get to make that decision. I don’t get to make any decisions.

Sometimes I think parents must grow up and push their childhood so far back that they can’t remember what it’s like to be a kid. Otherwise how could they get married and have a kid and then tell them they won’t have two parents in the same house anymore. Or even what house it will be that they decide to live in. I’m angry.

My sandwich sounds better now. I guess I should be hungry since I didn’t get to eat breakfast. It doesn’t matter. If I’d eaten something earlier, I probably would have thrown it up later anyway.

I guess the truth would have come out sometime. Even when we don’t always want to hear it. I just wanted them gone when I got back. After I dropped my bike in the yard, I went up through the back door. I figured it would be open even though they always locked the door when they went to work. They wouldn’t leave me outside all day. I see a note for me on the table. Big letters ‘JESSE’ but I didn’t want to read it. After I’d made a PB&J and grabbed a soda I went outside to my tree house.

I gulp down the sandwich and drink the rest of the soda which is warm now. The breeze begins to flow through again and I think about what I did, wishing I could take back my words. They were mean words. I don’t hate my mom or my dad but yelling that out to them was my first reaction. I didn’t care. Not then.

It’s getting to be late afternoon and the warmth in here is making me tired. I lay down, crossing my hands behind my head and stare up at the ceiling. I only have a couple of hours before my parents will be home so I need to think about what I should do. Go to my room, come down for dinner, act like nothing has changed, like it’s no big deal?

There’s so much I’ll miss. It will be different. A lot different. I’ll miss when my dad reaches around to hug my mom while she’s standing at the sink or the stove. That always makes me smile. I’ll miss playing scrabble together and I was just learning how to play euchre. I begin to wonder if they’ve stayed together because of me or because it was easier than not staying together? I sit up. It was me. I’m sure of it now.

I climb down and look up at my tree house. I’ve enjoyed it and I will miss it if I have to move. But it isn’t everything about my life and it isn’t just myself I have to think about now. I want my mom and dad to be happy. It may not be together but at least they can be happy.

I've just gotten back in the house when I hear laughter and look out to see my mom and dad in the driveway. My mom is bent over laughing hysterically. I can’t hear what my dad is saying but my mom suddenly takes off running and starts climbing up to the tree house. I knock on the window and my dad looks up. He’s holding pizza. The joy is back!

He waves for me to come and I run out the back door to follow him as he heads for the tree. He reaches the top and I hear my mom laughing again. When I reach the opening, I see my dad hugging my mom. My heart leaps but just as quickly I’m angry all over again. “What was so funny?” I shout.

“We’re just having a good day,” my mom says.

Now I’m fuming. “How can you be having a good day when you’re getting divorced?”

“Jesse,” my mom says, “we left you a note.”

“I didn’t read your stupid note,” I blurt out.

“Jesse, sit down.” My dad sits down and points to the floor of the tree house. “If you had read the note you would know we aren’t getting a divorce. I have a job in the city and won’t be able to drive home every night.”

“He has to stay in an apartment for a couple months,” my mom adds.

I sit down and cover my face with my hands. I’m feeling pretty stupid right now. I look up, “Why didn’t you say that this morning/”

“If you hadn’t run off so fast, we would have,” my dad says.

I’m so happy I can’t think. I spent my whole day whining over something that wasn’t even happening. But right now, we’re having dinner together in my tree house and that’s a big deal.