Kids in Kars

Kids in Kars

We’re on our way home from the beach, there’s sand in my hair and on my skin and the car smells like wet bathing suits, ours too and not just the kids’, when “Us and Them” by Pink Floyd comes on the Spotify classic rock playlist and I notice brake lights ahead of us. Which is just fucking perfect, because it’s already past the kids’ bedtime and we have a sitter coming in an hour and my daughter needs her bottle, and my husband sighs and says, “Do we really have to go out with them tonight?” as I hit the brakes a little too hard and say, “I mean, if you’d rather stay home again, fine,” which isn’t really fine, but I can tell it’s fine with him as he refreshes his phone again, for the 1,000 time since we got in the car. Who’s writing him on a Saturday night, I wonder, one of the cute young girls in his writer’s room, maybe? As if he has the energy to cheat, doesn’t even want to get drunk or high or go see live music like we did when we first met, back when I’d wear short skirts and high boots and we’d fool around in the bar bathroom and race home to have “let’s come at the same time” sex that would end in a deep sleep that the nasal voices of NPR would wake us from the next morning. That was before our kids became our alarm, our goddamn 5:45am alarm, and now he’s taking a swig of his Coke Zero, which I’ve told him a million times is going to give him cancer and he’s told me a million times will not, and he’s talking about how he may need to work tomorrow, Sunday. And as our car creeps past one of those depressing “Kars for Kids” billboards, I say, “Don’t you think I’d like to work tomorrow? Don’t you think I’d like to do anything in the world except be a mom?” which absolutely isn’t true and the minute I say it I regret it, and then realize that my son – our son – is listening to us from his car seat, or maybe he’s listening to the music, which has just changed to “Surrender” by Cheap Trick. And I can’t help but think I’m doing irreparable damage to him, and he’ll blame me years later when he’s in therapy and not his perfect father, his perfect father who would rather repress his rage than go to couples’ therapy and who is now saying, “Shhh, Jesse is awake,” as he adjusts the Yankees hat he wears so he can seem like he’s still 23 and not 43. “I know,” I snap back as I reach for my son’s leg, even though my husband always tells me not to do that while driving, I could get into an accident that would kill all of us, and I say, “How you doing sweetie?” and squeeze his tiny little leg. He smiles a five-year-old Mona Lisa smile that could either mean “I’m fine Mama” or “I know that passive aggressive tone in your voice and wish you’d be nicer to Daddy” as I see my husband checking his phone again. “Who the hell are you expecting a text from right now?” I spit out because I can’t help myself, and his eyes are fire as he says, “The network, okay? To them I am like the President right now,” and I stifle a laugh because…the President?!? But then I remember my therapist told me to be nicer, and I am trying really really hard to do that so I don’t get divorced like my own parents did, and besides, shouldn’t I be happy that the show he tried to make happen for two years, the show that allows us to pay our rent and send my son to a preschool and occasionally eat out at bougie restaurants in Williamsburg is actually happening? But instead of being grateful, which I truly am most days, I say, “Do you think maybe if you were better with decisions, you wouldn’t have to work on weekends?” and it takes about half a second to realize that was definitely the wrong thing to say. Because his eyes, which I used to think were the most beautiful eyes I’d ever seen, get really small, and he’s whispering, “I’m so mad at you right now I could spit,” as “Whole Lotta Love” is playing, which reminds me of my narcissistic, adulterous and now-dead father, who used to keep Zeppelin 45s in our basement. And tears spring to my eyes, because I know my husband is looking at me with all the doubt I’ve been feeling toward him, and picturing a life away from me, one where he’d never be there for bedtime and would pick up the kids on weekends with his new, young, stylish, funny wife in the car and think “Wow, I can’t believe I loved her once.” And suddenly every bone in my body softens toward him, because I do love him, I really do, and he is a good father and partner and lover, and as I touch his hairy arm, which always turns me on, because he’s a man now but was once a little boy, and say, “I'm sorry, I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” And as the traffic starts moving ahead of us, he squeezes my hand, “I’m just tired and it was a hard day,” which is true, but why was it hard for him again, swimming with the kids in the ocean? I think, but hold my tongue, and then hear my daughter’s baby mews. So I squeeze his hand back and say, “She’s up,” and he nods and says, “You know, you’re the one who wanted two kids – we could have had two dogs,” and I laugh because it’s funny, he’s funny, and I love him, I do, and just then the traffic lets up and “Don’t Stop Believin’” comes on as we make the left turn onto our block, and all I have to say is, god bless fucking Classic Rock.