Violet pads out into the kitchen. She’s a light sleeper, just like me. Wordlessly she crawls up onto my lap. I kiss the top of her head. She’s three years old, but she still smells like a sweet sleepy baby to me.
“Why do you think I could get hold of Matt even if I wanted to? He was scrubbed from my address book a long time ago.”
“Mommy, what’s an address book?” Billy asks.
“It’s a book that people used to write phone numbers and addresses in. Before we had iPhones,” I tell him.
“You mean like in the olden days?” asks Violet.
“Yes. The olden days. My address book is from the olden days and so is Matt.”
“Who’s Matt?” Violet asks.
“Mom’s old boyfriend,” says Billy. How on earth does he know that? I swear that kid’s got surveillance cameras around this house.
“He’s not exactly hiding under a rock. Just call Colburn Entertainment,” says Peter.
“Just like that?”
“Why not?”
“Not that I’m intending to call, but even if I did I’m sure he wouldn’t deign to speak to me.”
“Then you don’t have anything to worry about, do you? Just try, Amy. For me.”
“Daddy, if you sell a screenplay, will you be working all the time?” asks Billy.
“That’s the plan,” says Peter.
“But who will look after us?” says Billy, his eyes wider than ever.
“Your mother, of course.”
“Hurray!” says Violet.
“But she doesn’t know how!” objects Billy. The kid’s got a fair point. “It was Wacky Wednesday at school today, and she didn’t believe me and made me wear my regular clothes. Everybody said I just looked normal!”
“Normal was what everyone aspired to when I was in school,” I say.
“And she made me wear the shirt with the scratchy label.”
“Ooh,” says Peter. Insisting Billy wear the shirt with the scratchy label (because it was the only one that was clean) has been my biggest parenting faux pas to date. If I had known it was going to cause as much drama as it did, I would have trashed the thing long ago. In hindsight, it was cutting the label off and then insisting he wear the shirt that sent things irretrievably off the rails. Apparently, the stub of the label was even more scratchy.
“And then yesterday she made me eat cabbage sandwiches for dinner.”
“Cabbage sandwiches?” Peter looks alarmed.
“They were kale-and-lemon panini.” See, I’m trying to make healthful meals for my family. Plus, I’d never tried out the panini maker I got from Peter’s mother two years ago. Granted, they turned out kind of awful.
“You can’t feed a five-year-old a kale sandwich, Amy.”
I’m about to tell him that I’m sure somewhere in this vast world, there is at least one five-year-old child who has, at some point in history, consumed a kale-and-lemon panini—when Billy does something truly awful. Standing behind Peter, he opens the laptop, performs a few deft keystrokes, and then closes it again.
“Billy, what did you just do on Daddy’s laptop?”
“Nothing.”
“Yes, you did something—I just saw you.” Peter grabs his laptop and pulls it open.
“He deleted it. He deleted the screenplay.”
“No, I didn’t!” yells Billy.
“Goddamn it, Billy, why would you do that? That was all of Daddy’s work!”
“Because I hate you!” This kind comment is targeted directly at me. Granted, the kid’s had a lot to deal with recently with a complete caregiver flip-flop; granted, I did insist on dressing him “normal” on Wacky Wednesday; and yes, I did more or less hand off his care to his father when he was just six weeks old, but still . . . his words hurt so much I feel like he just plunged his little hand inside my rib cage and squeezed my heart for all it’s worth.
Violet somehow immediately senses my emotional devastation and starts sobbing, her tiny fingernails digging into my neck skin.
“What’s wrong, Violet?” Peter asks.
“I don’t know! I just feel sad.”
What’s she going to be like when she’s a teenager? What’s Billy going to be like? He’s already dropped the “I hate you” bomb and he’s only five. My kids are hormonally deranged and it’s all my fault. I’m sure there’s a study somewhere that proves that the lack of constant physical presence of a mother causes the chemical balance of the brains of under-fives to disintegrate. Well, here I am: sitting in the middle of the chemical fallout. And all in the pursuit of the perfect cup of coffee. When Billy was born, I should have moved us all into a one-bedroom rental, pledged a sacred vow never to get on a plane again, and taken a part-time job at Macy’s. Would that have made me a better mother?
Both Billy and Violet are crying now—and I’m not far off myself.
“Okay. Calm down, everyone. I’ve got another copy. It’s not gone forever.”
Oh yes. I forgot. Peter hasn’t relied on hard drives to retain any information since the “spilled cup of Kenyan Karinga” incident of ’06. He always e-mails himself everything he writes. He was way ahead of the rest of us as far as cottoning on to storing stuff virtually. I kinda wish he’d have reminded us all of that fact about three minutes ago, as I might have responded to Billy’s act of sabotage with a little less of a dramatic edge.
“Billy, I want you to apologize to your mother.”
“No! I do hate her.” Doesn’t look like this situation is diffusing anytime soon. It’s one of the most insane things about family life. One minute everything’s borderline calm and then one seemingly tiny thing happens and everyone’s screaming at each other, as emotionally distraught as if someone just beheaded Mickey Mouse on live TV. And then someone (usually Peter) will say the right thing or a sufficiently novel distraction will come along, and we’ll all be bouncing along again like the Get Along Gang. It’s psycho.
“He doesn’t have to apologize, Peter.”
“Yes, he does.” Of course he does. We can’t let our child think it’s okay to go around screaming at people that he hates them every time they reprimand him. It’s just that . . . well, I’m kind of feeling like a child myself right now—or at least an emo-esque teenager—and I don’t want him to apologize unless he wants to apologize. I want him to genuinely retract his statement. I want to know that he loves me. Unconditionally. I want to know that he’d love me even if I fed him cabbage sandwiches for a month and then went on a yearlong work trip and didn’t even return with a gift. Aren’t all boys supposed to love their mothers more than anything on earth? Isn’t that a thing?
“It makes Mommy very sad when you say that you hate me. I know I don’t always do things the same way Daddy does, but that doesn’t mean that it’s okay for you to say those words.”
“I hate you.” Now he’s just using it as a weapon. He knows. He knows he’s killing me slowly every time he says that. He wants to kill me. He wants me to give up so he can get his father back on the job. I’m hanging on to my mature parent persona by a rapidly fraying thread here. If he says it one more time, I am going to lose my shit.
“You say that word again and there will be no iPad tomorrow.”
“I hate you!”
“That’s it. No iPad.” This, you understand, is the ultimate punishment. Ultimate. He’d rather get a lifetime ban from Disneyland than not get his iPad for the day. And I know why. It’s because he’s bored. And it’s all my fault. If I were the kind of parent who woke up with ideas for one hundred and three fun-yet-educational activities up my sleeve every day, he wouldn’t be so overwhelmingly attached to his tablet. He’d be overwhelmingly attached to me instead. But I’m not and so he is. And removing it is my only weapon. And I know to Billy it’s a weapon that’s as painful as me hearing “I hate you.” And I’m using it on him.
“Now I really hate you,” he yells, and kicks the kitchen table with his bare foot. This, of course, hurts him and he falls to the floor screaming. I shi
ft Violet off my lap, run over, and try to rub his foot. He pushes me away.
“No!”
I think I’m going to start crying real tears now.
“Come here, bud.” Peter scoops Billy up off the floor and sits him on the kitchen table.
“Daddy,” he cries, his huge green eyes spilling over with tears. He’s looking up at his father and his face says it all: How could you let it come to this?
“Let’s take a look.” He lifts up Billy’s foot and wiggles each of his toes one by one. Within a few seconds of basking in his father’s full attention, Billy’s tears turn off as if by magic. “Well, nothing’s broken it seems. But there is, unfortunately, one big problem.”
“What?” says Billy, entranced.
“I’m very, very hungry. And it appears to me that these feet are made of extremely delicious cheese.”
“No!” Billy squeals, with delight this time. Peter then proceeds to do a big song and dance of eating Billy’s “cheesy” feet. He actually has a song that he seems to have specially composed for such occasions as this. Everyone knows the words except for me. Violet then, of course, asserts that her feet are even more delicious and insists that they get eaten too. Peter obliges.
“What about Mommy’s feet?” Peter asks. “Do you think they’re delicious too?”
“I bet they’re the most delicious of them all!” says Violet. I’m touched.
“I don’t. I bet they’re just stinky. Like old lady’s feet,” says Billy. He’s completely serious. I’ve never been so devastated by someone’s assessment of my feet in all my days.
“Billy, why are you so mad with Mommy?” asks Peter. I’m not sure if I want to hear the answer to this or not. Billy stares downward. He knows he’s in the hot seat now that his father’s asking the questions.
“Because she said I couldn’t have the iPad.”
“You said ‘I hate you’ before all that!” I snap.
Any outward act of my being a calm and caring parent evaporated around the time of the foot slight. If Peter came over to try and eat my stinky feet, I think I’d just kick him away. Why am I sinking down to their level like I just stepped into a pile of juvenile-behavior quicksand? I’m supposed to rise above all this. That’s what my mother’s been telling me my whole life: “Amy, just rise above it.” That’s what she’s been doing her whole life—the second half of it anyway. It seems as if I’ve yet to rise. Are these parenting skills that you’re supposed to pick up along the way, or was the ability to remain reasonable in the face of provocation supposed to be gifted to me right after I finished labor?
“Look. You can have the iPad tomorrow, Billy,” says Peter.
“No, he can’t!”
“It’s fine,” says Peter. Officially undermined. “Billy, you can have the iPad if you’ll just tell us why you’re saying such bad things about Mommy.” Billy pauses for a moment. He clearly doesn’t want to talk about this. Yet he clearly does want access to his iPad tomorrow. I suppose it is quite clever the way Peter’s turned it from a stick into a carrot.
“I don’t care about Mommy being here and getting it all wrong. That’s not why I’m mad.”
“Then what is it?” asks Peter.
“I miss you, Daddy. You haven’t been here to play with me. It’s just boring without you. When are you coming back to look after us again?”
“Soon, bud. Very soon. Just give me a bit more time, okay? Mommy is so excited to hang out with you guys right now.” Yeah, I’m practically doing somersaults. “Can you say sorry to her, please, Billy?”
“Sorry,” he says, too quickly, avoiding eye contact. I know he doesn’t mean it, but Peter doesn’t seem to be after a genuine statement here. He just wants to diffuse this thing. And he’s doing a better job of it than I ever could—as evidenced by the last eight minutes of my life.
“Now give your mother a hug.” Billy slumps over, gives my midsection a hollow embrace, and then heads off toward his bedroom. I feel like the kid picked for the team only after the teacher insists someone call her name.
“You okay?” Peter asks me.
“No,” I answer.
“I know,” he says, and comes in for a head bump. We lock eyes deeply for zero point three seconds.
“Daddy! Come and read me a story,” yells Billy. And the moment is broken. Like so many of them before this one.
No one tells you about all of this in the birthing classes. They should. In fact, they should probably do a seminar when we’re all still in high school on how parenthood’s guaranteed to run your relationship and your mental health straight through the shredder. But then the birthrate might start dropping even faster than it already is and fifty years from now there would be no one left to pay the government its precious taxes. This is all a conspiracy.
And now it’s two in the morning and all of this trouble is still floating about in my brain. Around the midnight mark I started to wonder if I was permanently angry as a kid myself, if I ever put my own mother through all this drama. I don’t remember it being that way, but I expect I had a skewed view of the situation. I do remember general tears, fuss, constant arguments—accusations of my being “emotionally volatile”—but that wasn’t until I was a teenager. Maybe I should ask her what kind of a child I was. Maybe Billy’s generalized rage toward me is just par for the course for Jansson stock? Mom and I have had a rather distant relationship since the kids came along and I didn’t quit my job. Every conversation became laced with hints that my constant circling of the globe was practically child abuse, and eventually I just stopped calling. She’s never approved of the untraditional situation. Not that “traditional” worked out any better for her.
I close my eyelids tighter. These kids are going to be up in four hours and counting. I’ve got to sleep. Peter’s busy not-so-gently snoring. Violet has her head in his armpit and her feet on top of my stomach. It’s no wonder I’m wide awake. A fragment of some past advice I read on insomnia comes to mind: if you can’t sleep, get up and do something else. It’s ten in the morning in England. Mom will be at work so I can’t call her. I’ll e-mail instead.
I gently push Violet’s feet to the side, slip out of bed, creep to the laptop, and open it. After a few moments of indignant whirring—turns out that, unlike me, my computer was sleeping—we’re ready to go.
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Hi Mom,
How’s life in sunny Yorkshire? Any new “English cuisine” recipes for me? If you want to send one now, there’s a chance I might actually be able to cook it these days because I got FIRED. Yup. Fourteen years of doing everything for that cock monkey Dexter and he sold off the company, hoarded the profits for himself, and threw my livelihood into the dumpster. We are screwed. Utterly screwed. We’ve got next to no savings, Peter’s as allergic to work as he ever was and to top it all off, the kids are totally thrown out of routine by my actually being in their lives and now both hate me. Especially Billy who’s being an uber-shit.
As you’ve often vaguely hinted, I’ve always been a failure of a mother. But I feel as if my one saving grace was an ability to provide for my family. Now I’m not even doing that anymore, I’m not sure where I fit in. I think maybe I’ve missed my chance to be a proper part of my family, to be a proper mother. I think I might have missed my chance to ever have their love at all.
Anyway. When you get a minute, maybe you can draw on your own personal experience of a lifetime of handling bullshit and let me know how I’m supposed to cope with all this. Cheers!
Your darling daughter,
Amy
Well.
I obviously can’t send that diatribe.
As much as Mom disapproves of my career, she’d go hairless with worry if she found out we’d lost our only source of income. There’s no point in dragging her down with me into the poop pot of hell that is currently my life. Especially as she’s in no situation to provide any help, financial or otherwise. Besides,
between her all-consuming job at the county council and my father, she’s got enough going on.
My mother’s been basically living life from inside a shitstorm since 1997 when—within one glorious year—my dad lost all his money, renounced his US citizenship, developed hard-core arthritis, and moved them from their leafy north London semidetached to an ex-council house in the depths of Yorkshire—and not the nice part. I never got to the bottom of what happened to Dad’s cash. I was told that tax laws were technically not broken, but from what I can gather, he’d authorized loans to a couple of firms in the States and had bent regulations to the point of being obnoxious. He hasn’t been back to the United States since. I don’t think he dares. These days they’re broke. They seem happy enough, considering all they’ve been through, but I think the news that their only child and two grandchildren could be about to starve to death might send them both into a mental death spiral. So what’s the point?
I quickly delete the e-mail before I have some kind of brain spasm and hit “Send.” In its place I send something written in my normal brand of upbeat/vague that I always use for my parents.
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Hi Mom,
How’s life in sunny Yorkshire? Any new “English cuisine” recipes for us? Things are much the same as ever here. Peter’s had some time recently to work on his screenplay so we’ve got fingers and toes crossed for that one. Billy’s and Violet’s legs both seem to get two inches longer every time I look at them. Both are as crazy as ever. But that’s kids—right!? I know I can’t have been all peaches and cream—or maybe I was . . . ? Thanks for Billy’s Paddington Bear—he loved it. Sorry I didn’t get many pictures of his party. Anyway—hope you and Dad are well and his knees aren’t giving him too much trouble.
Life After Coffee Page 4