“What’s going on?” the woman responds, leaning into her camera.
Oh my god. Holy shit. “Is this . . . live?”
Mike stammers.
“Hi!” the woman says, running her hands over her body in a way that I have to admit is pretty sexy, “do you want to watch, too?”
The gears in my head click into place, and my rage machine is ON. My head swivels 180 degrees and lasers shoot from my eyeballs.
“Mike.”
“Amy, it’s not cheating.”
“Wow, great opener. It’s not cheating. So what is it?”
“We just . . .”
From onscreen, that pleasant voice chimes in, “We just . . . chat. We just . . . we watch each other. We talk.”
“You TALK? What the fuck do you talk about?”
Mike is frozen, but his girlfriend isn’t. “Oh, everything! Our hopes, our lives, our families . . .”
A gear pops. My head spins. More lasers shoot from my eyes. He talks about his family with this woman? His family? Our family?
“Mike, you need to say something now. I don’t know what this is, but it’s not okay. Is this . . . do you have feelings for her?”
Mike looks down.
Onscreen, I can see the answer in the way this woman’s slight and beautiful shoulders deflate at his nonresponse.
He does have feelings for her.
You know how you always hear about how if her kids are in danger, a mom could easily deadlift a minivan if she needed to? Well, if her marriage is in danger, she can clear a desktop computer, a flat-screen monitor, and piles of paperwork off a desk with her bare hands.
Maybe not as impressive, but it feels damn good.
“MOM? DAD?” I CAN SENSE JANE AND DYLAN ON THE OTHER side of the office door. I can see them, like X-ray vision of the heart: they are in their dad’s college T-shirts and the matching pajama pants our family gets from my mom every Christmas. They are pressed to the door, waiting for a clue about what they just heard. Are Mom and Dad fighting?
Mike projects his hearty, room-filling laugh.
“One second, guys! Your klutzy mom knocked some stuff over in here trying to clean up this dumpster. Don’t come in . . . uh, broken glass!”
Of course he’d make this about me.
“Go to bed, sweeties! I’ll be in soon for tuck-in.”
I hear them, sense them, backing away, making incredulous eye contact at each other.
For someone who is allegedly smart and successful, Mike is a fucking idiot. How hadn’t this doofus known what he was doing? How hadn’t he realized that he was playing with our family, that he could ruin everything? Or had he realized it all along, and just not cared?
I am out of my body, watching Mike on his hands and knees, gathering up files and pens and knickknacks as if this had been an accident. As if this had just been an act of my physical klutziness, and not his emotional carelessness. As if once all the glass was vacuumed up and the papers re-sorted, I’d go tuck in the kids and put in my retainer, and he’d crawl into bed next to me, warm and familiar.
THE NIGHT MIKE AND I MET, I’D PUKED ABOUT THIRTY OUNCES of half-digested Natural Light on his feet. He’d been wearing flip-flops, and while most college boys would have turned that into a story about a girl they never spoke to again, Mike had held my hand and walked me right back to my dorm room. He’d stayed with me in the kitchen until I’d downed a whole bottle of red Gatorade, and then used my hot plate to make me a cup of instant ramen. He’d been sweet, and I remember thinking to myself, This boy is special.
Mike loves our “how we met” story. He loves to be the one to tell it, to repeat it even to people who had heard it before. It’s his testament to how much he’d loved me, right away. “This girl,” he always says, “is so special I’d let her puke on my bare feet any day.”
Where had that boy gone? When and how had he turned into this kind of man? And what the hell is going to happen to my marriage? To my family?!
I roll my head, cracking my neck, and summon the internal power of every mom who had ever come before me. The redness creeping up my neck begins to cool. The tears dry from my eyes. I open the office door.
“Get the fuck out.”
* * *
To: Amy Mitchell
From: Dale
Subject: WTF do you not have wifi at home are you not getting my texts
To: Amy Mitchell
From: Dale
Subject: AMY. DUDE.
To: Amy Mitchell
From: Dale
Subject: Okay. I get it. Power move.
To: Amy Mitchell
From: Dale
Subject: What if this were an emergency, you’re my emergency contact
To: Amy Mitchell; Mike Mitchell
From: McKinley Soccer Club
Subject: Welcome to the team
Mr. and Mrs. Mitchell,
We are pleased to announce that your daughter Jane has earned a spot on the MSC 12 and under team. We are looking forward to a competitive season, and to bringing home the hardware this fall in our first state tournament. Please click here to accept Jane’s spot on the team, and to place your $500 deposit.
9
Principal Burr
889.
That’s the number of days I have left at McKinley before I retire. Not the days that will pass on a calendar until I retire, but the number of workdays where I am required to show up, wear a suit, and sit behind a desk I have strategically placed to ensure my computer monitor is never visible to anyone but myself.
I’ve spent twenty-three years at McKinley. Some things are always the same: the toilets on the first floor are clogged by kindergartners who require one roll of toilet paper each to wipe their butts. There’s always one inter-teacher feud that requires me to mediate an argument that could have been easily resolved by one of them not commenting on the other’s haircut or teaching style. There are always a few naughty kids. And a few parents who are much worse.
For the past seven years, that parent has been Gwendolyn James. Her husband is fine. I think. I’ve never met him, but his donation checks always clear. Gwendolyn, though, is what we used to call “a real piece of work.” Gwendolyn James is our PTA president, but she won’t call it the PTA because she has anointed herself the Queen of Everything. Gwendolyn James is why our teacher’s lounge was replaced by a “feelings room” for the kids. Now our teachers sit on a few couches in the lobby. Which Gwendolyn has renamed the foyer.
Gwendolyn canceled Valentine’s Day and Halloween but insists the children celebrate the winter solstice. Last year, she spent the entire school year developing a Study Abroad program. When I mentioned that studying abroad seems to be an inappropriate endeavor for children who can’t blow their own noses, she accused me of being a xenophobe. Me! She’s the one who insists that every classroom have a “foam in, foam out” hand sanitizer policy, as if the kids are all performing brain surgery.
Gwendolyn is why I’ve routed every email that even vaguely references Gwendolyn or her Mom Squad to land directly in my trash can.
Because if Gwendolyn really wants to run this school for free, what do I care? If she thinks we should be the first school with a space program, or wants to launch a capital campaign to start a circus school within our school for kids whose bodies learn better than their brains do? Okay! In 889 school days, I’ll be done with McKinley, and until then, I’ll be playing solitaire.
* * *
To: McKinley Mom Squad
From: Cathy M.
Subject: Screen time
Hi Mamas!
A gentle reminder that many of us at McKinley are practicing a screen-free lifestyle for our children. While not everyone is interested in the research (which I’ve shared before) that proves that screen time is eroding our children’s attention spans, socialization skills, and peace of mind, please do respect that not everyone places their children in front of an iPad after school and do your best to help us provide a consistent childhood experienc
e for our children while they are at your house for a playdate.
Sincerely,
Cathy
To: McKinley Mom Squad
From: Brittany J.
Subject: RE: Screen time
Thanks, Cathy. Might I also add that the squad spent a lot of time preparing a screen time contract for all incoming kindergartners? A contract that we and our children signed before they entered the kindergarten room? Please be in touch if you need your copy, Gwendolyn has filed them all alphabetically according to college graduation year in our shared drive.
Best,
Britt
To: McKinley Mom Squad
From: Jessica C.
Subject: RE: RE: Screen time
Is this for real?
To: McKinley Mom Squad
From: Emily P.
Subject: RE: RE: RE: Screen time
Yes, Jessica C., this is for real. It’s a for real waste of time trying to police everybody’s parenting when the group hasn’t even addressed whether or not we’re going to ban Hop on Pop from our kindergarten reading list for inciting violence against fathers!!
To: McKinley Mom Squad
From: Lindsay W.
Subject: RE: RE: RE: RE: Screen time
A gentle reminder to one another that it’s possible to care about two things at once, and a discussion about screen time does not mean we are not passionate about our kids’ reading lists!!
To: McKinley Mom Squad
From: Katie T.
Subject: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: Screen time
As someone who works in tech, can I just say that I find it really shortsighted to prevent our children from engaging with technology in a meaningful way? How can we expect our children to be leaders on the world stage if they’re so far behind their international peers?
To: McKinley Mom Squad
From: Emily J.
Subject: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: Screen time
I have no idea how I got on this email chain but please remove me immediately. I’m begging you. You’ve been clogging up my inbox all summer and just seeing these subject lines gives me anxiety. I’m not even a mom!!!!
10
Kiki
It all happened so fast. I’d dropped Bernard at school and Clara at hip-hop dance class. The twins were with Kent’s mom, who flew in just to spend time with them before she gets too old and useless.
There was a dog—a beagle? No. A shih tzu—just sitting in the middle of the street. I swerved the van just in time to spare its life, and then I woke up here.
It’s quiet. And calm. The sheets are soft and clean and there is a vase of peonies by the window. My favorite.
“Honey?” I hear his voice before I see him. It’s Kent. There are tears in his eyes, and even though he doesn’t want me to see him cry, one tear rolls silently down his cheek.
He carefully brushes his hand against my cheek and bites his lip.
“There was an accident, Keeks. You saved the shih tzu, but the van was totaled. It’s going to be replaced—with the new model, the one that has a built-in vacuum and a cooler in the center console—so don’t you worry about that. You just need to focus on getting better.”
Before I can ask about the kids, he says, “The kids are on a plane. My mom took them back to North Dakota to stay with her for a few weeks so you can lay here and focus on getting better.”
He’s interrupted by a team of nurses. “Kiki?” one asks. “Would you like a special coffee?” She pushes a button, and the bed sits me up . . . just like in the commercials with the elderly people! A second nurse is holding a bottle of Aveda foot cream. “You just relax,” she says.
MY FANTASY IS INTERRUPTED BY A HAND GRAZING MY FOOT. It’s small and sticky, a disembodied appendage sliding under the bathroom door, searching wildly for me. Gwendolyn recommends that you take five minutes a day to visualize the life you want, but that is very difficult when there are three small children who have a psychotic obsession with you, and another child who may just be psycho. I’d sat the three girls on my bed in front of my iPad to play an educational game, but they’d apparently lost interest already. It has been two minutes, and I didn’t even get to the part where the nurse gives me the remote and tells me that there’s a twenty-four-hour marathon of Property Brothers on.
“MAMA? MAMA. MAMA!!!!” IT’S ONE OF THE TWINS. SHE BIRD-DOGGED me, and now there are several small hands reaching underneath the bathroom door. The physics of this barely make sense, but children are kind of like mice. They can squish their bones to get into anyplace you don’t want them to be.
In the minuscule amount of time I was allowed alone in the bathroom, the girls have made their displeasure with me apparent. Somehow, even though they each tend to go completely limp when it’s time to get dressed, they’ve all managed to get completely naked. The basket of clean clothes I just folded is now upside down, and one of the twins is standing on it proudly, like she has just scaled a mountain. Kent’s socks, which I had just finished ironing, are unpaired and littered around the bed.
Naptime isn’t for another two hours, and I can tell that this will not be the kind of day where the girls fall asleep sweetly after lunch. This won’t be the kind of day where I stand outside their door, missing them, wishing I could be in their little unconscious brains.
No, this day is going to be a fight. And even if your opponents’ combined weight is half your own, three on one is an impossible fight to win.
DO OTHER MOMS FEEL THIS WAY? BECAUSE IT SURE DOESN’T look like they do. On Instagram, the other McKinley moms all seem to love their days. All their days. They actually post things like that on Instagram: captions that say, literally, “I love all our days,” right under beautiful photos of their clean and smiling children. I look at my girls, whose faces are crusted with the remnants of this morning’s attempt at yogurt parfaits. I got the idea from Pinterest, from something titled 100 easy breakfasts your kids will love!!! I spent the morning spooning full-fat, hormone-free unsweetened yogurt into little ramekins, alternating layers of expensive yogurt with homemade granola. On the top of each little parfait I placed thinly sliced strawberries, fanned out to make a flower. I had them sitting at the table, with real cloth napkins, when the girls came down for breakfast. The twins cried because they wanted toast, and smeared yogurt on their cheeks while I rushed to the toaster. Clara took a single bite and gagged, which I thought was a little dramatic. I ended up eating what was left, scrolling through Instagram trying to imagine if this would ever happen to the McKinley moms who were always at playdates and special coffee dates, who take their well-behaved children to lunch at the diner where they still serve milkshakes in old-fashioned glasses and give you the big metal tin they mixed it in.
Kent says that eating out is a waste of time and money, and that if I wanted to spend my days eating fancy lunches, I should have been born the Queen of England. He also says that joining a gym is a waste of time and money, because he spent all that money on the Chuck Norris Total Gym and if I watched the DVD it came with, I would totally get it and I would also trim inches off my buns, waist, and thighs. He also says that I’m starting to sound like a real feminazi, and that if I’m so unhappy we should switch places. “I’d love to spend my day finger painting and taking naps!” he joked the other night. “But, Keeks, someone has to keep the lights on. You like electricity, don’t you?” I do like electricity, so I nodded.
I actually do like electricity. I was considering a major in electrical engineering at the University of North Dakota, but my mom told me I should focus on getting my MRS degree. I got a BA in elementary education, and I got Kent. I thought I’d work for a few years, but when I was pregnant with Bernard, Kent pointed out that my salary wasn’t all that much more than we’d be paying to put Bernard in daycare, and that I may as well stay home with him. Not forever, just until Bernard was in kindergarten. But then I got pregnant with Clara, and then the twins. And after being out of the workforce for five years, what are the chances I’ll earn
more than it costs to put the three littlest ones in daycare?
The chances, I’ve learned, are not great.
I practice the deep breaths Gwendolyn talked about on her blog, and repeat my mantra for the day:
I love my life. I love my life. I love my life.
* * *
To: McKinley Mom Squad
From: Megan W.
Subject: Playdate
Hey, Mamas!
Just wanted to let all of you know that Praydon and Aubrianella have openings in their playdate schedules coming up. Please be in touch if you’d like to arrange a time with either of them.
Praydon is GF/DF/NF, prefers dinosaurs to LEGOs, and does not watch television of any kind.
Aubrianella is spirited and independent. She enjoys physical play and is currently working on impulse control and using her hands and words for kindness.
Both are available from 3:00 to 3:25 on the following dates: 1/15, 1/16, 2/8, 5/12, 6/27, and 8/15.
All responses will be considered. I will send a confirmation calendar when the playdate selections have been made.
Best,
Meg
To: Megan W.
From: Jenny M.
Subject: RE: Playdate
Hi Megan,
Thanks for putting this out there. Kermit’s avails are below:
1/16
6/27
Would either of your kiddos be able to spare an extra ten minutes? There’s a beautiful path at McArthur Park that Kermit and I love to forest-bathe in, but the loop takes a solid five minutes.
With Love,
Jenny
To: Sarah J.
From: Megan W.
Subject: FW: RE: Playdate
Like I’d ever let my kid go forest-bathing with her—remember in our newborn group when she told me I had a “weak aura” because my milk supply was down? Fuck all the way off, Jenny.
To: Megan W.
From: Sarah J.
Subject: RE: FW: RE: Playdate
Oh, she’s not that bad. Kidding—I don’t even go to McArthur Park anymore because last time I saw her there she tried to get me to eat a raw acorn.
Bad Moms Page 6