The pumpkin costume was my idea, but the cupcakes were Dustin’s.
He wanted them orange all the way through, so we put food coloring in the batter, and by the time we finished, my kitchen looked like a crime scene for a jack-o’-lantern. There was orange frosting on the cabinet handles. There was orange frosting in my hair. Dustin had a streak of it across his forehead that he refused to wipe off because he said it was “war paint.”
So when we walked into the Oakridge Elementary fall fair that Saturday afternoon, carrying two trays of pumpkin cupcakes and dressed as two enormous, lumpy, homemade pumpkins, we were already laughing.
The costumes were terrible. I’d made them out of orange felt, a hula hoop cut in half, and about three hundred safety pins. Mine sagged on one side. His had a green stem on top that kept flopping over his eyes, so every few minutes he had to blow it out of his face. We looked like two oranges that had given up on life.
We loved them.
“Mom,” Dustin said as we set the trays down at the fourth grade booth, “people are staring.”
“That’s because we look amazing.”
“That’s because we look insane.”
“Same thing,” I said, and he laughed so hard his stem fell over again.
The gym smelled like popcorn and apple cider. Somebody had hung paper leaves from the basketball hoops. Kids ran around in face paint, parents stood in clumps holding paper cups, and up on the little stage at the far end, a table was covered with ribbons and small gold trophies for the fair prizes. Best booth. Best costume. Best bake sale item.
Dustin kept glancing at that table.
I thought he wanted to win best costume. I remember thinking that. I remember thinking, this is a good day. This is what I wanted for him. A normal, silly, happy day.
Then the gym doors opened, and Nigel walked in with Annabelle.
I knew he was coming. Dustin had told him about the fair weeks ago, and Nigel had said he’d “try to make it,” which with Nigel usually meant he’d show up for twenty minutes, take one photo, and leave. What I hadn’t known was that he’d bring her.
Annabelle was wearing a cream colored coat and tall brown boots, and her hair was the kind of blonde that costs money every six weeks. She looked like she’d walked out of an ad for expensive candles. She held Nigel’s arm and looked around the gym like it smelled bad.
Then she saw me.
I watched her eyes go from my face to the costume and back up. I watched the corner of her mouth lift.
They walked straight over.
“Hey, buddy,” Nigel said, ruffling Dustin’s hair and knocking the stem sideways. “Look at you. Very festive.”
“Hi, Dad.”
“Hi,” I said.
Nigel gave me a nod. Annabelle didn’t say hello. She just tilted her head and looked at me the way you’d look at a dog that had gotten into the trash.
“Well,” she said, loud enough for the moms at the next booth to hear. “With your figure, that pumpkin costume suits you perfectly!”
For a second, nobody moved.
Then Nigel burst out laughing.
Not a polite laugh. Not an awkward, oh-no-what-did-she-say laugh. A real one. A big, head-back laugh, the kind I used to love hearing from him back when it was me who made him laugh like that.
And then, while he was still laughing, he pulled Annabelle against him and kissed her. Right there. Right in front of the cupcakes and the fourth grade booth and half the parents in the gym.
I stood there with a tray in my hands.
I could feel my face burning under the orange felt. I could feel the moms at the next booth looking at me and then looking away, the way people do when they’ve seen something they don’t know what to do with.
I told myself, smile. Just smile. Don’t make a scene. Not here. Not in front of him.
So I smiled.
I don’t know what my smile looked like. Probably like someone being pinched.
I looked down at Dustin.
He wasn’t laughing.
He wasn’t smiling either. He was standing very still, with his hands at his sides, looking at his father. Not at Annabelle. At his father. His face had gone flat and quiet in a way I’d seen too many times that fall.
Then he looked at the stage. At the table with the trophies.
And then, for just a second, he looked at me. And I saw something in his face I didn’t understand yet.
It wasn’t hurt. I knew what hurt looked like on him.
It was a decision.
To understand why that look scared me, you have to understand how hard I’d worked to make sure Dustin never had to make one. Continue Here
