Bad Moms

by Nora McInerny

  “That’s normal,” she said, “when your marriage is fucked up.”

  MIKE AND I HAD SETTLED INTO THE SMALL SOFA, SITTING AS FAR APART AS you can on a couch that was built to force couples into close physical proximity. Dr. Karl started with all the usual therapy stuff: how being here was a good sign for us, that all marriages can be saved, that the work starts in this room, but the most important work will be done outside of these walls. I didn’t even have to look at Mike to know he was rolling his eyes.

  “Let’s start with some affirmations,” Dr. Karl suggests. “I want you each to tell your spouse three things that you like about them.” She over-pronounced like, just to clear up any confusion.

  “Can I go second?” Mike asks, because of course he did.

  My mind goes blank. Blanker than blank. What did I like about him?

  “Well. I like that you gave me my children. That was nice of you.” I say the words slowly, hoping my brain will come up with two more reasons while my mouth was talking.

  “You’re welcome,” he shoots back, in that self-satisfied way that I used to find appealing.

  “I like that you sometimes pick up the kids from school; that’s really helpful. And . . . I like that you came to therapy.”

  Dr. Karl nods in Mike’s direction.

  “Okay. Um, I like your spaghetti. And your calzones.”

  Dr. Karl and I wait patiently for him to mention something that isn’t Italian food.

  “Is that three?” he says after several moments of silence.

  “Oh!” He continues, “I like that you’ve never crashed the car.”

  So. That’s it. That was what we like about each other?

  Dr. Karl pages through the file folder in her lap, probably reviewing her notes from our last session.

  She breathes deep, and exhales loudly. Without thinking, Mike and I do, too. Dr. Karl asks us to close our eyes, and to imagine ourselves as our partner. We aren’t to say anything aloud, just imagine life in their shoes. What do they see when they wake up? What do they think about? What does their day look like? She will ring a small bell when our exercise is finished.

  I close my eyes and disappear into Mike’s life for three hundred seconds. It’s . . . nice. I wake up, and the coffee is already made. My wife has already hit the gym and fed the kids, and all I have to do is stumble to the shower and get downstairs for breakfast. During the workday, I take a few phone calls and spend the morning picking a restaurant where I can spend two hours chatting with a client. After lunch, I set my phone to silent and take a nap. I come home to a clean house where my wife has made a balanced dinner, where my laundry is folded neatly and arranged by color.

  The bell rings before I can even finish the day, which surprises me because Imaginary Mike hadn’t even done anything yet. I blink open my eyes. Mike is playing on his phone. I try my best not to let the rage blooming inside of my chest take over.

  Dr. Karl clears her throat. “Mike? Why don’t you go first? Tell me what it’s like to be Amy.”

  Mike puts his phone down and sits up straight. Is he making fun of me?

  “Hiiiiii,” he says in a patronizing voice that is supposed to be me, “I’m Amyyyyy. I’m sooooo perfect. My life is sooo perfect! I spend all day just rubbing lotions on my face and talking and talking and talking and making sure everyone around me lives up to my ridiculous standards!”

  “We—we don’t need the voice,” Dr. Karl tries to interject. “Focus on how it feels to be Amy.”

  “Oh, it feels great to be me! Why wouldn’t it? I have a fully tricked-out minivan and my husband still has all his hair and I have a ton of expensive clothes, but I still wear these boner-killing sweatpants every night and I don’t know what I sit around complaining about all day because my life is great!”

  I pride myself on my ability to navigate conflict with maturity. Which is why I’m not proud of what I say next.

  “OH, HEY!” I shout in my best bro voice. “I’m Mike! I have no idea how good I have it! My wife actually buys all her clothes on sale, takes care of literally everything for me, and all I had to do was not jerk off all day online with a stranger but whoops! I’m still the same fuckup I was in college!”

  “Oooooh!” Mike squeals. “I’m Amy! And I’ve never jerked off on the Internet because I’m sooooo perfect!”

  “Hey, Doctor,” I bellow, “mind if I splooge all over your computer?!”

  “Please don’t joke about that,” Dr. Karl whispers, eyeing her MacBook Air, which sits on the coffee table between us.

  “The bottom line is that she is a perfectionist, and I’m never going to be good enough for her. And she doesn’t even bother with sex anymore. I haven’t gotten a blowie since my birthday, which was like, months ago.”

  “You know what, Mike? You’re right. You haven’t gotten a blowie since your birthday. Maybe because you still say things like ‘blowie’? Or because you think I owe you sex in exchange for you meeting the minimum requirements as a parent and a spouse. And by ‘minimum,’ I mean just being alive. You know what would be so hot to me? If you took care of the kids, or me, in any way. If you ever walked the dog. If you took care of anyone outside of yourself, I would give you so many blowies your dick would explode.”

  Mike scoffed. “That would never happen. My dick is indestructible.”

  Sometimes, you don’t know what the truth is until it slips out of you on its own. I sigh, and it comes out: “I am so tired of pretending to love you, Mike.”

  Mike nods. “That’s exactly how I feel.”

  Dr. Karl snaps shut the folder in her hands.

  “Okay, you two. I know earlier I said a lot of stuff about how all marriages can be saved? But that was hyperbole. This marriage? It’s not going to happen for you. I’m not going to refund you for our time today, but I won’t be booking another session with you. I can refer you each to an individual therapist, which I highly recommend.”

  “Wait, don’t you think we should stay together for the kids?” Mike asks, and Dr. Karl shakes her head, citing statistics that kids whose parents stay in a loveless marriage are two times unhappier than kids whose parents got divorced. I think about my parents, and how even as a child I could tell that my parents loved each other and belonged together, even though my mom is an absolute tyrant. Was that why I believed that marriage was like a staring contest? Because my parents hadn’t blinked? Did I want Jane and Dylan growing up thinking that marriage was more important than love, or happiness? That misery was noble?

  “So,” I wonder aloud, “what now?”

  “As a therapist, I’m not allowed to tell you what to do. But as a human being with two fucking eyes in my head, I will tell you to get a divorce as soon as humanly possible.”

  DIVORCE.

  Why have I been so afraid of saying the word before? Now that it was out there, the fear had been drained from it.

  “Hi,” I said to my rearview mirror, “I’m Amy. I’m divorced. Oh, it’s okay. It’s a good thing. The divorce was really amicable. Really!”

  It would be amicable, I knew. Eventually, at least. I’d walked into therapy hating Mike and hoping to work it out, and walked out of therapy planning for a divorce and hating him at least 200 percent less than I had for the past month. By the time I got to work, he’d already texted me five times:

  MIKE: Everything 50/50 sound good?

  MIKE: We don’t have to get lawyers, do we? Lawyers suck.

  MIKE: And I’ll pay for all the kids’ shit because I know they’re expensive.

  MIKE: Can we split custody of Roscoe?

  MIKE: Can we please not hate each other?

  It will be amicable eventually. It will be okay eventually. But right now? It’s just really, really fucking sad.

  JESSICA IS OUR “HUMAN RESOURCES” TEAM. BY THAT I mean, her business card reads “People Person,” and her qualifications for running an HR department are that she is a human and that Dale assumed she would be a very resourceful person. Most of her job de
scription is having “one-on-ones” with the younger staff members and promising them ever-loftier job titles. At one point, all the VPs here at CoCo were under twenty-five years old. The other part of her job is exactly what’s happening here. Jessica fires people. Always in the conference room closest to the entrance. Always when the person has just arrived at work. Always—always—with a witness present.

  I’m seething. It’s one thing to say you’re divorced; now I have to practice telling my mirror I am divorced and unemployed?

  “What the fuck, Dale? You’re firing me?”

  Dale looks as if he’s been fed a lemon. “What? Yuck, no! I hate that word! You’re being positively transitioned, Amy.”

  “What do those words even mean, Dale?” I’m going to make this smarmy little dink say it.

  “It means that you used to have a job here, and we’re so grateful for the many ways you’ve contributed to our company, and now . . . we are so grateful, we are . . . positively transitioning you somewhere else. Home. So you can just, do your thing.”

  “You’re firing me.”

  “Amy, you haven’t even been coming to work!”

  “I’m part-time!” I remind him.

  “Okay, but you only came in once this week. That’s less than part-time.”

  I’d only come in once this week, yes, but that’s because it’s only Tuesday. Isn’t it? Oh. Shit. It’s not Tuesday. It’s Friday. I had only come in once this week. And I don’t remember checking my email, either.

  “Look,” I reason, “I have been slacking off. Sure. But Tessa took two weeks off when Jon Snow died on Game of Thrones and he’s a fictional person, so . . . can’t you let this slide?”

  Dale winced. “You know I’m not caught up on Game of Thrones, Amy. And besides, I already sent out an email telling everyone you were being positively transitioned so I can’t take it back or I’d look stupid. Jessica has your severance info.”

  Jessica, who has been sitting here silently with a pasted-on smile, just nods. A small gift bag has materialized on the table, next to the folder.

  “Just, sign these?” She wasn’t asking a question, she just always sounded like she was. “And . . . the team wanted you to have this special gift?”

  I scrawl my name at the places Jessica had flagged with tiny sticky notes and dig my hands into the gift bag. Was this? No. A four-ounce bag of CoCo coffee. Four ounces. The size we sell to hotels. All this time here and they couldn’t even spring for a pound?

  I consider throwing it at them. I glare at Jessica. At Dale. And then at the two mountainous security guards.

  “Well!” I say, shoving the coffee into my purse. “Fuck off, then!”

  33

  Carla

  The smell coming from Jaxon’s backpack is from a few bites of what might have been deli ham at some point. It’s hard to tell, but it’s clear the whole thing needs to be thrown into the washing machine or possibly burned. I dump the backpack onto the kitchen table and sort through all the junk. We’ve got chewed-up pencils, a baseball schedule, some spiral-bound notebooks, a math textbook, a calculator, some kind of melted candy, and one sealed envelope that looks too clean to have been in this bag for long. I separate the usable school supplies from the pencil shavings and food remnants and pick up the letter.

  “CARLA DUNKLER” is written in neat block letters on the front, and I pray it’s not another library fine like Jaxon got last year for trying to get into The Guinness Book of World Records by eating a Guinness Book of World Records to entertain his classmates.

  I unfold the paper and wince. It’s worse than a fine.

  Hello Ms. Dunkler,

  I’m just checking in again to see if you’re available to join us for conferences. Midterm conferences are a great time for educators and parents to connect about a child’s development and performance this year, before the crunch of the holiday season.

  Let me know if you’re available. Spots are filling up, but I’m more than willing to accommodate your schedule.

  Sincerely,

  Peter Nolan

  Shit, this guy is relentless. What has Jaxon done that would necessitate a conference? Every time I ask him about school, Jaxon grunts and says his day was good, or that everything’s fine. Sometimes he’ll even smile about it and tell me something they learned that day. Mr. Nolan needs to step the fuck off and let Jaxon and me just live. I use the paper to sweep the backpack trash into the palm of my hand, then crumple it up and dump it all in the trash.

  34

  Amy

  My life is teetering dangerously close to the lyrics of a country music song. My husband has left me. I just lost my job. My dog hasn’t died, but he is on anxiety meds. I’m driving home, playing through all the scenarios that could arise when my mom finds out that I’m also unemployed. It’s chilly, but the windows are down, and Alanis Morissette is up, because when everything has gone to absolute hell, I find that angsty music from middle school is really the only thing that helps.

  And, the only thing that can interrupt my word-for-word rendition of a song about the heartbreak of losing Dave Coulier to another woman is the sound of my phone ringing, which blasts through every speaker in the van. I have to admit that Mike was right, and I do have a very nice minivan.

  Any sense of fine-ness I’d achieved with Alanis disappears when I see the number calling me. It’s the generic number from McKinley, which means it’s the school nurse calling to let me know that one of the kids puked or has chicken pox or lice or whatever else could possibly go wrong this week.

  “Hello!” I shout, trying to roll up the windows and keep an eye on the road. “Amy Mitchell here.”

  “Hello, Mrs. Mitchell.” It’s a deep, kind voice. Not like our nurses aren’t kind, but they are also not men my father’s age.

  “Hello?” I reply. “Can I . . . help you?”

  There’s a cough on the line. “Yes, it’s Principal Burr. Could you come pick up Jane from school? She’s in my office.”

  Jane? He must mean Dylan. “Jane? Jane Mitchell? My daughter? Is she sick? Is she getting bullied?!”

  My body has already rerouted the van toward McKinley, and I know from memory that I’ll be there in approximately eight to eleven minutes, depending on how many parking spots are available.

  “No,” Principal Burr says, sighing, “she’s not sick. And she’s not being bullied. We can discuss it in person.”

  The line goes dead, and I push the gas pedal. What the fuck is going on?

  AFTER I’VE DOUBLE-PARKED IN ONE OF THE VISITOR SPOTS and gotten buzzed in the front door and rushed down the hallways papered with sponge-painted sunsets and posters about the scientific process, I’ve worked up a sweat to go with my anxiety.

  “Hello, Mrs. Mitchell,” Principal Burr’s secretary greets me, gesturing to the small pleather loveseat where sick kids wait for their parents to show up.

  “Hey,” I say, blatantly ignoring his unspoken request that I wait my turn and instead pushing my shoulder into Principal Burr’s office door. Jane looks so small and so scared as she turns toward the door. She’s sitting in one of the two chairs facing Principal Burr’s desk, wiping tears from her red, blotchy cheeks. Principal Burr looks bewildered and more than a little bit uncomfortable. Did Jane get her period?

  “Janey Bear,” I coo at her, and she looks at me with wide-eyed bewilderment.

  “Janey? What’s going on, bear?”

  No response.

  Principal Burr sighs, and I take my seat.

  “Are you aware of the code of conduct by which all McKinley athletes are expected to abide?” he asks, and I shrug.

  “Sure,” I say, “is Jane getting an award or something?”

  Principal Burr slides a small baggie toward me. It’s made of eco-friendly craft paper, and I open it. Inside are three perfectly rolled joints. And I mean perfectly. I’m . . . confused. Is he offering these to me? Am I supposed to know what this means?

  “He found those in my locker,” Jane chok
es out, and I can’t help but laugh.

  “Your locker? Honey.”

  “Mom! They’re not mine, you have to believe me.”

  “Believe you? Of course I believe you!” I turn to Principal Burr. “You know Jane. You know there is no way these are hers. Kids don’t even roll joints, they vape marijuana juice out of those little flutey things. It’s an epidemic! I saw several tweets about it.”

  Principal Burr pulls the bag back toward himself.

  “It doesn’t matter who rolled them,” he says. “They were found in Jane’s locker.”

  “Then someone must have—” My face suddenly falls as I recall Gwendolyn’s meltdown at the bake sale. “Oh my God . . .”

  Jane snaps to attention, grabbing my arm.

  “Wait, Mom, do you know something about this?!”

  “It’s possible I pissed someone off . . . and it’s possible they came after you.”

  “WHAT?! This is so unfair! Principal Burr! Are you hearing this?”

  If Principal Burr is hearing this, I’m sure it sounds absolutely bonkers. Am I really going to accuse Gwendolyn of planting drugs in my daughter’s locker? And how exactly would I prove that? “J-Jane, it’s . . . it’s . . .” I stammer, not sure what to say.

  Jane starts crying. When I turn to Principal Burr, he just shrugs.

  “The code of conduct is clear,” he says, opening the student handbook to read me a passage. “The possession of any drugs or drug paraphernalia is grounds for immediate ban from all extracurricular activities.”

  I wince. “All activities?” I ask.

  “All activities. Jane is off the soccer team. I’m sorry, Amy, but I answer to the PTA and the school board on this one and my hands are tied.”

  I bite my lip to keep it together and do my best to smile.

  “Thank you so much for your time, Principal Burr,” I say, standing up and reaching out to shake his hand. He looks relieved, like he’d expected this meeting to go differently. His hand is warm and clammy, and once he lets go, I swipe the bag of joints from his desk.