by Rea Frey
“Should you be doing that?” (You’re an idiot.)
“What kind of oil did you cook that in?” (You’re incompetent.)
“Robbie can’t eat nuts yet, Richard. Jesus. He’ll choke to death.” (You’re a terrible father.)
The coated insults stacked up like all the laundry, and some days, she said the thing she actually meant, and Richard would let it roll off his bony, mole-shrouded shoulders, because he was spineless, careless, muted. Sometimes, when he was standing there, head bent over his phone, she could tell he was just waiting for a heart attack (he was too skinny), an act of terror (he rarely flew), or some freak accident (he only went to work, home, and back to work again) to put him out of his misery. And hers. Lately, she fantasized about Richard having an affair. She’d catch him in the act of sweaty, spread limbs and divorce him. But she knew Richard would never have an affair. He wasn’t that type of man.
Amy looked at herself in the mirror on the way to the kitchen. It was one of those cheap, full-length mirrors she’d bought on sale with one of the endless 20 percent off coupons from Bed Bath & Beyond. She stood in front of it, feeling like a fleshy, red whale. Was this who she’d always been or who she’d become? Childbirth had taken a few things from her, sure, but she wasn’t like one of those women who went from a sizzling 10 to a 6 on a scale of 1 to 10. She, at best, had always been a 4 and was now hovering between a 2 and a 3, so that the differences, although there, weren’t jarring. She didn’t have to spend her time agonizing over stretch marks, how her skin had changed, or the clumps of hair that came loose in the shower like weird, ropy sea kelp.
She’d always thought she was lucky not to be beautiful, because when beauty faded, and you didn’t have other things to offer, you were basically just a shell. You weren’t real. Her mother taught her that because she wasn’t attractive either, and that’s what less-than-pretty people told themselves (and their daughters). All the pretty people she had ever known spent their entire lives dissecting imperfections or judging others: pinching flesh, gasping at wrinkles, doing everything to make themselves lighter, tighter, and younger, when they all would end up the same heavier, looser, older versions of themselves. It seemed such a waste of time to focus the majority of one’s time on looks; she was just too lazy to tweeze, pluck, wax, and spackle.
So she settled for a red, pocked face—the tragic result of horrific childhood chicken pox, followed by a staph infection, resistance to antibiotics, shingles, and yet another staph infection—a gummy waist, and thighs that rubbed together so much, she had sores on the insides of her legs and labia. She got horrible gas, went to the bathroom just twice a week, and always had some ailment she was sure would require surgery or result in an immediate death sentence. She should exercise, get outside, get inspired, find something she loved, meet a group of people, live. But she didn’t, and she wouldn’t, and the whole thing—all the things—pushed her to a maddening form of being, or not being. She felt like a nonperson.
This wasn’t always her life. Before Richard, before Emma and Robbie, she was a semi-okay woman with an affinity for romance novels and single-serving frozen satin pies she’d devour after her nightly baths. She had been alone then, and she’d loved it. Now, there was just noise.
She moved from the mirror to the kitchen, resolving something. So what? So she wasn’t beautiful—should it come as such a shock by now?—but she wasn’t funny, overly nice, kind, or insanely smart either. She was a ruddy person with a ruddy complexion in the middle of a ruddy life.
Except for her daughter. Except for Emma.
She’d been told that two regular people could produce one beautiful one, but she’d always rolled her eyes at such nonsense, until the doctor placed her newborn daughter in her arms. She’d looked down at this still warm, pink, pretty bundle—just an eight-pound slab of meat that had, moments before, been pulled from her hairy, swollen vagina—and lifted the newborn back up to the doctor, as though her baby, her real baby (probably with a smashed face, a cone head, and skinny little arms and legs, like Richard), had been swapped and was now munching on someone else’s tits.
Emma was exceptionally beautiful, which was kind of a cruel joke, because Amy didn’t know what to do with beautiful. She was afraid it would crumble in her hands, like meringue. It was just too big a responsibility. No one in her family had looks, but this child—oh, this child—she got stopped everywhere they went. Strangers commented on everything from her ruby lips (She looks like she’s wearing lipstick! Is she wearing lipstick?) to her mammoth gray eyes (They will change color, you know, but my, aren’t they spectacular?) to her flawless, ivory skin (How is her skin so creamy? You could eat her with a spoon! You really could!), which drew constant attention to Amy, which made her self-conscious because now people were looking. She couldn’t hide.
Now, after having a second child, she was a full-time mother and was forced to strike up conversations about babies and childbirth, and wasn’t it all so wonderful? The anger formed a helix inside her. Richard, on the occasions he could tell she was about to burst, would ask her why.
“I’m not angry,” she would insist, spitting the words, as though he had insulted her even by insinuating she was anything other than a pleasant human being. (Because she was a whale; because she was married to a wimp, but she married him anyway; because who else would she marry?; because she hated being a mother; because she hated her job; because she hated Washington; because she was so fucking tired all the time; because she was too old, too fat, and too ugly to do anything about it.)
“You seem angry,” he would reply.
“Well, you seem annoying. Why are you so annoying?”
“Because I’m married to you.”
They’d go on this way for minutes until one of them just gave up and went into the den or for a drive, and then they’d join in the same bed hours later, each of them tucked in to the very edge of their lumpy sides. After so many years of marriage, she’d squirm in the beefy dark, trying to figure a way out of what she’d gotten herself into, but this wasn’t some movie where she could change her life, divorce her husband, quit her job, lose the weight, toss the anger, and move to somewhere shiny and new. She had children now and that tethered her to this life, these dishes, the endless to-do list, and this filthy house for the next two decades, at least.
Whenever Emma and Robbie left their house, years later, with their entire childhoods, acne, backne, crazy hormonal shifts, boyfriends, girlfriends, and toxic teenage outbursts behind them, Amy would be too resigned to do anything but sit in a recliner (Would they still make those in the future? Did they even still make them now?), eating crappy food and watching mindless TV until she died from cardiac arrest, boredom, or from choking on a fat corn dog, which she loved so much and often ate too fast.
She rarely chewed, which was probably why all the gas, and she loved cheese even more than corn dogs, which, as every magazine, website, diet pill ad, and doctor told her, was unhealthy. Every day, she sliced clean rectangles from block after block of cow and goat cheese, which probably explained the lack of poop. Maybe she wasn’t fat; maybe if you cut her open, you’d just see congealed mountains of cheese clogging everything up? That had to impede her colon somehow. Maybe she should get a colonic? Maybe that was the answer to all of her prayers! Maybe, after, with a sore asshole, she’d be thinner, happier, and feel better about her life?
Amy began the painstaking process of washing dishes, loading dishes, wiping countertops, sorting laundry, picking up random toys and various Emma and Robbie messes, vacuuming, making lunch, eating lunch, having her post-lunch cheese, cleaning up her own damn dishes, going to the grocery store, picking up Emma, then picking up Robbie, all while trying to placate her very loud children while she decided on dinner.
She heard Richard shuffle through the door right at six, dropping his heavy bag, removing his light shoes, and crashing his thirty-seven keys onto the tray by the door. Why couldn’t she just cross the threshold from anger to acceptance,
kiss her husband hello, and ask him about his day? Why, now, was this so hard, when it was pretty much the unspoken lifeline of marriage?
Because they weren’t that type of couple, that’s why. It was too late for them. She heard Robbie perk up, cooing at the sound of his father’s footsteps. Robbie struggled in his purple Bumbo, an eager toddler desperate to break free. Emma dislodged his chunky, creamy thighs and allowed him to take off toward their father, before she threw her own small limbs into his long, lanky ones. Amy busied herself in the kitchen and tried not to feel the bullets of jealousy at her children’s preference for him rather than her.
She heard Richard’s blasé voice hitch up an octave as he greeted his daughter and scooped her into his arms. Then Robbie. He entered the kitchen with a sigh, his standard post-work, my-life-is-harder-than-yours-because-I-am-the-breadwinner-and-because-I-have-a-penis-therefore-I-get-paid-more-than-you-do-to-sit-behind-a-desk-all-day-so-I-am-granted-this-daily-sigh sigh.
When was the last time they’d made love? Kissed? Hugged? She’d brushed against him in the hall the night before last, and they’d both startled, almost embarrassed by each other, by the brief, unwanted contact, by their sham of a marriage.
Her work friends said they’d find their way back to each other eventually. She didn’t tell them much because they were always talking; they chattered constantly, as though their jobs—and lives—depended on it. They talked about everything: groceries, the weather, the upcoming election, neighbor noise, child discipline, dairy, anal. Sometimes, they’d throw in a casual, “What do you think, Amy?” to which Amy, having checked out after the first two minutes, would murmur, “I totally agree with what she said.” If their fleeting attention ever landed on her for more than a few seconds, she fed them small, insignificant morsels about her life over turkey sandwiches in their cubicles. They’d all been there, they said. She had children; therefore everything was allowed to be on pause. She would blink into their pretty faces and realize, even though they were all women, she couldn’t be more of a foreign species if she tried.
“I don’t know what to do for dinner.”
Richard placed Robbie on the ground, and he was off, rocketing down the hall on his flat, wide, heavy feet. Emma chased after him.
“What do we have?”
Amy shrugged. There was a pinch in her neck—was she out of alignment again? She felt absently for a lump, hoping it wasn’t a tumor or something like lymphoma, but the skin gave way under her fingers, warm and full, like the rest of her. “The usual. I picked up a rotisserie chicken. Want to do something with that?”
“Sure.” Richard sorted the mail with one hand and adjusted his glasses with the other. Why didn’t they both just get out of the house? Throw a babysitter at the problem once or twice per week? Have girls’ nights, guys’ nights, and date nights? Toss back some cocktails, get reckless, let their chests expand and contract with laughter, or at least the opposite of annoyance? Maybe even let their mouths meet in some sticky, wet semblance of a kiss?
It was so hard to recollect their beginning—both of them dripping with inexperience and insecurity. They’d connected because there was just nobody else. Theirs had been a sloppy and inefficient pairing, but they’d done it without all the passion, falling “madly in love,” and drama of other couples. They’d taken trips, gone on dates, gotten engaged, and had a lovely two-person wedding with one witness. Had there been laughter? Had there been real love? She felt it was harder to regain something you might never have had in the first place; this left her unsure of what it was she was supposed to want, and for that, she was stuck.
Robbie screeched from somewhere down the hall, and Emma started crying. It was the fake cry, though; the one that screamed for attention and nothing else. “Will you deal with that, please?”
Richard set off after his children. “How’d you get in here so fast?” he cooed to Robbie. She could hear him groan as he picked up their heavy toddler and then plopped him into the playpen in the family room, where China-made toys filled the silence with their aggravating, repetitive songs. They worked around each other in the kitchen, discussing bills to be paid and daily logistics as Amy sliced off pieces of clammy chicken and Richard fried up some red potatoes in canola oil.
As the kitchen heated and Emma rambled to Robbie in the next room, Amy felt her real self banging inside the prison of her own mind, jangling the bars and trying to find another way out—or in.
after
“Richard. Richard, wake up.” She struggled to keep her voice calm, when all she wanted to do was shake him, scream, and place blame on her incompetent husband. She pulled his thin body up to a sitting position and motioned for him to come out of the room. Richard stuffed two pillows on either side of Robert and groggily followed.
“God, what time is it?”
“Emma’s gone.”
“What? What are you talking about? She was just outside.” He swayed back and forth, never one to come out of sleep without a struggle.
“She was just outside three hours ago, Richard! I fell asleep! Why didn’t you get me up? Did you just leave her out there all night by herself?”
His eyes were shiny, heavy, and confused. “No, I … I don’t think so. Wait.” They moved to the kitchen. He leaned against the counter and wedged his palms over his eyes. “Robert was super-fussy, so we did bath and story time. I laid down with him, and—”
“And you fucking fell asleep and forgot our five-year-old daughter was outside, alone!” She was hysterical. Her whole body itched.
“I wasn’t the one who locked her out! I unlocked the door! I thought you were with her. I thought you two were working it out. I wanted to give you space.”
“You didn’t want to give us space. You forgot.” What she meant was: We both forgot, we always forget, we are not cut out for this.
“Jesus, Amy, does it matter who did what? We need to call the police right now.” Richard reached for the phone, but she stopped him.
“Just wait. Wait. You know the last two times she showed up.”
“She wasn’t gone for three hours, Amy. And it wasn’t at night.”
“Still, you know they won’t do anything until she’s been missing twenty-four or forty-eight hours or whatever that ridiculous rule is. We need to see if we can find her first. Should we call the neighbors?”
“We don’t have any of the neighbors’ information.”
“Well, then, we’ll knock on their doors. I don’t know.”
He re-cradled the phone. “Don’t you think if the neighbors had her they would tell us? Or bring her home?”
“Not if they don’t know where she lives.”
“Well, some of them know us. And Emma knows her own address.”
They wouldn’t bring her home if they saw her sore face or had heard their loud fight. The reality of the situation clamped hard. How would she explain their argument? The slap? How could she possibly tell authorities that they’d just left their child outside, alone? That she’d hit her and then locked her out? She reminded herself that people left their children in hot cars while doing simple things like going to the grocery store or to work. They were so tired, they just forgot, while their children suffocated to death. But what she’d done was worse than forget.
“I think we need to call the police,” Richard said.
“Fine. Yes, you’re right. Call the police. I’m going to start knocking on doors. Stay here.”
“But I want to help, Amy.”
She slapped one hand to her forehead. “You can’t leave our other child alone, Richard! Why is this so hard? We have two children who need to be looked after. Two, not one.”
He hated her. She could see it, could feel it. There had been a small window after Robert was born where they found their way back to each other, where he finally had his boy. She had given him that, and then, like so much else, it had all fallen away, and here they were again, enemies.
“Why don’t you stay with Robert and I’ll go knock on doo
rs? If I’m not back in half an hour, call the police.”
He zipped up a windbreaker and was out of the house in seconds. She exhaled and felt a sharp pain in her chest. Was she going to have a heart attack? Was this the event that would finally push her over the edge?
She massaged her chest, went through the house again, and then back into the woods with the flashlight. Richard would find Emma, they would all go to sleep, and Amy would be better in the morning. This was her wake-up call. She’d start going to anger management or back to hypnotherapy. She’d done so well when she was going. She’d been happier, calmer. She’d felt better about the world; she’d been a better mother because of it.
She charged through the trees, getting snagged and whipped by rebounding branches. She kept track of her steps and turns and heard her own voice, small and ineffective, call out a name that was instantly swallowed by the trees.
* * *
An hour later, she and Richard stood in the kitchen, just having reported Emma missing. The police force in Longview was small, and up until this point, irrelevant in their personal lives. She had no idea of their capabilities or what the protocol was for an event like this.
The officer on the phone, Barry, suggested they enter Emma into the National Crime Information Center Missing Person File. Amy had almost protested—her child wasn’t really a missing person, was she?—but the gravity of it came pressing down; the reality of their chaotic mother-daughter relationship was about to be unraveled. They’d talk to the school. They’d search their home. They’d look at her—miserable, overweight, perpetually stressed—and make immediate judgments.
“They’re going to put out a bulletin to the community, though there’ll probably be little movement tonight,” Amy said.
“Are we supposed to just go to sleep like everything’s normal? Knowing she’s … out there? Amy, what if someone took her? What if someone hurt her? Is hurting her right now, while we’re just sitting here, waiting?”
She thought of the handprint that was probably on Emma’s face, the bumps and bruises up and down her arms and legs. Would she become a suspect? “I have no idea. They’re sending officers over right now. Let’s just … I don’t know. I don’t know what.” This is your fault. I hate you. I never wanted children. I should have divorced you when I had the chance.