Chapter 2 #3
Her life sped up, the velocity gaining on her more and more every day.
Her business was still too small for her to hire someone to help, but too busy for her to do it all herself.
She was the Cloth Diaper Lady now, the mom who answered dozens of questions a day on Facebook, who filmed videos showing off cute new designs.
Everything seemed to hurtle forward with its own speed, and soon it all began to disintegrate, one small thing breaking away, followed by another small thing, until nothing was holding back the big things.
As soon as the kids went to bed at seven, Alice fell asleep wherever she happened to sit down—the couch, the armchair beside the bed, once with her head resting on the worktable in the basement, her butt balanced on a cardboard box.
She and Grant never had sex, and if he tried to touch her in the early morning, she rolled over on her side and pulled the blankets tight around her body, ignoring his sigh as he got out of bed and put on the same T-shirt he’d worn the day before.
The orders piled up, her favourite supplier went out of business, customers tried to return stained diapers they had already been using for months.
Soon complaints began accumulating on Yelp, Google Reviews, even her neighbourhood Facebook group.
Alice hadn’t dared to look at the cash flow and her debts, but she knew it wasn’t good.
It didn’t matter how many times she asked Grant to help her clean and look after the kids when he was home from work, he never really did, only scrolled on his phone while lying in the grass as Luna and Luca threw clods of wet dirt at the fence.
When she asked him to pay more attention, he said, “We could just hire a nanny, you know,” as he watched Luna spill an entire mug of cranberry-apple juice down the front of her shirt.
“That doesn’t make us capitalist bullies. Relax, Alice.”
So she hired a live-in nanny, Pinky, whose previous family was relocating to Edmonton.
Soon, Pinky was texting her photos of the children at momentous activities.
Luca riding a pedal bike. Luna reaching through a fence to get closer to a grizzly bear on a class trip to Grouse Mountain.
Both kids crammed into a bumper car at the exhibition.
Sometimes, Alice cried when she looked at these pictures.
Sometimes, she glanced at them without thought, texted a heart emoji in return, and then went back to work, finishing each of the packages she was sending out with brown raffia and a handwritten card.
Thank you for taking care of your sweet baby and the Earth at the same time. Good job, Mama!
Years passed. She still made pretty packages, applied the right dewy makeup for Instagram videos, showed up to the school fundraising auction with a basket of brightly coloured diapers, and everyone thought she was doing just fine.
Alice the businesswoman. Alice the patient mom.
Alice the pretty one with the unlined face.
It was a fragile scaffolding on which her entire life rested: if one thing went wrong, her business could fail, she could lose the house, and she would have to finally ask Grant for money or, worse, allow him to move back in.
She would pack a million boxes, go to a million parenting trade shows, to avoid living with him again.
When you fail, you will deserve nothing more than that douchebag . That inner voice again. She shook her head against the noise.
Alice bent over and picked up a piece of exploded balloon hanging off the back deck, careful not to spill any of her coffee.
She would have to talk to Luca about his water balloon habit, the little rubber remnants that could get caught in a bird’s throat or twisted inside its digestive system.
She saw, inside her head, a tiny chickadee choking, its beak open wide, purple rubber twisted around its tongue.
Alice closed her eyes and tried to push the dying bird out of her thoughts with other, more benevolent images.
Sandwiches. The grey globes of dandelions.
A cumulus cloud. But it wasn’t working. The chickadee convulsed.
In her pocket, she felt her phone buzzing.
It was either an order or a complaint and right then she didn’t want either.
She often thought that she was haunted by the vibration of her phone, that when she was dead and buried she would feel it in her casket, in the pocket of whatever respectable skirt suit her children had chosen for her.
Her eyes opened and, on the screen, a thumbnail headshot of her mother.
Judy aka Poh Poh , the call display read.
“Hi Mom,” Alice said. She could hear that her mother was in the car.
“I have some eggs for you. I just finished at Costco.” Despite the fact that Judy spent most of her life on her phone, negotiating with other realtors or cajoling clients, she still shouted, as if the distance between her and the other person could be bridged by volume alone.
“Mom, I already have eggs.”
“But I bought four dozen!”
“Why would you do that? You live alone.”
“Why? What a stupid question. I bought them for my grandchildren.”
Before Alice could reply, Judy continued. “I have another call coming in. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Growing kids need protein!” Alice heard a pause and then her mother’s voice again. “Judy Chow, Top Realty.”
“Mom, it’s just me again.”
“Shit.” And then silence. Alice’s relief came out in a long, deep sigh.
Ever since Grant had moved out four years ago, Judy had taken it upon herself to bring food, toilet paper, and other necessities to her daughter every week.
It didn’t matter that Alice never once asked for help.
If a client sent Judy a fruit basket, she drove it to Alice.
“See,” she would say, “a mango for those smoothies you like.” If a distant relative visited and brought a box of Black Magic chocolates, Judy would insist Alice take it, saying, “For Luna’s sweet tooth, although,” and her voice would drop to a whisper, “you need to watch her. Chocolate is bad for pimples.” Then, inevitably, she would ask, “Does Grant ever bring you groceries?” It didn’t matter how many times Alice explained the concept of child support and what it was for, Judy would only shake her head and mutter, “Imagine that. Not even caring if your children eat or starve.” After a while, Alice stopped resisting and simply accepted the food, even if she hated lychees or already had a pork tenderloin in the freezer.
In the end, it only mattered that Grant seemed to feel no regret and that her mother hated him.
As it should be , Alice thought. The fucker.
Through the window, she could see Luna stuffing her backpack with random handfuls of snacks—packages of seaweed, granola bars, rice crackers. Alice hurried back inside. “Luna, please take something that has nutritional value. You can have the leftover pasta salad.”
“I hate pasta salad. It’s not pasta, and it’s not salad. It’s nothing.” Luna turned toward the door, not looking at Alice. On purpose, of course , Alice thought.
“There are bananas on the counter. Right there. Take one.”
Rolling her eyes, Luna pulled a banana from the bunch. “Whatever. I have to catch the bus, Mom.”
“Can you at least walk Luca across the street? I don’t have time to drive him today.”
“He’s ten. He can walk to school by himself. You never forget anything that he needs.”
Alice ignored the jab. “You know how distracted he gets.” Alice was always worried Luca would forget to pee or eat or sleep while he was working on a robot or an app or figuring out a shortcut to finish a level of a video game.
Last weekend, when Alice got up at two in the morning to use the bathroom, his bedroom door was ajar and there he was, sitting at his desk, the blue light from his computer shining onto his face, illuminating his spiky hair like a glowing, living crown.
For a moment, Alice panicked. Was Luca being sucked in, the digital light an inexorable path to a netherworld?
She knew what that felt like, the loss of time in the dark, the tetherlessness of a childhood with only one parent.
Her greatest fear was that she would fail to protect her children from falling into a vortex of sadness and isolation where they tried—and failed—to untangle their confusion alone.
Alice ran in and pulled roughly at his shoulder.
He turned to face her and blinked, his pupils shrinking, adjusting to the dark.
“Mom? What’s going on?”
It was fine, it was fine. These were only video games, right?
Alice and Luca had had a long conversation that night about screen time and sleep time, about regulating the gaming and coding, and then she had tucked him into bed, as if he was four years old again.
When she bent down to kiss his forehead, his eyes fluttered closed, dark eyelashes against his cheeks.
“I love you,” he had muttered, as she tiptoed away.
This small tenderness was like muscle memory, a reflex, something he always said when they walked away from each other, but she held on to it as if it was the first and last time she would ever hear it.