My husband sits across from me in the living room next to his boyfriend. They’ve suggested Go Kart World, that sad racetrack off the 405, and I’ve agreed because I know the kids will love it.

It’s eleven on a Saturday morning. My husband’s boyfriend has made us coffee from the beans he brought home from Peru last year. That was before he started dating my husband; it was after Peru that he got the job at my husband’s agency, where they met.

My husband was unhappy for so long, so of course, there’s a secondhand happiness I feel in seeing him happy again. Recently, he made the announcement on his public Instagram account, the caption in the first person plural. It received 1.5k likes and 485 comments. One of them mine: the red heart emoji, three in a row. 

That week, a friend said, “It must be so good to finally see him live his truth.” Another friend said, “Have the three of you, like, done it?”” My sister said, “Men always get to have it both ways.”

We were married at twenty-one, so young, too young, and it took ten years and four kids before my husband came out, last year. First to his therapist, and then, presumably because of her encouragement, to me. 

We both cried when he told me, but there was no anger, no outbursts. This wasn’t a new conversation for us, my husband being attracted to men, though in previous iterations the fantasy always included me. In place of anger then, a strange kind of satisfaction to see him finally act on it, that I no longer had to wonder if, or when, he would without me. 

He showed me a photo on Instagram, a dark-haired man on a green cliff at Machu Picchu. Committing the username to memory, I said, “Yeah, he’s cute.” (In fact, he’s gorgeous—thick eyebrows, sharp cheekbones—and next to my husband, all freckled skin and red hair, they make a beautiful couple.) 

It took us half a year to figure out the logistics of what it all meant—for him, for me, and for the three of us as a unit. 

These days, my husband and his boyfriend sleep in the guest room and the kids climb into bed with them in the morning to be cuddled and tickled and wrestled with. 

The kids love my husband’s boyfriend. We told them the truth: that daddy and mommy were best friends—the best friends ever of all time!—but daddy was in love with a man because daddy was gay. 

They took it in stride. I get to sleep in now; I starfish in the middle of the bed and listen to the kids’ laughter echo down the hall from the guest room.

#

“You tell them,” my husband says, his arm slung over his boyfriend’s shoulders.

He’s offering me some of the glory he has naturally by being their father; I take the bait.

“We were thinking we should go to Go Kart World,” I say. 

The kids erupt in cheers. One of them, wearing roller blades, glides over  and sits on my lap. He kisses me on the face and says, “You’re the best mom in the world.”

My husband’s boyfriend says, “She is the best mom in the world.” 

My husband starts to chant: “Best. Mum. Best. Mum. Best. Mum.” 

The kids join him and soon they are screaming it, and I force a laugh and a smile and say, “Okay, okay, I get it, I’m the best,” but they keep going, the screams getting louder and more piercing, even as I buckle them into the van, as I make sure I have wallet house keys cell phone sunscreen snacks water and band-aids, just in case.

My husband and his boyfriend decide to take his boyfriend’s Bronco because there’s only room for one of them to sit comfortably in the van. The kids are still screaming as I back out of the driveway and head north toward the freeway. 

#

My husband’s boyfriend and I have tried our best to create a friendship outside of my husband. We go for drinks once a week while my husband stays home with the kids. At happy hour, we talk only about my husband, like we’re nervous to discover what else we might have in common.

Is he taking his Lexapro? Don’t you think he needs a haircut? What are you going to get him for his birthday? 

My husband’s boyfriend is so grateful for me—he says this all the time. 

“Not all wives,” he says. “Not all wives, what,” I say. “Would be this cool about it,” he says. 

Am I cool? I like the idea of it, but not how it feels—as if I’m giving something up without a fight. All the small ways you acquiesce over the course of a marriage. Painting the front door coral when you always wanted it red. My husband’s British accent is his boyfriend’s favorite thing about him. “That and his pecs,” he’s told me.

#

Near the restrooms, there is a long hallway lined with framed photos of all the celebrities who have visited Go Kart World. It’s $50 for a two-hour wristband. That’s $200 for the kids alone. 

I say, “You know what, I’ll sit out this time and just watch.”

My husband says, “No way, come on, that’s no fun.”

My husband’s boyfriend says, “Let me treat you all.” He pulls out a shiny credit card. There’s some back and forth about who will pay for what. The cashier stares us down, annoyed as the line of customers grows behind us.

“I can pay for my kids,” I say, more forceful than necessary, so it’s decided that I will buy the four wristbands for the kids and my husband’s boyfriend will buy the three wristbands for the adults. 

We sign waivers indicating we understand the risk and won’t sue if someone gets hurt.

#

Last month, my husband’s boyfriend was out of town, the first time our house has been empty of him since he moved in six months ago. There was some unspoken awkwardness over where my husband would sleep that weekend. Would he, I wondered, still take the guest room, and sleep alone, without his boyfriend here? We had a couple of drinks after dinner as we’re apt to. He slurred that he’d like to sleep in his old room if it was okay with me. I was aroused imagining what new skills he might have learned from his boyfriend, but the sex wasn’t anything magical or restorative. He touched me in all the ways I expected him to, then pulled out and finished politely on my stomach. A tinge of disappointment followed by a wave of clarity: I was not missing out. 

It was the sex of married people, which we still are. 

#

We gather the kids from the arcade. At first we can’t find the youngest and the other three run around yelling his name until he turns up in the oversized plastic seat of one of those Fast & Furious video games. As a group we walk outside to the racetracks. My husband and his boyfriend hold hands and I follow behind. I notice, not for the first time, that they look good together from the back too. 

There is the mini-track and the medium-sized track and the big-track, which my husband says is called the SUPER TRACK. Everyone wants to ride the SUPER TRACK but only two of the kids are tall enough. The other two start to whine and then to cry so I take out some fruit snacks from my purse to distract them. I whisper at them not to tell anyone, especially not their big brother and sister, but the mini-track is actually faster than the SUPER TRACK. 

“Really?” the more skeptical one asks.

“I swear.”

This makes them feel better. 

In the midst of this, my husband and his boyfriend and our two tall-enough kids joined the line for the SUPER TRACK and are now near the front. When it’s their turn, we watch them speed past us in circles from the other side of the metal fence. 

The youngest says, “Who’s winning?” and I say, “I don’t really know how to tell.”

#

The first hour of our two-hour wristband has passed and I’ve yet to sit in a go-kart. This makes me irritated about the $50 spent on said wristband, but then I remember my husband’s boyfriend paid for mine, so I care slightly less. 

The two youngest have raced the mini-track six times in a row and I’ve stood on the other side of the fence in the hot sun, trying to get a photo of them. I’ll send the photos to my husband so he can send them to his parents in London who have recently learned to use WhatsApp and request more photos of the kids. 

My husband’s parents have met his boyfriend only once, over FaceTime. I was on the call too; we agreed it was important to show a unified front. His mother and I don’t have a close enough relationship for her to check in on me, but during that call, as my husband explained our new situation, reiterated, as his therapist recommended, that he wasn’t asking for their opinion, just their support, I felt like she was trying to—how her eyes bore into the screen, the way she asked if the heat was unbearable that summer.

Shielding my phone from the sun’s glare, I flick through my camera roll, deleting the blurry pictures. An email notification appears: yes, a pizza party sounds good, can you get the word out? I swipe it away as another notification takes its place. Did you get her email? she said pizza party sounds good. Another: we should check how many kids are gluten-free. 

Someone puts an arm around me from behind and by the smell of his cologne, I know it’s not my husband.

“Hi, honey,” I say. We call each other pet names, the three of us, switching off who is honey, who is baby, who is babe, love, sugar pie, sunshine. “How’s the Super Track?” I ask him.

“Those things go fucking fast,” he says. “Wanna race?” 

I point to the kids on the mini-track and he hollers both of their names. “Get ’em, killers!” he shouts. “When they’re done,” he says, “let’s race, me and you. You haven’t even driven one yet.”

“Someone has to keep an eye on them,” I say. 

He points to my husband at the concession stand, probably spending too much on an overpriced soda, as if to say, can’t he do it? It’s nice when it feels like we’re on the same team regarding certain paternal failings of my husband, but I know if forced to pick a side, my husband’s boyfriend would never pick mine. 

The race ends and the younger kids run out from the mini-track, barreling into my husband’s boyfriend. He picks one up and throws him over his shoulder, fireman’s carry, and starts walking toward the concession stand. My first worry is that he’ll drop him, but then the other kid starts crying because he wants to be carried that way and it’s not fair, so then I’m busy pulling out more fruit snacks and tissues for his snotty nose, calming him down, telling him he can have a turn next.

“Daddy has a soda for you,” I say, pointing my husband out in the crowd. The kid takes off running. “Watch where you’re going,” I say, but not loud enough for him to hear.

#

My husband turned thirty-two last week and he and his boyfriend threw a big party at our house. A rebirth, they called it. My husband’s first birthday identifying as a gay man.

It was a fun party. A little messy, but joyful. I sat apart from the two of them for most of the night, enjoying the company and conversations of our mutual friends. Our children were with my sister, who chose not to attend. A joint was passed around. I observed my husband sitting on his boyfriend’s lap taking a selfie and felt warmed by their love. To the people I hadn’t met before I was introduced as the wife—not just my husband’s wife, but their wife, as if I was a wife to them both. It didn’t feel right, but it also didn’t feel entirely wrong, or untrue. 

Late in the night, I joined my husband and his boyfriend in a circle around the fire pit. They were mid-conversation with another couple when I came to sit down. My husband had his back to me so he didn’t notice me approaching as he said, “It’s like I get a do-over at life. I’m so lucky. Thank god I didn’t kill myself before I got here. All those times I thought about it.” 

For those that turned to look at me, as if hoping to see some kind of pained reaction, I held perfectly still.

I’m privy to the details of only one of those times: in college, a few months before we met, his first time living outside of England—his first time sleeping with a boy too, though that part of the story I wouldn’t learn until much later. Not an attempt, but a threat to attempt, the word ideation, and his mother flew out, rented them a beach house for the weekend in Santa Barbara where they waded in the ocean and ate fresh ceviche from cold bowls. The image I have of them sitting on the sand, my husband a twenty-year-old boy crying in his mother’s arms, must be an image he provided me in his retelling, yet it comes across as clearly as if I were there. 

My sister says I’m sacrificing my whole life so he can have it his way, but is my sacrifice now any greater than my husband’s sacrifice has already been? Even on the days I believe I’m still in love with him, I can accept that his life depends on him not being in love with me.

#

You can’t gas until the light goes green. There’s some mechanism on the go-kart that doesn’t allow it. My calf cramps while hovering my foot over the pedal, but I know it’s all about how fast you get off the start. When the light flicks on, I’m ready. 

I fly out the gate. I hear the youngest kids scream, “Go Mom!” from behind the fence, the spot I told them they were not allowed to move from, and don’t talk to any strangers. My husband didn’t want to sit out the race. “They’ll be fine,” he said. 

I’m in the lead when I hear my husband’s boyfriend shout my name. He’s just behind me on my right. “Is that all you’ve got?” he yells. 

I edge my cart over so it bumps his.

“No bumping!” The attendant warns over the loudspeaker. 

“Fuck you,” I yell at my husband’s boyfriend who laughs, maniacally. 

“Are you trying to win or not?” he shouts. 

I bump him again, harder this time. He hits the metal barricade and bounces off, knocking back into me.

 “No bumping!” says the attendant. “I repeat, no bumping on the Super Track.”

We’re coming up to the first curve and I know I need to slow down to not spin out, but slowing down would mean losing the lead and I don’t want to do that either. 

I want my kids to see me win, even if they can’t tell the difference. I want my husband to see me win because I know he can tell the difference. “You become an animal,” he’d said once, on an anniversary camping trip in the Redwoods. I beat him at UNO four times in a row, then called him a self-righteous prick when I finally lost. “Scary, in a sexy way.” 

We’re nose to nose approaching the bend, his boyfriend and I, but just as it begins to turn, I ease off the gas, slowing down enough to hit the bend on the inside. My husband’s boyfriend, forever a competitor, does not slow down. He spins out until his go-kart is facing the wrong way on the track. 

I have enough time to swerve, but I don’t. 

I ram straight into him. 

#

In the weeks after my husband first came out, I went to see a therapist for the first time, a different woman from the one who originally encouraged his honesty. The therapist handed me a worksheet on which I had to list all of the physiological responses I would have if a grizzly bear broke through my kitchen window. 

“Would you stand your ground?” she wanted to know, and because I thought the healthy answer was yes, I said that I would. “If a grizzly bear broke through your kitchen window and you stood your ground, you would die without question,” she said. “Sometimes the best solution is to get out of the way as quickly as possible. It’s not always weak to run.”

“Are you telling me to leave him?” I asked.

“I’m talking about the worksheet,” she said. “Do you think you should leave him?”

“He doesn’t want me to leave.”

“And what do you want?”

I want the Sunday mornings, my husband cooking breakfast, the stereo on—alright, so his boyfriend’s there too, that’s fine. What I want is for my kids to be okay, for our attempts at happiness now to not eclipse their own attempts at happiness later on. 

“You’re not supposed to run,” was all I could say. 

The therapist’s brow furrowed.

 “From bears,” I said, remembering a hiking tenet learned long ago. “You have to stay facing them and back away very slowly.”

#

“Lady!” The attendant yells. He waves his arms in the air as he runs over to me. The mechanism in the go-karts has turned off the gas, so everyone is frozen in place on the track. “Lady, there’s no bumping. I announced it three times over the speaker.”

“I’m sorry, it was an accident. I wasn’t looking where I was going.” I unbuckle and stand up from my go-kart. The competition that seemed so important moments before is immediately revealed to be ridiculous. There are children everywhere. In fact, the three of us—me, my husband, his boyfriend—are the only adults on the track at all. 

“We’re gonna have to ask you to leave,” the attendant says. “We can’t have people crashing into each other like that. It’s too dangerous.”

My husband’s boyfriend comes over to me. He looks a little shaken, but otherwise unhurt. I bury the disappointment; I didn’t want to hurt him.

“Are you okay?” he asks. “I told you, they’re fucking fast, right?”

The attendant says, “Man, you need to take your wife and leave. This place is for kids, okay? Kids. We can’t have adults driving reckless like that.” 

On the other side of the track, across the grassy median, my husband and our two oldest kids stare at me from inside their go-karts. It’s too far for me to read the expression on their faces, but I can imagine the older kids are mortified and that my husband is finding it hilarious.

“Seriously, man.” The attendant’s getting angry now. “She has to go. Three times and you’re out. Don’t make me call security.”

“We’re going, we’re going.” My husband’s boyfriend leads me toward the track’s exit. He waves at my husband to assure him we’re fine. The attendant pushes our karts onto the grass so they’re out of the way of the other riders. It’s clear he’s in a rush to get the race going again so people feel like they get the most out of their expensive wristbands. 

We stop at the bench where the youngest kids are waiting. They look confused, or like I’ve embarrassed them by causing a scene. A security guard approaches and tells me I have to leave.

My husband’s boyfriend says, “Alright, dude, relax. She’s a mom. She’s just here with her kids, okay? She’s not some threat to public safety.”

The security guard says, “I’m only doing what they tell me. And they say she’s gotta go.”

The youngest starts to cry. He reaches for my husband’s boyfriend who picks him up. 

I say, “It’s okay, baby, I’m fine,” pulling more fruit snacks from my purse. I try to offer them out, but both kids shake their heads. I rip open the plastic pouch anyway and put one fake red berry after another into my mouth. 

“I shouldn’t have crashed into you like that,” I say to my husband’s boyfriend, my child sitting comfortably on his hip, no longer in tears. “I’m sorry.”

He laughs. “It’s not like you did it on purpose. You were just going too fast.” 

The security guard clears his throat. “Ma’am,” he says, as if this whole fiasco has exhausted him.

My husband’s boyfriend says, “If you go, I’ll go too.”

I wave him off. “No, you stay here, I don’t mind. I’ll come back later to pick the kids up.” 

He hesitates, unsure what the right move is: if it would be a mistake to let me leave, or more specifically, if my husband will be upset with him for letting me leave. We’re all just trying to play by the unstated rules of our agreement. 

“Really,” I say. “I don’t want to ruin the day. Just call me when you guys are done.”

He squeezes my arm. “Okay, if you’re sure,” he says. “We’ll call you.” 

I smile and nod, then leave with the security guard trailing behind me. 

From the parking lot I can see that the race has finished. I watch my husband take our youngest from his boyfriend’s arms. He pretends to drop him, catching him only moments before he hits the pavement. Even from here I can tell the kids are all talking over one another, screaming with laughter as my husband’s boyfriend reenacts the crash. 

They huddle in close together, the six of them, a unit.