She recalled those early-morning sprints to the bathroom while pregnant with Christopher, how she’d both loved and hated throwing up—loved that it meant that the baby was growing, hated that her life had been taken over. There is no turning back, she’d thought every time she crouched over the toilet and lost her breakfast. This is happening, she’d thought then.
But she knew it wasn’t happening now. She thought of the conversations she’d had with Everett lately about Christopher getting bigger, how he felt they should start trying again. “Remember how long it took?” Everett had pressed last week. As if she could forget.
How could she tell her husband she couldn’t do it again? That she wanted Christopher to be their only child? Could he ever understand or accept that? Would he still love her if she just said a firm, nonnegotiable no?
As if reading her thoughts, Everett asked, “You’re thinking about what we talked about, aren’t you?” He gave her that enticing grin, the one that could coax her into just about anything. It had been that way since they were in ninth grade and he’d talked her into making out that one time during night games in someone’s front yard, the other kids playing freeze tag and hide-and-seek in the dark, their disembodied voices calling out from the darkness.
She’d strolled by that very spot just yesterday, now pushing their son in his stroller as she walked their elderly neighbor’s dog. Another family lived in that house now, one of a string of families occupying and abandoning the house everyone called “the eyesore.” But she could still remember the way the house looked before the renters began destroying it. She could remember a lot about this neighborhood she’d called home all her life.
She had not gone far, geographically speaking, yet she’d gone to lengths she’d never thought herself capable of. She thought of her solitary visit to the doctor’s office, of the things she’d had to do after. She would never do those things again. Another child wasn’t in the cards for them, and that was all there was to it. Now she only had to make her husband understand her resistance without explaining just how deep it ran.
Everett was looking at her, watching in his wary way. “What do I have to do to convince you that this”—he gestured to Christopher sitting in his little booster seat, a ring of chocolate coating his mouth—“is a very good idea? We can’t have too much of this.”
The bite of donut she’d forced herself to take turned to glue in her mouth. She took a gulp of her coffee, feeling the mass lodge in her throat, making it hard to speak. “Christopher was a very good idea.” She glanced at her son as she said it, ready to give him a wink. But he wasn’t listening, engrossed in driving a toy car through the sprinkles that had fallen off his donut. She continued, “But one’s a gracious plenty right now. I mean, we’ve also talked about that e-mail from work wanting me to come back, and with him starting preschool in the fall . . .” She picked at what remained on her plate, scattering more sprinkles onto the table as she did. She could not look Everett in the eye.
“Mommy, you are making a mess,” her son observed. He pointed at the colorful sprinkles now scattered across the table and began attempting to get out of his booster seat, ostensibly to clean up her mess. She watched as Everett stopped him, settling him with soothing words and promises that Mommy would take care of it. She met Everett’s eyes and blinked back her understanding. Taking care of things was her job.
JENCEY
Jencey swung into the McDonald’s parking lot and navigated the huge SUV into a narrow parking space, throwing the vehicle into park with a flourish, projecting a confidence she didn’t possess. She turned around to find two pairs of wide eyes blinking back at her, the looks on her children’s faces akin to the time she took them to the circus—incredulity with a trace of fear. “You guys hungry?” she asked.
“We’re . . . eating here?” Pilar, her older daughter, asked.
“Sure!” she said. She tried to keep her voice light, breezy. “Let’s go see what they have.”
Pilar rolled her eyes, trying out her newfound tween attitude. “Mom, it’s McDonald’s. They have burgers.”
“And french fries!” Zara, her younger daughter, added. She leaned forward, lowering her voice as if she were going to tell a secret. “Can we get french fries?”
“Sure!” Jencey replied. She opened her door, throwing the interior light on as she did, the glow of it emphasizing her daughters’ faces in contrast to the oncoming night. Everything that’s precious to me is in this car, she thought. “We can even get milk shakes!” She waved at them to follow her and climbed out of the car.
Pilar opened her door just a crack and gave Jencey a look that reminded her so much of Arch she had to look away. She fiddled with stowing her keys in her purse, right beside the roll of money Arch had hidden for her. She would have to use some of it to pay for this dinner. It was all the money she had left in the world. “Mom,” she heard Pilar say, her tone parental, “you never let us have McDonald’s.”
She turned back. “Well, there’s a first time for everything, now isn’t there?” She began walking, trusting that the girls would follow her. They did.
Inside, they took their places in line. She scanned the menu, tried to remember what she used to get at McDonald’s back when she and Bryte considered it a treat to go there. They used to get the hot fudge sundaes, she recalled. With nuts. She scanned the board and found that they still served them. This brought her an inordinate amount of comfort. Some things didn’t change. She wondered if Sycamore Glen had.
Zara tugged at Jencey’s elbow to get her attention. She looked down. “Yes?”
“Were you serious about the milk shake?” she whispered.
Jencey laughed. “I was totally serious,” she whispered back. She tried to catch Pilar’s eye, but her daughter was ignoring her. She was angry about having to leave her home, her friends, her life behind. Jencey didn’t blame her. She was angry, too. Angry and sad.
She thought of Arch behind the glass partition that had separated them, his mouth moving as his voice came through the phone. “You have no idea,” he’d said. “No idea at all what it took to keep all of it up.” His spittle had hit the glass, leaving a pattern, a constellation. “I did it for you!” he’d added, as if she were somehow complicit in his crimes. She’d turned then, hung up the phone that connected them, and walked away. If he’d said anything else, she hadn’t heard it.
Zara ordered a chocolate milk shake, and Jencey added, “Make that three!” her voice full of false cheer. Pilar started to argue about the milk shake, but she gave her a look to silence her. We need this, she wordlessly implored her oldest. Play along.
The cashier rang up their total, and she counted out the money to pay for it. A penny got away from her and rolled lazily along the counter until it fell to the sticky floor at the cashier’s feet. The girl blinked at her from underneath a brown visor, managing to look both bored and busy as she waited for that last cent. Jencey handed over another penny. Her life before hadn’t included pennies.
After their so-called dinner and a quick stop at a nearby station for gas, they got back on the road. She intended to drive straight through to her parents’ house as the girls slept, the highway numbers changing from 95 to 40 to 85. She used to know how the highways were numbered, and now she tried to remember. Were the odd numbers for east to west or north to south? It had to be odd for north to south. Fitting: odd numbers for this odd journey from one former home to another. She thought of the home she’d left behind, the yellow crime-scene tape barring her from ever having access to it again.
JUNE 2014
ZELL