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“Three eggs. A third of a cup of oil.” Ethan reads this from the cookbook, one finger pressed to the stained pages. A massive volume, over five hundred pages, it’s the only cookbook Mari’s ever owned. It had been a gift from her adopted father, who’d considered cuisine as much a part of her curriculum as reading or writing. An important life skill, he’d said, to be able to make more than boxed macaroni and cheese. Being able to cook a decent meal was part of being an adult. “Quarter cup of water. We forgot the water.”
“Go ahead and add it.” Mari doesn’t hand it to him, knowing he wants to do it himself.
Ethan adds the water. “It says we should mix it.”
“Yep. Put it in the bowl and turn it on. Low,” Mari emphasizes, because Ethan’s been known to flip the speed to high and spatter the kitchen with batter.
He giggles. Her heart swells with love for her boy who reminds her so much of herself. Yet who all too soon will become entirely more foreign to her than that mixer.
Already his legs and arms are growing longer. His fingers and feet bigger. If she were to press her hands to his, palm-to-palm, his would be nearly the same size. Sooner than she knows it, he will be a teenager like his sister. After that, a man.
And what will she do then? When she can no longer hold him on her lap. When she is not the one he comes to for fixing boo-boos and putting together toy trains that have fallen apart. What will Mari do when her boy turns into something else?
She doesn’t understand men. Never has. Probably never will. Sometimes she will stare at the damp towel tossed on the bathroom floor instead of hung neatly on the hook and wonder how Ryan, who was raised by a woman for whom there was no such thing as being too neat, can stand being such a slob. How he can blow his nose so raucously in the shower like he’s the only one to use it, or leave his dirty socks in a pile by his favorite recliner until at last, frowning, he comes to her wanting to know why the sock drawer is empty. It’s because he never had to pick up after himself, of course. His mother never made him. Nobody had done that for her; she’d learned early on how to take of herself. Clutter and mess disturb her, remind her of bad days long past. Mari can’t stand to live in filth.
If Ryan’s asked to clear away a dish or return a gallon of milk to the fridge after drinking from it, he gives Mari a blank look as though she’s asked him to perform an unexpected brain operation. Asked to fold towels, he leaves them rumpled and in leaning stacks, not neat piles. She has learned over the years to simply move behind him, tidying, a silent force he doesn’t even notice but would surely miss if it were gone. Her job, she supposes. To keep the house together, her husband and children organized and on track. Her job, Mari thinks while watching her son, to make sure her children are capable and responsible human beings who can cook and clean and take care of themselves.
Ethan, lower lip pulled between his teeth in concentration, lifts the measuring bowl and prepares to pour the contents into the metal one he needs to use with the mixer. Slick fingers, a hard tile floor. All at once there is glass and oil and eggs all over, and a small boy’s cry echoes in the kitchen.
“Mama, I’m sorry!” Ethan moves toward her with one hand out before Mari can stop him.
“No, Ethan—”
Too late. One bare foot comes down on shattered glass. He cries out again, this time in pain. There is blood.
Blood, and the low, harsh panting of a dog’s breath. Four punctures in the back of her hand, but pain all over her. The dog growled, lunging again, and Mari didn’t take a second to think about it. She kicked, hitting it in the jaw. The side. The dog yelped and fled, but she stood with her wounded hand cradled against her and watched the blood spatter on the floor until everything tipped and turned and she ended up on the ground, her burning face pressed to the cool, smooth surface....
“Mama!”
Mari is no longer frozen. That long-ago time, those long-ago sounds and smells, don’t fade away. They simply vanish. Pushed aside as she leaps across glass to lift her boy.
She settles him on the kitchen island and plucks the shard from the sole of his foot. She twists to drop it in the sink, careful to avoid the glass on the floor with her own feet. Mari grabs a clean dishcloth from the drawer, folds it into thirds and presses it to the wound.
“It hurts,” Ethan says.
“Let me take a look.” Mari lifts the white cloth, stained now with red. The wound is oozing too much blood for her to get a good look, but it appears that the glass has sliced a long section of Ethan’s foot, and the skin is flapping across the cut.
“Shh,” she murmurs. Presses the cloth against the wound. “This might need stitches.”
She could do it herself, of course, but Ryan would frown on that. Taking Ethan to the hospital will take time and expense, and ultimately, nobody can do a better job at tending her child’s hurts than she can—but nevertheless, it’s not what’s done. Just like picking mushrooms from your yard, sewing up your son on the kitchen table is bound to lead to whispers and looks of the sort Mari should be used to, the way she’s accustomed to blood, but would like to avoid, anyway.
“Nooo!” Ethan wails, and she hushes him as the back door opens.
“Gross!” Kendra, incredibly, stops midtext to stand in the doorway and stare at the bloody, oily, eggy puddle on the floor.
“I cut myself,” Ethan offers through tears.
“I have to take him to the place where they fix people when it’s an urgency.” Mari says this matter-of-factly, but Kendra’s already blanching, turning her face. More like her dad than her mom, that’s for sure.
“Emergency,” Kendra corrects. “I think I’m gonna puke!”
“Text your dad, please,” Mari says. “Tell him I’ve taken Ethan to the hospital.”
“Do I have to go, too?”
Mari thinks, knowing she’s always been able to trust her daughter who might have a flair for drama but who’s still a good kid. “No. But nobody’s allowed to come over. Don’t answer the phone unless it’s me or Daddy. Don’t answer the door. Don’t use the stove.”
It’s a little overkill, but Mari’s not thinking quite straight. The smell of the blood is teasing her head into spinning again, and she blinks away the past. Focus. Focus. This is now, she thinks. I am here.
Kendra’s already tapping her dad’s number into her iPhone, a much-coveted birthday gift that never leaves her side. “Got it.”
“Mama? Will it hurt bad? The stitches?”
“Yes. But they’ll give you something so it doesn’t hurt so much.”
“A shot?” Ethan’s lower lip trembles; a bubble of clear snot forms in one nostril.
“Yes. A shot, probably.”
“Nooo!”
“You can have the shot, which will help the pain,” Mari says, “or you can choose to not have the shot and take the pain when they stitch you. Up to you, buddy.”
Other mothers coo and coddle. She knows this because she’s seen it on playgrounds with scraped knees and during playdates when her children played with other children and she was left to make conversation with their mothers. Other mothers tell “little white lies” to ease their children’s fears. Maybe those are better mothers than she is, Mari’s never sure. All she knows is that lying rarely ever serves any good purpose, and she’d personally rather know if there is going to be pain than be told not to expect it when it is surely coming.
Ethan is much like his mother. “Okay. I’ll take the shot.”
She hands him a tissue for his nose and calls out to Kendra, “Honey, don’t come in here until I get back, okay?”
“No worries! Gross!”
Mari laughs, shaking her head, and gives Ethan a wink. He smiles back. Mari finds her purse, her keys, her wallet with the insurance card inside. Ethan helps her wrap some masking tape around the dishcloth to keep it on his foot. Then she lifts her boy, his arms around her neck. She presses her face briefly to the sweet boy scent of his hair, closing her eyes. For now, he’s still hers.
FOUR
ALONE IN THE HOUSE.
Kendra couldn’t remember the last time she’d been here without someone else. The first thing she did was lock the doors. Kendra’s friends bragged about their parents leaving them alone and the sorts of things they got up to when they did. Most of it was bullshit. If the kids in her class did half as much drinking and messing around as they said they did, they’d all be in rehab or pregnant.
Some of it was true, though. Last week there’d been a party at Jordan Delano’s house, and three girls got so drunk they ended up posting naked selfies on ZendPix. So stupid and gross. But that was the sort of thing kids did when they were left alone. It seemed as if almost all the kids in her class had parents who both worked, or moms who, if they didn’t have jobs, spent a lot of time at the gym or getting massages and mani-pedis. Kendra had been in an accelerated private kindergarten, and was almost a year younger than the rest of her classmates. Most of them had already passed their driver’s tests. Lots of them drove brand-new cars, sixteenth birthday gifts meant to make up for the fact they were left to themselves so much, she thought.
Her dad would never buy her a car. He’d say she didn’t need one, not when she had her mom to take her where she needed to go. Kendra’s mom was almost always home. She’d never had a job. She didn’t volunteer for charity or politics. She didn’t spend hours on yard work or doing crafts, either. She cleaned a lot. And she cooked. She was always there when Kendra needed her, and when she didn’t, too.
Her mom didn’t get on her case about boys or clothes or even grades like Sammy’s mom did, always wanting to have “a talk” with Sammy, like she ever really listened. Kendra’s mom was always there for her, though, ready to listen. No matter what Kendra needed to say. She’d always liked that.
Other mothers wore designer clothes, or at least outfits that matched. Shirt, shoes, belt, purse. Kendra’s mom wore tank tops and sheer, flowing skirts, and the only time she wore shoes was if she had to. Her purse didn’t bulge with makeup or a hairbrush or coupons or anything like her friends’ mothers kept in their bags. Mari didn’t even wear makeup. She was smaller than other mothers. Kendra had grown taller than her in sixth grade. And Mom didn’t care about a lot of stuff other moms did, like working out at the gym or going to church.
She was still more beautiful than any other mother, so much so that it was kind of embarrassing. Hard to live up to, too. There were times Kendra looked in the mirror at the mess of her face and wondered why she’d had to end up looking like her dad instead of her mother.
Her phone buzzed from her pocket. “Dad.”
“What happened?”
“Ethan cut his foot on some glass. Mom took him to the hospital.”
Dad sighed, and Kendra imagined him pinching the bridge of his nose with his eyes closed. “Shit. Is he okay?”
“There was blood everywhere.” Kendra made a face.
“Did she say she wanted me to meet her there?”
“I don’t know, Dad.” God, he could be so annoying. “Why don’t you call her and ask her?”
“I did. She didn’t pick up.”
“She’s probably okay,” Kendra said. Mom often forgot her phone or turned off the ringer. But her mom could handle just about anything, while it was another family truth left unspoken that her dad mostly...couldn’t. Or maybe just didn’t.
“Yeah. Well, if she calls, tell her I have some stuff I need to handle here and I’ll be home a little later.”
The call disconnected, and Kendra put her phone back in her pocket. Alone in the house, she thought, wishing for a second she was the sort of girl who’d invite everyone over for a party. Tear everything up, get wasted, make out with whoever she wanted. That’s what her dad might’ve done, she thought suddenly, when he was young. But not her mom. Her mom would’ve been good and done what was expected of her. And that’s what Kendra did, too.
FIVE
“MARI? MARI CALDER, right? Ethan’s mom.”
Mari turns with a half smile she was taught long ago was considered polite. “Yes?”
The woman in front of her looks as though she stepped out of one of the magazines Mari reads every month but rarely enjoys. Perfect hair, perfect outfit. Perfect smile that makes Mari cover her own mouth with her hand in reaction, though her teeth are no longer gray and broken and jagged.
“I’m Lorna. Davis?” The woman pauses. “Bev’s mom.”
Bev. Beverly. Beverly Davis... Mari vaguely recalls a girl with curly red hair and a set of sprouting buckteeth. She is in Ethan’s class.
“Oh. Yes. Bev.” Mari nods, wondering how it is that Lorna Davis knows who she is.
“Bev told me Ethan had an accident. Is he okay?”
“He’ll be fine.”
“Good. Kids,” Lorna says with a laugh and shake of her head. “It’s amazing any of us survive childhood, am I right?”
Mari has mastered the social smile, but laughing at something she doesn’t find funny is a skill that still escapes her. “Children are capable of surviving a lot.”
It wasn’t quite the right answer. She sees that in Lorna’s blink, her raised brow. The woman recovers quickly.
“Right. Yes. And thank goodness it was just a cut, not something worse, am I right?”
“You’re right,” Mari says.
Lorna nods. They stare at each other there in the bandage aisle of the pharmacy. Mari has a package of gauze pads and antiseptic wipes in her hand. Lorna’s small basket contains mascara, feminine deodorant spray, skin lotion, a beauty magazine.
“You know, you should think about coming to one of our Mommy’s Day Out meetings,” Lorna says suddenly.
It’s Mari’s turn to blink. “Umm...”
“You don’t work, am I right?”
“I take care of my kids,” Mari says.
Lorna laughs. “Oh, yeah, which is a full-time job, I know that. I feel you. I just started back to work last year, part-time. Gets me out of the house, but leaves plenty of ‘me’ time.”
There’s a silence that goes on too long, until Mari says, “What’s Mommy’s Day Out?”
Lorna’s eyes gleam. “Oh, we get together once a month at someplace really delish for lunch. Then sometimes a spa treatment, manicure, something like that. We have a great place we go to that does this amazing chi rejuvenation or a sugar scrub or hot stone massage, really everything they do there is fantastic. It’s a chance for us to get together away from the husbands and kids, you know what I mean? If I didn’t have my ‘Mommy’s’ days, I’d lose my mind.”
Mari shudders involuntarily at the thought of suffering a massage, of being touched so intimately by a stranger. “I like spending time with my kids.”
“Oh...of course. Me, too. I love my kids. Of course.” Lorna puts a friendly hand on Mari’s arm. “Just, you know, they can drive you crazy. You know what I mean?”
The touch makes Mari’s skin crawl, but she doesn’t back away. Mari puts on that same polite half smile she’s practiced for so many years. She will never be a social hugger, but she’s learned to tolerate a lot.
“Of course. Well, I’ll think about it.” Mari holds up her packages. “I should get home.”
“Oh, right.” Lorna pauses, expectant.
Mari has no idea what she’s waiting for and the silence stretches on until she nods and smiles and ducks away from Lorna, who stares after her.
In the car, she thinks about what she will say if Lorna actually does invite her to a Mommy’s Day Out. It might be nice, she tells herself as she lines up with the other mothers in the school parking lot, each car inching forward slowly, though the kids haven’t been dismissed yet. To do something with other women. Have some...friends.
Except it wouldn’t be nice. It would be strange and awkward. For them, not so much for her. Mari gets along with most anyone. It’s other people who usually don’t know how to react to her.
“You’re too honest,” Ryan told her once, long ago, in the very beginning when things between them were fresh and new and still strange. He’d tangled his fingers in a strand of her dark hair, pulling it along his much lighter skin to show the contrast between them.
“You’d like me to lie?”
“I don’t think you know how to lie,” had been his answer, and he’d kissed her.
It isn’t that she doesn’t know how. It’s that she doesn’t see the point. Lies are secrets, and there’s no use for them, either.
“Hey, honey,” she says when Ethan at last limps to the car and slides into the backseat. “How was school?”
“It was okay.” He shrugs, clicking his seat belt. “Can we get cheesesteaks from Pat’s for dinner?”
Pat’s, King of Steaks, isn’t on the way home. In traffic, it will take them an hour or so to get there and back. Still, Mari looks at her son’s hopeful face and doesn’t have the heart to say no. His grin and shout of laughter when she nods is enough to make her laugh, too.
Small things, she thinks as she pulls away from the school. That’s what matters. Small but beautiful things.
SIX
THE NUMBERS DIDN’T add up. Ryan had figured them four or five times, and every time, no matter how he worked them, they still turned red. He’d gone online to check balances and shift some money, but there was only so often he could do that. The checks coming in were too small, and eventually might stop coming at all. He’d have to do something, and soon.
He could tap into the money his dad had left Mari. The funds had been meant for her to go to college, if she could, or at least to live on her own in case she wasn’t able to support herself. She hadn’t done either of those things. She’d married Ryan as soon as she’d turned eighteen, and he’d taken care of her ever since. Ryan checked the balance in the account now, as always with a somewhat sour taste in the back of his throat at the amount that had accumulated.
It wouldn’t be hard to get her to agree to use it. He’d pulled from it before. The down payment on this house, for example. And he hadn’t felt bad about that, because providing Mari with a home of her own had been exactly what his father had meant the money to do. And once, they’d taken the kids to Disney World, a trip that in Ryan’s opinion had been six grand tossed away. Ryan didn’t like sweating and dealing with hordes of sticky, screaming kids, so the trip had been something of a nightmare for him. Mari and the kids had loved it, though. That was something, and giving her that experience, something she’d been lacking in her childhood, had been a perfect use of the money, too.
Even after dipping into the account twice for two big expenses, there was still plenty left. There’d been donations, fund-raisers and grants in addition to what Dad himself had set aside. Dad hadn’t known, of course, that Ryan would be able to provide her with anything Mari ever wanted or needed. He’d wanted to make sure Mari would never have to worry about money because he knew how little the concept of it meant to her. Some people who grew up poor became misers, others spendthrifts. Mari simply didn’t understand money. She just saw it as numbers.
It was Ryan who’d suggested the Disney trip. Who’d bought her the fancy iPhone that, as far as he knew, she barely used. Ryan wanted HD cable television with all the premium channels, the fastest internet. The fancy car that came with the fancy payment, too. All numbers, when you broke it down.
And now, the numbers didn’t add up.
Technically, her account was separate from the one they kept jointly, but of course, Ryan knew Mari’s passwords and PINs. Just like he knew she never checked the balances. He looked again at the balance in Mari’s account. The numbers stared at him smugly. He only needed a thousand or so to cover the credit card bill for this month.
He should ask her, first. It was her money. But he knew she’d just give him one of those quizzical looks and a smile. She’d never deny him. He’d just do it and tell her a little later. Or better yet, he’d just replace the money when he started getting his full paychecks again. She’d never know. It wouldn’t matter. It wasn’t as if they were going bankrupt or anything.
A quick tap-tap of the keys and it was done. A thousand dollars shifted from Mari’s account to the joint one. It nicely covered the upcoming bills, with a little left over in case he needed to hit the ATM for some cash. It all worked out just fine.
Ryan had just closed the browser when his wife came in. He swiveled in his office chair to find her holding up two glasses of red wine. She smiled as she closed his door.
She kissed him before she gave him the wine. She smelled good. She tasted good. Rich and earthy, like wine but so much better. She settled herself on his lap, straddling him, careful not to spill.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hey.” Ryan took a glass and sipped it. “That’s good.”
“I read about it in that magazine you subscribed to. It got a great rating. I saw it at the liquor store and figured I’d pick up a bottle.”
The wine cost, by his best guess, about forty bucks a bottle. Ryan winced. “It’s really good. Thanks.”
“You like it?” She sipped and swallowed. “I do.”
He did like it; that was the problem. Probably more because he knew the price tag. Behind him, the computer monitor cast an accusatory glow around them. Ryan ignored it.
“I like it a lot.” He inched her closer. “Where are the kids?”
“Ethan’s asleep. Kendra’s video chatting with someone.”
“Who?”
Mari shrugged. “Different person every time I go into her room.”
“Boy or girl?”
She gave him that look. That tender, amused look. “Both?”
Ryan frowned. “Not that Logan kid. The one with the pierced lip?”
“Honey, I don’t know. Anyway, what difference does it make? She can’t get pregnant from a video chat, thank goodness. She’s going to talk to boys, Ryan. It’s part of being a pretty fifteen-year-old girl. If she didn’t have boys wanting to talk to her, you’d worry about that.”
He didn’t want to admit that was true. “I don’t like that kid.”
“Because he has long hair and paints his fingernails?” Mari laughed. “You’re such a prepper.”
She meant preppy, but he didn’t correct her. “She should be in bed. It’s almost eleven. Doesn’t she have to get up for school tomorrow?”
“Yes. But she knows that it’s on her if she’s tired in the morning. She’s not a dummy. Besides, they have three half days this week, and then they’re done for the summer. You know they won’t be doing anything in class, anyway. And don’t you have to get up early for work tomorrow? Isn’t it your early day?”
Twice a month for the past ten years, Ryan had been volunteering his time at the Sexual Abuse Resource Center, offering free counseling. He went in two hours before work to see patients. But with the investigation going on about Annette Somers, he’d thought it would be best to step down from that volunteer position.
He hadn’t told Mari and now faced with the chance, found himself unable to.
“Yeah. I guess so.”
“Don’t hit the snooze button three times,” she warned him. “I might have to poke you. Hard.”
Ryan put his glass on the edge of the desk and used both hands to anchor her on his lap. He tipped his face to look up at her. “Poking permission granted.”
His wife sipped more wine and set down her glass, too. “I can’t believe it’s almost summer. I’m not sure I’m ready for it. I still haven’t figured out about camp. I’d like them both to go at the same time, but the one Ethan likes is shifted a week earlier this year. Oh, and Kendra’s riding instructor called to say they were changing lesson times. Ethan says he wants to learn to play the guitar, so I don’t know when we’ll fit that in. What’s the name of that place where your friend’s son took lessons?”
“Yeah...about that...” Ryan’s mouth, still thick with the flavor of red wine, dried. His tongue stuck in place. He swallowed heavily. “Maybe the kids need a break from some of that stuff this year. I mean, studies are showing that kids are so overscheduled these days.”