He knew it was petty. He knew it the way you know a song is bad and keep humming it anyway.
* * *
Dana Pruitt did the math at the kitchen table after eleven, when the boys were asleep and the house had stopped making demands. She did it on paper, in pencil, because the banking app made everything look tidy and final and she needed to be able to erase.
Rent: the same as always, which was too much. The car: two more payments, thank God, and then the check-engine light could be its own problem. Dryer: she had watched a video about the belt and believed, in the way you believe in horoscopes, that she could fix it herself. Rich's support check: she wrote 800? and then, after thinking about the last four months, erased the 800 and left just the question mark.
Then the column that wasn't on any statement anyone else would ever see.
Washington trip deposit: $450, paid. Second installment: $450, due April 1.
She had not told Caleb what the trip cost. The school sent home a letter in September that said Financial assistance is available upon request, and she had held it in her hands for a long time and then put it in the recycling, because the last time she'd requested assistance, for the free lunch form when Caleb was in third grade and Rich had just left, the woman at the district office had said, "And is there no father in the picture?" in a voice like she was asking whether there was no milk in the fridge. So Caleb thought the eighth-grade trip was a thing the school just did, like fire drills. He'd been talking about the Air and Space Museum since he was nine. She was not going to be the reason he stood outside it.
Under that, in smaller letters: Dr. Ines — copay $40 x 4 = $160/mo.
She rubbed her eyes. The pencil had left a gray smudge along the edge of her palm.
The orthodontist. She hated that lie more than any lie she'd told in years, and she had told some whoppers to bill collectors in her time. It had been Jordan's word. They'd been sitting in the parking lot after the first appointment back in November, Jordan in the passenger seat with his knees pulled up and his sneakers on the dashboard, which she normally didn't allow, and he'd said, very fast, "If Caleb asks, can you say it's the orthodontist?"
"Bug, there's nothing to be ashamed of—"
"I'm not ashamed." He was. He was four months from eleven and he was ashamed in every cell. "I just don't want him to know. He'll be weird. Please. Dr. Ines said I get to decide who knows."
Dr. Ines had said that. Dana had been there. Dr. Ines had a soft voice and a room full of beanbags and a white-noise machine shaped like an owl, and she had said, Jordan, this is your story, and you get to choose who you tell it to and when, and Jordan had looked at her like she'd handed him a key to a house he'd been locked out of. So Dana said the orthodontist. She said it every Thursday.
She thought about Jordan in October, before any of this had a name, the morning he'd stood at the front door in his coat with his backpack on and his hand on the knob and simply not opened it. Ten minutes. Fifteen. She had been late for a seven-thirty cleaning and had said, "Jordan, honey, come on, what's going on," and he'd turned around and his face had been gray as dishwater and he'd said, "My stomach," and she had believed him, the first time, and the second time, and the fourth. Then the school nurse had called on a Tuesday and said, gently, the way people say things they've said before, "Mrs. Pruitt, he's been in my office every morning this week. I think it might be something other than his stomach."