Small Animals

by Kim Brooks

  “Zoloft,” I said. “Should I go get my full medical file, Mom?”

  “It is what it is. She gets it from me. The women in our family, our brains are short on serotonin.”

  “They’re short on something,” I said.

  “What are you worried about, Kimmy?” asked Priya, another friend. “And what’s the opening suit? Hearts?”

  “Spades.”

  “She worries about the kids,” my mother answered for me. “She obsesses over them. Speech therapy, occupational therapy, social therapy. If they had any more therapy, they’d be in an institution. And that’s just the beginning. After that there’s the baby sign language, the breastfeeding on demand, the co-sleeping, the mommy-and-me classes. Baby monitors all over the house. I’m afraid to fart. Then she’s schlepping them to calculus for two-year-olds, baby language immersion, yoga. Yoga! Because it’s good for them. Why does a three-year-old need to take a yoga class?”

  “This is what they’re all doing,” said Priya. “The same with my grandchildren. Enrichment. Lots of enrichment.”

  “Why does a two-year-old need to be enriched? Can’t they be enriched by digging in a sandbox the way we were?”

  “It’s good I’m old,” said Dana. “Just hearing about this makes me anxious. I wouldn’t have made it. I think I was an A mother in the eighties. Now I’d be like a C. It’s different than when we were doing it. We were involved. We were invested. But there were limits. It’s changed now.”

  “Changed from when we were children too,” said Priya.

  My mother laughed. “I don’t think I saw my parents that much. When I was ten, they bought me a moped and I used to ride around Albany with my little brother on the back. That was that.”

  “In India, we had servants,” said Priya. “It was a special treat to see my parents. Holidays. Birthdays. Jack of spades.”

  I watched my mother as she stuck a cracker into a bowl of whitefish salad, nibbled, shuffled, dealt. She’d gotten her nails done. Her hair too. I had to admit it: She looked good. Having her two daughters all grown up and living in distant states had done wonders for her mood and health. She’d lost weight, started exercising, gotten her blood pressure down and her spirits up. It struck me for the ten millionth time in my life how strange it was, how wildly unlikely, that this particular woman, this distinctive human sitting before me of all the humans on earth, should be my mother, the woman from whose body and soul I sprang. She ate more whitefish, brushed a crumb from her mouth. The round of bridge was over, so she got up from the table, carried a tray of veggies to the counter to be replenished. “You like the kitchen’s new backsplash, Kimmy?” she asked as she passed.

  She pointed to the silver polymer behind the stove. It was plastic, but it sparkled like quartz.

  “Sure,” I said.

  “You could have such a big kitchen if you lived in the suburbs. Why don’t you and Pete get out of the city?”

  “We like the city.”

  “You could have more space. A big yard. A garage. Good public schools.”

  “Maybe,” I said.

  “An easier life,” she added.

  “I like things hard,” I said.

  I dipped a carrot into the bowl of briny mayo, wondering momentarily where my mother managed to find whitefish salad in central Virginia. In a land of smoked ham, we always had smoked salmon. While others ate biscuits and gravy and cobblers and collard greens, our house was stocked with rye bread and chopped liver and borscht. This was not because my mother kept kosher but rather because she was … my mother. She’d lived in Virginia thirty years but was still a Jewish girl from Albany who saw no need to change. No wonder I strove to be her inverse, a chameleon who blended into any background.

  “It’s true,” my mother said. “You always have liked to do things the difficult way. You’ve never trusted anything easy.”

  “Thanks, Mom.”

  “Oh, leave her alone,” Dana said. “She’s a writer. Writers are supposed to be tortured.”

  “Tortured! What does she have to be tortured about? She worries too much. That’s all.”

  “Is that true, Kimmy?” Dana asked.

  “I enjoy worrying. It’s my main hobby.”

  My mother gave me a look, but offered no further comment. “Are you still doing Weight Watchers?” she asked instead. “You look good.”

  I thought, not for the first time in my life, that every time I came home to visit, no matter how long I stayed, it was always one day too long. “I’m enormous,” I answered. “I’ve never been bigger.”

  She sighed, patted my shoulder as she walked past me in the kitchen. “It’s hard to take care of yourself when you’re taking care of everyone else.”

  * * *

  The next day, I drove Felix to Target. It was a few miles from my parents’ house, but it was nearly identical to the one in Chicago where I’d been shopping on a biweekly basis since Felix was born. All through our long winter, I found myself lured there by its covered parking garage, its cart-lifting escalator, its enormous family restroom, and the SUV-sized kid-carrying carts. Here was a corporation making life easy on a mom—a mom who wanted to buy its products. Navigating so many of the city’s public places and crowded spaces with children and their accompanying equipment felt like walking on the moon. Strollers didn’t fit. The babies’ cries echoed. Changing tables were broken or fetid or nonexistent. It was only when I got pregnant that I noticed that my favorite neighborhood café had a passive-aggressive sign on its front door: BABIES AND CHILDREN MUST BEHAVE AND USE INSIDE VOICES. When I pushed the stroller up a ramp outside the Art Institute, a woman in a wheelchair waved her fist at me and told me I should be ashamed of myself. I felt awful, but also exasperated. So many places I went with my babies, the message seemed the same: You’re not really wanted here, but if you come anyway, don’t expect any help. But not at Target. At Target, everything was easy. Target loved new mothers, even with our screaming charges and unwieldy gear, even with (especially with) our anxiety and boredom and expendable cash. I’d once shunned chain stores, shopped local, and supported small businesses. By the time my daughter was born, Target was my second home. I’ll be a good person again when I have more time, I said to myself.

  And so, though I was hundreds of miles away from home, nothing about that Target felt foreign. “Be a good boy,” I told my son, promising I’d be gone only a minute. I jogged across the parking lot and moved quickly through the store, on automatic pilot, easily orienting myself to the slightly altered layout from the store in Chicago—kids’ merchandise to the left, electronics in the back. Headphones, headphones, headphones. I glanced toward the wide, glass-paneled entrance. I could see the car. In my mind, I could see Felix playing. I hurried past groceries and handbags, found electronics.

  “Can I help you?” a salesperson asked.

  “Headphones?”

  She pointed to the next aisle. There were at least forty brands: black headphones and pink headphones, earbuds and noise-canceling devices, top-of-the-line and ten-buck cheapies. But where were the kind I needed? I scanned top to bottom, left to right. I don’t wear a watch, but there was a clock on the wall. Or did I look at my phone? Two or three minutes had passed. I tried to find the salesperson who had approached me a moment before, but she wasn’t around now. There was a woman behind the display case, talking to another customer. I looked for someone else, considered giving up, then I saw them: the padded kind my son preferred. One pair left on the far bottom corner. I grabbed them, didn’t bother to look at the price. On the way to the register, I passed the grocery aisle and picked up two cereal bars to toss into my purse for the plane ride. There was only one customer ahead of me in line. The cashier scanned her items with impossible slowness while I looked at the packages of gum and breath mints and batteries and toys. If Felix was with me, he’d be begging for candy. Through the sliding doors of the store’s entrance, I could see the car, could see the blurred outline of my son.

  “Sorry, w
as there a price on this?” the cashier asked the woman ahead of me.

  “I’m not sure. Five dollars?”

  “You don’t remember?”

  “I think it was five. I can’t be sure.”

  She picked up the phone beside the register. “I’m going to need a price check.”

  I took a deep breath, exhaled, craned my neck. I could still see the car.

  “You know what,” the woman said. “I’m gonna skip it. I’ll pick it up next time.” I wanted to kiss her.

  “Are you sure? It’ll only take a minute,” the clerk asked. I wanted to hit her.

  “I’m sure.”

  At last I was up. I swiped my Visa, declined the offer to save 5 percent. No need for a bag. Thanks, thanks. Then I was jogging. The doors slid open. The wind blew my hair. A cool March day. My mother’s minivan right where I left it. In it, the boy.

  “Hi, you little boy,” I said as I settled into my seat.

  “Hi,” he said, still playing his game. I tossed the headphones onto the passenger seat and put the keys in the ignition, took a deep breath, glanced in the rearview, over my shoulder, then backed out slowly, the windows still open.

  * * *

  I’ve replayed this moment in my mind again and again, approaching the car, getting in, looking, pulling out. I replay it, trying to uncover something in the recollection I hadn’t noticed at the time. A voice. A face. Sometimes I feel like I can hear something. A woman? A man? “Bye now.” Something. But I can’t be sure.

  We drove back to my parents’ house. My mother was cooking and talking on the phone. My daughter was awake in her crib with a diaper full of poop. I changed her, gave her a bottle, gave her to my mother while I loaded up the car, shoved the headphones and enough snacks for a caravan across the Mojave into my diaper bag.

  “All set?” my mom asked.

  “Have I ever told you how much I hate flying?” I said to her while I hoisted my suitcase into the trunk.

  “You didn’t used to,” she said. “As a kid, you weren’t afraid of anything.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I remember.”

  Then we were on our way.

  * * *

  We landed. We deplaned. We schlepped through O’Hare, a place where the only form of movement permitted is schlepping, and eventually, eventually, found ourselves in the baggage claim.

  Pete usually picked us up in the carpool lane outside, so I was surprised when we stepped off the elevator between baggage carousels and I saw him waiting. The kids both ran to him. I straggled up behind them, dragging the equipment. Then I came forward and hugged him, pressed my face against his beard and felt pure and genuine relief at the sensation. It was funny, these moments, these flickers of uncompromised feeling. For more than four years, there’d been no more him and no more me. There was only us. And mostly them. But occasionally, coming back from a few days away, I’d notice the kinds of things I used to notice all the time in our childless years—the particularities of his face, his skin, his gestures—small qualities that made me love him.

  Felix tugged on our arms, smiling, but Pete hardly looked at him. Something was different. Something was wrong.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Call your mom,” he said.

  “Why? What happened?”

  “Just call her. The kids and I will wait for the bags.”

  I stood next to the wall and dialed. When she answered, she was crying.

  “What is it?” I asked her. “Calm down. I can’t understand you.”

  After a few seconds, my father took the phone. He told me that about ten minutes after my mother arrived home from dropping us at the airport, a police officer pulled into the driveway and came up the porch. When she opened the door, he held up a picture on his phone. “Is this you?” he asked. “The person in this picture … it’s you, isn’t it?”

  “It’s not me,” she said.

  “Who is it then? It’s your car. Can you identify this person?”

  “It’s my daughter,” she said, and started to panic. She thought something must have happened. An accident at the airport. A bomb.

  “Is she here?” the officer asked.

  “No, she’s…”

  “I need you to tell me where to find her.”

  “My husband will be home in an hour. Can you come back then?”

  At that point, the officer told her she had two choices. She could tell him where to find me or he could put her in the back of his car and arrest her for obstructing justice. She began to cry. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I have no idea what this is about, but if you don’t have a warrant, I’m waiting here for my husband.” Then she closed the door in his face.

  * * *

  I followed Pete and the kids to the car. We loaded the suitcases, collapsed the stroller, reinstalled the car seats. We didn’t talk. I felt like I couldn’t move. It was early evening, close to the kids’ bedtime. We’d thought the kids would fall asleep, but sensing the tension, they sat wide awake. I don’t remember how far we’d driven when I realized there was a voice message on my phone. The message was from a police officer calling from Virginia. “I’m trying to get ahold of Mrs. Kimberly A. Brooks. I need to speak with Mrs. Brooks about an incident this afternoon in a parking lot. Please contact me as soon as you receive this message.” By the time we were nearing our exit on the Kennedy, the kids had finally dozed off. Pete was driving and I was shaking, trying not to panic, trying to figure out what to do. I started to dial the number the officer had left on the voice message, then stopped.

  I dropped the phone back onto my lap and stared out the window. Car rides were more dangerous than flying, yet I’d always found them calming. When I was a baby, my parents used to drive in circles around our subdivision to get me to sleep. Even now, it was soothing, the soft darkness around the highway, the streaks of headlights and taillights, white on red, the familiar, almost transparent motion.

  The phone hummed on my lap. It was the Virginia number again. Pete just looked at me, a look that said … I don’t know what it said, but it wasn’t good.

  “I think I fucked up,” I said to Pete, without turning away from the window.

  He reached out and silenced the phone. Then he asked what he’d probably wanted to ask since the moment he saw me come out of the airport elevator. “What happened?”

  * * *

  Once we were home, Pete carried the kids up to their bedroom, walked the dog, emptied the dishwasher, made tomorrow’s lunches—saw to all the domestic minutiae that make up our days—while I tried to piece together what had happened.

  Eventually a picture emerged of someone—a man, a woman—who had seen me run into the store, leaving Felix in the car. That person had recorded him there, alone, and called the police. But before the police arrived, I had returned to the car. The person had watched me—us—leave. The person had waited there, explained to the police what had transpired, handed over the recording and the license plate number.

  Late in the evening, I reached an attorney. My father-in-law had recommended I call a friend of his, a criminal lawyer. When I reached him, I thanked him for talking to me so late, and explained as best I could the unfolding of events. He told me that if the prosecutor decided to press charges, I’d need to find a lawyer in Virginia, someone who really knew the local system, but in the meantime, he was happy to return the call to the police officer to explain the situation.

  “That would be wonderful,” I said. “What is the situation, exactly?”

  “The situation is that you’re a regular, responsible, attentive suburban mother who let her kid wait in the car while she ran into a store to get one item, which you shouldn’t have done. But you weren’t thinking, and you did it, and your kid is fine. No pattern of neglect. No history of abuse. No criminal record. No problem with drugs. It was a lapse in judgment. A momentary lapse in judgment. Is that about right?”

  “Right!” I said. “A lapse in judgment.”

  “There’s nothing y
ou’ve forgotten to tell me, is there?”

  “Nothing,” I promised. “I mean, I don’t live in the suburbs, but…”

  “Never mind that.”

  He told me he’d call me back in twenty minutes. It was well past working hours, but as a friend of the family’s, he wanted to help. Two hours later, I was still sitting at the dining room table, staring at a glass of wine, waiting for the phone to ring. Pete had fallen asleep. The washer and dryer were grumbling downstairs. I sat at the table, folding and unfolding a paper napkin. The living room was messy. It was always messy. I surveyed the objects scattered across the floor without getting up to put them away. There was a purple barrette, a lint roller, a handful of Duplo LEGOs, a tube of diaper cream, a baby nail clipper, a baby blanket, a pillowcase, a National Geographic Little Kids magazine, a battery-operated talking globe, and seventeen stuffed animals. I could pick them up, but the next morning, they’d be back on the floor. What was the difference? Why bother? I couldn’t come up with an answer, so I just sat there sipping my wine and thinking about every mistake, every oversight, every miscalculation I’d made during my four years as a parent.

  At twenty-five, I’d opted to have a breast reduction, though I knew it might one day compromise my milk supply. Three years later, before I knew I was pregnant, I drank two glasses of champagne at a New Year’s Eve party, with Felix’s little tadpole fetus tipsy inside me. As soon as I knew he was there, I stopped drinking alcohol and coffee, forswore sushi and cold cuts and all things unpasteurized; but after long deliberation, I chose to stay on my antidepressant, prioritizing my own mental health over the risk to his development. And still, there was more. I wanted to have a natural childbirth, to have his entry into the world take place in a candlelit tub of warm water and rose petals, to give him the gentlest, calmest, quietest arrival. Instead, I ended up with my legs half numb and hoisted in the air, feeling him crown as my first epidural wore off and I screamed for someone, anyone, to kill me. I wanted to co-sleep, to bond with this little precious creature all through the night, but he had colic and wailed the first eight weeks of his life, and I, teetering on the edge of sleep-deprivation-induced psychosis, sleep-trained him before the fourth month. I had hoped that the first year of his life would be filled with love and music and long walks in nature and interesting nonplastic toys and baby-mommy swim classes, but he was sickly, so instead the days passed in a haze of nebulizer treatments, antibiotics, oral steroids, and ear tubes. I wanted to be a devoted stay-at-home mother until he started kindergarten, but after only six months, I realized that if I went one more week without working or using my brain, I’d stick my head in the oven, so I put him in day care three afternoons a week to begin work on a novel.