Come to think of it, the food was repulsive to her too.
Bath time, early bedtime. She could make it. Somehow she would make it.
Oh, but Viv did not want to take a bath. She could remember the last time she had taken a bath and she did not like to take a new bath until she had forgotten her old bath.
Ben calmed down a notch or two in the warm water. Molly took refuge in the honeysuckle scent of the baby wash. She realized how acutely part of her was waiting, ever alert to the possibility of Moll’s footsteps in the other room.
Viv ran up and down the hall, chanting. Only after a few minutes did the words of Viv’s chant register with Molly:
“In my scary dream, I saw the mystery! In my scary dream, I saw the mystery!”
“Viv,” Molly called. “What’s that you’re saying?”
“A song.” Viv skipped into the bathroom, grabbed one of Ben’s bath cups, scooped up water, and tossed it at his face. He cried.
“Viv!” Molly roared.
“I was cleaning him,” Viv claimed, skipping away. “In my scary dream, I saw the mystery!”
“Where did you hear that song?” Molly yelled down the hallway.
“In my scary dream! I saw the mystery!”
“Vivian, where did you hear that song?”
“In my head,” Viv chirped.
Molly wanted to probe further—what the fuck?—but Ben was upset, wet from bathwater and wet from tears, a bedraggled little otter, so she pulled him dripping out of the bath, onto her lap, forgetting to place a towel there first.
“I’m doing a good job rhyming, right?” Viv poked her head into the bathroom.
Ben threw up on Molly’s shoulder, a spew of half-chewed raisins and breast milk.
She twisted him around and he threw up again, this time on her knees and on the bath mat and on Viv’s toes.
5
“Turn on the light! Turn on the light!”
It was—what?—the middle of the night.
Who was talking to her? Was Ben talking to her? Ben was not talking to her. Ben could not talk. Ben was sleeping beside her in the big bed because she once heard of a baby who choked to death on its own vomit. Ben’s skin was hot, too hot, to the touch. And in the dark someone kept telling her to turn on the light. And that person was becoming more upset by the second.
She couldn’t find the switch for the bedside lamp.
She found the switch for the bedside lamp.
Viv was standing beside the bed.
“I’m bad,” Viv said.
“You’re bad?”
“I feel bad.”
“Bad how?”
“Can you cover that mirror?” Viv was staring at the mirrored closet.
“Cover the mirror?”
“Please,” Viv implored.
“Why?” It was a big mirror. She had no idea how she would go about covering it.
“I’m scared to see myself in the mirror.”
“Why?” She reached for Viv’s hand. Too hot to the touch.
Viv threw up on the pillow, on the sheets, on the rug, on Molly.
6
Her body woke her before daylight with a single pressing need.
She understood that her nausea was residual, merely a form of empathy for the two small humans who now slept (parched, fitful) beside her.
She had cleaned up so much last night—had lost count of the rounds—the children trading off—then overlapping—the only measure the laundry hamper reeking in the corner.
She leaned over them, breathed them in—their grassy aroma, her favorite smell in the world, obscured, now, by the stink of bile. The odor invaded her pores. The odor was to blame (she lay in bed, believing it) for this false response in her own stomach.
She hated throwing up. The beast within tearing through one’s tamed body. Like giving birth. That same absolute loss of control.
Like orgasm too, but the opposite.
But this was no time for such thoughts.
Because she finally had to admit that the sourness was real, deep inside her—that she had to claim it, do something about it.
She extricated herself from the foul bed, the clammy children, and went to the bathroom and held the toilet.
Which was not as clean as one would have wished.
She considered fetching the toilet bowl cleaner from the cabinet, swooshing that blueness around the interior, sanitizing the victim of her embrace.
She discovered, though, that she had crossed the line: was past the point of being able to fetch and clean.
She crouched.
At first she hoped she wouldn’t. Then she began to hope, fiercely, that she would. She just wanted to have the thing out of her. She just wanted to be free of it.
She waited.
It would not come.
She waited, an increasingly impatient passenger in a train station.
It did not come and it did not come and then, evil, it came.
7
In the bedroom, someone was throwing up.
She could not stand. She could not stand.
She stood. She walked to the bedroom.
Her foot slipped on a slick patch on the floor.
“I’m bad, I’m bad.” Viv was weeping. “I just threw up on our baby.”
Molly was too unsteady to speak but she sat on the bed and pulled Viv toward her. Ben slept on, splattered.
“Will he be okay?” Viv said.
Molly let go of Viv and ran back to the toilet. When she was done, she turned her head to see Viv in the doorway, freaking out.
“I’m okay,” Molly lied. “Don’t worry.”
“He’s awake now,” Viv cried. “He’s sick!”
There was no way she could handle this. It was impossible.
“Help me up,” Molly said.
Viv looked at her and cried harder. But she did move closer to offer a useless little hand. Bolstered by the gesture alone, Molly somehow made it to her feet.
On the bed, Ben was crawling around in vomit (apparently had just added to it himself), whimpering. She tried to pick him up but her arms were too wobbly. Instead, she sat them both on the edge of the bed and knelt down before them and laid her head half in his lap, half in her lap.
It was unclear whether this position indicated that she was reassuring them or that they were reassuring her. With extraordinary effort, she pulled her head up off their laps. They stared at her, their eyes moist.
Someone needed to do something.
She would call the doctor. That was something, a thing a person could do.
The pediatrician’s twenty-four-hour hotline put her on hold. The children continued to stare at her. She held the slim phone with her shoulder and cupped the children’s knees with her hands. After a while a young man told her, brightly, that she would receive a callback within forty-five minutes.
“Forty-five minutes?” She laughed. There was no way she would last that long.
“Erika?” Viv suggested as Molly hung up with a wrathful sob.
It was a brilliant idea. But Molly didn’t pause to applaud Viv before texting Erika: Can u come now? Emergency everyone throwing up.
Only after pressing send did she note that the time was 6:03 a.m. So Erika would be deep asleep, childless, in the apartment she shared with several attractive roommates, dreaming of her upcoming backpacking trip, her alarm not set to go off for another hour and a half yet.
But an instant later Molly’s phone buzzed with a text and she seized it.
Me 2! Erika replied. Bad bug got us all, I’m destroyed, literally can’t stand up, good luck lady! This sucks right
So what now?
Norma, with her walker and her medications?
Those four scared and trusting eyes.
She called David. His phone went to voice mail. She called him six more times. Voice mail every time. Predawn Sacramento. She thought hateful thoughts about him.