Tell Me. M. Colette Jane

down the stairs and I slam the laptop lid down. I should really just do this on my phone. Less conspicuous. As the thought enters my head, I push it away. I don’t like it. I do not like to be…deceitful. I lift the laptop lid up.

      —Reality calls. xx

       xx

      Alex piggybacks Annie down the stairs and into my lap. I enfold her, kiss her, smell her hair. He brushes his lips against my forehead, then hers. ‘Running late,’ he calls over his shoulder as he runs into the kitchen, grabs coffee, runs back upstairs. ‘Want me to get the boys out of bed before I shower?’

      ‘No, there’s lots of time for them,’ I say to his disappearing back. Stretch on the couch. Don’t look at the laptop. Pull my thoughts away from where they inevitably wend and think about what a fantastic, fantastic father Alex is. And how precious what I have here, in my arms at this moment, all around me in this house, in this family, in this life, is to me. And try to wrap myself in that thought. Protect myself with it.

      I fail.

       What do you want?

      —You

      —on no terms

      —so entwined with me we don’t end

      —for a few hours

       Then I send you home. Bruised and happy.

       Perhaps hating me just a little more

      Breakfast. Shower. Clothes. Everyone has socks and pants; minor miracle. Into the minivan. I’m so rattled, I almost ram into Clint as he pulls into the driveway to pick up his son Clayton.

      ‘Jeezus, I’m so sorry,’ I say through the rolled-down window.

      ‘You OK, Jane?’ he asks, peering at me through his. One of the longest sentences he’s ever said to me. Of course, I did just almost kill him.

      ‘Fine,’ I lie. ‘Just late. Be safe.’

      ‘You be safe,’ he says, and I can see he’s pondering the logistics of driving all my four kids as well as Clayton wherever it is they have to go, because clearly I can’t be trusted behind the wheel of a car right now…and I smile. My head clears, briefly, and I have one of those sharp insights into why Lacey has loved him for the past nine, ten, eleven years – as he’s fucked other women and fathered at least one other child – and why women keep on falling into bed with him even though he makes no pretence of what he is and what he is not.

      Cause he’s a really, really rockin’ dad. His always-pointing-to-the-hottest-target cock notwithstanding.

      I’ve told this to Lacey before, not that she really needs to hear it, for she knows – that he’s a great dad. Because it’s not something hidden. This is not a new revelation for me either; Clint’s commitment to fatherhood has always been there. Not in being Clayton’s weekend dad – although he’s never, as far as I know, missed a weekend. Not in showering either Clayton or even Lacey with gifts, because he’s no Disney dad. In fact, he’s kind of…cheap, really. Lacey orders herself gifts from Clint and tells him what he got her. Sometimes he reimburses her. Sometimes he conveniently forgets. His presents to his son, birthday and Christmas alike, consist of on-sale clothes, the price tag of which is further driven down by Clint’s employee discount. I know this, because Lacey has no secrets, important or otherwise. She shows me Clayton’s clothes, tags still on – and she shows me the earrings ‘I bought myself from Clint.’

      This is how, why Clint is a great father: most days, he stops at Lacey’s on the way to his home from work to say hi and bye to Clayton. He does this when he’s fucking Lacey, and he does this when she doesn’t want to look at him. He does this when they’re fighting (and, thanks to Facebook, I know when they’re fighting even before Lacey tells me) and he does this when they’re reconciled, as Lacey puts it, ‘again madly in love.’ When he can’t come – he calls. And he calls to say goodnight to his boy every single night.

      Alex, who is also a great father, does not call to say goodnight when he’s not going to be home for bedtime.

      Of course, he sleeps in the same house as his children every night. I don’t expect it.

      I try to recall if I call to say goodnight on those nights when I’m out late. I used to, all the time. These days, now that they’re older? Maybe not.

      I resolve to start doing so again.

      Back to Clint. This must be part of his attraction, to Lacey and others. Can they tell, do they pick up this thread, this power – can they tell this man will make a great father? Not as a beautiful physical specimen only, but in those post-conception essentials? That he will rock your baby to sleep, and teach your toddler to throw a ball, and take your six-year-old to cheesy Disney movies he himself hates?

      I think they can. I could – I knew Alex would be a fabulous dad, that was part of what I loved about him, always, love about him the most, still. I could see him holding my babies, not just making them.

      Never part of the dynamic for Matt and me, never. Yet he, I have no doubt, would make a wonderful father to someone else’s child. His wife’s, perhaps. This I also know, even though the part of him that belongs to me, fits into me is not the man who will be a father.

      But it does not surprise me that they are still childless.

      —it’s a hard thing when you understand what someone is, perfectly.

      I deliver the kids to school safely, drop Annie at my mom’s for the morning, run back home and pretend to be a housewife for two hours – laundry, fucking laundry, who finds joy and fulfilment in pairing socks? – then meet my dad for our sacrosanct father–daughter lunch. First Thursday of every month when we’re in the same city, third Thursday of the month too, when we can fit it in – our ritual since I was…twelve? Thirteen? It was at one of these lunches that I officially lost what little religion I had been brought up in. Confessed to my first kiss (but not my first fuck, although I did think of telling him…but that would have been too much, even for my dad). Told Dad I had to leave John, but couldn’t figure out how to do it. Laughed to him about – well, all of them. Scott. Raj. Pretentious Jason and overly ambitious Aldrin. That weird guy from Ghana who really wanted me to pierce my tongue and clit. Tried to explain to him why I was going to marry Alex.

      Never told him a word about Matt.

      We face each other across a wobbling round table in the basement of The Unicorn. Dad’s staring at a steak sandwich. I’m poking at an awful Caesar salad.

      ‘What the fuck was I thinking?’ I say. ‘Fish and chips. Fish and chips. The only thing we ever order here.’

      ‘Sometimes change is good,’ my father says. I give him a suspicious look.

      ‘But not when it comes to pub food,’ I retort. ‘You know what? I’m not eating this. I’m going to order fish and chips. You?’

      He cuts into the steak.

      ‘Not so bad,’ he says.

      My dad. Stellar dad, incredible – and incredibly patient – husband. But will never, ever admit he made any sort of mistake. As he masticates the sandwich, I’m filled with gratitude for his place in my life – for his awesomeness as father. As grandfather. And I wonder if this will be one of our very rare really honest conversations – or one of our companionable silent lunches when we just chew and enjoy each other’s company without talking – or one of the painful, shallow ones, in which one or the other of us has something profound to share but can’t figure out how to breach it, and so we talk at length about nothing.

      I wish to share…nothing. I feel my angst and turmoil and mindfucked state retreating inwards where I can wall them off. And I tell him – that Lacey thinks she and Clint are ring shopping, but I think they’re just ring photographing. That I can now do four unassisted pull-ups (‘But then I want to die.’). That Henry’s got a loose tooth. That Alex is in a mad pre-Christmas rush – ‘Everyone