Chapter 5
FIVE
The sky looks like the bruised flesh of a persimmon as she pulls into the nearly empty school parking lot.
A swift, brittle pain slices through her chest with each hurried step through the gates, as if she has swallowed sewing needles and scissors and they are working hard to vivisect her from the inside out.
It had felt good, for the last few hours, to procrastinate picking up Jude, to buy groceries without him as a ticking time bomb in the cart, and then wander through a bookstore without rushing.
Everything is bought with a swipe of Bren’s card, and though he’s told her to get whatever she wants whenever she wants it, she’s careful.
A good wife is frugal. A good wife buys only things that benefit her husband as well.
Stopping by the bookstore, she could argue, was not for her but for the baby.
She stood absently flipping through parenting books until another pregnant mother looked over and said with a smile, “Your first?”
Yes.
She just wanted to know what the lie would taste like, whether the flavors would be simple and delicate and easily digestible.
Now guilt owns her, though her only visible failing is being the last parent to pick up her child from after-school care.
No one will know about the bookstore. No one will know about one minute of weakness where she thought of how comfortable it would be to recline with Bren on the couch, her head against his chest, their heartbeats synced in drowsy calm, while he talked about names for their child. Their only child.
He likes to fix things.
The words have sunk teeth into her, and she doesn’t know how she feels about the entire conversation with Ava. She shoves it aside and decides to ignore everything.
Once inside the classroom they use for after-school care, she takes a moment to collect herself, steady her breathing so it doesn’t look as if she rushed here in an anxious whirlwind.
Her black coat is buttoned to her chin and her hair spills from her bun as if she is a raven swept in from the night.
One of the carers—LIZ, the name tag on her purple polo shirt reads—bustles over to greet Elodie as she signs Jude out.
“I’m so sorry I’m late,” Elodie says. “Midwife appointment.” Which was hours ago, but this is the perfect lie to garner sympathy.
“We do have a late collection fee, I’m afraid,” Liz says. “But congratulations! When’s bub due?”
“March.” Elodie’s smile is thin.
“It’ll go by in no time.” Liz looks like the bubbly, chatty kind, and Elodie already wants to escape, but as she’s scanning the room, noting the other carers are busy packing up and cleaning, Liz takes a step closer and lowers her voice. “Jude had a really good time today. We’re very impressed.”
Elodie waits for the punch line, the but that inevitably comes when someone talks about Jude. Her face must convey her anxiety because Liz continues.
“He usually sits in a corner and refuses to participate, but today”—she leads the way toward the craft tables—“he decided to get creative. You’ll love this.”
Jude sits on a little green plastic chair, wearing a paint-splattered art smock, the sleeves of his sweater rucked up and his expression one of intense concentration.
He is in the midst of a cyclone of his own making: torn paper and brushes with sticky paint congealed under them surround him, and there are yogurt tubs of glittery pom-poms and strands of wool next to pots of glue.
Paint streaks his chin and paper covers his jeans like confetti, all a reminder why Elodie doesn’t let him do crafts.
He is messy. He is uncoordinated. An apology is in her mouth, but the carer looks buoyant.
Jude is building a house.
Popsicle stick walls and a cardboard roof. Glue leaks through the cracks, and the whole thing looks liable to slide into a wet heap at any moment. But it means something; it is a response, perhaps, an open door to what he’s thinking, and part of her heart leaps to see it.
She crouches down. “Hi, baby. This looks amazing. Did you do it all by yourself?”
Jude ignores her, dipping his brush in a pot of watery red paint and then swiping at the walls. The Popsicle sticks tilt under his fierce brushstrokes.
“He’s been working independently all afternoon,” Liz says, beaming.
“We need to pack up, okay, Jude?” Elodie says. “Time to go home for dinner.”
But Jude keeps painting, dogged and focused, as if she’s not even there, and she gets a sinking feeling about how this will go.
At least, on the days he sits in the corner, his rabbit clasped in one hand and an unopened juice box in the other, he will run to her in frantic relief to be rescued.
No cajoling to get him out the door. No tense attempts to get him to shift activities.
Elodie stands, her stomach twisting, but she smiles for the sake of all watching.
The carer’s voice lowers slightly as she steps closer.
“I also meant to check in with you about his forms. I’m new to admin and was doing some filing, and I noticed Jude is in the first grade.
I’ve been pairing him with the kindergarteners all this time and I feel terrible.
He’s tiny, isn’t he? I’m sure your pediatrician has that under control, though. ”
Elodie feels accusation steeped under the comment.
“Also, his mannerisms,” Liz goes on, the cheerful bounce in her voice taking a careful turn, “made me think he was much younger. I was wondering if we should note anything else down on his forms. That is to say, any special accommodations we should account for?”
“I wouldn’t think so,” Elodie says, cool. She starts running fingers through Jude’s curls, though she knows he hates that. “Come on, baby, we need to pack up.”
Jude hunches, his fist clenched so hard around the paintbrush, his knuckles have whitened. Elodie waits until Liz has taken an awkward step back, clearly unsure how to push her questioning. Then Elodie bends so her mouth is close to Jude’s ear.
“Do you want a chocolate?”
Terrible mother. Bribing your child. Building bad habits. You’ll create a selfish little brat who always gets his own way—
Jude flicks a quick glance at her, but he’s stopped painting. She quickly takes the brush from him and pulls him from the chair, grateful the distraction worked and he won’t end up on the floor screaming.
She gets him washed up, the smock folded away, all the while wondering if the Popsicle house will make it to the car before collapsing. Jude holds up a stick figure he’s twisted from pipe cleaners so she can see.
“That’s cute,” Elodie says.
“Me,” he says. “I live in this house now. Not in your bad, bad house.”
She slings his backpack over her shoulder and picks up the Popsicle monstrosity with tentative care, her fingers already sticky from the wet paint. She’s about to usher him toward the door when he adds, “That’s you.”
He’s pointing at the floor.
A wad of mangled pipe cleaners lies on the linoleum, the shape of a body barely detectable because it’s been rolled into a ball. As she watches, he stomps on it with all his fierce, tiny might.
She doesn’t know what to say. No one else noticed; no one would pick up on the significance. When he stares up at her, there’s a defiant set to his dimpled chin.
She snatches his hand and marches for the door, tightening her grip on the little house until the walls slouch. When he starts to whimper, she knows she’s being too rough, but she doesn’t relent until they are in the parking lot.
The car locks flash and she yanks open his door. “Hop in.” The edge in her voice holds the slice of an uncut glacier. She is not gentle as she buckles him and slams his little house on his lap.
When she slides into the driver’s seat, she doesn’t start the engine immediately. They sit in the cold and quiet, the car park darkening around them, and when she glances in the rearview mirror, he sits there clutching his house and glaring at her back.
What is she meant to do? Tell him off and receive an uninterested stare back? First he loses Bren’s tools, now this. He wants her to know what he thinks of Bren, of her, of their new life.
“Chocolate?” he says, and her resolve cracks.
She’s trying so hard. She’s giving him everything. She will never understand him, not even if she took a box cutter to his chest and opened him up to see what is so very wrong with her child.
Heat smarts behind her eyes and she thumbs them quickly, putting the car into gear and telling herself it’s hormones, just hormones, because she is used to him not loving her when that’s what she wants most.
She loves him with such wretched intensity, it leaves holes in her lungs.
When they pull into the driveway, the house grows before them, formless in the melting dark.
No lights peek from the windows and Bren’s SUV hasn’t returned.
There is something toothy about the way the house watches her climb from the sedan, as if it’s been waiting for fresh meat to step into the molasses void of its mouth and be swallowed.
Theirs is the last on the road, the asphalt petering to gravel before thick woods grow out of the gloom.
The rest of the street is cast in a rosy glow, refurbished Victorians and newer brick cottages lit up with an inviting warmth that speaks of families crowded around dining tables to swap tales about their picturesque days.
Bren’s house looks harrowed, pulled straight from a haunting.
She slams her door and walks around to unbuckle Jude, but when she pops open his door, a cold wave of dismay washes over her.
Paint has been spilled all over the back seat, smeared sticky and fresh on Jude’s trousers and puddling between his legs.
Even in the dim car light, the red is brilliant and vivid and unforgiving, glinting as if it is tipped from the throat of a slaughtered animal.
It isn’t possible. The little house couldn’t have leaked this much—and then she sees the bottle of watery paint in Jude’s hand.
He must have stolen it when she wasn’t watching.
“I was finishing it.” His voice pitches high, anxious. “I was just finishing it.”
She can’t move. Red fingerprints cover the car door and paint pools on the lush upholstery. His clothes are ruined. The car is …
“I don’t like your house.” His bottom lip trembles. “I like my new house. I was finishing—”
“Just stop.” She wrenches his seat belt off and jerks him out of the car, nearly clipping his head on the roof and doing nothing to prevent the soggy house being squashed in his grasp.
She slams the car door with such force he begins to cry, but she’s already wrenched the creation from his grasp and stormed around the side of the house, car keys clinking in her other hand.
A twisted, static feeling roars behind her eyes as she reaches the trash bins propped against the wall, waiting for Bren to lug them to the curb for collection. She plucks off the lid and flings the Popsicle house inside.
Jude screams.
He flies at her, his fists clenched as he beats at her arms. She grabs him by the shoulders.
“Stop it.” The words cut from her mouth, shrill and unsteady. “Do you want me to tell Bren how—how bad you’re being?”
It’s a hollow threat to make when neither of them knows where it leads, but he’s landed a good punch to her shoulder and it throbs, her muscles screaming as she struggles to hold on to his thrashing body.
A glance at their closest neighbor shows a porch light has flicked on, a curtain fluttering.
Jude keeps screaming, his feet grown into the dirt, his spine arching backward like a bow bent as he wrestles in her grip.
He will split the sky open with his noise, he will pull a storm down and drown them, and everyone will look and see how poorly she is handling this.
They will ask how she possibly deserves a new child when the first is so wild and feral and unmanageable.
“You’ve destroyed his car,” she snaps. “You’re— Jude, stop hitting me.”
“I just wanted to f-f-finish!” He’s hysterical, tears streaking down his cheeks.
“Well, you don’t get everything you want.” She tries to grab his wrist, but he snatches the keys right from her hand.
He runs.
“Jude!” She grabs for him, but he’s lithe and quick, ducking across the dead grass and up the porch steps.
The huge mahogany door yawns open under Jude’s touch, and all she can do is think shit shit shit she forgot to lock it. She flies up the porch stairs, everything in her head an unsteady blur as she reaches the door just as Jude darts inside.
The door slams behind him, monstrous and loud, and she snatches her arm back just in time to avoid broken fingers.
The lock turns over with a dull thunk.
Silky silence falls, the only sound that of Elodie’s ragged breathing. For a second, she stands still as understanding burns through her insides. There is no way he did that so fast, wrangled the keys and figured out the lock. It’s almost as if the house did it for him.
“Jude! Open this right now.” She rattles the knob, but it doesn’t turn. Her voice cracks in a whisper-shout of desperation. “Jude William. I’m warning you.”
He has her keys.
He has her keys.
He is alone in the endless dark of an unlit, unfinished house and she can’t get to him. She can almost feel the house’s smug satisfaction at the snack caught between its teeth.
“Jude. Unlock this fucking door. RIGHT NOW.” She slams both fists against it, her breath a globe of white in the dark, but all she can hear on the other side is the light scuffing of shoes running away.
Her heart is in her mouth, her pulse racing so fast she can’t get a full breath. She’s hyperventilating. She’s freaking out. Even as scared as he is of this house, he chose it over being near her for a second longer.
There is still paint on her hands and it’s transferred to the door in smears of gory red, and in that moment all she can smell is the hot, coppery rush of blood.
Her son is gone. She can’t get to her son.