Chapter Three Kiersten
Chapter Three
Kiersten
Kiersten climbed into her car, exited the school parking lot, and drove her minivan to a nearby park, where she turned off the engine and sat staring ahead at a small cluster of moms sitting on a picnic blanket, holding infants.
She glanced at the clock on the dashboard and grimaced. She’d planned to attend the first PTA meeting of the year after the orthodontist appointment.
She didn’t necessarily want to join the PTA, because how much could she realistically volunteer, with her HMO Call-an-Advice-Nurse job, and travel sports, and her husband always gone, and a giant pile of unpacked boxes in the basement?
But she did want to make friends in this new place, and the PTA seemed like a good place to start.
Her gaze traveled to the rearview mirror, where she took in her unwashed hair and naked face. All the energy leaked from her body, and she sagged in her seat like a three-day-old helium balloon. She couldn’t go to the PTA meeting looking like this.
Some of the moms out here in the DC area were .
. . intense. A little intimidating. She’d met a few of them at Sneak-a-Peek the day before school started.
They looked like the kind of people who discussed battleground polls on CNN after a presidential debate.
Half of them seemed to run vitally important government agencies, and the ones who didn’t wore head-to-toe Lululemon and looked like former Olympic athletes.
One of the women she’d run into had casually mentioned that she’d gone to Harvard.
Kiersten was still trying to figure out how the woman had managed to insert this fact into a two-minute conversation about whether or not her fourth grader really needed the mini stapler she’d been unable to find at Target.
In her mind, the conversation went something like this.
Were you able to find the mini stapler?
Yes. I went to Harvard.
She took a giant swig of coffee from her stainless steel travel tumbler, then closed her eyes and exhaled. She would attend the next PTA meeting, after she’d taken a shower, put on under-eye concealer, and found a way to disguise the fact that she only had a bachelor’s degree from Mankato State.
Through the windshield, she watched as one of the mothers on the picnic blanket dangled brightly colored plastic keys in front of a baby who reached out with chubby hands to grasp the toy.
Little kids, little problems. Big kids, big problems.
Someone had told her this, years ago. It felt condescending at the time, and she’d resented the person who said it. When Matt had colic and refused to sleep, it was a huge problem. But now she felt like she understood.
She couldn’t fix her son’s distress with a fresh diaper or a bottle. These big-kid problems seemed far beyond her abilities, above her pay grade. Fitting in at a new school, dyslexia, ADD, flunking, fighting.
She marveled, not for the first time, at a world where you had to pass an elaborate series of tests to drive a car, but even people who had never changed a diaper could walk out of the hospital with a new baby, no questions asked.
Digging into her purse, she searched for her cell phone. She needed to talk to her husband.
Though he couldn’t plan a birthday party or be trusted to buy the right kind of chicken nuggets at the grocery store, they were volunteers in the same two-person army, sharing the same almost-impossible mission: to raise healthy, kind, emotionally balanced humans in an often unhealthy, unkind, unbalanced world.
She was pretty sure God had created Adam for this purpose.
So he could lie and tell Eve the kids would be just fine, even when they were both positive their offspring would end up in jail, in a cult, or running an illegal Bitcoin-mining operation from the family basement, where they would still be living at age thirty-five.
She punched Garrett’s number into her phone, and he picked up on the fourth ring. “Hey. Just heading into a meeting. What’s up?”
“Luke got into a fight.”
A beat of silence. Then, “Hold on.” She could hear his voice, muffled now, telling someone he’d be there in a second. “A fight? You’re sure?”
“Matt told me. Just now.”
A slow exhale on the end of the line. “Okay. We’ll deal with it when I get back.”
“Garrett.”
“Yes?”
“What if this move was a huge mistake?”
Another pause, followed by an impatient sigh.
“Look, I’m about to head into a meeting with fifty ranchers who are terrified they won’t be able to feed their herds or their families next year because it hasn’t rained in six months and their pastures are burnt to a crisp.
I can’t talk about this right now. I’m sorry. ”
“I just . . . I didn’t know it would be like this.” The admission filled her with shame. She felt like a homesick child, instead of the capable woman she wanted to be, the strong adult her husband and sons needed her to be.
A long pause on the other end, then her husband’s voice, gentle now, but with the faintest hint of an accusation.
“Look, we knew this transition might be hard. But we said we’d give our family this opportunity for two years.
Museums. A chance to live fifteen minutes from the nation’s capital.
Exposure to different people and cultures and a different way of life. We made this decision together.”
She wanted to reach through the phone, through time and space, and wrap her hands around his neck and strangle him.
Because he was right.
She desperately wanted to blame him for this decision, but she couldn’t because they had made it together.
She’d encouraged him to take this job.
The arguments came flooding back, arguments that came from her own mouth.
You’ll be in a position to make policy that helps farmers and ranchers and small towns.
We’ll be living five minutes from Mount Vernon and twenty minutes from the Capitol.
So much history! Such a great opportunity for the boys.
Think of all the good you can do in this position.
She’d actually said that. She’d been so stupid.
And it was a chance to break away, for just a couple of years, from the grandparents and aunts and uncles and in-laws who dropped in unannounced at all hours of the day and night, who helped enormously but also made constant well-intended suggestions, criticisms, and observations.
James spends an awful lot of time playing that Minecraft game.
Maybe Luke doesn’t have dyslexia. Maybe he just eats too much sugar.
When I was their age, I had chores. These boys don’t do enough to help around the farm.
This move to DC was supposed to provide a break from all that. A chance to parent without the peanut gallery.
But as it turned out, the peanut gallery provided an awful lot of free, high-quality childcare. Not to mention homecooked meals, rides to practice, help memorizing the multiplication tables, and love.
“I gotta go,” Garrett said, breaking into her thoughts. “I’m sorry, honey. But we’ll deal with it when I get home, okay?”
“Okay,” she whispered. She knew she should utter the two quick words that normally ended their calls, should force herself to mutter Love you even if she didn’t mean it, especially if she didn’t mean it.
But she couldn’t do it, and apparently neither could he.
Garrett disconnected the call. She tossed her phone into the passenger seat.
They’d gone to a museum exactly once, the Smithsonian Natural History Museum, back in July, to give themselves a break from the boxes and unpacking. They’d seen the Hope diamond and a mummy and an enchanting exhibit with live butterflies. It had been their best day so far.
Then school and sports started in mid-August, and Garrett began traveling, and they hadn’t set foot in a museum since.
And that thing about being minutes from the nation’s capital? That was only true at 10:23 a.m. on a Friday morning in August when there was no traffic. At other times it could take almost an hour. Or longer. She’d learned that the hard way.
She rested her head against the steering wheel and fought back tears. She would not cry. Crying never helped.
“I just wish . . .” She whispered the words, then stopped. It was more of a feeling than a wish. Nostalgia and longing wrapped in frustration. A desire to give her own children the very best of what she’d had growing up.
But what was that exactly? What did she really want?
To go back home to Minnesota?
No. That wasn’t the answer. Because even if they moved back home, she’d still have four kids in five million activities. She’d still have a son with dyslexia and ADD who struggled in school. She’d still be driving around in circles at top speed in a minivan, going nowhere, except maybe crazy.
I wish we could go back in time.
Yes. That’s what she wanted. Life wasn’t like this when she was a kid. She didn’t start playing sports in earnest until high school. She didn’t have loads of homework every night.
She rode her bike around the neighborhood after school in her tiny hometown with a pack of kids. At dusk, she pedaled home to a balanced and nutritious dinner made by her stay-at-home mother.
Then she watched Little House on the Prairie and The Love Boat with her whole family, all in one room, together, on a device that looked like a piece of furniture, and went to bed.
She wanted to go back to that world. To a place with no social media.
No cell phones. No arguments about screen time and Fortnite and Minecraft.
No PowerSchool portal to check grades in real time.
A place where the telephone clung to the wall like a barnacle, and a long curling cord held the world at bay.
She shook her head, banishing these memories and the soft yearning they generated.
A ridiculous wish. Also impossible. Impractical. And a little bit sad.
You can’t go home again. And you can’t go back in time.
No point in fantasizing about a different way of living.
She’d chosen to have four children, and this wild, frenetic existence was the price of modern motherhood.
Everyone was busy. Everyone had a million activities.
She just needed to buck up and stop complaining.
Embrace the suck, as her brother, an army veteran, sometimes said.
She sighed and ran her fingers through her unwashed hair. Things would get better once they got settled.
Plus, she only had to live this way for another decade or so, until her third grader turned eighteen and left for college . . .
She’d figure this out. Because that’s what mothers did.
And as for that other issue . . .
She shuddered at the memory of what she’d found this morning.
The flutter of movement had caught her eye as she gazed out the window at dawn, thinking existential thoughts while nursing her first cup of coffee.
Something white peeked from the trunk of the massive sweet gum tree in the front yard.
She slammed her coffee cup down on the counter. How many times had she told the boys not to leave their socks, their shoes, and inexplicably, sometimes even their underpants, in the front yard?
She bolted into the mudroom, put on her flip-flops, and approached the tree, eyes narrowed.
Not a sock. Or underpants.
Instead, a page of lined notebook paper quivered in the early-morning breeze, spiked to the tree trunk with a large nail.
Stepping closer, she scrutinized the paper without touching it.
Dark-brown streaks crisscrossed the page like a child’s attempt at finger paint.
Her eyes narrowed; then she inhaled sharply.
Dried blood. A substance any nurse could identify.
She’d removed the paper and zipped it into a plastic bag. Another fun thing to discuss with her husband when he returned home.
What if . . .
She slammed her mind shut, refusing to go there. Then she took a deep breath, sucking air into her lungs, wishing she could also inhale hope, strength, wisdom, and sanity.
Things would get better. They had to get better. Because surely they couldn’t get worse.
Right?