“I’m kind of devastated to be missing the fish party,” David had said to Molly in bed early that morning, whispering over Viv’s slumbering body. Molly rolled her eyes at him, though she knew he meant it. He reached across and stroked Molly’s neck.
It was well over a week since she and David had had sex, thanks to the whirl of their lives, and now it would be more than another week. So though she was too tired, though it felt like her breasts were currently the common property of the family (sucked by the baby in hunger; sucked by the child in jest, in imitation of the baby; sucked by the husband in desire; sucked, too, by the breast pump), she told David to carry Viv, intruder on their sleep, back to her own bed.
When he picked up Viv, she was so limp that her head lolled back and her hair dangled wildly, as though she were dead; Molly had to shut her eyes against the sight.
She kept her eyes closed until David came back in, locking the door behind him.
“By the way, Ben’s not wearing his pajamas,” he said, though his penis was already in her mouth.
“I know,” she paused to say.
“Oh shit you had to go to him last night?”
She didn’t have the energy to respond to the obvious.
“Do you think he’s cold?”
“Can we talk about something else?” she said. “Or not talk.”
She wanted to go through the doorway with him, into the other mode, where they were just two bodies with straightforward and ecstatic goals.
She was grateful they’d had so much sex together for all those years before they had children. Every time they had sex now implied all those other times, an accumulation of sex, the times they couldn’t remember and the times they could.
How gentle, his hands on her head. They were passing through the doorway and she was glad. He released her head and she released him and she came up to him so they could kiss in the old way, with mouths open and accepting, the savagery of teeth, not those tame, raisin pecks of Mommy and Daddy.
It puzzled her that orgasm wasn’t widely considered a phenomenon that challenges everything we believe about human existence—doesn’t it serve as proof of an alternate state of being? Isn’t the fact that people can feel this way, so in thrall to this enigmatic force, so carried by it, even for an instant, evidence that the state in which we spend most of our time is merely one possibility?
“I love you even though I hate you,” she said to him after they had both come. She felt joyous, lazy with him. She felt rich, richer than a millionaire.
“I love you even though I hate you,” he replied.
It was their shared motto for these early years of parenthood. Because sometimes you had to hate the person who was using the toilet or taking a shower or at work or sleeping or doing any other indulgent thing while you were caught in the cyclone of your children’s needs.
About a week before, Viv had a restless night, coming into their room a bunch, so eventually Molly gave up and went to sleep beside her in her little bed. Then Viv slept well but passed her restlessness on to Molly. The next morning, a Saturday, David complained that he’d had bad dreams, a peculiar night of sleep, and asked Molly why she kept stroking his face all night long when she knew he hated that. “What the fuck are you talking about?” she roared under her breath so the kids couldn’t hear. I was tending to your offspring. Screw your peculiar night of sleep; I had no night of sleep. Believe me, if I had to stay up all night stroking a face, it wouldn’t be yours. I love you even though I hate you.
Now, beyond the locked bedroom door, a small voice was asking for them, but he had somehow fallen back to sleep in the past three seconds, so it was she who got out of bed.
19
“What’s this?” Viv repeated, waving high above her head an envelope encrusted with golden star stickers.
“Where did you find that?” Molly said as she rushed (capable, now, of swift movement; of effortlessly bearing Ben with her, adrenaline whirring through her) across the room to lock the door through which the deer had just exited.
“In The Why Book of course,” Viv said. She had recently gotten in the habit of ending her sentences with of course.
Molly darted over and yanked the letter out of Viv’s hand, imagining new threats: yellowish powder, whitish powder.
“No,” Viv protested. “It’s mine and it’s covered in my stickers and I found it and I get to open it of course.”
“No.”
“Give me my letter,” Viv insisted.
“It could have poison in it,” Molly snapped, her filter gone.
“What’s poison?” Viv said.
“Something bad.”
“Bad how?” Viv was scared.
“Just very, very bad.” She put Ben down on the floor beside Viv. First she would open the letter. Then she would call 911. “Can you babysit Ben for a sec?”
Viv, frightened into compliance, turned back to The Why Book. “B,” she whispered, “do you know why are moths not as decorated as butterflies?”
Molly went into the kitchen and put on rubber gloves and pulled the sharpest knife out of the knife block. She cut through the golden star stickers. A single sheet of paper fell out, unaccompanied by any suspicious powders. On one side, the paper bore an announcement from Viv’s preschool reminding parents to please bring in extra tissues and paper towels (shit, she kept forgetting). On the other side, there was a numbered list, written painstakingly in capital letters in magenta ink. She recognized the color of the pen, which sat in a jar on her small desk in the bedroom. It chilled her to think of the intruder going from room to room, finding the pen, finding the school notice, finding the stickers, finding the deer mask, finding The Why Book.
1. GIVE V & B DINNER AND PUT THEM TO BED.
2. E BACK BY 7PM.
3. COME OUT TO CAR WHEN E ARRIVES.
4. IF YOU DO NOT COME YOU WILL REGRET IT FOREVER.
5. POLICE WILL THINK YOU ARE CRAZY.
So he knew their names. Item five notwithstanding, she would call 911, of course. But in her head her of course sounded as childish and misplaced as Viv’s.
She ran to her bag and pulled out her phone, which had only 10 percent charge. There was a nonsensical text from Erika: Yeah no prob c u @ 7. Molly tapped in her passcode so she could read back over their texts. From Molly’s phone, at 6:16 p.m.: So sorry something came up is there any way you can come back and cover a couple more hours tonight? And then, at 6:17 p.m., from Erika: Sure thing, just postponed my drinks, actually works better anyway. From Molly, at 6:18 p.m.: Sweet thanks for swift response see you soon. Can you be here by 7? I’ll get both kids to sleep so you can just chill.
“No, Ben!” Viv cried out. “You’re gonna rip it!”
Calling 911 no longer seemed like a possibility.