Taking a break from doing the bills, I let my eyes rest on my son, Daniel, who is sitting across the table from me. He is working intently on drawing a heart on a piece of paper; in fact, he's busy making his very first Valentine's Day-card. Catching me looking at him he gives me a smile. His smile is just like his father's and it has always made me feel happy. He holds up the drawing so that I can properly see the bright red and pink heart that he has just spent half an hour creating.
"That is very pretty, Daniel!" I tell him encouragingly, and his grin grows a little wider. He wipes off-mindedly at his fringe to keep the messy black-brown hair from his eyes and returns to carefully typing a message under the heart. He has spent the afternoon with his aunty Rachel and his two cousins Ted and Hannah, and I have no doubt that it is from Rachel that he has got the idea of making a card. "Who is it for?" I know very well that asking that question to a six-year-old, particularly my six-year-old, might cause smaller tantrums, stomping on the floor and slamming of bedroom doors. Not an ideal situation. Still, he keeps smiling.
"It's for Clara." He tells me, and signs his name neatly on the paper. "She just started in my class, and she's got blue eyes and brown hair and she speaks funny." I ponder for a second what he might mean by saying that she speaks funny, but since the fact doesn't seem to bother my son particularly, I decide that it won't matter to me either. "She's only five, but she's in our class because she's very smart." I smile at his little story, glad that he has found a new friend, a friend that I am pretty sure he really needs, and he hands me his drawing. It reads 'To my best friend Clara from Danny'; I smile at him and compliment him a little more. Then I go to get him an envelope to put it in. He is twiddling a pen between his fingers when I return. His smile is gone, and he seems to be thinking about something; once again he's far off into his thoughts; doodling indecipherable figures on another piece of paper. It hurts me a little every time he goes off to wherever he goes off to, because I know that he does it partly because of decisions I have made for us in the past. I look at him for a little while; his doodles resemble a man now, and I flinch. It is the man he has never met, doesn't know the real name of, but still has always longed for. To avoid the tears, the guilt of hurting my son in a way I know he can never forgive me for, I turn back to the bills, furiously scribbling down the all too high numbers.
"H-have you ever loved someone, mom?" His voice breaks through my thoughts, it's weak, and I can tell that he is embarrassed from the way that he stares pointedly at his crayons that are now organized by color and back in their box. I clear my throat, not really sure what to tell him.
"Of course honey." My voice comes out soft and quiet, and I reach for his hand across the table. "You know that I love you, right? A-and uncle Ross, and aunt Rachel…" He shakes his head and I stop before he can interrupt me.
"Not that kind." He snaps, and if it hadn't been for the fact that I really think that I deserve being snapped at, I would have told him off. "Y'know, the other kind…" I nod that indeed I know what he means and he meets my gaze. "D-did you love my dad?" I don't answer immediately, because, quite frankly, I don't have a simple answer. Did I love Daniel's father? On some level I suppose I did. He was one of my best friends; I had known him for well over ten years and I hadn't been able to imagine my life without him; but did I love him romantically? I think back to that night in London, when we had accidentally made Daniel. I would be lying if I said that it wasn't one of the best nights in my life, damn, I'd be lying if I said it wasn't on my top three. Not so much because I know that during one of those seven times, Daniel was conceived, but because it was him, it was Chandler and he had made me feel like I was whole again. Like if my mother and her harsh words didn't exist; like if the future still lay before me – marriage, husband, children and a nice green house on Long Island. I suppose I loved, and will always love him for the way he made me feel that night; but I can't love him for the way he treated me afterwards. We decided, together I might add, that our friendship was too valuable to lose over good sex. I didn't know that I was pregnant then, or else things might have turned out differently. It was awkward. I had seen him naked, and actually enjoyed it; I had had the best sex of my life with him and I was supposed not to feel differently about him? A week after returning from London, Chandler and I had barely said a word to each other. Three days after that, he announced that he was back together with Kathy. A month later he was gone from the Village and I realized that I was pregnant.
"Mom?" Daniel's annoyed voice drags me back to reality and I shake my head mentally. "Mom, did you love him?" I look into his eyes, they could easily be Chandler's, but just as easily they could be mine, and I smile a little.
"Yes, honey, I loved him. He was one of my best friends." There are a million questions in my son's eyes, and I know that he needs answers to them one day; I know that I should have made sure that he never needed to ask them at all, but I also know that it is too late for me to change things now. We are good, just him and me. Monica and Daniel. Two souls against the rest of the world.