A text exchange of which she had written not a word, a text exchange that had taken place while she was crouched in front of the mirror in the dark in the other room—but how would she convince the police (POLICE WILL THINK YOU ARE CRAZY) that she was not the author of these texts, which were indistinguishable in tone from every other text in her correspondence with Erika?
20
Her commute was short, the Phillips 66 less than two miles from home. She turned right just past the neon sign of the Excellent Laundromat. Even after more than eight years living here it still caused a physical response in her whenever she rolled off the weary, blaring thoroughfare onto these quiet blocks of tiny timeworn bungalows, the neighborhood soft gray at this darkening hour, an old woman limping beneath old trees, a dog mourning somewhere, a mild melancholy that resonated with her, the imperfect sidewalks and overgrown rhubarb and ill-tended crab-apple trees.
“Thanks for raking,” David had said that morning, staring out at their small yard while downing coffee, his suitcase and instruments beside the door.
She had no idea what he meant; there had been no raking whatsoever in her life of late. But there wasn’t time to probe, for Viv was pulling her toward the hall closet, distressed to the point of tears at not being able to locate her left rain boot. And Ben, who was eating his oatmeal in fistfuls with both hands, had just begun to experiment with tossing globs of it toward the ceiling.
Now, ending her commute, pulling up to the curb, pleased that no parallel park was demanded of her, she noticed how the base of the house no longer possessed its trademark ring of dead leaves. Someone or something (some wind?) had cleared away the debris of the dark months, making newly passable the dirt pathway around the house.
She forgot to wonder about it, though, when she opened the front door to a blueberry-stained Ben, to Viv parading through the living room chanting “Birth-Day! Birth-Day!” with an uncapped purple marker held aloft in her right hand like the Statue of Liberty’s torch.
21
Her hands were shaky on the knife that spread the peanut butter, shaky on the bread beneath, shaky scooping applesauce, shaky slicing banana. Yet the children were tranquil and happy as they ate their makeshift dinner, laughing together at something that escaped her. She needed to be in a room, by herself, in silence, where she could think about what to do next, but there was no time for that.
As she shepherded them into their bedroom after dinner, she was alarmed at her obsequiousness. GIVE V & B DINNER AND PUT THEM TO BED. It seemed that she ought to disobey. That she should be crafting some plan, calling someone, getting help. Yet the instructions were sound, no matter what was to follow. Make sure the children are fed; make sure they get their rest. She locked the bedroom door and locked the window and pulled the curtains. She turned on the lamp.
This final half hour of the day, when she was toggling back and forth between the needs of two tired children, often felt insurmountable if David was gone. But tonight it felt sacred to hold the bin while the children cleaned up the blocks, Viv delighting in slamming each piece into the bin while announcing its color, Ben crawling over with a long blue one in his mouth.
“Red,” Viv said. “Green. Green. Green. Blue. Red. Yellow. Blue. Blue. Red.”
Would she ever again kneel here with them?
IF YOU DO NOT COME YOU WILL REGRET IT FOREVER.
Viv flitted and jabbed her fingers right above Ben’s eyes to keep him entertained while Molly changed his diaper. Molly let Viv choose Ben’s pajamas. Viv selected her old purple footed sleeper for him. There was an ice-cream cone stitched over the heart and Viv pretended to lick it. Her head banged his chin and he cried. Viv yelled at him to be quiet. Viv whispered at him to be quiet. Ben calmed down. Viv wanted to wear her whale costume to sleep. Molly talked her out of it. Viv deigned to put on her fish pajamas instead. Viv asked Molly to turn on the ocean sounds on the white-noise machine.
“Your hand is shivering,” Viv observed.
Molly tried harder to still herself.
The three of them squeezed onto Viv’s narrow bed so Molly could nurse Ben while Viv smelled his hair. Ben relieved Molly of the milk far more quickly and thoroughly than the pump, and she was appreciative. The milk had been accumulating for too long. Her bra was soaked. He nursed until her breasts were no longer hard and misshapen. She watched him float off into his milky sleep. When he was completely out, when even removing her nipple from between his lips couldn’t reinvigorate his latch, she stood and carried him to the crib.
It was unnecessary, since he was already asleep, but she did it anyway: cupped his head, whispered a few words of a song into his ear. His head an exact handful, weighty and light at the same time. Holding him this way was as ecstatic a physical experience as dancing late into the night in a big crowd with David the way she used to love to do, their bodies and all the bodies around them nothing more than a manifestation of the beat.
She lowered him into the crib. A milk-saturated baby in a crib tends toward the position of Jesus on the cross, arms outflung.
When Molly got two books and rejoined Viv on the bed, her daughter seemed milk-saturated by association, slurry and sleepy.
“I want The Why Book,” Viv stirred herself enough to declare. Molly could picture The Why Book, the bearer of the letter, on the floor near the table, surrounded by the crumbs and smears of dinner.
“No,” she said simply. Viv, for once, did not challenge her.
Molly read the book about the rabbits and then the book about the mice. By the time she had finished the second, Viv’s eyes were closed.
She stood up and turned off the lamp.
“You forgot my song,” Viv accused.
“Sorry, I thought you were asleep,” she said, returning to the bed. You are my sunshine. She was glad, weepily glad, that bedtime was not over. My only sunshine. That she did not yet have to think about what lay on the other side of the door. You make me happy. That she could continue to pretend nothing existed in the universe aside from this room. When skies are gray. This warm dim spaceship bearing her children toward their deep sleep. You’ll never know, dear. She held Viv from behind. How much I love you. Breathing in strands of her dark messy hair. Please don’t take my sunshine away.
Only as she lingered by the kids’ door, petrified of what awaited her once she opened it, did she remember that she had forgotten to make Viv brush her teeth.
22
“…a Friday-night beer with my girls,” Erika was saying as Molly moistened a paper towel with which to wipe the blueberry goo off Ben’s forehead. She paid Erika and then Erika was gone and it was just the mother and the child and the baby. She and the two fruits she had grown inside her. She was happy to be with them and exhausted to be with them. She wished the penny she’d unearthed in the Pit this morning had been an actual find and not a false alarm. She wished that man wouldn’t pray for her soul. She wouldn’t mind sitting quietly for five minutes and drinking something, tea or wine, before playing with the children.
But the children were already playing with her. Viv enlisted her in locating every pillow in the house so she could pile them beside her parents’ bed and jump off. Ben crawled into the bedroom bearing a shoe and a crayon. He alternated between gnawing on one and gnawing on the other, looking expectantly at his mother to observe her respective reactions.