Five minutes go by. He whispers, “You awake?”
“Yes.”
“What are you thinking?”
“You don’t want to know.”
I’m thinking about Heidi versus Peter Cottontail. That bunny, fluffy and clean, had to be someone’s escaped pet. That bunny’s aggressive behavior was shockingly unnatural. Just like your aggression. Maybe that bunny had been infected by an unknown virus. The same virus I caught from the bats.
Quit it, Grace. You’re off the deep end.
OK, maybe there was no virus, and the bunny was simply sick of being the victim.
“Have you thought about taking anti-anxiety meds?”
“I tried those. They make me too sleepy to manage work and life.”
“Goodnight,” he says, his breath warming my hair, and pulls me in tight. I expect his groin to kick into a rhythm again, but it doesn’t.
“You aren’t going to lecture me? You aren’t going to say, Maybe you can’t sleep because you take speed, meth head?”
“I tried that with my ex-wife.”
“She was a meth head?” I say, laughing.
“You know what I mean. The lecturing. Go to sleep.”
He slips his warm, rough hand up the back of my shirt and caresses my back with the same nonchalant, yet generous strokes I have laid upon Wyatt’s back. The anxious flutter in my chest settles. Even before James started rubbing my back, he eased me away from fatalistic neurosis and toward calm sanity. How did he do that?
“Goodnight,” he says again. I may actually be able to fall asleep soon. He is such a good man, this might go somewhere if I don’t mess it up. If my neighbor’s murder case goes cold soon.
But you don’t deserve him.
Shh, I tell myself.
But you promised you’d never let a man into their lives because you would always put them first and you are not naive enough to trust a man utterly and fully and completely with the kids.
Shh, I tell myself.
But you killed a man. With a hammer.
Shh, I tell myself.
I say, “You have to leave by seven because the kids will be home at seven-thirty.”
“I have to leave by six-thirty,” he says. “Work.”
56
PUT ON A DIAPER AND HEAD TO THE O.R.
Next morning, Liz and I sit on a bench, watching our kids on the playground, when Nate texts me.
-Call me as soon as you can.
My heart puts in a few extra beats. Oh no. The kids.
Why didn’t I get a call? I’m listed as the kids’ first emergency contact. Nate is second.
I check my phone to see if I missed a call earlier.
I didn’t.
“Emergency text,” I say to Liz, trying to remain calm, but I’m already sweaty and frantic. I call him as I walk toward the six-foot chain-linked fence that keeps the children caged and safely away from the parking lot and strangers. A minute ago, the warm sunshine and gentle breeze were soothing. Now the sun cuts too sharp, too harsh. My skin is burning. I shield my eyes.
“Grace?” Nate says.
“Yes, yes, what is it?” I expect the worst. One of them is dead. Choked to death on a grape. A pretzel. A ham sandwich. Chloe wandered away from daycare and was found dead against the curb.
“My mom broke her arm,” he says.
I laugh with relief, and cover my laugh with a cough. “She’s alright?”
“She’s fine, but she fell and she’s shaken up. You know my mom.”
I do. Snotty, country-club, golfing, thin, bejeweled, and perfectly coiffed Harriet. She excels at etiquette, party planning, and getting drunk on wine. Gushes over her two cats more than her only grandchildren.
“I’m sorry to hear about your mom. I’m working. Can I call you later?”
“Well, I was calling because she asked if I could bring Wyatt and Chlo to visit tonight and we’d spend the night,” he says, tentatively, because my mother-in-law has always been cold to me and isn’t much warmer toward my kids. I want to deny her to spite the bitch. I want him to beg and apologize for his mother’s character flaws.
I say, “Sure. Why not?”
Silence. He assumed he would have to beg. He clears his throat. “Are you sure? Wyatt would miss a half-day of school.”
“Actually, we don’t have school tomorrow. District day off. Even if he were to miss a day, it’s third grade. When do you want them ready?”
“Does five work?”
“Sure. See you then.”
I end the call and text James.
-Nate is taking the kids tonight. 5pm. Unexpected. Come over when you get off work.
I sit next to Liz and set my phone on the bench.
“Your people safe?” she says.
“I thought someone died, but my ex-mom-in-law broke her arm.”
“You only wish she died.”
“You’re evil.”
“Yeah, and I’m right.”
Izzy is climbing the slide and Mateo’s at the top, ready to blast her with his Buzz Lightyear gym shoes. I rush over while telling Mateo to wait. He doesn’t, of course. He’s three and he’s got a wisp of a mean streak in him that, over the next five years, will either be easily snuffed or stoked. I pick up Izzy as Mateo’s sneakers come whooshing down.
“Izzy, we only go down slides. Not up. We slide down. Mateo, when someone asks you to wait, you wait nicely. Like a statue, remember, hon?” I say hon for my benefit, to solicit sweet feelings. They say smiling makes you happy. Talking sweetly has to do something.
When I sit beside Liz again, she says, “It’s not cocaine then.”
“Huh?”
She points to the text waiting on the screen of my phone. James.
-My lucky day. See you at 6pm. I’ll wear my gray T-shirt.
I smile.
“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me,” she says, her voice silky as usual, but the jagged edges of irritation lie just under the smooth surface. “I’ve been worried about you. The crazy situation with your neighbor. I mean, murder? Fuck. Seriously? And you were avoiding talking to me. Shit. I can’t believe you didn’t tell me.”
“Just happened.”
“Just happened, my ass,” she says, a smile sliding into her voice. She’s already forgiven me. “Tell me about the gray T-shirt. Tell me how good he is.”
“No.”
“Let me live vicariously, you stingy bitch,” she laughs. “This old vagina is retired, but it can still dream.”
“Good God, for the sake of the children. You know Tabby will go home and tell her mom Miss Liz’s vagina is retired, and we will both get fired. Besides, no one is making your body retire. Go get some of your own.”
“Sex isn’t worth the hassle of having a man hanging around. I don’t need another one to feed and pamper, I got grandchildren coming out of my ears,” she says. Liz’s second husband died a decade ago. Heart attack. “Well, at least that gray T-shirt explains you having your head in the clouds and losing weight. I thought you were lit on drugs.”
“You didn’t.”
“You’ve been weird, Grace. Even before the murder.”
“You think?”
“Beaming and excited one day, quiet and spacey the next. And you’ve been blinking a lot. Almost like a tic. I figured you had allergies, but then I figured it was your lack of sleep. You said you had insomnia. Then I thought you might be losing it over your neighbor’s murder. Mostly I figured it was drugs.”
“Why didn’t you try to put me in rehab?”
She turns her upper body toward me stiffly and raises her eyebrows. “What?”
“I can’t believe you thought I was abusing and you didn’t intervene.” I’m joking, but I mean it.
“Seriously? Don’t be so damn needy.” She’s joking, but she means it too.
My eyes check the playground, searching for signs of stressful body language. The goal is to perceive the slightest suggestions of friction and intercept the conflict before it lands.
Slide to sandbox to tricycles, these small bodies and minds appear free and light-hearted. Still I keep my eyes vigilant because children are unpredictable as wolverines: territorial, clumsy, and always hungry.
“You’re right,” I say. “I’m needy.” I scoot closer to her and weave my arm under hers, take her hand in mine, and lay my head on her shoulder.
She squeezes my hand. “I still love you.”
Did Nate think I was too needy?
No. He thought you cold and secretive.
Well, can’t argue with secretive.
Please. Five times.
How many times have you had sex with James?
It’s different. Nate and I are divorced.
Yeah, but it feels the same, doesn’t it? Feels kind of even, don’t you think?
“Have you talked to Susan today?” I say. “I thought the police were getting ready to make an arrest.”
“No, I haven’t seen her today. Who knows? Maybe she’s full of shit.”
* * *
Hours later Wyatt and I sit on the front porch, waiting. I run my fingers through his hair. “You need a haircut, brother.”
He pulls away a little. “I like it long.”
“OK.” I rub his back. I love his sleek shirt under my fingers.
Late afternoon is warm and golden, but storm clouds are approaching from the south. Air is thick with ragweed and fatty burgers smoking on the grill. Flowers and weeds are late-summer wild and straggly because most people have forfeited the fight. I never started fighting. No point to it now. Autumnal equinox is days away. Cool fall air lurks, waiting to descend. The plummeting of temperature, the yellowing of leaves, always feels so sudden.
“I love summer,” I say.
“I can’t wait for snow,” Wyatt says.
“That’s because you’re nuts.”
Chloe, five feet away, on all fours on the driveway, has spotted an ant. She tries smashing it with her finger. Reminds me of Ethan Boone squashing that ant with his shoe. Poor Ethan Boone. Poor Ava.
“Chloe, we don’t kill bugs outside. This is where the ant lives. You’re a guest in his house.”
Wyatt, blurts, “Of course she kills bugs. She’s Chloe. She’s a murderer. That’s what she does.”
“Wyatt. Don’t use the M word. You used to kill ants too. Little kids don’t know better.”
No one ever called me a “murderer” my entire life. At three, Chloe has heard her brother label her “murderer” a half-dozen times.
When she’s grown, will she remember that her only sibling, someone who knew her well, occasionally characterized her as a murderer? Will the words slowly sharpen and harden until, at some point in her teens or twenties, they splinter her self-perceived sense of goodness and she begins to doubt she is worthy and deserving of love?
Don’t blow up. Bring them back to calm. I rub Wyatt’s back again, but he shrugs me away.
“Why not kill it?” she says lightly, offhand, as if she is justifying every convicted killer locked away by the courts.
Calmly, I say, “He’s alive like you and me.”
She gives the ants a break and looks directly at me. “But he’s not like you and me.” She’s not being snotty, she’s being philosophical.
“He’s not hurting anyone,” I say. “He’s hunting for food or going for a nice walk.”
“But maybe he’s going to hurt someone,” she says. That she’s making a case to kill a dangerous entity before it can harm leaves me breathless.
Wyatt giggles. “Yeah, Mom, he might be planning an attack on a pill bug. He might be a mean ant.” At least he’s back to calm.
“Thanks, Wyatt.”
Shade descends upon the driveway, and I gaze upward. A row of stacked storm clouds cuts fast through the blue sky. Whoever’s grilling burgers better wrap it up.
“Squashed him,” she says. “Two points.”
The random, aimless, and heartless slaughter of countless bugs at the hands of toddlers has always bothered me. Irritation is popping under my skin.
Nate’s car pulls up. I sigh and say, “How about a kiss for an old lady.”
Chloe charges me with open arms and wraps me tight. She gives me a kiss on the lips, makes a kissing sound effect, and licks my cheek. She lets me go and runs to Nate. In the wake of her love attack, my nose, right breast, and neck twinge in pain.
Wyatt laughs and gives me one of his reluctant, disgusted, pulling-away, this-is-torture-for-him hugs, but then licks me on the cheek too.
“You’re both worse than Hulk.”
Wyatt runs to Nate’s car.
Once the kids are buckled, Nate walks up the driveway. “Thanks again.” He throws me a shy smile, and it hits like a baseball. Fast, and it stings. He’s so clean cut, so handsome. It’s no wonder nurses pull down their ugly scrub pants for him. Standing four feet away, gazing at me, he says, “Are you seeing someone?”
“No,” I answer quickly, and regret I answered at all. I don’t owe him an answer. I wish I were standing.
He takes a deep breath. As if anything is difficult for him. “You can say no, but I was wondering—”
I want to fall into his arms in a heap, in one big exhale, and say, Yes. Whatever you are willing to give, the answer is yes. I want his arms around me. I want him to pay my bills. I want a partner, someone to balance my crazy with his own crazy, someone to talk me down. I want the father of my children to take care of us, the yard, and the ratty house. I want him to brush away my tears and to love me when I look like shit because I gave him children.
“No,” I say simply.
He half-laughs, lifts his shoulders, and lets them fall. “I miss you. I miss us. All four of us. I guess I already told you that.”
I bite my lip. I am trembling with a toxic mix of desire, guilt, and rage.
Speak carefully. Don’t let him drag the worst out of you.
The worst of me wants to be dragged out. Craves it. It is filthy and gnarly and oozing with nasty, panting anticipation. It is waiting for me to weaken and slip the key into its cage so it can free itself.
He’s only missing me because he thinks I might be dating. I quickly granted him the kids this evening, and he hadn’t expected that. He thinks someone else might actually want me, and I might be worth more than he figured. He has probably noticed I’m thinner, I have an after-sex glow about me, and he’s being drawn in superficially. He’s probably not even aware of why he’s drawn to me.
I want to shred his ego. I want to tell him that a hot cop is fucking me, that he can’t keep away.
Are you sure you’re not making shit up about Nate? He said he missed you at Burger King, and he didn’t say it because he thought you were dating. He’s a good guy, you know.
“I was so happy with plain,” I say and find I can’t say anymore. Maybe because it’s all that needs to be said. I breathe deep. Air is moist and loamy. Rain is coming.
“I know. I know. I was too, but,” he sighs, “God, I wish I didn’t fuck up.” His eyes shift and lose their confident doctor veneer. “I’m working through some medical school stuff with my therapist, and, well, I think it’s helping.”
I’m surprised at his mention of medical school, but I guess I shouldn’t be. Nate once told me doctors commit suicide twice as often as non-doctors. Most medical students start out young and burning with a desire to help, but school and residency bully and torture them with sleep and food deprivation and other cruel devices.
When Nate was a first-year intern, the stomach flu hit him hard when he was at the hospital. During a brief intermission from his uncontrollable diarrhea, he sought out the resident surgeon and asked to go home. The resident chewed him out for taking holiday in the bathroom and told him to “put on a diaper and head to the O.R.”
Nate didn’t, of course. Too confident for intimidation. That’s probably how he made it through med school and emerged intact.
Good doctors also worry about misdiagnosing their patients. Intellectual doctors often question thei
r own utility. Combine that deep worry and abuse with access to medication and the uncanny knowledge about how to kill themselves in a tidy, efficient manner: bam, they are suicides waiting to happen.
“I was hard on you,” he says. “Judgmental. Like my parents. I’m working on that. Grace?” His gaze drops to the grass, the weeds sprouting everywhere, and the dead branches that need picking up. “Do you think people can change? Do you think people can make terrible mistakes, but then decide to change, and then never make those mistakes again?”
How can I say no? Saying no would be giving up on myself.
“I hope so, but I’m not sure.”
Chloe yells from the car, “Daddy! What’s taking you? We’ve waited hours. This is too long to be true!”
“I’d better go,” he says, his eyes liquid and warm. “I will have them back tomorrow morning by ten.” He turns away and takes a few steps toward his car, but turns back. “Possibly by eight.” This he says in case I am dating someone, to keep me on my toes.
Asshole.
Or maybe he is possessive because he loves you.
Or maybe he means “possibly by eight”.
A fat raindrop bursts on my arm and another hits my cheek. Slow, meaty, warning drops. As if the clouds all split, rain comes fast. I scurry into the house, but my arms are already shower-damp. Safe behind the screen door, I watch Nate back out with my precious cargo.
Chloe calls out her open car window, her voice casual and upbeat, “Don’t get hit by lightning and get dead, Mommy.”
“I won’t,” I yell.
Wyatt stands and leans over to roll up her window as Nate’s back tires drop onto the street.
Worry pokes tiny holes in my heart. I always worry when they are not with me. Chloe is afraid of thunderstorms. Will Nate say the right words to calm her, make her laugh, and make her forget about the scary storm? Will Nate remind Wyatt to buckle back up? Wyatt always forgets to buckle up. It is raining—no, pouring—they have an hour drive on the highway, and Wyatt will forget his seatbelt. Dread tightens its fist in my gut.
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