Ha, there it was.
Her value had increased threefold!
“Wow,” I said.
“I know,” Kate said, not believing it herself.
Even this drunk husband couldn’t help but notice the change in his wife. The six-figure job offer had given Kate a renewed sense of her own worth. It was all over her. Mostly, it was in her eyes.
The possibility of it all must have been too much for her, because Kate started turning off the lights and said, “Let’s talk about it tomorrow.”
“What’s to talk about?” I said, following her. “Take the job with Bruno Schwine, work hard for a year, make buckets of money.”
“But the kids. What about the kids?”
“What about them?”
“I can’t leave them with a babysitter.”
“You don’t have to. I’ll take care of them.”
“What about your teaching?”
“I’ll take the year off. It’ll be like a sabbatical.”
“You’d be willing to do that?”
My mind began to race with this new possibility. I could finish my dissertation. And enough with teaching other people’s children. What about our children? Even Sam had begun to complain about the size of our home. And hadn’t Kate sometimes joked, “Something has to give.”
So now here it was—life was giving.
“You’d really take care of the boys?”
“It’s my turn to be the one at home.”
Kate, later, in the dark: “Are you sure?”
“Yes,” I said as we fucked. Yes.
And so it was decided.
TIM
SOME DAYS YOU FEEL LIKE YOU’RE IN A MOVIE. THE DAY I DECIDED TO BREAK THE news was one of those days.
All of April and much of May, I’d been in a teaching slump. Why? Was it the decision Kate and I had made? Or that it was still a secret?
When I woke up that particular Friday morning, I knew it was time. Bad news was best delivered on Fridays. Give the students a weekend to recover. It was only fair.
What I didn’t expect was how different it would feel that day. As I climbed the stone steps to the academy, it was as if I’d been given a new set of eyes, as if my head had been wrapped in soft gauze. Each student, my fellow teachers, even Dr. Millicent Vandeventer appeared warm and fuzzy and backlit with an auburn glow. It was as if behind every move I made, every word I spoke, an orchestra played.
A faint, lone oboe caressed the air as I typed my resignation letter on my Underwood No. 5 manual. Enter flutes and a French horn as I was ushered into Dr. Vandeventer’s oak-paneled office. A chorus of fifty German singers hummed as I requested a leave of absence for one year, during which I would “study and reflect” on my experience at Montague and “yes, absolutely, finish the dissertation.” I expected Dr. Vandeventer to be upset by this request, particularly with it coming so late in the year. To my dismay, she seemed elated. She nearly shot out of her wheelchair to a standing position; she nearly danced on her desk.