A Lady Under Siege

5

Meghan awoke and felt her face wet with tears. She stumbled downstairs to the kitchen in a trance, opened the refrigerator and squatted there, grabbing anything that came to hand—pita bread, grapes, a block of cheddar— stuffing bits from all of them into her mouth. Ravenous, she yanked the lid from a half litre of yogurt and tipped it up to her lips to suck at its runny thickness. Yogurt dribbled down her chin.

“What are you doing?”

Her daughter Betsy, in pyjamas, stood barefoot on the cold kitchen floor, taking in the sight of her mother tearing at food like a stray dog. Meghan instantly became self-conscious, thinking how strange she must look at this moment. She wiped her face and mouth with her sleeve, and put the yogurt back in the fridge without its lid.

“I—I woke up starving,” she said.

Betsy picked the yogurt lid off the floor and set it on the counter. “Dreaming your dream again?”

Meghan nodded.

“What happened this time?”

Meghan tried to say it calmly: “Her husband died.” She felt weak. She closed the fridge door and slumped with her back against the cabinets below the counter. “He died. Oh God. He died,” she whimpered. Tears welled in her eyes. She tried—and failed—to hide them from her daughter.

“You’re scaring me,” Betsy said.

“Don’t be scared. It’s just a silly dream,” she lied. It was more vivid and intensely felt than any dream she’d ever known, and the strange, painful emotions of grief and loss that gripped her now were a token of its power. But for her daughter’s sake, she attempted a light tone. “As if I don’t have enough going on in my life, I’ve got to cry over someone else’s.”

Betsy got herself a bowl and some cereal from the cupboard. “If the husband is dead, then the siege should be finished, right? And that’s good, right?”

Drying her face with the back of her hand, Meghan said, “It would be good if I stopped dreaming.”

Betsy stepped over her to get to the fridge. “I need milk.” Pushing at Meghan’s leg with her foot to make room for herself, she looked down at her mother, all puffy-eyed and distracted.

“Are you going crazy?” she asked.

“What? No—why? Don’t think that.”

“Daddy said he left because you were driving him crazy. But maybe it was ’cause I drove him crazy. And now I’m driving you crazy.”

“No, no, no,” Meghan protested. She pulled herself together, stood up, rinsed yogurt and tears from her hands at the sink, then came to Betsy. She straightened a loose strand of her daughter’s hair.

“Your father is full of it, which is one of many reasons he doesn’t live with us anymore. I’ll have to talk to him about how he’s explaining things to you. And you’d better eat up quick or it’ll end up being the usual sprint to school.”

“Pro D day,” she said.

“Shit.”

“I told you.”

“I forgot. I’ll have to juggle.” She thought for a moment. “I can get away with working here most of the day,” she said. These days she actually preferred it. Working from home gave her a break from the toxicity of office gossip. She was an illustrator and graphic designer with a well-known book imprint, part of a publishing conglomerate that was by all accounts teetering on the verge of financial ruin. “I’ve got one meeting this morning first thing I can’t cancel,” she remembered. “Hopefully I’ll be gone a couple of hours, max. That’s the one positive thing I can say about this house—I’m so much closer to work here. But we’ll still have to get someone to come be with you. Your dad, maybe.”

Betsy made a face. “No fun.”

“How about a play date at Brittany’s?”

“Her mom is psycho.”

“Good. You can help her cope.”

“I’d rather stay here—I’ll keep the doors locked and won’t answer any phone numbers I don’t know.”

Meghan hesitated. “You’re giving me one more thing to stress about.”

“I can handle it.”

“I don’t know if I can. You’re ten. Have you ever been alone in your life?”

“No. But I feel like I’m alone, lots of times.”

Looking at her daughter’s troubled face, Meghan felt herself dissolve into guilt and sympathy. “Give me a hug,” she demanded. She didn’t want Betsy to see it, but she was crying again.