The Pomegranate

The Panera Bread was on a cross street where a highway met residential back roads. It stood between a Pet Value and Anthony’s Pizza behind a roofed outdoor patio with a mosaic floor, and a fountain that people mistook for a wishing well. College students collected the pennies and nickels after dark, and stood around it after the Panera closed, shrouded in shadows like spirits waiting to cross into the underworld.

Daniel waited at a table near the Panera entrance, just behind a partition that kept the autumn air from hitting the warmth of the dining room, pulsing with the heat from a small glass fireplace mounted into the wall over tables and in line with diners’ heads. The table had chairs on one side and a booth on the other. The heat caressed his face, but he refused to move. He had already switched from sitting on the booth side to the chair side of the table. He had to turn around to see the door.

He folded his hands on the table. His fingers gripped his hands like a pleading prayer. The watch on his wrist marked the five and ten-minute increments before he checked it. Adults with children and groups of students entered and left the restaurant while he waited. Three students sat in the corner table beside his. He caught their glances between bursts of clicking keyboards and the occasional folding of a page.

His hands shook when he reached for the phone in his pocket. He had thought to call when he arrived, and again when twenty minutes had passed, but his wife had yelled at him before when he called to check up on her.

Daniel held the phone under the table to check it. No messages from his wife or children, only a missed call from his secretary. He considered leaving the restaurant to check his computer and pomegranate in his car. The fruit was from the grocery store across the street from the Panera Bread. It was a common stop for him when he lived with his wife and children, and a weekly stop to buy pomegranates when they were in season. When he and Tabitha separated, he avoided the grocery store and learned the layout of the one near his apartment, but the meeting he had before lunch had ended early, and Daniel bought a pomegranate. He thought to bring it inside and ask one of the cooks to cut it for him. He had only eaten pomegranates with his children, so he left it in the car.

He thought of the pomegranate seeds his children loved to eat, and wondered who cut the fruit for them now, or if they bought the seeds separately. Tabitha introduced Daniel to the fruit soon after their marriage. He often found her eating the seeds when they returned home from fertility doctors. She ate them with her fingers, plucking the red bulbs and swallowing them as if they could plant children inside her. When they discovered she was pregnant with Kory, Daniel was exuberant, and bought four pomegranates that day.

He was a nervous father, preferring to hold Kory when she needed to be moved and his wife wasn’t available to carry her. Daniel felt his daughter’s strength in her cries and kicks when he tried to dress her, yet, her minute limbs flailed in in weak, wooden movements, and Daniel harbored a fear that he would break her.

Zack was a stocky baby from birth, and Daniel often balanced the baby on his knee while taking phone calls and answering emails on his computer. He put bottles into Zack’s hands and let Kory play with him, fathering stocks and bonds with measurable outcomes and predictable changes. The children remained marvels and mysteries to him, changing as the seasons. Daniel could measure their new heights, interests, and times for activities after school, but their new styles had no name for him, and as the summers of their youth gradually drew to winter, he sensed a distance between him and his children that he hadn’t expected.

He considered bringing the computer inside, but he wanted to show his children that he was caring and attentive to their needs. He knew what his wife told them when she thought he wasn’t listening.

His children came with a breath of cold from the door, his daughter bound in her jacket, a thin overcoat that fastened with a matching cloth belt and three large buttons. Her scarlet hair was pulled back to a loose bun. His son’s lay open to his white jersey. A crisp letter 4 curved into the concave of his chest. Daniel stood to greet them.

His daughter bent around him to slide into the booth with her brother, then took out her phone. The college students tapped their keyboards. His ears rang with the voices of people around him halting then moving to whispers. He sat.

“You made it,” Daniel said.

His daughter looked down to the phone in her lap. He wanted to say he missed them and tried to meet their eyes. “You look well. Taller,” he said. “Do you want anything to eat?”

His daughter sighed and leaned back into the seat. A thump came from under the table as his son kicked the bottom of the booth. He glanced at Daniel briefly.

“How are you liking soccer, Zack?” Daniel asked.

Zack’s foot hit the seat again. He nodded.

“I heard you won the game against Wayne. Good job.”

Daniel’s heart raced when his son looked at him. In the few weeks he had been gone, his son had lost the round curve in his chin and lips, and sunlight had carved rough patches into his fair cheeks. Zack’s gaze moved to him then around the room. He yawned.

“I saw your grandparents recently,” Daniel said. “They say hello.”

He looked up when Zack turned to him and caught his gaze when it was bright and excited. “They miss you,” he said.

His daughter lifted a Snapple bottle and popped off the cap. She drank long as she watched her phone on the table. Daniel knew better than to look at her screen and ask about what she was doing.

“I was thinking I could make it to one of your games, Zack,” he said, “After my trip to Tampa I’ll—”

"Stop, just stop," his daughter said.

Daniel heard the three students whisper. He thought of the conversation he prepared for this. “Kory,” he began.

"Want to hear a funny story?" Kory said. "How about when you yelled at us, and called mom crazy?"

Daniel looked at the grain of the table to refrain from blushing. The memories of fighting with his wife rang through his head. He had called her crazy, after she called him cruel, selfish, and inconsiderate of what his children needed.

"Want to hear another funny story?” his daughter said. “How about when you took our dogs away?"

"You wanted to get rid of the dogs,” Daniel said.

"I think we only wanted to get rid of Scout,” Kory said. “He was a very violent dog. It would be helpful if you could drop Max off at the vet so we can pick him up."

Daniel put his elbows on the table. The heat of the fireplace descended on him. He realized his fingers were laced like he was in a meeting and kept his hands in place as he spoke. “Max is happier with me,” he said. “I take him out, I play with him...”

"That's an opinion, not a fact," Kory said.

A brief image of the dogs appeared when he closed his eyes. They were huddled in the same dog bed, Max curled and looking at Scout, his head hanging off the edge of the bed as he slept. “Please, don’t bring up any issues now. Do you want anything to eat?”

"You didn't even ask us," Zack said, "You just took them away."

Daniel decided to skip to the part of his rehearsed conversation where he recalled good memories, and how he would reveal embedded lessons they had missed. “Do you remember our trip to Disney, when you both wanted to go on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride again and again but didn’t want to wait in line? I told you that if you weren’t willing to wait you couldn’t go on the ride. Your mother and I couldn’t stand in place for you while you went off to do something else. It’s the same thing, you can’t have something you won’t take care of.”

“I remember a funny story about that trip,” Kory said. “You yelled at us in front of a lot of people, and mom had to take us back to the hotel because you said we were ‘disturbing’ the other guests.” She lifted air quotes that hovered next to her ears as he spoke.

“Yes,” Daniel said. “You refused to listen to me, so you lost a day of enjoying rides and eating at that restaurant with the characters like you wanted. We couldn’t do any of that because you refused to listen.”

She dropped her hands. “You’re funny,” she said.

Daniel leaned back. He touched his chin. “I remember,” he said, “that you used to play sick to stay home from school. I never said anything, I let you stay home. Now I’m wondering if I should have made you go, so you could face whatever it was that you were hiding from.”

“I think mom was the one who let me stay home,” she said. “Because I was actually sick, but you wouldn’t believe me.”

“I always came home with a new toy for you.”

“To make up for not believing me.”

“And I called the school to make sure everything was okay.”

“To say I was pretending.”

Daniel sighed. “What was going on, Kory? Were kids teasing you, was the teacher mean?”

"I don't open up to people I don't feel comfortable with," Kory said.

Daniel thought to ask why Kory didn’t trust him. He tried to think back to when she stopped asking him to lay with her, or ran to him crying instead of her mother, or smiled at him without mocking him.

“Will you tell me about your theater troupe?” he asked.

She looked toward the door.

“Are you still acting?”

Kory lifted her phone again and tapped the screen.

“When are you performing?” Daniel asked.

“I’ve been performing,” she said, “since I was six.”

Daniel almost smiled. “Dear, you started in middle school.”

“Oh, no it started before then, dear,” she said.

He frantically ran through his memories. “The thing you started with your friends,” he said, “in second grade? What was it, fairy tales?”

“Classic myths.”

“Your shows were in your cousin’s basement,” he said.

“And somehow you could never make it.”

“Okay, I’ll try to make it to your actual rehearsals, and your brother’s soccer games. I promise.”

“Promises, promises are so fun to say. Promises, promises go away,” she said.

Daniel’s ears burned. "Well, you're pretty funny too."

"Don't pretend to know us," his daughter said, "You can't make up for our childhood. You're delusional."

"Yeah," Zack echoed, "delusional."

He wanted to ask what their mother said about the dogs and about him after he left. He had planned out what to say to them and how to convince them of the truth before they came, but they fell from his mind like sparks from a fire.

Brief memories of the secret pains that dug into him when his children ignored him appeared. He looked down to the wood grain on the table. "I'm going to get something to eat," he mumbled.

He ordered a soup and sandwich and waited for it by the kitchen. Daniel lingered in front of the counter, watching the staff combine food and call names for orders.

A girl stood on her toes to look over the counter. Daniel watched her reach, the tips of her fingers dancing along the edge. A plate with a salad and panini sandwich stood back near the kitchen staff. The girl started to jump. His heart still thudded after talking to his children, but it slowed as he watched the girl try to obtain something she couldn’t see out of her reach.

Daniel looked down the line of adults standing against the wall separating the kitchen line from the dining room. A man in a red hoodie was tucked around his phone, and two women sat talking. He thought of his wife, and imagined her alongside them, chatting and laughing like the world they made around themselves was the one others lived in. Tabitha’s focus had intrigued him when he first met her in graduate school. Her fiery red hair was long and loose about her shoulders, and her ability to command intrigued him. But after twenty years of marriage and differences in raising children, he wondered if he was intrigued or seduced. His children were influenced by their mother’s energy and sweet promises, and he fell into the background, rooted in the world she spun for them.

The girl looked to them, then to the counter. Daniel shifted closer to her. She kept her gaze on the plate, even as he stepped closer and reached over her to move the plate closer to the edge.

She leaned against the counter to stare up at the light blue lip of the plate over the edge. She lifted her hands and grasped the lip with her thumb and middle fingers.

“No, no,” Daniel said. He glanced at the women. One watched him as the other spoke. The first woman turned her gaze to the friend and smiled. Daniel lifted the plate and held it out to her.

One of the women stood. “Hey,” she said. She draped her purse strap over her shoulder with one hand and grabbed the girl’s wrist with the other. “What are you doing, that’s not hers.” She tugged at the girl’s arm. “Let go, come over here.” She returned to her seat and wrapped her arms around the girl. She said something to the other woman. They both turned to him, and Daniel moved to stand where the drinks sat waiting to be claimed.

He folded his hands in front of him, and then tucked them behind. For a moment he was back at his parents’ house explaining he was moving in with Tabitha. “Before you’re married?” His mother had said. He explained he loved Tabitha. His father was silent. After Daniel explained he wanted to be with Tabitha, his father sent him away. Daniel carried the box with his last few things from the house, passing under the pomegranate tree that grew in the front yard. The tree had no fruits, and the air usually sweet was dry. He wondered if he was making the right decision, and if he truly loved Tabitha.

Daniel looked to the wall that hid his children from view. He hoped they were still at the table. He called to ask the children to lunch as part of his agreement with Tabitha. While they were separated, she would keep the house and he would see his children three to four days of the week. He saw them for the first time that day after five rejections to meet with him and had planned to prove to his children that he was teaching them how to make good decisions, but now, he barely knew what his reasons were. The door swung inward as two people left the building. Daniel played with the thought of following them. Whispers of cool air from outside touched his face. He considered telling his children that he had to leave or asking why they hated him. When the door closed the heat of the building wrapped around Daniel.

He remembered the day he left – a Thursday afternoon before the children returned home from school. Daniel was working from home that day to finish moving into his new apartment. The house was bright, the marble floors glowing, as Daniel packed the last suitcase and bags in the car. Max was whimpering for his walk. Daniel looked at him. The dog was slowly waving his tail, his jaw jumping as he whined. The car had room in the backseat for the two dogs. The children were against the idea when he asked them to take care of their dogs. Zack promised through tears to walk and feed them, and Kory ignored Daniel, occasionally rolling her eyes, and then telling her mother when Tabitha entered the room. Tabitha threatened to sue Daniel for everything he owned if he took the dogs. Kory offered for him to take Scout.

Daniel was shaking when he loaded the dogs into the car. As he slowly pulled out of the driveway, Max’s hot breath hit his ear. The dog licked Daniel’s cheek. Max was almost two years old and was large enough to take up most of the space in the back seat. Scout glowered against the window. A sensation similar to the smell of the flowering trees outside his parents’ house flooded over Daniel. He was timid, but certain he had made the right decision taking the dogs out of the house. He imagined Zack and Kory coming home to find them missing – Daniel knew they would be angry with him, and Zack would cry. Daniel’s heart bled at the thought, but it froze to think of Max waiting at windows for Daniel to walk him, and Scout snapping at the children without Daniel to reprimand him.

"Daniel."

A woman placed a tray onto the counter. Daniel took it and slowly returned to the table. He was surprised his children had stayed.

Daniel sat. Kory's cold stare burned a hole into his chest. He wanted to stare back at his daughter, but he kept his eyes on the tray.

"When can we see Max?" Zack asked.

"Mom says you should bring Max home to us," Kory said.

Daniel kept his eyes on the salad. "Max is at home with me."

"Home is where we live," Kory said, "Max is coming home."

Daniel drowned the spoon into the soup. “Max and Scout get along now,” he said. He kept his eyes lowered as he lied. “They play together, and Scout stopped nipping at him.”

“But I thought you said Max was too wild to play with Scout, because Scout was too old,” Kory said.

“Well, I guess he’s happy now.”

“Like we were so happy with you?” she said. Her eyes widened and she blinked rapidly. “Because we do miss the yelling, and the disappointment, and all the times you called Mom or us crazy.”

Daniel accepted the jab. A hollow space opened in his chest. He remembered the day Tabitha went silent. She stopped arguing and treated him like he was air. She walked around him, talked around him, and sometimes left the room when he entered.

He and Tabitha had been drifting since Zack was born, each floating in a different direction. First with preschool decisions, which friends were right for their children, and if they should sleep train Zack when he was nine months. They fought over circumcising Zackary, seeing Daniel’s parents and details over Christmas and Hanukkah celebrations. He saw they were doomed for failure, and he considered divorce since Zack was two years old. The only nights he thought otherwise were when they were together eating pomegranates. The children were eagerly waiting for him to serve them the seeds, Tabitha plucked a few from the rind as he cut, and he remembered the nights of them trying to have a child, then being blessed with two.

In those moments he thought he and Tabitha were meant to be together, then the darkness would life and the light like spring would bloom in the house, and he saw clearly that he needed to leave before more nights of pomegranate seeds kept him bound in the house.

He just hated to leave his children. Daniel knew the nights that would follow, returning to a new home with no familiar faces, would break him. Taking the dogs was cowardly, but they were his lifeline – a terrible, biting enigma that guarded his mind against the lost lonely hours ahead if he didn’t take them.

Daniel’s last day at the house was a Friday. He told his wife the night before that he was going to move closer to Philadelphia for work. She asked for how long. Daniel hung his head. He thought of her on the couch, her tablet propped on her swollen belly, swiping through parenting sites. Her feet were bare and crossed at the ankles, and the tablet light glowed blue on her face. The lights were out, and in the darkness, her pointed nose and thin lips were stark in the tablet glow. She hadn’t heard him enter the house or cross the living room to sit beside her. She ate chips from a blue bowl on the couch cushion. The years before that moment raced in his mind, from meeting her in college, to their first nights together, and the three years of dating before she told him to propose or break up with her. He wondered what made him hesitate, and he realized in the quiet of the living room how easily she closed herself off to him. Sometimes he wondered if she loved him or needed his companionship to get what she wanted. His job provided a large house, grassy lawn, money for trips, and in the future, he knew they would be able to send their child to private schools. But he couldn’t have Tabitha – her heart was solid and out of his reach. He had remembered her eating pomegranate seeds before the pregnancy. That was the only time he saw her soul – heavy, deep, and red with heat and anguish.

Daniel had told Tabitha he didn’t love her anymore and needed to be away for a few days. Her jaw locked and she stared at him. Her soul blazed bright again. She stood, walked out of their bedroom, and descended the stairs. Daniel went to check on her an hour later and found her laying on her back on the couch, Scout’s head in her lap.

Daniel decided it was time for his children to know the truth. Their mother was a fiery force who loved them, but she was so determined for her own way that she would rewrite their ideas just to keep them close. Their mother hated to be without power, which is why she withered when she thought she couldn’t conceive. Daniel was sorry his children, the lives he had seen as the answer to his happiness, were lured away from him in a lost fight for their undivided acceptance.

Daniel faced his children. “Why do you think I left?” he said.

Kory laughed once. Daniel heard the shift of Zack’s coat.

“I left because your mother – “

“She was right,” Kory said. “It’s funny how she knows. She said you would go, and she said you would try to convince us that she was wrong.”

Daniel watched Kory. She turned back to her phone as cold descended over Daniel. He looked to Zack. The boy turned away from him. Daniel’s mind hummed with the possibility of losing his children. He frantically thought of something to say, promise, or do, but he was numb, and the thoughts filtered through his mind like water.

Daniel ate in silence as his children watched. Zack followed the rise and fall of his spoon and hands, and Kory stared into his face, breathing shallow and steady.

Memories of the gifts he bought for his children after his fights with Tabitha filled his mind – plastic jewelry, Wii games, play tickets, video game controllers. His thoughts fell to the pomegranate in his car, and the ones he had bought for his children in the past. The memories came vividly then, the children’s wide smiles and their eager embraces, his children helping him scoop the seeds from the rind and fed pieces to the dogs when they thought he wasn’t looking. The memories danced in his mind, and the kitchen lights that fell around them were gold.

Daniel wiped his mouth and piled his dishes on the tray. “I got you something,” he said.

They followed his movements as he stood, placed the tray in the bin near the trashcan, and walked out the door. The cold touched his face. He heard the fountain nearby, and chirps of sparrows fluttering around its edge.

Daniel strode to the car and opened the backdoor. When he untied the plastic wrapping and lifted the pomegranate, he felt ashamed. He knew his gifts in the past hadn’t eased his children’s thoughts about him. The fruit rolled as Daniel leaned forward to touch his computer case. He felt its waxy surface rest against his thumb.

He straightened. His children’s faces were young again in his memories. They appeared when he closed his eyes, rewritten to be smiling and reaching out to him.

Daniel returned to the restaurant and set the fruit onto the table. "I remember how much you like pomegranates," Daniel said.

Zack's face dropped and he looked up to Daniel. His eyes were bright for a moment before he frowned and dropped his gaze. Kory shifted.

Daniel waited, gripping the chair. Neither child moved.

“Maybe we can ask one of the cooks to cut it for us,” he said. He wanted to smile, but it caught on his lips. Daniel imagined its blood splattering on the wall as a stranger split the fruit, and the pieces wounded and gleaming on the table before his children. His heart beat in his ears.

Daniel shoved his hands into his pockets. "It was really great seeing you," he said slowly. He wanted to ask if they knew when he could see them again, but he kept silent and walked away.

Daniel's feet were heavy. The walk to the door was long. Kory's stare was cold against his spine, and he wondered what it would happen if he looked back.

He glanced through the window when he was outside. Kory had turned to her phone, but Zack was watching the pomegranate, sitting before him as an offering.