by Megan Hart
Maybe he could get a teaching position. Maybe he could go back to school for a new career, something like software engineering or website design. Maybe he could run away to Europe and become a heroin addict.
Maybe he could finally write that book he’d been thinking of writing for years.
The idea wiggled, a worm on a hook, in his brain. He had his dad’s notes. All the files, the hours of film and video. Just because the old man had never taken advantage of the gold mine didn’t mean Ryan couldn’t. Or shouldn’t. In fact, wouldn’t it be something his dad would want Ryan to do? And who better to put it all together, to make something out of his dad’s life’s work, than Ryan? After all, the only man who knew Mari’s story better than his father was, of course, Ryan himself.
Eased a little, he sat back in the dark, scarcely realizing he’d sat up in the first place. Yeah. The book. Even if all the rest of this turned out okay, if he got reinstated, kept his license, dodged the malpractice suit...even if all of that worked itself out, now still might be the time to write the book. What had his father always said about a door closing while a window opened?
Beside him, Mari stirred and murmured in her sleep. Ryan was used to her sleep talking, usually half-formed sentences and mumbled phrases that made little sense. Sometimes, more rarely, she moved her hands in those fluttering motions that he knew were language but which he’d never been able to interpret. Remnants of her childhood slipping out in unconsciousness. If he woke her too roughly, she’d come awake instantly. No rubbing of eyes, no yawns. Instant clarity. She’d probably be halfway across the room, too, hands up to protect herself but eyes wide. And silent, even those silly, muttered phrases gone. She wouldn’t remember what she’d been dreaming. She never did. Well, she said she never did, and Ryan had no reason to believe she’d lie. Nor did he have any real interest in prodding those memories. He wasn’t a Freudian psychiatrist; dreams were of little use to him.
He listened now, though, trying to make out what she was saying. Her low chuckle quirked his own smile. Mari had an infectious laugh as easy and free as the rest of her impulses. He loved that about her. Envied it, too.
His smile slipped away. What would she do when she found out everything, the whole truth? She hadn’t questioned him when he’d said he was being threatened with a malpractice suit. That had happened before, more than once. It was part of being a doctor. Probation meant he’d still go to the office every day, so he’d downplayed that part of it. She wouldn’t notice anything different about his schedule. But the rest of it, the part about Annette, what would she do about that? She wouldn’t leave him. How could she? He was all she’d ever known. The second most important man in her life, and once his dad had died, the most and only. She wouldn’t leave him. She couldn’t.
Could she? Oh. God. Could she really?
His hands fisted in the covers, a blanket and quilt for him because even with the summer-weight flannel pajama bottoms and T-shirt, he was still too cold to sleep without blankets.
All he’d told her was that there was some trouble with a patient at work, and she hadn’t pressed him for answers. She never did. That was something else he loved about her.
If Ryan said the sky was green, Mari could be counted on to give it a curious glance and a shrug, a smile. To go along with it. Not that she couldn’t be stubborn, because she could hold tighter to an idea or a desire than anyone he’d ever known. When Mari wanted something, she sewed herself up tight inside it, so whatever it was she’d set her sights on became a part of her. Inextricable. It was just that she so rarely wanted something hard enough to hold on to it that way.
So, she wouldn’t press him for answers about what had happened. What was still happening. He could give her any number of explanations, and she’d accept them the way she’d always done because he’d never given her reason to doubt him. She trusted him.
Sometimes, Mari’s trust in him was a weight Ryan wasn’t sure he could carry. Sure, he’d always liked it that way, pitying his buddies whose wives controlled the bank accounts, their sex lives, hell, what their husbands wore. What cars they drove. But that trust was a huge responsibility, too.
Lying in the dark beside her and hearing the soft whistle of her breath, that low chuckle that told him she was dreaming again, inside that place he could never go, Ryan wanted to wake his wife and tell her everything. Confess. Spill it out, no matter what might happen. He wanted to turn to her, take her in his arms, kiss her until her eyes opened and she focused on him.
But then somehow the alarm was going off. He’d slept without knowing it. Daylight filtered through the windows, brighter than he expected, and in the sunshine the truth suddenly didn’t seem as appealing as it had in the dark.
THREE
THE BOY IN front of her looks very seriously at the glass measuring bowl, ducking so he can see directly into it. From this angle, his face is distorted through the glass. All big eyes and twisted mouth. He’s concentrating fiercely, pouring exactly the right amount of oil.
“Is this enough, Mama?”
Mari eyes the red line on the glass bowl. Shimmering golden oil inside it. And her boy, looking up at her now as though the answer to this question is very, very important. She supposes to him, it is.
“Looks good to me, honey.”
“Now the eggs?”
“Now the eggs.”
Ethan carefully takes one egg. Then another. He cracks the eggs into the small glass cup the way Mari taught him and checks each yolk carefully before dumping it into the oil. As far as she knows, her son has never cracked open an egg and found a half-formed fetus inside, but Mari has. The eggs she ate in childhood weren’t like the kind you get in stores, all of them candled to make sure they’re okay before they’re shipped off to market. Chickens penned with roosters often had eggs with babies waiting inside. Mari always cracks them first into a separate container.
“Three eggs. A third of a cup of oil.” Ethan reads this from the cookbook, one finger pressed to the stained pages. A massive volume, over five hundred pages, it’s the only cookbook Mari’s ever owned. It had been a gift from her adopted father, who’d considered cuisine as much a part of her curriculum as reading or writing. An important life skill, he’d said, to be able to make more than boxed macaroni and cheese. Being able to cook a decent meal was part of being an adult. “Quarter cup of water. We forgot the water.”
“Go ahead and add it.” Mari doesn’t hand it to him, knowing he wants to do it himself.
Ethan adds the water. “It says we should mix it.”
“Yep. Put it in the bowl and turn it on. Low,” Mari emphasizes, because Ethan’s been known to flip the speed to high and spatter the kitchen with batter.
He giggles. Her heart swells with love for her boy who reminds her so much of herself. Yet who all too soon will become entirely more foreign to her than that mixer.
Already his legs and arms are growing longer. His fingers and feet bigger. If she were to press her hands to his, palm-to-palm, his would be nearly the same size. Sooner than she knows it, he will be a teenager like his sister. After that, a man.
And what will she do then? When she can no longer hold him on her lap. When she is not the one he comes to for fixing boo-boos and putting together toy trains that have fallen apart. What will Mari do when her boy turns into something else?
She doesn’t understand men. Never has. Probably never will. Sometimes she will stare at the damp towel tossed on the bathroom floor instead of hung neatly on the hook and wonder how Ryan, who was raised by a woman for whom there was no such thing as being too neat, can stand being such a slob. How he can blow his nose so raucously in the shower like he’s the only one to use it, or leave his dirty socks in a pile by his favorite recliner until at last, frowning, he comes to her wanting to know why the sock drawer is empty. It’s because he never had to pick up after himself, of course. His mother never made him. Nobody had done that for her; she’d learned early on how to take of herself. Clutter and mes
s disturb her, remind her of bad days long past. Mari can’t stand to live in filth.
If Ryan’s asked to clear away a dish or return a gallon of milk to the fridge after drinking from it, he gives Mari a blank look as though she’s asked him to perform an unexpected brain operation. Asked to fold towels, he leaves them rumpled and in leaning stacks, not neat piles. She has learned over the years to simply move behind him, tidying, a silent force he doesn’t even notice but would surely miss if it were gone. Her job, she supposes. To keep the house together, her husband and children organized and on track. Her job, Mari thinks while watching her son, to make sure her children are capable and responsible human beings who can cook and clean and take care of themselves.
Ethan, lower lip pulled between his teeth in concentration, lifts the measuring bowl and prepares to pour the contents into the metal one he needs to use with the mixer. Slick fingers, a hard tile floor. All at once there is glass and oil and eggs all over, and a small boy’s cry echoes in the kitchen.
“Mama, I’m sorry!” Ethan moves toward her with one hand out before Mari can stop him.
“No, Ethan—”
Too late. One bare foot comes down on shattered glass. He cries out again, this time in pain. There is blood.
Blood, and the low, harsh panting of a dog’s breath. Four punctures in the back of her hand, but pain all over her. The dog growled, lunging again, and Mari didn’t take a second to think about it. She kicked, hitting it in the jaw. The side. The dog yelped and fled, but she stood with her wounded hand cradled against her and watched the blood spatter on the floor until everything tipped and turned and she ended up on the ground, her burning face pressed to the cool, smooth surface....
“Mama!”
Mari is no longer frozen. That long-ago time, those long-ago sounds and smells, don’t fade away. They simply vanish. Pushed aside as she leaps across glass to lift her boy.
She settles him on the kitchen island and plucks the shard from the sole of his foot. She twists to drop it in the sink, careful to avoid the glass on the floor with her own feet. Mari grabs a clean dishcloth from the drawer, folds it into thirds and presses it to the wound.
“It hurts,” Ethan says.
“Let me take a look.” Mari lifts the white cloth, stained now with red. The wound is oozing too much blood for her to get a good look, but it appears that the glass has sliced a long section of Ethan’s foot, and the skin is flapping across the cut.
“Shh,” she murmurs. Presses the cloth against the wound. “This might need stitches.”
She could do it herself, of course, but Ryan would frown on that. Taking Ethan to the hospital will take time and expense, and ultimately, nobody can do a better job at tending her child’s hurts than she can—but nevertheless, it’s not what’s done. Just like picking mushrooms from your yard, sewing up your son on the kitchen table is bound to lead to whispers and looks of the sort Mari should be used to, the way she’s accustomed to blood, but would like to avoid, anyway.
“Nooo!” Ethan wails, and she hushes him as the back door opens.
“Gross!” Kendra, incredibly, stops midtext to stand in the doorway and stare at the bloody, oily, eggy puddle on the floor.
“I cut myself,” Ethan offers through tears.
“I have to take him to the place where they fix people when it’s an urgency.” Mari says this matter-of-factly, but Kendra’s already blanching, turning her face. More like her dad than her mom, that’s for sure.
“Emergency,” Kendra corrects. “I think I’m gonna puke!”
“Text your dad, please,” Mari says. “Tell him I’ve taken Ethan to the hospital.”
“Do I have to go, too?”
Mari thinks, knowing she’s always been able to trust her daughter who might have a flair for drama but who’s still a good kid. “No. But nobody’s allowed to come over. Don’t answer the phone unless it’s me or Daddy. Don’t answer the door. Don’t use the stove.”
It’s a little overkill, but Mari’s not thinking quite straight. The smell of the blood is teasing her head into spinning again, and she blinks away the past. Focus. Focus. This is now, she thinks. I am here.
Kendra’s already tapping her dad’s number into her iPhone, a much-coveted birthday gift that never leaves her side. “Got it.”
“Mama? Will it hurt bad? The stitches?”
“Yes. But they’ll give you something so it doesn’t hurt so much.”
“A shot?” Ethan’s lower lip trembles; a bubble of clear snot forms in one nostril.
“Yes. A shot, probably.”
“Nooo!”
“You can have the shot, which will help the pain,” Mari says, “or you can choose to not have the shot and take the pain when they stitch you. Up to you, buddy.”
Other mothers coo and coddle. She knows this because she’s seen it on playgrounds with scraped knees and during playdates when her children played with other children and she was left to make conversation with their mothers. Other mothers tell “little white lies” to ease their children’s fears. Maybe those are better mothers than she is, Mari’s never sure. All she knows is that lying rarely ever serves any good purpose, and she’d personally rather know if there is going to be pain than be told not to expect it when it is surely coming.
Ethan is much like his mother. “Okay. I’ll take the shot.”
She hands him a tissue for his nose and calls out to Kendra, “Honey, don’t come in here until I get back, okay?”
“No worries! Gross!”
Mari laughs, shaking her head, and gives Ethan a wink. He smiles back. Mari finds her purse, her keys, her wallet with the insurance card inside. Ethan helps her wrap some masking tape around the dishcloth to keep it on his foot. Then she lifts her boy, his arms around her neck. She presses her face briefly to the sweet boy scent of his hair, closing her eyes. For now, he’s still hers.
FOUR
ALONE IN THE HOUSE.
Kendra couldn’t remember the last time she’d been here without someone else. The first thing she did was lock the doors. Kendra’s friends bragged about their parents leaving them alone and the sorts of things they got up to when they did. Most of it was bullshit. If the kids in her class did half as much drinking and messing around as they said they did, they’d all be in rehab or pregnant.
Some of it was true, though. Last week there’d been a party at Jordan Delano’s house, and three girls got so drunk they ended up posting naked selfies on ZendPix. So stupid and gross. But that was the sort of thing kids did when they were left alone. It seemed as if almost all the kids in her class had parents who both worked, or moms who, if they didn’t have jobs, spent a lot of time at the gym or getting massages and mani-pedis. Kendra had been in an accelerated private kindergarten, and was almost a year younger than the rest of her classmates. Most of them had already passed their driver’s tests. Lots of them drove brand-new cars, sixteenth birthday gifts meant to make up for the fact they were left to themselves so much, she thought.
Her dad would never buy her a car. He’d say she didn’t need one, not when she had her mom to take her where she needed to go. Kendra’s mom was almost always home. She’d never had a job. She didn’t volunteer for charity or politics. She didn’t spend hours on yard work or doing crafts, either. She cleaned a lot. And she cooked. She was always there when Kendra needed her, and when she didn’t, too.
Her mom didn’t get on her case about boys or clothes or even grades like Sammy’s mom did, always wanting to have “a talk” with Sammy, like she ever really listened. Kendra’s mom was always there for her, though, ready to listen. No matter what Kendra needed to say. She’d always liked that.
Other mothers wore designer clothes, or at least outfits that matched. Shirt, shoes, belt, purse. Kendra’s mom wore tank tops and sheer, flowing skirts, and the only time she wore shoes was if she had to. Her purse didn’t bulge with makeup or a hairbrush or coupons or anything like her friends’ mothers kept in their bags. Mari didn’t even wear
makeup. She was smaller than other mothers. Kendra had grown taller than her in sixth grade. And Mom didn’t care about a lot of stuff other moms did, like working out at the gym or going to church.
She was still more beautiful than any other mother, so much so that it was kind of embarrassing. Hard to live up to, too. There were times Kendra looked in the mirror at the mess of her face and wondered why she’d had to end up looking like her dad instead of her mother.
Her phone buzzed from her pocket. “Dad.”
“What happened?”
“Ethan cut his foot on some glass. Mom took him to the hospital.”
Dad sighed, and Kendra imagined him pinching the bridge of his nose with his eyes closed. “Shit. Is he okay?”
“There was blood everywhere.” Kendra made a face.
“Did she say she wanted me to meet her there?”
“I don’t know, Dad.” God, he could be so annoying. “Why don’t you call her and ask her?”
“I did. She didn’t pick up.”
“She’s probably okay,” Kendra said. Mom often forgot her phone or turned off the ringer. But her mom could handle just about anything, while it was another family truth left unspoken that her dad mostly...couldn’t. Or maybe just didn’t.
“Yeah. Well, if she calls, tell her I have some stuff I need to handle here and I’ll be home a little later.”
The call disconnected, and Kendra put her phone back in her pocket. Alone in the house, she thought, wishing for a second she was the sort of girl who’d invite everyone over for a party. Tear everything up, get wasted, make out with whoever she wanted. That’s what her dad might’ve done, she thought suddenly, when he was young. But not her mom. Her mom would’ve been good and done what was expected of her. And that’s what Kendra did, too.