Understanding Us

“I get the child. End of discussion,” Calista says, folding a lavender top and putting it in her luggage.

“I don’t understand how you can just decide that, without even asking me,” Julian says.

He sits right in front of the luggage, forcing Calista to look at him.

“I am her mother. Therefore, I get more rights on Lydia. Is that so hard to get through your thick skull?” she says, manoeuvring around him to place the next item in the luggage.

“Yeah, maybe it is. Maybe I imagined it, but did you just say you had more rights on Lydia?” he asks.

“Why, is there cotton stuck in your ears?”

He grabs her hand and looks up at her from the ground.

“Firstly, Lydia is not an object to be possessed by either of us. Secondly, she’s my daughter just as much as she’s yours,” he says, his hopeful eyes almost breaking Calista’s resolve.

She frees herself from his clutches and looks at the wall behind them.

“She is my daughter, more than she’s yours. Why can’t you just accept that? You never wanted a daughter, and now you want her just because you can’t have her?” she asks, still keeping her eyes trained on the worn-out dusty wallpaper of the bedroom they had shared for so long.

“People change Calista. People change their minds,” Julian says, getting up, losing his patience.

“You still haven’t answered my question. How do you arrive at the conclusion that Lydia is more yours than mine?” he says, seating himself on the mattress without a bedsheet on it.

“I already told you, I’m the mother.”

“I feel like I’m missing something big over here.”

“I gave birth to her, so I should get to keep her.”

“I thought that two people made a baby?”

“If both those people wanted the baby in the first place. If one person doesn’t want the baby, it automatically belongs to the other.”

“Show me this book.”

“What book?”

“Where these rules are written.”

“It’s called common sense. You should really use it sometimes.”

“Oh wow, what a sick burn. I’m melting,” he says, bitterly laughing.

Calista rolls her eyes and returns to the packing that had slipped her mind.

“Why are you like this? Why can’t you be a good person for once, and give us joint custody?”

“I can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“I just can’t.”

Julian throws a vase on the ground in frustration.

It breaks into a gazillion small pieces, and he picks them up, ignoring the blood that soon starts pooling in his palms.

“Are you hurt?” she says, walking over to him.

“No, not at all. I’m not hurt by the fact that my wife, sorry, my ex-wife doesn’t trust me with my daughter, no. I have no feelings at all,” he says, wiping off the tears on his face with his bleeding hands, leaving dark red marks on his cheeks.

“Julian, you know that’s not what I meant,” Calista says, trying to help him up.

He swats her hand away, and stands up on his own, wobbling a bit without support, trying not to get any blood anywhere on the room.

He fails terribly, as he places his hand on the rough mattress to steady himself, the blood slowly seeping into it and leaving a stain.

“You know what? You keep Lydia. You keep everyone. That’s what you always do, isn’t it? Everything is yours and yours alone. Can’t you open your mind up to the possibility that other people may also want the same things you do?”

“Oh wait, I forgot. You can’t. You can’t do anything unless there’s something in it for you. So, you keep everything. You keep my broken heart, my daughter, my life, my home. I’ll just leave empty-handed, just like how I entered,” he says, and goes to the washroom.

Wincing slightly at the sting, he washes his hands with soap and runs water over it until the bleeding stops. He washes his face and dries his cheeks.

As he dries his hands, Calista stands at the door of the washroom, tears running down her face.

“You know, I don’t even remember why we thought it was a good idea to get married,” she says, wiping her tears off.

“We were stupid hormonal teenagers too caught up in love. I guess love isn’t always enough,” he says, and walks outside the washroom, passing by her.

“It’s always like you’re speaking another language. It’s like you’re saying something, and I’m saying something else, and it just becomes this big mush of nothing. I don’t like that at all,” he says, sitting on a chair.

“I don’t like it either. But you need to understand only one thing to understand me.”

“That you have more possession of our daughter because you gave birth to her? That even though you were the one who said ‘I love you’ first, I still love you more? That even though my heart is lying on the floor in pain right now, you still have the right to put a knife through it again?” he says, his voice breaking at the end.

“No, no just hear me out.”

“What’s the point of hearing you out? We are not together anymore. Did you not know? Did you not realize that nothing you say will matter because this marriage is over? Gone. Burned to the ground. Even if you try to convince me why you have more right on Lydia or the house or the money, it will still sound as confusing and pointless as the first time I heard it.”

“Julian! Can you just shut up for once?”

He sets his jaw, his eyes on the floor.

“Look, there is only one thing that you need to understand to understand me.”

He tilts his head, looking bored.

“I still love you. Even if we can’t understand what one person is saying half the time, I will always love you.”

“But clearly, understanding each other is important in a relationship. We can’t speak different languages and expect it to work.”

He cracked a sad smile.

“We can have joint custody of Lydia,” she finally concedes, walking away from him and continuing the packing that had been abruptly stopped.

His expression changes to one of shock.

“Really? You’re not kidding, right? This isn’t some kind of sick joke, is it?” he says, getting up with a suspicious look.

“No, not at all. She’s your daughter as much as she’s mine, so we must have joint custody.”

He laughs in relief, and runs over to Calista, picking her up and spinning her around and around.

“Julian. Put me down. Wake up a bit. It’s not like we got back together.”

He stops spinning her, and puts her down, rubbing the back of his head sheepishly.

“I’m sorry, I forgot myself there for a second.”

“Thank you, Calista, you have no idea how much this means to me,” he says, and gives her a light kiss on the cheek.

“You know, I think I have some idea of how much it means,” she says, smiling.

He looks at her and smiles back.

“I’m going to go and see Lydia for a bit,” Julian says and walks to the nursery, where Lydia is peacefully sleeping in her crib, not having heard a word of their argument.

He caresses her head, looking at her fondly.

“You know, today Mommy finally understood me. You know how much of a big deal that is?”

Lydia just smiles in her sleep, and Julian knows that she understood.

He smiles to himself, happy that in the last few minutes of their relationship, Calista and he had understood each other.