At this point, I feel like I’ve lived through some kind of hell over the past year.
First, after 11 years of marriage, I caught my husband, Max, cheating on me with his yoga instructor, Angelica.
Then came the divorce, and it was an incredibly difficult time because we have a 9-year-old daughter, Emma.
Then my mother got cancer. I went into debt trying to help pay her medical bills.
But it didn’t help. My mother died.
With all the debt I was trying to pay off, I didn’t even have enough money to cover rent and our everyday expenses, so I took a second job.
Sometimes, just to breathe a little, Emma and I go for walks in her favorite park.
And this time, trouble found us again.
I swear I was right there the whole time, but Emma was climbing down from the playground equipment, got caught on something, and fell.
I immediately called an ambulance, and at the hospital, the X-ray showed a fracture with significant displacement. The doctor explained that Emma needed surgery to properly realign the bone and secure it in place.
I stepped into the hallway and cried by myself.
Insurance didn’t even cover half of the costs. There was the surgery, the cast, and then the recovery afterward.
I called friends and acquaintances and borrowed more money again.
Then I called Max and explained the whole situation.
And he said in a surprised tone:
“I’m not paying anything. This is your fault. If you were a better mother and had watched Emma properly, this wouldn’t have happened.”
My jaw dropped.
“Max, you know I don’t have that kind of money. Besides, her medical expenses are supposed to be split between us.”
He just smiled and said:
“I don’t care what’s supposed to be split. I have a new family now, and I have to provide for them. So deal with your problems yourself.”
Then he just hung up.
I actually had to sit down in the hallway because my legs were giving out.
This is our daughter. How dare he?
The thing is, Max had a new high-paying job. He wasn’t struggling financially. He simply didn’t want to spend money on his own daughter’s health.
I decided I wasn’t going to let this go.
I could have called a lawyer and handled everything through court, but that would take too long.
I came up with something better.
So I called someone and asked them to go to Max’s house and deliver a small package.
That same evening, Max called me, screaming:
“God, what am I supposed to do now? Please, take this back. Angelica even packed her things and left!”
PART 2
Max’s voice on the phone was high and cracked, nothing like the smug, easy voice that had told me to deal with my own problems.
“Rebecca,” he said. “She read the card.”
It was a quarter to nine on a Friday night. I was sitting in a vinyl armchair in a pediatric ward on the fourth floor of St. Anne’s Hospital, in yesterday’s cardigan, with a cold cup of vending-machine tea at my elbow. The surgery had been at two. Emma had come out at five-thirty, pale and groggy and thin, with a bright purple cast running from her toes to her hip, and had cried for an hour, and then fallen asleep with her hand in mine. She was asleep now, on her side, with her mouth slightly open and her stuffed rabbit under her chin.
“Angelica opened the package,” said Max. “She read the card, and she hasn’t said a word, and she’s packing. She’s packing her things.” His breathing was ragged. “Please. Call somebody. Tell them to take this back.”
I looked at my daughter.
“Max,” I said. “Which card?”
“What do you mean which?“
“There were three.”
There was a long, ugly silence on the line.
I had spent four hours that afternoon, in the hospital cafeteria, preparing the package. I had not meant it as a trap. I want to say that. I had meant it, I think, as a mirror. I had borrowed an envelope and a manila folder from the nurses’ station, and I had put into it four things, in order, and I had written Max’s name and Angelica’s, together, on the front, in block capitals.
MAX & ANGELICA.
My cousin Diego, who drives for a courier company and owed me a favor, had delivered it at six. He had been instructed to hand it directly to whoever answered the door.
The first item was a photocopy of the divorce decree, with one paragraph highlighted in yellow. Section 9(c). The parties shall share equally, fifty percent each, all uncovered medical expenses of the minor child. Beneath it, a short, civil note, in my handwriting. Max. Emma’s surgery today. Uncovered balance: $9,430. Please pay your share, $4,715, within seven days.
The second was a copy of the hospital’s itemized bill.
The third was an X-ray.
I had asked the radiology nurse for a print. It was an ordinary one, in black and gray, eight by ten, taken the day before. It showed a small, thin, child-sized leg bone, split cleanly in two, with the broken ends pulled a full inch apart. In the corner, in white, someone had typed, Morales, Emma. Age 9.
“I didn’t — that was horrible,” said Max, in a thick voice. “That picture. I couldn’t even look at it.”
“No,” I said. “I imagine not.”
“Why would you do that?”
“Max,” I said. “Which card?”
He did not answer.
The fourth item was not from me.
PART 3
I had not planned the card.
That is the truth. Emma had made it on Wednesday night, in her hospital bed, before the surgery, with a stub of purple crayon and a sheet of the nurse’s paper. She had refused to tell me what it was. She had folded it, carefully, three times, and written on the front, in her big, round, third-grader’s capitals, FOR DADDY.
“Mommy,” she had said. “Can you give it to him?”
I had said, “Of course, sweetheart.”
I had thought about it for two days. I had taken it out of my purse, and put it back, and taken it out again. I hadn’t wanted to. I’d wanted to throw it in the trash. I’d wanted, God help me, to burn it. But at five that afternoon, standing in the hospital hallway with the folder in my hand, I had looked at the little folded square of paper, with its smeared purple FOR DADDY, and I had thought: she asked.
I had put it in.
“She read it out loud,” said Max.
His voice was very small. I had never heard it like that.
“She was standing in the hall. She’d opened the envelope. She said, ‘Max, what’s this?’ And she — she read it. Just standing there. And her face —” He stopped.
I waited.
“It said, Dear Daddy,” said Max. “I broke my leg. It hurts a lot but I was brave. The doctor says I’m going to have a purple cast. Mommy says it isn’t her fault, or mine. I wish you could come see it. I made you this picture of the cast. I hope you aren’t busy. I love you. Emma.“
The line went quiet.
“There was a drawing,” he said. “Of a girl. With a purple leg. And a big, big smile.” His breath hitched. “She’d drawn me. In the corner. Holding a balloon.”
I closed my eyes.
“Angelica said — she said, ‘You told me it was a scratch.‘” He gave a high, wet, helpless laugh. “I said it was nothing. I said you were exaggerating. And she said, ‘Max. That is a child’s thighbone.‘ And she said — she said she couldn’t. She said, ‘I’m not going to stay in a house with a man who ignores his own daughter’s surgery.‘” He drew a long, shuddering breath. “She’s taken the car, Rebecca. She’s — she’s leaving. And I don’t know what to do. Please. Tell them to take it back.”
“There’s nothing to take back,” I said.
“The folder. Call Diego. Tell him—”
“Max. It’s a drawing. It’s a child’s X-ray, and a hospital bill, and a card.” My voice was perfectly level. “There’s nothing in that envelope that isn’t true.”
“I’ll pay it,” he said, wildly. “I’ll pay the whole thing. Right now. I’ll Venmo you. Just—”
“Fine.”
“What?”
“Venmo me,” I said. “Forty-seven fifteen. Now.”
I heard him fumbling. I heard the clatter of the phone, the swearing, the frantic tapping. Eleven seconds later, my own phone buzzed, on the arm of the vinyl chair. I looked at the screen.
Max D. paid you $4,715.00. “I’m so sorry.”
I stared at the words, for a long moment.
“I’m not asking you to forgive me,” said Max. He was crying. I could hear it. He was crying, quite openly, in the quiet of the house on Willow Lane that I had once, long ago, helped him choose. “I know I don’t deserve it. I know what I did. I told you it was your fault. I told you to deal with it yourself.” His voice cracked. “She’s nine years old, Rebecca.”
“Yes.”
“She’s nine.“
“I know how old she is,” I said. “I was there when she was born.”
I put the phone down on my knee. In the bed beside me, Emma stirred, and sighed, and, without waking, turned her face toward my hand.
PART 4
He came to the hospital on Saturday morning.
I had not asked him to. I had told him, in the course of a short, cold, quiet conversation, at ten o’clock the night before, that Emma was in room 412, that visiting hours began at nine, and that if he came, he would not be allowed to stay past noon. I had added that I would be present for the entire visit. I had said it as a statement, and he had not argued.
He arrived at 8:55.
He stood in the doorway of room 412, in a rumpled gray T-shirt and jeans, with his hair unwashed and a bunch of grocery-store tulips in one fist. He looked, I thought, ten years older than he had a week ago. He had not shaved. His eyes were red-rimmed.
Emma, propped against the pillows, with her rabbit in her lap and her purple cast propped on a mound of blankets, looked at him.
She did not smile.
“Hi, Emmy,” said Max.
“Hi.”
“I — brought you flowers.”
“Okay.”
He came into the room, and laid the tulips on the bedside table, very carefully, as though they might explode. He stood beside the bed with his hands hanging. I sat in the vinyl chair by the window, with my hands folded, and watched my daughter watch her father.
“Does it hurt?” said Max.
“A little.”
“I’m so sorry, sweetheart.”
“It’s okay.”
“It’s not okay,” said Max, in a thick voice. “Emmy, it’s — it’s not okay. I should have come. I should have been here.” He swallowed. “I want to tell you something. I want to tell you the truth.”
Emma looked at him, steadily, with her mother’s gray-green eyes.
“I was scared,” said Max.
“Of what?”
“I don’t know.” He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes. “I think I was scared of being a person who had to pay for something. Who had to — to show up. I thought I’d gotten away from all that.” He gave a ragged laugh. “And then you got hurt. And I thought, if I don’t look at it, it won’t be real.”
“It’s real,” said Emma.
“I know.”
“It’s purple.“
A startled sound came out of him, half laugh, half sob. “It is. It’s a beautiful purple.”
“You can sign it,” said Emma, after a pause. “If you want.”
He looked at me. I did not move. I did not nod. I only watched, with my chin on my hand, as my ex-husband took a black felt-tip pen from the bedside table, with trembling fingers, and bent over the cast.
He wrote for a long time.
When he straightened, his face was wet.
“Max?” I said, quietly.
“I’m going to fix it,” he said. His voice was low and steady. “I’m going to — I don’t know how. But I’m going to.”
He stayed until noon. He did not ask to be forgiven. He sat on the end of the bed, with his legs folded, and showed Emma a video on his phone of a dog that could skateboard, and listened, with grave attention, to a long, unfocused, sleepy account of the plot of her favorite cartoon. At eleven-fifty, she fell asleep, with her hand curled around his thumb.
He did not move.
On Monday, the doctor called me into the corridor.
“I’m afraid there’s been a complication,” said Dr. Patel. She was a small, tired, brisk woman in green scrubs, with a kind face and the careful, evenly measured voice of a person who delivers hard news for a living. “There’s an infection at the surgical site. We caught it early. But she’ll need to stay for another ten days, and a second procedure. I’m so sorry.”
I put my hand on the wall.
“How much?”
“I’d estimate another twenty-two thousand.”
I thought of my mother. Of the hospital bills, in a shoebox, in a closet, which I had paid for a year and a half and never reached the bottom of. I thought of the second job, and the lost sleep, and the vending-machine tea. I felt something inside me begin, very slowly, to give way.
“Rebecca.”
I turned.
Max stood at the end of the corridor, in his gray T-shirt, with a paper cup of coffee in each hand. He had been, I realized, standing there for some time.
“I heard,” he said.
I said nothing.
“I’d like to pay it,” said Max. “All of it. I know it’s not — I know it doesn’t fix anything. But I’d like to.” He set down the cups on a windowsill. “I have a hundred and eleven thousand dollars in a brokerage account. I’ve been saving it for a — for a house. For Angelica.” A short, bitter laugh. “I don’t think there’s going to be a house.”
I stared at him.
“I’m not asking for anything,” he said. “I just want to do one thing right.”
From the open door of room 412, behind him, a small, thin, drowsy voice called, “Daddy? Mommy? Is somebody there?”
PART 5
I did not make it easy for him.
I want that to be understood. There were people, later, my friends, my cousin Diego, a nurse on the fourth floor, who said I should have. They said that a man who had come to his senses deserved a chance. They said, in so many words, that I had won.
But I had not been fighting to win. I had been fighting for Emma.
So I called a lawyer.
Her name was Hannah Pierce, a calm, sandy-haired woman of forty, in a gray pantsuit, who listened to the whole story across a desk in a small office above a hardware store, with a legal pad on her knee. When I had finished, she put down her pen.
“I’d like to tell you what I’d recommend,” she said. “I think you should do all of it.”
“All of what?”
“File for enforcement of the medical-expense clause. Retroactive, with interest. File for a modification of child support, because the current figure was set before his promotion. And file for primary custody, formally, with a visitation schedule.” She tapped her pad. “He’s offering to pay, and I believe he’s sincere. But he’s also a man who once told you to deal with it yourself. I’d like to see it in a court order.”
“He’ll be furious.”
“He’ll be accountable,” said Hannah Pierce. “There’s a difference.”
We filed on a Tuesday. I braced for a fight. I told myself Max would call, screaming, and I steeled myself.
He did not call.
He signed everything. He signed it in front of his own lawyer, a tired, rumpled, middle-aged man named Frank, who read the documents and shook his head and said, “Mr. Dunn, you’re consenting to a hundred percent of the medical expenses. Retroactively. You understand what that means?”
“Yes,” said Max.
“You’re not obliged to.”
“I know.”
“You could contest the custody provisions.”
“I know,” said Max. “I don’t want to.”
The hearing, in the end, was a formality. It took eleven minutes. Judge Margaret Sims, a heavy, gray, courteous woman in her sixties, read the stipulated order from the bench, in a flat, unhurried voice, and signed it. At the end, she looked down over her half-moons at my ex-husband, and said, “Mr. Dunn. In twenty-three years on this bench, I have seen perhaps four fathers who agreed to do the right thing before the court made them. I’d just like to say that I noticed.”
Max bowed his head.
Emma came home on a bright morning in July, in a wheelchair, with her purple cast signed by sixty-one people. There were nurses’ signatures, and her teacher’s, and a long, wobbly line, in green marker, from the boy next door. In the very center, in a neat, blocky, careful hand, was a message in black felt-tip.
Emmy. I’m sorry I wasn’t there. I’ll always be there now. Love, Dad.
He came every Saturday. He brought her tulips, and a dog-eared copy of her favorite book, and, once, a very small, extremely ugly stuffed hippopotamus. He sat beside her bed and read aloud, and did the voices, badly, and she corrected him. In September, when the cast came off, he carried her up the front steps of our apartment, in his arms, as though she were made of glass.
Angelica did not come back. I heard that she had moved to Colorado. I heard that she had opened a studio. I did not ask, and I did not mind.
In October, on a bright, blowing afternoon, Emma and I went back to the park.
She walked. She was a little unsteady, with a hint of a limp. She stood at the base of the big wooden climbing frame, looking up, with her head tilted, and her hand curled around mine.
“Mommy,” she said. “Can I?”
I looked at her. At the pale scar, a thin pink line, on the inside of her knee. At her small, serious, lifted face.
“Yes,” I said. “I’ll be right here.”
She climbed.
She went up the rope ladder, and across the wooden bridge, and she stood at the top, on the little platform, with the wind lifting her hair, and the whole bright, gold, blowing sky behind her. She looked down. She grinned.
“Mommy!” she shouted. “Look!”
“I’m looking!” I called.
I had been right there the whole time.
I had always been right there.
It was only that, for a little while, I hadn’t known who else was watching.
