We just both have to push a little harder right now, and then things will get easier. That’s the way it works. You work hard and you pay your dues and it pays off.”
“Or you work hard and then you die. Maybe that’s, like, the Kansas pioneer spirit. Maybe that’s you. But some of us want time to make sure we really want what we’re working for.”
“And some of us know you don’t always get another chance to go get it.”
They stared at each other, the familiar stalemate reached, and Jay was the one who broke, looking away. That was it, and Mae knew it. She’d won. This time.
Actually she won every time.
Jay got up and walked to the trash to scrape off his plate, but when the trash can popped open, he stopped and reached in. Mae got cold inside. Shit. That was where she had put everything from her satisfying clear-out earlier in the day, and she hadn’t covered up the things she was discarding with other trash, as she usually did. Damn it! She knew exactly what was coming. Jay stood up with a ratty stuffed chicken in his hand.
“You can’t throw this away. Ryder loves this.”
He did, but Mae hated it. The little stuffed chicken—a gift from her sister when Ryder was born—had grown gray and smelly and was beyond washing, and Mae had been able to slip it away from Ryder’s bed for several nights running. With the trip, she figured he would forget about it, although she’d felt a tiny twinge of regret as she’d stuffed it into the trash can. It was just that it was so gross now, and there were so many stuffies. If she didn’t get rid of them, they’d take over.
“He doesn’t care about it. Not really,” she said. It sounded weak, even to her. “It’s so filthy, Jay. He’s little. He’ll like other things. It’s just junk, anyway.”
Jay turned on her. “You don’t always get to decide what’s junk, Mae. You don’t get to pick and choose everything we have and everything we do and everywhere we go.”
“I don’t. Just—some things. And it’s not the same.”
Throwing away a toy was not the same as making all their life decisions—and how could she not make decisions right now, when everything Jay wanted to do felt so precarious? Couldn’t he see that they wanted the same things, for the world to stay nice and safe and solid around Madison and Ryder and around themselves? She knew Jay had moved around a lot as a kid, and that at least once his dad had handed him a shoebox and told him that if it didn’t fit in there, it couldn’t come. But sometimes you had to get rid of things, even things you once loved, to make room for better things.
And sometimes you made mistakes. Don’t bring up the baseball glove. Don’t bring up the baseball glove.
She hadn’t known the baseball glove was a perfectly worn-in classic Rawlings. Or that Jay had been hoping Madison or Ryder might use it someday. All she’d seen was that it was old. And kinda moldy. She honestly hadn’t thought he would notice it was gone.
Sometimes you needed to make hard choices, and then just keep going. Apparently Mae was the only one here who knew how to do that.
She got up and started to clear the table. He could have the stuffed chicken if he wanted it. Let the battles continue. Was this how marriage worked? They just kept replaying this same scene? Wasn’t there supposed to be some point where they got past it, where they did the right thing and moved on?
Maybe neither of them knew how.
“I’m going out to meet Jessa and get the kids,” Jay said, and Mae shrugged, not looking at him as he left the kitchen.
Jay would get over it once she really had things sorted out. He’d get past this early midlife crisis he was having and just work all of his yoga and meditation and stuff into his job like a normal person. Maybe they’d even laugh about it, like they used to laugh at stuff like that.
And if not—Mae took a deep breath and turned on the water in the sink—she’d be ready for it. She was always ready.
The next morning, when she bent to buckle Ryder into the taxi to go to the airport, he was clutching the chicken tightly to his chest, looking so much like his father that it made Mae catch