“Yeah, because you’re there. Now you’re not, so he’s not going to stay on old-woman-time.” Charlotte tilts her head to the side, slaps her coffee cup on the hotel desk. “Whatever,” I say, “I get up way earlier than you ever do.”

“We’re supposed to go out tonight and I want to know where I’m meeting him.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yeah.”

“You don’t want to sit this one out.”

“And what,” she says, “go home where my husband is holed up in the guest room? You know he put a new lock on that door so I can’t go in when he’s not home. It’s like I’m renting him a room for half the mortgage.”

“That’s brutal.”

“Yeah.”

“Still, don’t you want to just watch a movie tonight or something?”

“Gabe doesn’t Netflix and chill.”

“Is that what the kids call it these days?”

“That’s what I like about him. He gets me out.”

“Oh god,” I say. “You are Lydia.”

“What?”

“You’d know what I mean if you did what I told you to every once in a while.”

“Sorry, I thought that once I turned 21 my big sister no longer got to tell me what to do.”

“Well, you’re wrong. Look, I remember when you got married and you two would bolt from work on Fridays to take hiking trips in the wilderness where you were ages from a cellphone tower.  And then that stopped, and I was happy because it meant your careers were taking off and you could buy a house, and I knew you wouldn’t die from a bear attack any time soon.”

“Yeah, I remember when my marriage was fun too.”

“It’s not supposed to stay fun. Loving people when they get old and fat and gassy and push babies out of their vaginas isn’t fun.”

“Then why do it?”

“Because it gives you every other feeling. But those feelings come with stretch marks and bald spots and tits that won’t stop leaking milk.”

Charlotte comes over to the bed and sits by the pillows. I reach my hand out to her, but she does not reach back and it falls on the comforter. She picks up her phone. I don’t ask what she’s doing, but I’m sure she’s messaging Gabe.

***

We eat at Wendy’s, not In-N-Out, because the big one gets car sick while watching a movie and throws up all over my iPad. Wendy’s is the closest place to get her cleaned up. I don’t try to save her t-shirt, but I think the iPad will survive.

The other three of us order, but once the food comes and my oldest smells French fries, she wants food too. We’re done before her food arrives. She offers to eat in the car, but David and I tell her to sit right there and only eat what she wants to.

She takes a bite of her chicken sandwich and says, “that throw up was pink.” She smiles. Her little brother takes a cue and starts laughing. David looks at me and lets his head fall, but I know he’s trying to hold in his own laughter.

“Well,” I say, “I guess that means you are a princess. Even when you vomit, it’s pink.”

As she eats the rest of her sandwich, she mutters to herself, “princess throw up,” and grins so wide some of her food falls out of her mouth.

The little one falls asleep before we’re out of the Wendy’s parking lot and wakes up when we hit traffic on the 405. When we get home, David and I are exhausted so we let the kids watch a movie and we order a pizza for dinner.

I put the toddler to sleep while David reads books to the big one. She’s only supposed to get three since it’s a school night, but she always cons David into a fourth or fifth. I’m in PJs and lying in bed before he’s done, and when he walks in I don’t turn to look, but hear him open the closet to get changed.

He crawls into bed and puts his arm around me.

“I can’t party and also raise children,” he says.

“Well, Disney helped us out a little tonight.”

I feel his arm go a little slack around me as he relaxes, so he’s not really holding me anymore. I take his hand and rub it between my own.

“When do you have to be in tomorrow?”

“8:00, I guess. Maybe I’ll have a ‘kid is sick’ morning.”

“Hey, she threw up.”

“Doctor has to see her first thing, right?”

He rolls onto his back, and so do I.

“I probably shouldn’t do that,” he says.

“Save it for a real emergency.”

David falls asleep first and, even though I can’t stop yawning, I toss from one shoulder to the other. I’m worried I’ll wake him up, so I get out of bed, use the bathroom, go downstairs and make a cup of green tea. I pick up a novel I grabbed from the library, don’t care about it after a page, and start looking through my emails.

A text clicks through from Charlotte who, based on the picture, looks like she made it to the club. She says she didn’t find her rings yet but she’s not worried about it right now. Then she says she thinks I’m right, it’s all just stress from starting a divorce, and that going out with Gabe will help her get over that.

I don’t respond.

I fall asleep on the couch with my laptop open and only wake up when one of the kids yells for me. I don’t know which one it is, but I shut the computer and go upstairs to find out.

 

Joshua Isard is the author of the novel Conquistador of the Useless (Cinco Puntos Press, 2013), and his short stories have appeared in journals such as Pithead Chapel, Northwind, and Cleaver. Currently, he is the director of the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Arcadia University. Visit his website, JoshuaIsard.com.