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Bunny Boiler

Dodi

“You’re home,” he says with a big psycho smile.

I drop my disintegrating paper bag of groceries on the bar top with a thud, and the contents spill dramatically across the counter.

“What’s going on here? Where’s my neighbor? And why do I have five missed calls from Cat’s school?”

They came in one after another while I was trapped with Cynthia. The school was closed by the time I returned them.

Jake’s smile closes up on itself and Cat takes a half step behind him.

“What are you still doing here?” I ask.

“You needed me to pick up Cat,” he says slowly and carefully.

“I needed you to drive my neighbor to pick up Cat. I told her to expect you.”

We stare at each other for a beat. I feel sick. The calls from the school, the cryptic text from my neighbor: Your man friend coming through. I scrabble with my phone now to confirm. Yes. That’s what she said.

But I missed the follow-up text a moment later: ?

And I made a pit stop at the grocery store instead of coming straight home to make sure Cat was okay. I stare at her now, assessing for trauma from the experience of school pickup by a strange man. She darts from the kitchen like she thinks she’s in trouble.

This is all Jake’s fault.

“Why are you wearing my apron?” I snap.

“I’m cooking dinner.”

He absolutely is not.

“I had something planned,” I say.

He glances at the Kraft Dinner sprawled out incriminatingly on the counter and raises one eyebrow. The snob. He has no idea what it’s like trying to cook for a six-year-old who only eats beige.

I lift the lid off the Dutch oven to see what sort of disgusting bachelor special he’s whipped up, and an unexpectedly savory aroma steams upward. Stew.

“She’s not going to eat it,” I say triumphantly.

He gives me a look, as if that’s a challenge accepted. He lifts the Dutch oven and carries it into the dining area. I trail after him and stop in my tracks. Place mats, cutlery, trivets—all laid out with geometric correctness. My table has never looked like this. And that’s not all. My mouth falls open.

My sofa looks…orderly, the cushions smoothed, the blankets folded. The coffee table is cleared and the windowsills, too. Everything feels brighter and fresher. I smell citrus cleaner. I look down. He’s vacuumed . I bolt across the living room and stick my nose into my bedroom. My bed looks like it was made up by a hotel maid. My suitcase is missing from the floor, and with my heart in my throat I stomp into the laundry nook. It’s taken so much work putting together a proper wardrobe on a shoestring budget, cobbling together consignment clothing and sale items, and if that idiot —

But he didn’t. My hang-dry clothes are hanging and drying exactly as per their care instructions.

I circle back to the dining area.

“What the hell did you do to my apartment?” I hiss, willing myself to feel angry. He overstepped. He definitely overstepped. “I didn’t give you permission to clean!”

Jake gives me a blank look. “Did you like the filth?” he asks without inflection.

Fury gives way to mortification and then swings back to fury again. But before I can clap back, Cat materializes and plunks herself audibly into a chair. He ladles stew into her bowl and tosses a roll at her like he’s feeding a creature in a zoo, and she digs in.

She actually digs in.

This has never happened. I’ve never succeeded in creating this tableau of domestic dinnertime bliss. It’s always fights and hunger strikes, ending with Cat eating crackers on the floor while I eat directly from the stovetop with a swig of cooking wine to cool my nerves.

I watch Cat in wonder. She chews. She swallows. A physiological miracle.

Jake ladles stew into my bowl and then his. My stomach growls and I cover it with a cough and reluctantly take a seat. We’re all dead quiet for a minute, but there’s something so hokey and normal about this scene, the actors can’t help slipping into their roles. In his apron, Jake the homemaker serves food and mops up Cat’s soup splatter and reminds her to try a parsnip. And I, in my rumpled end-of-day business attire, slip into the role of disciplinarian head of household. I clear my throat.

“I spoke to your teacher on the phone this morning,” I say to Cat. “She said you and Charlotte got into a tussle.”

Cat stiffens.

“She says you apologized very nicely.”

Cat stares at her plate, nostrils flaring.

“Cat?”

“The teacher made me apologize! It was Charlotte’s fault,” Cat says venomously. “She always starts it!”

“Exactly!” I say. “You can’t let a teacher strong-arm you into saying you’re sorry. Saying you’re sorry is an admission of guilt.” I’m on her side, but right now she’s looking at me like I’m attacking her. Her little claws come out so quickly. I don’t know why she’s like this.

Cat scowls at me, and I know it’s going to be silent treatment for the rest of the evening, but then Jake butts in.

“Legally, it’s not actually an admission of guilt in Canada.”

The land of people who apologize if you punch them in the face. But that’s not the point.

“This isn’t a legal matter,” I say through gritted teeth. “It’s the principle of the thing. I’m not raising my daughter to smile sweetly and play nice and turn the other cheek.”

“But Charlotte’s an evil little bully, and she’s going to figure out that if she says sorry and Cat doesn’t, Cat will wind up looking like a sociopath to the teachers. Your approach is going to screw her over.”

Cat looks up at him with her mouth open. Jake has no idea how to talk in front of a six-year-old.

Jake continues. “If you want her to protect her principles, she can say, ‘Are you all right?’ It demonstrates concern but doesn’t assume responsibility.” He butters a bun slowly and carefully and tosses it to Cat. The first bun has already vanished.

“You’re overstepping,” I say frostily, but next to me, Cat studies him with intelligent eyes.

“And I don’t have to actually care if she’s all right?” she confirms.

“Of course not,” Jake scoffs. “You have to be clever with bullies. Don’t let them realize you’re fighting back. Study them and outsmart them. Keep notes. Make a list and stay focused.”

I balk at him, but Cat glows from the inside. She’s been given a mission, a masterplan to follow. A wicked little smile blooms on her face. She stirs her stew thoughtfully.

“Can I take leftovers for lunch tomorrow?” she asks me.

I have no idea what this means. I’m surprised she’s even talking to me. Jake stares at her for a beat, then leans forward with his elbows on the table and catches my eye. “She’s a future HR nightmare.”

I already knew that, but the delighted, twisty smile Jake gives me now makes it sound like a compliment on my parenting. His eyes really are very green. And there’s a smudge of flour on his glasses. My face feels warm. I look away.

I still haven’t tried the stew. I take a bite, and melt.

“This chicken is delicious,” I say begrudgingly. Jake gives me an alarmed look, and Cat grins deviously at him around a knobby leg bone.

—

Cat polishes her bowl and disappears, leaving the two of us. Under the cover of the table, I unhook my skirt waistband and have a second bowl, an artichoke, and two rolls, all the while avoiding eye contact with him. When I’m done I stand and stack dishes, but Jake firmly takes them from me. I try to scrub a pan, but he silently wrenches it away and elbows me from the sink with one bare arm. I’ve never seen him in a T-shirt before. It’s filthy the way the muscles and tendons tense and flicker just below the surface in his forearms.

“I should clean. You cooked,” I say. He ignores me. He rhythmically pumps liquid soap onto a scrubber, then scours the artichoke dish vigorously and thoroughly, using his hands at the end for a careful, deliberate stroke to check for any stubborn bits. He wipes it dry with a sensuous massage through a tea towel and, this tender aftercare complete, places it gently on the drying rack to recover its breath.

I bite my cheek and drag my eyes away from this erotic display of masculine self-sufficiency. I wonder if he owns a pair of sweatpants, too, to go with the T-shirt. It would complete the image of comfortable domesticity. I could buy him a pair. Dress him up like he’s my doll. I thought girls were given dolls to play with to prepare them for motherhood, but when I grew up, I realized it had prepared me for babying a series of man-child boyfriends. But Jake isn’t a man-child. I watch him carefully wipe out the sink, drape the damp towel over the oven handle, align a wonky magnet on the fridge. He’d probably fold and hang my clothes for me as he took them off.

This is choreplay. This is me on a full belly in a warm, clean house, mind freed up to focus on other physical needs for once. I shake my head. There are knives laid out on the counter with the sharpener. I go to put them away, but he’s moved the knife block. I spot it by the stove. It actually makes more sense there, where I keep the cutting boards.

“How was your day?”

I round on him, and he leans back against the counter, eyes on my hands. I lower the sharp knives. “Are you asking me how my day was?” It comes out as a snarl. I didn’t mean it to. Suddenly I feel flushed and angry and confused. His hair is rumpled and sweet. He snooped through my freaking house. I never asked him to cook. Cat smiled at him.

“Who do you think you are? Coming in here, cooking, cleaning, getting Cat to actually eat something that’s not a freaking Pop-Tart or a granola bar? I guess you’re trying to show me how it’s done? Show me how easy it is?”

But Jake is Jake: cool, unflappable, like my moods don’t mean a thing. The unblinking serial killer watching his victim flail and shout. “I wasn’t doing anything else today. And it looks like you’ve been busy.” He tilts his head toward the calendar on my fridge, and I’m exhausted just looking at it. I’m so tired. I fell asleep on Cat’s bed last night. It’s the only time she lets me cuddle her.

“I wanted to say thank you for putting me up,” he says quietly.

With fury I realize if I blink a tear will probably shake loose. I have no idea why. I’m not sad. I glare at him, a staring contest.

“That, and you’re a pair of filthy animals and I can’t resist a good mess.” He twists the knives out of my grasp and slides them into the block.

“It’s my job to cook and clean. I’m her mother. I’ve always done it all. On my own.”

Jake ignores me and sweeps the floor, corralling approximately ten specks of dust into the pan.

“How was your day?” he repeats.

I ball up a paper towel in my hands and start ripping it to shreds.

“I walked in this morning to find Cynthia parked at my desk, waiting for me.”

Jake watches me thoughtfully as he taps the dustpan on the edge of the garbage bin. He doesn’t jump in with advice.

“She’s fixated on that list.”

“She would be,” Jake says mildly, mysteriously. He takes the paper towel pulp from my hands.

“The list that my name is on. At the very top.”

“Is it?” Jake says disinterestedly. I frown. Did he remove it?

“She’s fixated on me.”

“In a bad way?” he asks, and I almost laugh at the absurdity of the question. “She’s protective of you.”

I scoff. “You don’t know anything about her.”

Jake’s expression has turned thoughtful.

“What?”

He shrugs. “I recognize her from somewhere. Somewhere I used to work. She was like that. Weirdly protective. Maybe after decades of being persona non grata to worker bees and higher-ups alike, she’s set her sights on a mentee before she retires.”

He’s always been one for spinning fantasies. He sprinkles the macerated paper towel in the trash.

“Go relax or something,” he says, and I deflate suddenly like an air mattress splitting open at the seam, all the pressure inside belching out in a breath of stale air. “I can’t clean the place with you shedding messes everywhere you go.”

I peer around the corner at Cat, who is sitting on the living room floor surrounded by her dolls. She makes dialogue, bouncing her Barbies on their toes as they talk to each other.

I creep slowly out of the kitchen and across the carpet. Three feet from her, I stop. Slowly, awkwardly, I kneel on the carpet just behind her. Her hair is tangled. She needs to let me brush it. That will be another fight, later, but for now it’s nice to just sit near her and listen to her play with the toys I pinched and saved to buy her.

But then Cat looks over her shoulder at me, surprised, like the sight of her mother getting down on the floor is alien to her. I suppose it is. There aren’t enough hours in a day to be a good mother and a fun one. I quail under that look, but then Cat slithers over to me and slides into my lap—soft and warm, claws tucked away, well fed and at ease in this tidy, nice-smelling apartment—and hands me a Barbie.

“You can be Charlotte,” she says in her funny, furry little voice. “Your bunny’s missing.”