This Is Where I Leave You

tragic, really, when you think about it. I needed you to see me as your wife and all you could see was the failed mother. And now I need you to see me as the mother of your child, and all you can see is the failed wife.”
    “You’ve thought about this a lot.”
    “I don’t get out much.”
    “You should have told me.”
    “I did. You didn’t hear me.”
    “You should have kept telling me until I did. I would have eventually.”
    “Maybe you’re right.”
    “We could have fixed this!” I am suddenly, violently furious. “We could have fixed it. But you gave up. You found someone else before I even knew anything was wrong. This could have been our baby.”
    “It’s still our baby. You and me.”
    “There is no you and me,” I say, getting up to leave. “We are strangers. And I don’t see how I can raise a child with a stranger.”
    “Judd,” she says, beseeching. “We’re finally talking. Please sit down.”
    I can sense the flight attendants shutting up to tune in to the little drama playing out in their midst. I take a long, last look at Jen, at her tired eyes, her desperate expression.
    “I can’t do this.”
    “Please don’t leave,” she says, but I’m already moving, weaving through the tables to get out of there. The last thing I hear her say is “This isn’t going to go away.” And it’s that very fact, obvious though it 210may be, that squeezes the air from my lungs and makes me run. Because, more than anything, what I want is for it to go away. I am not ready to be a father. I have nothing to offer: no wisdom, no expertise, no home, no job, no wife. If I wanted to adopt a child, I wouldn’t even qualify. What I’ve got is a great big bag of nothing, and no kid will respect a father like that. This was my chance to start over, to find someone who would defy the odds and love me, to figure out the rest of my life. Now any chance of a clean break is gone, and as a single father I have become, by default, even more pathetic.
    I’m heading down a wide, carpeted hallway toward the parking lot when my legs give out on me. I stumble against the wall and slide down until I’m sitting on the floor. A group of tuxedoed guys in their early twenties emerge from a conference room, bustling with nervous energy. They pass around a silver flask and smack each other a lot; the groom and his groomsmen. The groom is differentiated with tails and a white tie. He’s in his early twenties, handsome in an almost pretty way, his face scrubbed, his hair gelled. The groomsmen file into another room at the behest of the photographer, who is ready to shoot the wedding party, and for a moment it’s just the groom and me in the hall. Our eyes meet and he smiles a greeting.
    “You okay, bro?” he says, brimming with benevolence and goodwill.
    “Yeah,” I say. “Good luck.”
    “Thanks. I’m going to need it.”
    “You have no idea.”
    I am not real to him. This is his wedding day, and nothing is real to him. And I am in mourning, and in shock, and he is not real to me. We are ghosts, passing each other in a haunted house, and it’s hard to say who pities whom more. He straightens his tie and heads back into the conference room to record his cocky naïveté for posterity, and I get up on shaky feet and walk out to the parking lot.

    4:40 p.m.
    I make the two-hour drive back to Kingston, to the house Jen and I used to share. I let myself in through the front door, like I do from time to time when I know she and Wade aren’t around. If I had a shrink, he would ask me why I feel the need to burglarize my former home, and I would tell him the same thing I’m telling you: I have no idea. I just know that sometimes, without any premeditation, I go there and poke around. Technically, the house is still half-mine, and if Jen truly didn’t want me there, she’d have changed the locks, or at least the alarm code. I let myself into the front hall, taking note of the mail table that no longer has the picture of Jen and me on it. The kitchen is unchanged, except for the fridge door, which no longer has the pictures of Jen and me at Martha’s Vineyard or the old black and white of me from college that she always loved, sitting on a railing in my Bob Marley hat, smiling at her as she snapped the photo. There are no photos anywhere of her and Wade, which I’d like to read as a sign that she’s not that invested yet, but when you’ve been carrying on a yearlong illicit affair, there just aren’t a lot