The Same Page

Saturday did not go the way either of them had pictured it.

They got as far as the kitchen table. Nadia brought the envelope, the one with her own handwriting all over the back of it, and put it down between them, and inside of ten minutes they were not talking about the envelope anymore.

"I'm not saying it's you," Theo said.

"That's how it's coming out."

"I'm saying I don't know what's in your account. You don't know what's in mine." He put his hand flat on the envelope. "So what is this. What are we even looking at?"

Then Sofia needed a zipper undone, and Liam woke up out of a nap he hadn't finished, and the envelope ended up on top of the microwave. Neither of them went back for it.

Theo didn't say it'll settle. Nadia noticed. He hadn't said it once since her card was declined at Save-On Foods.

On Sunday morning Nadia phoned Joanne about the kids' dentist and told her about what happened at Save-On Foods instead.

Joanne had been married to Nadia's older brother once. It had been over for years and Nadia had kept her anyway. She got me in the divorce, Joanne told people.

She let Nadia get all the way to the end of it.

"Why don't we come by tonight," she said. "Me and Simon."

"Joanne."

"He's my brother, he's retired, and he has nothing planned tonight. Six o'clock. I'll bring something for the kids."

They came at six. Joanne had a bag of the little oranges, and before her coat was off both kids were asking her to build a tower.

Simon had done thirty-one years of IT projects and was newly retired. Money had never been his job. He'd just been careful with his own for a long time, and he was more likely to ask you something back than tell you anything.

Nadia had known him as long as she had known Joanne, which was longer than she had known Theo.

He ate what was in front of him and let Liam tell him about a dog for most of it. Sofia asked whether he was a grandpa. He said not quite.

Afterwards Joanne took the kids into the front room with the blocks. The dishwasher started up doing the thing with the grit again. Simon carried his tea over to the table and sat down.

"Joanne tells me you've had a week."

"Joanne tells you everything."

"She does."

It came out of her before she had decided to say it. The card at the till. Sofia asking why it was beeping. Saturday, and the ten minutes Saturday had lasted. Eleven years married and not one hour of it spent looking at the whole thing together.

Theo got up and put the coffee on. He set a mug down in front of Nadia before he took his own. "We're not throwing it around," he said. "That's the part I can't get past."

Nadia took the envelope down off the microwave and put it on the table.

Simon looked at it. He didn't pick it up. He turned it face down and slid it over next to the sugar.

"Not tonight."

"But that's it," Nadia said. "That's the numbers."

"It is, and we'll do them." He found a pen in his shirt pocket. "Sit down, both of you. Same side, if you don't mind."

They came around and sat next to each other, and Simon sat opposite. Every other time money had come up, the two of them had been facing each other across something.

He put his glasses on and pulled a napkin out of the holder, plain side up.

"Theo. What comes out of your account. Not what should. What does."

"Mortgage," Theo said. "Utilities. Insurance."

Simon wrote Theo across the top left and put the three underneath it.

"Nadia."

"Liam's daycare. Sofia's out-of-school care. Groceries, mostly. Whatever the school wants money for that week."

He wrote Nadia on the right and filled it in under her.

"And the groceries come out of which one?"

"Whichever card's closest to the till," Theo said.

Simon let that one go by without writing it down.

Then he pushed the napkin across so it sat in front of the two of them.

"There's a his," he said. "There's a hers." He put the pen down on the table. "Where's the ours?"

In the front room a tower came down and Liam announced that it was an accident.

"There isn't one," Nadia said. "There's never been one. There's two accounts and we hope they cover it between them."

"And neither of you can see both at once."

"No."

Simon reached for the pen again and wrote ours along the bottom of the napkin, under both lists, and underlined it.

"My pay lands every second Monday," Theo said. "Hers is every second Friday. They're never the same week."

"So on any given afternoon one of you is looking at an account that's just been topped up, and the other one's looking at the bottom of theirs." Simon sat back. "Thursday, Nadia's at the till four days out from Monday, and she's frightened. Theo's at the warehouse and his looks fine to him, so he thinks there's room. You're both looking at a real number."

Something let go in Nadia's chest. For three days she had been carrying that afternoon around like it had her name on it.

"You're not bad with money," Simon said. "I'd want you to hear that, because I think you've spent since Thursday deciding you are." He put two fingers on ours. "You've built a house with no window in the one room you both need to see into."

Theo had not taken his eyes off the napkin.

"So we get one account."

"You can. Some do. Everything in, everything out, and it suits them fine. Some keep it separate their whole lives and that works too." Simon shrugged. "I don't much care how you arrange it. I care whether the two of you can stand in one spot and see all of it. Both pays, every bill, the daycare, the roof. One picture, and you're both looking at it."

He waited until Theo looked up from the napkin. "You've both been rowing. Hard, the pair of you. Nobody in this house is lazy." He let that sit. "You're just not pointed the same way. A boat doesn't care how hard you pull if you're pulling against each other. It just sits there. And you both end up tired, wondering why you're not moving."

Sofia came in to ask about the oranges and Joanne turned her around in the doorway.

Simon folded his glasses and set them beside the teacup.

"So before you sort out a single dollar," he said, "I want the two of you to answer one thing. Out loud, where the other one can hear it. Not what you're afraid of. What you want." He tipped his head toward the front room. "Your reasons are on the floor in there."

Nadia looked at Theo. Theo looked back at her, and it was not across a table.

"I want to get to the end of a month and not be scared," she said. "That's it. That's the whole thing I want."

Theo took his time with it.

"Yeah," he said. "Okay. Yeah. I want that."

Simon wrote it under ours for them, in his own hand, small and level.

we want to get to the end of a month not scared

Theo took a picture of it with his phone.

"What," he said, when he caught Nadia looking at him. "It's the only copy."

"Right," Theo said, after a minute. He turned his hands over on the table. "So we're a team, and we know where we're pointed." He looked at the napkin, then at Simon. "What's the actual plan?"

Simon folded the napkin once and handed it across to him.

"Not tonight. That's enough for one sitting." He reached for his tea. "You don't agree on where you're pointed and sort out every dollar in the same hour. You'll just argue about the dollars and lose the direction."

"So when?"

"Come to Joanne's. We'll do the dollars there, on a night the two of you aren't refereeing." He nodded at the sugar, where the envelope was still lying face down. "Bring that."

"Tuesday," Joanne called from the front room.