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“WELL!” MICAH SAYS, when he sees me sitting at the table of the Indian restaurant with Violet, who has never been anywhere fancier than a Chili’s. “This is a surprise.”
“Our babysitter skipped town,” I tell him, and I glance sidelong at Violet. “And we are skating the thin edge of DEFCON Four, so I already ordered.”
Violet is coloring on the paper tablecloth. “Daddy,” she announces, “I want pizza.”
“But you love Indian food, Vi,” Micah says.
“No I don’t. I want pizza,” she insists.
Just then, the waiter comes over with our food. “Perfect timing,” I murmur. “See, honey?”
Violet turns her face up to the waiter, her blue eyes wide as she stares at his Sikh turban. “How come he’s wearing a towel?”
“Don’t be rude, sweetie,” I reply. “That’s called a turban, and that’s what some Indian people wear.”
She furrows her brow. “But he doesn’t look like Pocahontas.”
I want the floor to open up and swallow me, but instead, I paste a smile on my face. “I’m so sorry,” I tell the waiter, who is now unloading our dishes as quickly as he can. “Violet…look, your favorite. Chicken tikka masala.” I spoon some onto her plate, trying to distract her until the waiter goes away.
“Oh my God,” I whisper to Micah. “What if he thinks we’re horrible parents? Or horrible people?”
“Blame Disney.”
“Maybe I should have said something different?”
Micah takes a spoonful of vindaloo and puts it on his plate. “Yeah,” he says. “You could have picked Italian.”
I’M STANDING IN THE MIDDLE of the nursery my son is never going to use.
My fists are like two anvils at my sides; I want to swing them. I want to punch holes in the plaster. I want the whole fucking room to come tumbling down.
Suddenly there is a firm hand on my shoulder. “You ready?”
Francis Mitchum—my father-in-law—stands behind me.
This is his duplex—Brit and I live on one side, and he lives on the other. Francis crosses the room and yanks down the Peter Rabbit curtains. Then he pours paint into a little tray and begins to roll the walls white again, washing away the pale yellow that Brit and I brushed onto the walls less than a month ago. The first coat doesn’t quite cover the paint beneath, so the color peeks through, like something trapped under ice. With a deep breath I lie down under the crib. I lift the Allen wrench and begin to loosen the bolts that I had so carefully tightened, because I didn’t want to be the reason anything bad happened to my son.
Who knew there didn’t have to be a reason?
I left Brit sleeping off a sedative, which was an improvement over the way she was this morning at the hospital. I’d thought nothing could be worse than the crying that wouldn’t stop, the sound of her breaking into pieces. But then, at about 4:00 A.M., all of that stopped. Brit didn’t make a sound. She just stared, blank, at the wall. She wouldn’t answer when I called her name; she wouldn’t even look at me. The doctors gave her medicine to make her sleep. Sleep, they told me, was the best way for a body to heal.
Me, I hadn’t slept, not a wink. But I knew it wasn’t sleep that was going to make me feel better. That was going to take some wilding, a moment of destruction. I needed to pound out the pain inside me, give it a home someplace else.
With one last turn of the wrench, the crib collapses, the heavy mattress landing on my chest. Francis turns at the sound of the crash. “You all right there?”
“Yeah,” I say, the wind knocked out of me. It hurts, but this is a kind of hurt I understand. I’ll have a bruise; it will fade. I slide myself out from the tangle of wood and kick at it with my boot. “Probably a piece of crap anyway.”
Francis frowns. “What are you going to do with it?”
I can’t keep it. I know that Brit and I might have another baby one day, if we’re lucky, but putting this crib back into a nursery would be like making our new child sleep with a ghost.