39
I composed myself before the kids came home. This wasn’t their burden to carry, and their childhoods had already been so heavy.
As they sat at the kitchen table doing their homework, a snack of apple slices spread with peanut butter on a plate between them, I thought maybe this was for the best. I would be home more. They deserved a mother who focused solely on them.
But was that all I would ever be now? An empty vessel of a mother whose only adult interactions came from the mother-in-law who refused to leave and the occasional chitchat at school drop-off or the park?
Just a couple of years earlier, being a mom was enough. But then I’d had Harry. And Bobby wasn’t in school yet. Now, my job gave me such purpose. I couldn’t imagine a life in which waxing the floor was the highlight of my day until the kids came home from school.
“Mama?” Susie asked.
I shook my head to clear it. “I’m sorry, honey. What do you need?”
“Is this right?” she asked, turning her page toward me.
I went through the long division, carrying the two. “Yes, sweetheart, you got it.” I leaned down to kiss the top of her head.
It would have to be enough. I had tried making a difference outside the home and failed.
But unlike Icarus, who also flew too close to the sun, I was still here.
And I could make a difference to my children, even if learning that I couldn’t soar because a man would always be capable of melting my wings was a difficult pill to swallow.
“What would you like for dinner tonight?” I asked, blinking away the tears that pricked at my eyes. “I’ll make whatever you want.”
When the kids went into school the next morning, Janet looked me up and down, taking in my pants and blouse. “Not going to the hospital today?”
I shook my head. “Not anymore. Unless one of us gets injured. Though I suppose I’d have to go someplace else for treatment even now.”
Janet gripped my elbow tightly. “Explain.”
I gave the short version, and Janet was positively fuming by the time I had finished. She let out an expletive-laced stream about what Dr. Howe could go do to himself, his mother, and a two-ton rhinoceros.
“I tell Dada you said the fupping word again,” Paula said.
“Glad she hasn’t mastered her k sounds yet,” Janet said quietly to me, then knelt down to Paula in the stroller. “Mama said, ‘Ducking.’”
“Nuh uh.”
“Yuh huh,” Janet said.
“Nuh uh. I tell Dada.”
“And when I tell Dada what that man did to Auntie Barbara, he’s going to march down to that hospital and say even worse words to him, so drop it, short stack,” Janet said. Then she rose and turned to me. “He doesn’t get away with this.”
My shoulders sagged. “He already did. It’s over.
Dr. Harper knows the truth, but he can’t run the hospital without doctors.
And Dr. Howe is a really gifted doctor even if he’s the worst human on the planet.
” I could see the gears turning in Janet’s head, but I put a hand on her shoulder. “I’m okay.”
She looked at me for a long moment, then acquiesced. “You’ve always been okay,” she said. “I’d have crumbled if I’d gone through half of what you have.”
I desperately wanted to tell her that I wasn’t actually okay.
I wanted her to see it. To know it was a veneer thinner than the finest china.
But I was too good at hiding it, even from her.
And to admit I wasn’t all right would be to open a floodgate that would include what hadn’t happened with Eddie a couple of nights earlier, and I was terrified that our friendship couldn’t withstand that one truth.
Or maybe that I just couldn’t bear to let that one out.
“Listen, I hate to do this after you just took her Monday, but do you think you could take Paula for another couple of hours today? Now that you don’t have work.”
I nodded, and Janet was gone practically before she could say goodbye.
I wondered if she was in the middle of her own crisis.
Something I hadn’t seen because I had been too wrapped up in my own problems for the last two years.
She had been awfully despondent when I was there last. And this running off as soon as she could unload Paula.
The chain-smoking outside. She had said with Paula insisting on her sleeping in her room, there was nothing going on with George, but was there something with someone else?
No. Janet would never cheat. Would she?
My shoulders slumped. I didn’t know anymore. I didn’t know anyone.
Paula sneezed, and I said “Bless you” automatically. Then I mentally shook myself by the shoulders. “Come on, little one,” I said, faking a cheerfulness I couldn’t imagine feeling. “Let’s go to the park.”
We stayed until Paula started to yawn, me pushing her in the swing and sitting in the sandbox with her as she happily dug and built castles that she immediately squashed. Then I brought her to my house, fed her lunch, and laid her down on my bed to nap. I had no idea when Janet would be back.
“You’re being maudlin,” I told myself out loud. Then I realized Ruth wasn’t home either. I didn’t think she had told me she was going out. No, I didn’t really want to talk to her. But this was why I went to work in the first place. The quiet when I was home alone left too much room to mourn.
As I tidied up the already-clean kitchen, I told myself Dr. Howe was not going to defeat me.
I could volunteer at the Hebrew Home. The elderly weren’t my specialty, but it was certainly a mitzvah to brighten their days.
And after living with Ruth, I wasn’t going to foist myself on my own children later in life.
Maybe I could earn some good cosmic grace by working there now before I ended up living there myself.
Okay, that thought was too depressing for words.
Children were much more my cup of tea. But the ancient secretary at the elementary school made volunteering there equally unappealing.
I knew a few women, primarily divorcées, who had gone to work either in retail or secretarial jobs.
And while I wasn’t above either option, I loved the feeling of being most useful to people who needed it at the hospital.
I had been one of those people. I knew firsthand what a difference I could make there.
There was always the library. I had a degree in English literature going unused. I thought guiltily of the Marilyn Kleinman novel sitting still unfinished on my nightstand. That’s what I should do with my newfound free time—engage my brain instead of sitting and wallowing.
Later, that was. If I went back into my room for the book, I’d wake Paula.
Instead I poured myself a cup of coffee and took Pepper into the backyard so she wouldn’t bark in the house, and sat on the chaise lounge, wishing the best-laid plans of mice and men hadn’t gone so far astray.