The parents slumped against the walls of the hallway, couples embracing, except for Izzy, who was, as always, the only parent on her own, no one to hold on to.
Against the silence inside the communal bedroom, the parents kept their voices low, keeping their sadness from radiating too far from their own bodies. Izzy felt the strange mixture of exhaustion and anxiety putting her in a state of near hypnosis, unable to focus on much of anything that was going on around her, though the other parents seemed touched by the same feelings, everyone slightly drugged and yet unable to close their eyes.
Dr. Grind finally returned to the complex, Izzy hearing his footsteps on the stairs. He appeared before the parents, looking as tired as Izzy had ever seen him, his red tie no longer around his neck, his hair ruffled and sticking up like a child’s on Christmas morning.
“She’s okay,” he finally said, his voice soft and clear, the slightest hint of emotion wobbling the words. “They pumped her stomach and she’s in no danger at the moment.”
“Where’s Harris?” Paul asked.
“He’s staying at the Hospitality House there at the hospital,” Dr. Grind answered. “He’s going to be with Ellen tomorrow and then the hospital is going to release her and she’s going to check herself into a mental health facility to deal with her situation.”
“Which is what exactly?” Susan asked. “I still don’t understand what’s going on.”
“Well, Jeremy and Ellen have been having an affair,” Dr. Grind said.
“We know that much,” Carmen offered, but Dr. Grind seemed not to hear her.
“It’s been going on for a while, but apparently Ellen has been pressuring Jeremy to leave altogether. She wanted to start a new life away from the complex. She wanted to take Eli and Marnie. When Jeremy refused, Ellen became a little more antagonistic, according to Harris, who has been aware of this for some time, by the way. Tonight, when she saw Jeremy and Callie making dinner, it caused her to make an attempt on her life.”
“What happens when she finishes her time at the facility?” Julie then asked. “Does she get to come back to the complex?”
“In a perfect world, yes,” Dr. Grind said. “To remove Ellen from the family would remove Harris and Marnie. I don’t want that to happen.”
“Well,” Julie said, emotion breaking her voice into a higher octave, “I don’t know if I want Ellen here, to be honest. I don’t know if I want Jeremy here either.”
“We’re a family,” Dr. Grind said, “an imperfect one. I think we’re testing the limits of what that means, unfortunately.”
“I think we might be past that, Dr. Grind,” Julie then said.
“Let’s try to think of the present moment,” Dr. Grind said. “Let’s try to be kind, as much as we can be. We need to make our kids—”
“Our kids,” Julie said.
Dr. Grind paused, wincing at the wording. “Of course. Your children need to feel safe, and so we need to try to stick to our routine as much as possible, to make them understand that, while bad things happen to those we love, we can rally around each other to make us all stronger.”
“They won’t even let us in the room,” Asean said.
“And I see that you are all respecting that,” Dr. Grind replied. “That’s fine. Be ready for when they do want you to come back to them. It could be tomorrow or it could be days from now, but we have to show them that we can be there for them.”
Izzy had not fully understood this particular problem of collective parenting. It was wonderful when a child could look to every adult in the project and think of them as their parent. But, for Izzy, it suddenly dawned on her with a hopelessness that she could not control that if one parent betrayed a child’s trust, then, in the eyes of the children, every parent had betrayed them. No matter how good a parent Izzy might be, if one of the other parents fucked up, it would be her fault, too. Equal attachment, she understood, worked both ways.