When she finished the tea, she apologized again for my coming home to a mess.
“I’m glad I came home early,” I said.
“I would have been fine.”
“I know you would have managed. That is not the point.”
She looked at me.
“You do not have to manage everything alone anymore. You are allowed to need people.”
“It feels like weakness.”
“It isn’t weakness.”
“What is it, then?”
“It’s letting someone love you.”
She was quiet for a while.
“Your father always said I was terrible at that.”
“He was right.”
She smiled faintly.
“I’m trying.”
“I know.”
I stayed until she fell asleep, then went downstairs.
Gabriel was in the kitchen cleaning up some of the bottles.
“Sara, before you say anything, Danny called and wanted to come over. I didn’t know you were returning early.”
“I know.”
“I would have set things up differently if I knew.”
“That is exactly the problem.”
He frowned.
“What?”
“You would have behaved differently if you knew I was watching.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Yes, it is. You moved my seventy-year-old mother, who is receiving chemotherapy, out of the room I prepared for her and onto an air mattress in the basement because your brother wanted to watch football. You did it because you thought I would not find out for four days.”
“She was fine.”
“She was not fine.”
“She didn’t complain.”
“Gabriel, my mother has spent seventy years not complaining. She would probably apologize if you put her outside. Her silence does not make what you did acceptable.”
His jaw tightened.
“I’m the man of the house.”
There it was again.
“You are my husband,” I said. “You are not the man of the house in the way you mean it. 48 We bought this house together. We both pay for it. We both own it. Being a man does not give you more authority than me.”
“I know she has cancer.”
“Then act like you know.”
“I do everything for this family.”
“You put a sick woman in the basement for football.”
“I needed the room.”
“For football.”
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