Page 19

April 2016

“Come on, Bella. The light’s about to change. Let’s get across,” Sarah said as she grabbed her daughter’s unmittened hand. Bella looked up from a web of rivulets on the sidewalk, her face resolute. The weather had been unusually mild for early March, creating an obstacle course of slush mountains and snowmelt puddles. This week, Bella had decided scientist-explorer was her life’s ambition, which meant stopping at every tree hollow and snowbank between school and home.

Charlie slept in the stroller, head lolled back and face to the sky. It was too late in the day for a nap, but coaxing both kids through the temptations of soft snow and warm temperatures would have been too much. Sarah knew what lay ahead. Charlie would stay up too late tonight, and then they’d face the same situation tomorrow as another late night ceded ground to an afternoon nap.

Sarah was immune to the relief found in a spring thaw. Work had been nonstop as they prepared for the opening night of their latest production, and on top of that, the arguments with Matt had been getting worse. Her weeks were punctuated with recriminations: he was late coming home, she forgot to call about the furnace cleaning, he hadn’t done dishes like she’d asked, she always left hair in the tub. The kindling for any fight was mundane, but the flames rose higher with each new spark.

When Sarah reached the other curb, sodden snow pulled at the stroller wheels. “Come on,” she said in a deep growl. She took little runs at the dirt-gray pile only to gain an inch or two. “You stupid thing!”

Charlie shook awake. “Out!” he said. “I want out!”

Bella surveyed her mother’s struggles from the top of a nearby snowbank, like the queen of small things.

“Bella, let’s go,” Sarah said in a bark. She hoisted the stroller, stepped through slush, and felt ice water seep into her boots. She ran an undignified gauntlet the last two blocks toward home: Charlie screamed to get out of the stroller while Bella dragged her feet in retaliation for her mother’s harshness.

The final ring of the house phone reverberated off the walls as Sarah shoved open the front door. The kids tumbled in front of her, tossing off muddy boots and wet snowsuits. How did two small children leave behind a pile twice their size? Sarah ignored the mess. She settled the kids with a snack and headed upstairs to her bedroom.

A mound of the morning’s rejected work outfits lay on the bed. Sarah added the slacks and blouse she had eventually chosen to the pile and slipped into sweatpants and an old T-shirt. It took effort not to crawl into bed.

She made her way to the kitchen to look for feasible dinner options, settling on the working mother’s refuge: ramen noodles and sliced vegetables as a nod to healthy eating. Chalk another failure up for today. The water had just started boiling when she remembered the missed call. Matt’s message was frustratingly familiar. Sorry, late again tonight. Don’t wait up.

“Of course,” Sarah said to the kitchen walls.

She shoved bricks of dried noodles into the water and thought about the trail of hurts and slights that haunted the edge of any marriage: irritations and assumptions rooted into memory, carving a swath of resentment. Say the wrong thing or offer an ill-timed glance and the earth beneath your feet crumpled. Had she and Matt crossed that unseen threshold? Stepped onto a painful path that led only one way?

Certainly, they’d been here before. Before Charlie. Sarah stood in their kitchen, remembering when they had been just a family of three, and somehow less, and more, than they were now. Matt worked all the time then, too, chasing new contracts and leaking regrets about his life into the open. It’s growing pains, her friends told her. The new-parenthood honeymoon is just fading. This is the real work, they said, paying for life and raising a kid. For months, she and Matt had been circling each other back then. Unacknowledged slights festered, though they both kept up the pantomime of a happy family.

The shouting match, when it came, had ripped open a wound and resulted in Charlie.

Sarah had spent the day coated in phlegm and apple juice trying to work at the kitchen table with a feverish Bella clinging to her chest. Entire emails had been typed one handed while Fred Penner music played on a loop. By the time Matt came through the door, her exasperation was uncontainable. When he told her he’d need to work over the weekend, she said nothing, but her silent recrimination was enough. It oozed and bubbled through the room, sucking up the air between them.

“Jesus Christ, Sarah, stop being such a bitch!” Matt had finally said as they were getting ready for bed.

The fight had been larger than either of them, a contained monstrosity released and finally stretching its limbs. You’re never here anymore. You’re just a control freak. Jesus, that’s rich coming from you. Around it went, words used as weapons to expose delicate skin and slash. Bared teeth and guttural retorts. In the end, they came together in a final battle of dominance and submission, each using known vulnerabilities to claim victory. He’d stood at her back when he entered her, and she’d hated and loved him for it. Six weeks later, she’d learned she was pregnant with Charlie.

Sarah’s reminiscence of that past fight was interrupted by the sound of little feet thumping across the hardwood floor. “Daddy’s home, Daddy’s home,” Bella sang. Sarah held her ground in the kitchen.

“Hi there,” Matt said. Sarah turned to see him standing in the kitchen doorway, with an open box of pastries from her favorite bakery. His other hand gripped a bouquet of orange grocery-store gerbera daisies. The transparent plastic wrap crinkled as he moved toward her. His head tilted down, but his eyes held her gaze under the fringe of his too-long hair.

“What are those?” Her chin flicked forward; her voice stayed flat.

“Mille-feuilles and chocolate éclairs.” The bakery’s claim to fame was decadent French pastries.

“Is that a peace offering?”

“It is. And an apology. I know I’ve been ... absent lately. And you’ve taken on a lot with the kids and work.”

“I try! I wanna try one!” Charlie and Bella said as they circled Matt. All hoping, wanting, waiting eyes trained on Sarah. “Please, Mom,” they said in unison. Sarah took in her little family: Bella, her crossed arms and thrust out hip daring Sarah to say no; Charlie and Matt, their expressions identical. Though it wouldn’t disappear, Sarah swallowed her anger yet again, letting it slip down her gullet like bile.

Matt seemed to sense the crack and pushed further. “That’s not all,” he said, as he put the box on the counter and squatted next to Charlie. His words were directed at the kids but meant for Sarah. “Daddy is taking Mommy out for dinner, and Jennifer is coming to babysit tonight. Won’t that be fun? And, if you’re really good, then she’ll let you have a pastry for dessert.”

Sarah shook her head, a smirk her act of surrender.

“Why don’t we finish making the noodles and let Mommy get ready for the restaurant, hey, guys?”

Sarah held Matt’s eyes over the strains of their family, and she let a smile slip onto her lips. “Fine,” she said. “But we get dessert too.”

The warm water from the shower left a glow on Sarah’s skin. Darker thoughts—about the end of her marriage or her failures as a mother—spun and collided before sluicing down the drain. She wiped a thick coating of soap up her leg and, with a practiced hand, ran a razor the length of her shin. She continued around her leg, pulling the razor over forgotten parts of her. Her free hand caressed the newly shorn skin. She was on the second leg, the razor poised just above her Achilles, when the bathroom door clattered open.

“Mommy, Charlie broke my Barbie!”

Sarah’s hand jerked up her calf, catching a scar midway down and ripping open still-tender flesh.

“He’s always breaking my things. I hate him.”

The scar was more than a few months old, the cut deep. Inflicted when the pedal from Bella’s bike caught Sarah’s leg as she ran beside her daughter. Bella tumbled to the pavement, playing out the irony of parenthood: the collision with Sarah had caused Bella’s crash.

“Bella, I can’t do anything right now. Can you go downstairs and talk to Daddy?”

When Sarah peeked out from behind the shower curtain, Bella was gone, though the bathroom door was wide open. She looked down where a rivulet of pink rode a trail of water around her leg and down the drain.

Sarah put on a red dress and black-heeled boots. Beneath the veneer of wife and mom, she saw a woman in the mirror, one she remembered from a time before kids. Before Matt. She was pleased to see her.

“Not bad for thirty-five,” the reflection said.

She twirled in front of the mirror, watched the fabric undulate across her legs as it lifted slightly. She spun again, and in her mind’s eye, the dress lifted her above the daily arguments and the work deadlines, carried her past the runny noses and day care pickups, to a time when she was a wife, a lover, a partner to the man she loved. They could—they would—get back there again. She just needed to find the path. And tonight was the first step.

She was halfway down the stairs when she heard Bella and Matt deep in conversation in the foyer.

“I know you’re sad, Bella, but we can fix it. It’s not a big deal.”

“He’s always breaking my things. I hate having a little brother.”

“Daddy fix it?” Charlie came running to join them.

“Shut up, Charlie,” Bella said.

“Bella, that’s not how you talk to your broth—”

“I see, I see!”

“No, Charlie!” Bella screeched. “Daddy! He’s going to break it more.”

“Charlie, just hold on a second, buddy. I’m trying to fix Bella’s doll.”

Matt’s back was turned to the stairs. He knelt between the kids. Bella pushed at Charlie while Charlie grabbed for the doll.

“No! Daddy, don’t let him touch it.”

“I wanna see. Daddy, I wanna see!”

The contained chaos always under the surface of their home had bubbled over. “Guys, just give me a sec—”

“I see. I seeeeee.”

“Charlie, nooooo.” The anxiety was too much. Bella broke down in tears.

“Matt, what time is the reservation for?” Sarah said from her perch on the stairs.

“Hey, hey,” Matt said. “It’s okay, Bella. I fixed it. Look. See. The doll’s all better now.”

“No, I don’t want it anymore. Charlie ruined it,” Bella said through fat crocodile tears.

“Come on now. It’s as good as new.”

Matt tried to calm Bella with a hand on her back. Bella took the doll but cried harder in response.

“Matt?” Sarah stepped down the stairs, struggling to get his attention over the tumult.

“I help, I help,” Charlie said.

“Don’t touch it, Charlie.” Bella’s yell echoed off the hardwood floors.

The doorbell announced the arrival of the babysitter, adding to the crescendo in the hallway.

“Matt?” Sarah reached the bottom of the stairs. Her heels clapped the hardwood, and Matt turned to the sound.

“Jesus Christ, what the hell is it, Sarah?” Matt said as he stood and spun toward her. All sound stopped. The kids stared up at their father. Bella’s tears dried on her face.

Charlie stopped shuffling. Sarah met Matt’s eyes.

The look of despair on his face silenced any questions she may have intended.

Sarah stood before that look, took it in, and turned away. She buried that look, along with her anger, her frustrations, and her suspicion, driving it down so that it ran like hot magma far below the molten crust of her skin. Sarah’s hand brushed the cool rayon of her dress as she stepped toward the kids.

“Okay, guys, Jennifer’s here. You be good, now.” Sarah kissed each of the little heads before turning to Matt again. “We’re going to be late,” she said and reached for her coat by the door.