Page 15

By the time I got the girls bathed and brushed their teeth and put on their pajamas, it was just after eight.

I told them we only had time for one book, but Grace insisted on two, and I didn’t have the energy to negotiate or fight.

I sang my usual song—“You Are My Sunshine”—and then closed the door.

I stood in the hallway, waiting for one of them to summon me, every muscle in my body tense.

Mommy? Often, I hear it in my head and think it’s real—an auditory hallucination.

Isn’t that a sign of posttraumatic stress disorder?

Is there such a thing as present traumatic stress disorder?

Anyway, they didn’t call for me. Sometimes I think they can tell when I’m hovering at the edge of a precipice. Sometimes I think they know not to push.

I unpacked, took a shower, and got into bed just as I heard the garage door open. Kyle was home.

“Did you win?” I asked when he came into the bedroom, still wearing his cleats, clomping around on the wood floor.

I didn’t really care if he’d won, but it was a question asked out of habit. Before we had kids, I cared if his team won—or, I cared that he cared. Just like he cared to take off his cleats before clomping around on the wood floor. We have devolved, mutually.

“We won,” he said, sitting on the bed to take off his cleats.

His hair was slick with sweat, his shirt damp from exertion. There was a time I would have considered this manly and sexy; now it’s just gross.

“You get any hits?” I asked, again out of habit.

“Not tonight.”

He stood and went to the bathroom to shower—thank god.

When he came back, wearing his boxers and nothing else, he got into bed next to me and put his arm around me.

“You tired?” he asked. This was code for “Can we have sex?”

“Yeah,” I said, which was code for “No.”

He removed his arm from me and lay flat, staring at the ceiling. I did the same.

“I think my dad is going to die,” I said.

There were so many things he could have said to make me feel loved:

God, honey, I’m so sorry.

You must be so scared.

Let’s talk about what the doctors told you.

Instead, he sighed in the defeated-yet-annoyed way Merry sighs, and said, “You don’t know that.”

A hot flash took over my body, sweat coating my chest and back in a matter of seconds. I threw the covers off.

“It would be nice if you didn’t seem irritated by my concerns,” I said.

I always speak more freely in the midst of the hot flashes. It’s like I’m too agitated to contain myself.

“I’m not irritated,” he said, again with a sigh.

I tried to take a deep breath because everything on social media talks about how deep breathing is the way to inner peace. I wasn’t successful. It felt like my lungs were the size of hummingbird eggs.

“Have the doctors given you answers yet?”

His tone was careful, similar to the tone I use with the girls when they are on the verge of a tantrum.

“No,” I said.

“So see, there’s no reason to think he’s going to die.”

“Okay, but he might. Can you just go with me on this for half a second?”

“I just don’t want you getting carried away again.”

“Again?”

“Huh?”

“You said carried away ‘again.’ Do you see me as someone who is often getting carried away?”

Now that the hot flash had passed, my body was chilled with the cooling sweat left behind.

“Nic, do we have to do this now?”

“Oh, I’m sorry. Did you have a long weekend caring for your offspring?”

“Nic . . .”

“I was in the hospital with my dad who has no short-term memory and can’t walk.”

“Are we in a competition?”

“We shouldn’t be. Do you think your stress is in any way comparable to mine?”

“Can we talk about this tomorrow?”

“Why? Am I getting ‘carried away’?” I used air quotes then.

“Nic . . .”

“Fine. We can talk tomorrow. But you should mentally prepare yourself for the fact that I might need to go back up there this weekend. So hire a babysitter or something if you can’t handle two days on your own.”

He didn’t respond, just rolled away from me in bed and switched off the light.

Then I said the thing that I’d promised myself I wouldn’t say, because I knew it was petty and sure to aggravate him:

“Grace told me you didn’t brush their teeth.”

She had, in fact, told me that.

He didn’t respond, which just made me feel like a petulant child.

Instead of falling asleep, I lay flat with my arms crossed over my chest, contemplating if it’s possible for two people who have children together not to despise each other on a somewhat regular basis.

As with any tragedy, nobody thinks it’ll happen to them—all wedding vows are laced with naivete and arrogance, all newlyweds convinced their love will be different.

But then there are the embarrassingly common stressors of kids and jobs and money.

Then you must swallow your pride and admit that what you thought could survive anything may not survive the predictable struggles of an ordinary life.

The next morning, Kyle didn’t say anything to me, and I didn’t say anything to him.

I was waiting for him to apologize, and he was probably doing the same.

Or maybe he wasn’t thinking about me at all.

Maybe he was just focused on starting his workday.

In any case, the girls made it impossible for me to get too emotionally invested in our marital standoff because they were particularly unruly, likely punishing me for my forty-eight hours of absence from their lives.

“Girls! Stop it!” I yelled in my Mom-means-business voice.

Grace had taken a stuffed unicorn from Liv, and Liv was losing her mind. They did not even register my voice. To them, Mom never means business. Mom is a joke.

“Girls!” I tried again. Still, nothing.

Kyle closed the door to his office, separating himself from the chaos, as usual.

I didn’t feel like fighting about breakfast, so I gave the girls bowls of Lucky Charms. The little burst of text on the box—“11 g. whole grains per serving!”—assuaged my maternal guilt.

When I was pregnant with Grace, I envisioned myself as a mother who baked granola.

I was committed to avoiding sugar, to serving muffins sweetened with bananas instead of cupcakes on birthdays.

I was adamant about breastfeeding both girls, turned up my nose at formula.

Now I let them eat the stale McDonald’s french fries they find in the crevices of their car seats.

I’ve decided I want to be done with maternal guilt, once and for all.

Do fathers ever feel guilty about what they feed their children?

How often do they even feed their children?

I want to buy myself a gold bracelet engraved with “WWMD” for “What would men do?” I want to stare at it every time I am consumed with self-hatred about how I raise my children.

“I don’t want milk in mine,” Grace said, always adept at finding a problem with anything placed in front of her.

“Grace, you have to eat your cereal with milk.”

“I don’t want milk! I want it dry!”

“Then it’s basically just a sugary snack. The milk has protein and calcium.”

As if she gave a shit about protein and calcium.

People say you should talk to your kids as equals.

They say it’s a sign of respect and encourages maturity.

I haven’t seen evidence of this being a good strategy.

It seems like it would be more effective to talk to them like the immature cave people that they are: You eat cereal with milk. You do now.

“I don’t want milk either,” Liv said.

I was torn between praising her for using a complete sentence and chastising both of them for their disobedience.

“Eat your cereal. With the milk,” I said, employing my cave-people strategy.

Liv cooperated.

My phone buzzed with a text from Merry:

Just got to the hospital. The doctor wants to talk to us later about all the results.

Grace started whining about the milk again, so I gave her the iPad. That quieted her, and she began to just pick out the marshmallows from the cereal, which I supposed was better than nothing. Or not.

Ok. What time?

I don’t know. You know how these doctors are. They come when they please.

Ok. Then just call me when it’s time

She sent me a thumbs-up emoji.

How’s Dad?

The same. He says hello.

Tell him I love him

She sent me another thumbs-up emoji.

I took the girls to the park after breakfast because Kyle’s voice was booming on his calls and it was making me want to punch a wall.

It’s also possible that his voice was at its normally loud volume but my resentment had made me more sensitive to it.

This is all to say that I needed to get out of the house.

There was one other mom at the park, wearing a sweatshirt that said i run a tight shipwreck .

I liked her until I saw her perfectly coiffed little girls, about the same age as mine, dressed in matching pink dresses.

Shipwreck, my ass. Her girls ran over to her for a snack of “cheese” puffs made out of chickpeas.

Up close I could see that the ends of their hair were most definitely curled.

I tried to imagine Grace and Liv sitting still for such a procedure.

It would never happen. Someone would end up with a third-degree burn.

“Your daughters have beautiful hair,” I said.

Sometimes, I try to play nice. Even though I have nothing in common with them, I want them to accept me. It’s complicated.

“Oh, thank you,” she said, beaming with pride.

“My daughters won’t let me come near them with a brush.”

Which was obvious. Grace’s hair almost always resembles Gary Busey’s in that infamous mug shot. The last time I took her for a haircut, they charged me an extra twenty-five dollars for “the severity of her tangles.” Liv, thankfully, has shorter, wispier hair with less potential for dishevelment.

“Well, we have a rule that we don’t compromise health or hygiene,” the shipwreck-my-ass mother said.