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“What happened in here?”
Madison shrugs. “Some mice and snakes got loose.”
Jenna tenses. “Did you find them?”
“Yes.” Madison laughs and hands her mother a glass of wine and then pours one for Nathalie who comes inside with Grady on her hip. He’s thankfully asleep. “Ridley found them.”
Jenna runs her fingers over a metal tray Madison has on the counter with oranges in it and then sips her wine. “I thought you had a new house? Why are you still living here?”
Ah, yes. I was wondering when this would be brought up again.
Drawing in a calming breath, I look to my wife, curious as to what her answer might be but she’s watching me, waiting for my answer.
My eyes move to Callan as he opens the present in his hands. Play-Doh. She got a seven-year-old Play-Doh. I’m not even sure Noah even plays with it anymore. He might stick it up his nose or eat it, but he doesn’t play with it much.
Callan glances up at me, then to his grandmother, if you can call her that. “Thanks.” And then he tugs on my hand to whisper in my ear, “What’s that smell?”
“It’s the smell of a bitch,” I tell him, only to have him laugh.
I know what you’re thinking, why would you one, say that to your son, and two, say that in front of your son?
Just wait. You’ll see why in about five minutes. The standard length of time it takes for Jenna to piss everyone off. I was there the second I heard her voice.
Callan spots Noah getting too close to one of his presents left outside on the patio and takes off outside. I’m thankful for him leaving the house because I know what’s coming next.
Disaster.
Watch and you’ll see.
“Ridley’s still working on the house so we haven’t moved yet,” Madison says, putting the cork back on the wine and leaning into the counter with her hip. It’s a moment later when our eyes meet and stay that way for a minute.
Is that another reason why she wants a divorce? Because I didn’t finish the house?
I can see where that might upset her.
And here’s the moment the disaster hits and my anger for her mother takes on its normal behavior.
“I don’t understand you, Madison.” Jenna pauses, eyeing me and then Madison. “You leave home to get an education, marry the first guy you meet and look at you now, two kids and a husband who can’t deliver the promises he makes.”
Please tell me you see why I called her a bitch?
Madison’s too shocked to reply, blinking rapidly, looking from me to her mother and then Nathalie for inviting the whore.
“All right, that’s enough,” I say, my body trembling with anger. I remind myself this is Callan’s birthday and I can’t make a scene today. But he’s outside, as are the other kids, and I have to say something. Jenna is constantly putting Madison down for making something of her life and it’s not fair. “Don’t put your bullshit on her. We didn’t fuckin’ ask you to come here.”
“Stay out of this, Ridley,” she says, regarding me directly for the first time. It’s more than she does most of the time. At Christmas this year, she didn’t say a fuckin’ word to me in my own house for six hours. She’s also the same woman who bought my wife a vibrator for our wedding with a note that said, “The only way you’ll get off the rest of your life.”
She’s bitter. Her husband left when Madison was little. I’m not even sure Madison has ever seen him so it was just her mom raising her, if you can call it that. When she was six to the time she was fourteen, her grandmother raised her while her mother was out “finding herself.”
Madison tries to maintain a relationship with her mostly because outside of me and the boys, she doesn’t have any family since her grandparents passed away last spring.
But Jenna makes it really hard by acting like Madison will never be good enough, or I’m never good enough for her. And up until Tuesday, I thought I was. Now I’m beginning to wonder, and this isn’t helping.
Here’s where I lose my temper all together.
Nathalie clears her throat. “I’m going to put Grady down for a nap. Can I put him in Noah’s room?”
Madison nods, her stare locked on mine.