by Minka Kent
Sebastian splashes in the tub, giggling when it hits my face. I drag the back of my arm across my chin before wiping a streak of running mascara from under my eye. Bathing my four-year-old is worse than bathing the enormous, hypoallergenic labradoodle Graham insisted on getting for the kids last Christmas.
“Come on, buddy. Let’s get you out.” I turn to grab a towel and ignore my son’s whiny pleas.
“Daddy lets me stay in longer.” He crosses his arms and brings his knees to his chest.
“Now you know that isn’t true,” I say, leaving out the fact that the number of times Graham has bathed the kids I could count on one hand. I attempt to tuck my hands under Sebastian’s arms, but he’s got them locked against his sides. “If you get out of the tub now, I’ll read you an extra bedtime story later tonight.”
I am that parent. The one who bribes. The one who, somewhere along the line, lost all control and hasn’t the slightest idea how to get it back.
“I hate when you read me bedtime stories.” Sebastian scowls, his square jaw clenched as he finally stands. He is a mirror image of his father: milky, caramel complexion with chocolate hair and clear blue eyes. On his best days, Sebastian is a delicious little boy, all sweet with a smile that could melt the coldest of hearts. On his worst days, Sebastian is a spoiled monster. “I only like when Daddy reads to me.”
Refusing to take a four-year-old’s insult to heart, I ignore him, draping a towel around his shoulders and hoisting him out of the tub. The sound of giggling girls coming from Grace’s room makes me question whether or not they’re changing into their school uniforms like I asked ten minutes ago.
Lifting Sebastian to my hip, I carry him to his room at the end of the hall and place him at the foot of his bed where I had the foresight to lay out his clothes for the day earlier. The sooner I can get him dressed, the sooner I can capture an ounce of my sanity before we hit the grocery store together.
“I don’t want to wear dinosaurs. I want trucks.” He kicks his legs in protest when I try to slide his jeans on and throws his T-rex shirt across the room.
“Dinosaurs look so good on you though,” I say, knowing full well only crazy people try to reason with tantrum-prone preschoolers. I slide his leg into one side and ready the other, but he wiggles out and renders the pants halfway inside out. An exasperated sigh leaves my lips as I try once more. “Your daddy picked this outfit.”
It’s a lie.
But then again, so is every other facet of my life.
Sebastian’s face lights when I mention his daddy. I was hoping Graham was going to get to see the kids before they went to school, but he kissed me goodbye before the sun came up this morning and whispered that he’d see me tonight after work.
“All right.” Sebastian crawls off his bed and gathers his thrown shirt before handing it to me. “Sorry, Mama.”
It’s in these still, small moments I find myself falling back in love with being his mother. I think about the sweet hugs, the occasional unprompted I love yous, the lit smiles, and picked dandelions that make me think perhaps my son might actually love and appreciate me after all. I remind myself that maybe it isn’t so bad – that it can only get better from here.
“Okay, let’s check on your sisters.” I take his hand and lead him down the hall, following the trail of laughter to Grace’s room. The door is half closed, light from her lamp casting a warm glow that spills into the hall.
I smile when I hear my sweet Rose’s giggle. And then a metallic snip follows. I storm through the doorway, the door banging against the wall and bouncing back.
“No, no, no, no . . .” My heart stops in my chest as I reach down and retrieve handfuls of Rose’s silky blonde hair. Glancing up, Grace is frozen, shears in hand, wicked little smile fading.
I yank the scissors from her hand with a violent pull that startles both of us and sends her falling back on her bed. My seven-year-old Rose begins to cry.
“Rose . . .” I go to her, cupping her sweet face in my hands, my eyes filling with tears as I examine the monstrous haircut Grace saw fit to give her beautiful little sister. Finger-combing the baby blonde tendrils away from her forehead, her bottom lip quivers.
“Grace was trying to make me pretty, Mama,” she says, her blue eyes two perfect glassy pools.
“You’re already pretty, Rosie. You’re beautiful just the way you are.” I kiss the top of her head, taking in a deep breath and inhaling the scent of her vanilla-orange shampoo. Her soft locks lie in a pile at our feet, the same hair she’d been growing out since her toddler years with the exception of the occasional back-to-school haircut. It was past the middle of her back . . . until tonight.
“Mommy, I’m sorry.” Grace’s voice pulls me from Rose, and I turn to face her. Seated on the edge of her bed, her expression shows no remorse. No regret. Her sandy hair hangs limp around her round face, in a constant state of disheveled tangles no matter how much I comb and tug and pull and braid. “I didn’t mean to.”
“I don’t understand, Grace. You’re old enough to know better.” I glance down at Rose’s hair, my anger coming to life by the second. My stomach is knotted, my fists clenched so hard they ache. This week it’s Rose’s hair. Last week she let the dog run out the front door and I spent an hour chasing it around the neighborhood like a crazy person. Two weeks ago, she dropped eight of my perfume bottles from the top of the stairs to the wood floor of the foyer to see if they’d break. Six of them did. My house still smells like a French brothel.
My hand grips the scissors so hard they leave indentations in my palm, and when I loosen my hold, I realize I’ve never seen this pair in my life.
“Where did you get these scissors?” I ask, shaking like a woman who’s lost all control of her life.
I’ve taken every precaution to Grace-proof this house since I first suspected there was something special about her. Graham refuses to believe she’s anything but perfect, but he doesn’t see what I see because he’s never around.
There’s something off about her.
“Tell me, Grace.” My voice is deeper, my stare harder. “Where did you find these?”
Grace sighs, rolling her eyes. “I took them from Mrs. Applegate yesterday. They were sitting in a cup on her desk.”
“You stole from your teacher? From the school?” My jaw hangs for a moment until I can compose myself. “We do not steal, Grace McMullen. Do you understand me?”
“Yes.” Her ten-year-old voice is chock full of resentment as she stares at the garish Hello Kitty poster on her wall.
“Look me in the eyes when you speak to me,” I say.
Her lifeless brown gaze snaps onto mine, her jaw clenched.
“Apologize to your sister. And you’re giving the scissors back to Mrs. Applegate today along with a handwritten apology. I’ll be back to check on you in a minute,” I say. “I want you dressed for school. Teeth brushed. The bus leaves in twenty minutes, and your breakfast is getting cold. Move it. Do you understand?”
“Yes.” She stomps to her dresser, yanking the top drawer until it almost falls out, and from the corner of my eye, I spot the eight-hundred-dollar cocktail dress I thought I’d lost last year. I’d even gone so far as to blame the dry cleaner, taking our business elsewhere and sharing my suspicions with the girls at the coffee shop one frenzied Thursday morning.
“Why do you have my dress?” I march over, yanking her other drawers open to see what other treasures were waiting to be discovered. Just as I suspected, I find my grandmother’s antique, diamond-encrusted timepiece resting in a Strawberry Shortcake pencil box. I fired the last housekeeper over this missing watch. Another opened drawer contains a box of chocolate cupcakes and a half-eaten bag of family-sized potato chips, crumbs scattered and sticking to her winter sweaters. Shaking my head, I mutter her name under my breath.
I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t a day that passes when I don’t regret bringing Grace home. Our bond hasn’t been easy, and most days, I’m not sure it exists at all
. Everything about her is a challenge, and most days I don’t have it in me to conquer those tribulations. Adopting a baby was a quick-fix. A marital Band-Aid. Another one of Graham’s non-negotiable whims. And I was just a young wife, trying to please the only man I’d ever loved, desperately trying to keep him at any cost.
And if there’s anything I’ve learned in my thirty-six years, it’s that desperate people are incapable of making good decisions.
Fifty
Autumn
The way I see it, I have two options: I can crumble to a dysfunctional heap, refusing to move off the sofa and mourning the loss of Daphne’s Instaface account while raising a million red flags with Ben. Or I can carry on like nothing’s wrong until I figure out what I’m going to do next.
For now, I need Ben. Ben equals access to Grace, even if we’re separated by an acre of yard space and a fence.
I’ll figure this out, and I’ll land on my feet. Always have, always will.
The supermarket is packed for a Thursday morning. Apparently no one in Monarch Falls has anything better to do this morning. The yoga shop must be closed for renovations? Maybe the coffee shop ran out of soy milk? The bakery out of gluten-free cupcakes?
“Hi.” To my right, a man’s voice cuts through the cereal aisle, and when I glance up, I see a dopey grin with a laser-sharp stare pointed at me.
For a moment, I’d forgotten that today I’m the pretty girl from the gas station. Red lips. Big breasts. Tight jeans. Sexy, messy bun.
It feels good to be her right now, to step out of my burning, twitching, anxious skin. I almost forget about Instaface for a moment. Almost.
I smile the way I imagine she would, eyes half-squinting, lips closed and pulled up in one corner. Lifting my left hand, I give a small wave with just my fingertips and push my cart past him. From my periphery I see him turn, and I allow his stare to linger until I turn the corner.
“Excuse me.” An older woman with bushy gray hair and a lavender twin set nearly bumps into me with her cart, wielding the audacity to glare at me as if our near-collision was my fault.
“I’m sorry,” I lie. I saw this woman seconds before she saw me. Her attention was fixed on the wall of oatmeal selections before her as she mindlessly pushed her cart forward one shuffled step at a time.
The woman huffs and keeps moving, giving me side eye as if my look today offends her personally.
Typical Monarch Falls old-moneyed bitch.
I wonder how Pretty Girl deals with people like her? Half of me thinks she’s probably too oblivious to notice. Or maybe she’s too coked up? I could definitely see Pretty Girl with a two-grand-a-day coke habit. Easy.
Up ahead, a mother with a screaming infant and another mother with a squirrelly toddler are blocking the exit of the cereal aisle, gabbing on about something that seems to get the two of them fired up. Maybe preschools or the PTA? Swimming lessons? I couldn’t care less. Their faded yoga pants and dark-circled eyes don’t interest me. They may as well be invisible. I don’t see a mental vacation when I look at them. I see exhaustion.
I would never want to be them.
“Excuse me.” I say with a polite smile, staring straight ahead as my cart is pointed in the direction I intend to go.
The women stop yammering and glance up, gawking at me with the kind of stare that suggests they’re contemplating how their life would’ve turned out had they not married their high school sweethearts fresh out of college and popped out a litter’s worth of children before their thirtieth birthdays.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
It’s just not my cuppa.
Not my cuppa . . .
I stole that phrase from a woman on Instaface I followed briefly last year. Her posts intrigued me at first. She seemed well-traveled. And her boyfriend was some Italian model who walked runways all over the world. Anytime she didn’t like something, she’d politely say it wasn’t her cuppa, and it just stuck. Eventually her boyfriend dumped her, her posts dwindled to few and far in between, and after a while she fell off the face of the earth. I unfollowed her shortly after that, and now I can’t even recall her name.
The exuberantly exhausted mothers stop gawking long enough to move their carts and let me through. I don’t waste my breath thanking them. People who are inconsiderate enough to block a busy grocery aisle with idle chitchat don’t deserve common courtesy.
Rounding the corner, I stop at the end of the gift aisle, fighting the smart ass smirk on my mouth.
Marnie. Marnie. Marnie.
If I wanted to be the bigger person, I’d run to the mall and grab something decent. Maybe a giftcard to Bloomies or Victoria’s – something she might actually use and enjoy. But I’m feeling very, very small today.
The image of Marnie’s crestfallen face comes to mind when I envision handing her a cheap stuffed bear and a bouquet of dyed carnations wrapped in pink cellophane.
She would hate it.
She would hate me.
But she already does. And she’s made her sentiments crystal clear dozens upon dozens of times behind my back. Never to my face. She’s spineless like that. Any time she gets Ben alone, she feels the need to opine that he’s too good for me, that I’m using him. Ben shuts her down each time, bless his heart, but it doesn’t keep her from bringing it up all over again the next time.
Snickering, I reach for a neon green teddy bear with scratchy matted fur, checking the price tag.
$4.99.
And then I think of Ben.
I can’t do that to him. He’s a good man. He asked me to get his sister a birthday gift, and that’s exactly what I need to do, even if it kills me.
Placing the ugly bear back on its shelf, I trudge ahead, moving toward the card aisle. A pastel yellow birthday card with the most generic inscription draws the short straw, and I toss it in my cart before making a beeline for the gift card section.
I know many things about Marnie Gotlieb.
I know she loves to shop-til-she-drops, and I know her favorite things in the whole wide world are covered in images of dead presidents. I know she likes to be wined and dined by various older men she meets through online dating apps. I know she once slept with her college chemistry professor in exchange for a passing grade.
Pretty sure she has some daddy issues going on as well, though I’m not sure how that came to be since their father is Ward Cleaver reincarnate.
Swiping a couple gift cards from the rack, I grab one for a bookstore, because this woman needs to spend some quality time away from a phone screen, and another for a department store to mask the passive aggressive undertones of the first gift card.
Tossing them in my cart, it occurs to me that I told Ben I had wrapped Marnie’s gift last night, which means I need to get her an actual gift. Heading toward the bath and body aisle, I grab a few blocks of organic, hand-milled soap from a low shelf, three for twelve dollars, and then I swipe a bottle of honey almond lotion.
I have no idea what Marnie’s favorite scents are, nor do I care.
Rounding the next aisle, I stop in my heels when I spot a familiar image in the distance.
Long legs, red-bottomed shoes, glossy red hair and a screaming toddler paint a portrait of a woman I know like the back of my hand but have yet to meet in real life.
Daphne McMullen pushes her filled cart, slowly perusing organic boxes of macaroni and cheese and loaves upon loaves of gluten-free breads. Her hair glides across her back when she moves, and she turns to the youngest McMullen, four-year-old Sebastian, every few seconds to tickle his chin or give him an Eskimo kiss.
If there is a God, this must be his way of apologizing for this morning. He’s sorry her account disappeared. He put her in my path on purpose.
My heart thrums and my mouth runs dry. With a tight grip on the handle of my cart, I watch, jaw loose and eyes glued. She’s beautiful in person, which tells me what I’ve suspected all along: that her Instaface persona is authentic, that Daphne McMullen is exactly who she say
s she is.
It makes my heart warm, watching her in action with her youngest. Grace is truly lucky to be able to call Daphne her mother.
I chose well.
Sebastian drops something on the floor, and Daphne crouches down to retrieve it, glancing around. My chest tightens, and I turn my head in the opposite direction. I can’t stand here and gawk, though if I could, I’d do it all day long.
Behind me, an elderly gentleman clears his throat as if to tell me I’m in his way.
“Excuse me,” I say, pushing my cart away.
When I enter the next aisle, I spot Daphne in the distance, making her way to the checkout lanes, so I do the same. Checking the customer congestion ahead, I try and calculate which register she’ll choose, and I succeed. Within moments, I’ve secured a spot behind a round-bellied middle-aged man, who happens to be standing behind Daphne. She doesn’t look past him, and she doesn’t notice me.
To my back, a woman keeps checking out the other aisles as if jumping to the next one over could possibly save her a lifetime of waiting. She checks her watch, exhales, then glances at my cart. She seems annoyed, whether at this situation or the fact that I’m pushing a full-sized cart for three paper-y items and a few bars of soap. Maybe she’s offended that I’m taking up an unnecessary amount of checkout aisle space, and that personally offends her? It’s a perfectly reasonable reason to get bent out of shape . . . if you’re a miserable asshole.
Two lanes down, a green light flicks on, and a female checker calls, “I can help whoever’s next.”
The woman behind me scurries off, followed by the hard-bellied man in front of me who nearly topples over the candy display in the process.
People.
This is what’s wrong with the world.
And this is why I hate the grocery store: it’s a fucking zoo with real, live human animals.