The feeding frenzy finally subsided and all of the women stood in front of me with shirts in hand. They were so caught up in their chatter that they didn’t notice how hard I was working to quickly bag their items while wearing another human being, or that Violet was now trying to claw her way out of the carrier as I frantically folded red tissue. There was so much to handle that I wanted to scream. The overwhelm flashed me back to being in labor with Elliot, trying to push him out and Martha locking onto my eyes and saying, “Just keep going. That’s it. The only way out is through.” All I had to do was get through this moment, make my money to pay for my freedom, and then race to get to Elliot.
I stuck my hands out to give the women their perfect little bags of shirts, but Violet’s paws batted them away in protest. The escalation of her physical commotion finally pulled the women out of their fizzy champagne cocoon, and they were forced to pay attention to what was happening right in front of them—a mom trying to be something more.
They looked mortified that an upset toddler should be a part of their pop-up shopping experience, and I didn’t blame them. I hadn’t wanted it to be a part of my selling experience either. I dropped the bags on one of the glass tables and walked away. Too much was going on around me. I breathed out hard. Fuck this shit. I was near eruption and needed to get Violet off of my body, like when they tell you to put the crying baby down before you lose it. I pulled my arm back like a contortionist and attempted to undo the carrier clip on my upper back, but Violet bucked, making the tension in the strap so tight that I couldn’t unlatch it.
“Violet. Stop. It.”
She reached her orange Cheetos hand back and then bitch-slapped me square in the face. SMACK!
The flock of women looked up from the table of bags, aghast. They didn’t know that this wasn’t my first time being slapped in the face, in public, by a toddler. I had been initiated into this part of motherhood by Elliot and his slap heard ‘round the world in Toys R Us, years earlier. But the rage that came from being open-handed slapped in the face this time felt just as visceral as the first.
My cheek stung hot and I couldn’t see for a brief moment. It was either because my eye was hit, I had blacked out, or both. My hands quivered, like they were contemplating rising up to give a slap back. My adrenaline told me to fight and hit back the thing that had just hit me, but my mothering sense was telling me to protect my off-spring. There was an all-out war inside my body. I had to pause and deliberately force my hands to slow down, my right one coming up and grasping Violet’s hand tightly and then quickly letting go.
When my brain came back online, my mouth was agape and I looked down square at Violet, who was well aware that something colossal had just occurred and it might not be good news for her. I wanted to give her a tongue-lashing and possibly a caning to discipline her in some way that would matter, but I also knew that she had been pushed by this day just as I had. This was all her fault and yet all my fault too. It also felt like Tanya’s fault.
I tuned into the loud whispering coming from the women exiting the room with their bags, remembering that there had been an audience. And a merciless one at that. “I would never let my kid get away with that,” one woman muttered, throwing a condemning look directly at me.
“Some people just shouldn’t be parents. That’s why this generation is so entitled,” said another. I shook and felt tears well up and blur my vision, so I bit my lip to squash it, just shy of making it bleed. I wanted to upstage Violet’s bitch slap and punch these women in the fucking whitened teeth. How could they eat up my shirts and then spit out my heart?
Violet, who was still in the carrier on me, had been silent since the slap, but the soft sound of her now-calm voice peeped up. “I sowy Ma-ma.” I looked down into her tired eyes, our bodies pressed into each other. She laid her head down on my small breast that made a perfect little pillow. I couldn’t bring myself to be verbal quite yet, so I kissed her hot, weary head and quickly threw everything into my box and bags.
I ghosted from the house of horrors, weighed down not by clanking chains, but by Violet and overflowing bags that nearly fell off each of my shoulders as I sprinted out to my minivan, hoping to avoid CeCe and an explanation. As I exited the grand gates, I saw a black limo entering on the opposite side. It had to be JT—and what’s her name—because nothing would complete this day quite like missing out on my celebrity crush by sheer minutes. I pressed my hand up to my window as our vehicles passed like ships in the night.
As I sped onto the freeway towards Elliot’s school, I was ravenous. Even though Violet had snacked the day away and fresh ahi was on the breath of every person who came in my room, I had eaten nothing. I plunged my hand into the center console, looking for a stowed-away snack—anything would do. Even an old bank receipt or a squirt of sunscreen sounded delicious at this point. Lucky for me, there was a granola bar from the Mesozoic Era. But at least it was still in a wrapper.
I screeched into the nearly empty parking lot of Elliot’s school. The pick-up line and all its drama had driven off twenty minutes ago. I got out and peeked through Violet’s window to find her sleeping. She was the only child on Earth who refused to fall asleep in the car, but today she was zonked out. I cracked the window just a smidge, shut my door, and ran into the school’s front office which was just steps from where I parked. I ran through the front doors, hoping Elliot would be there waiting for me instead of in a stranger’s car on the way to the state line.
There he was. He looked so small, sitting in an oversized waiting room chair. My shoulders dropped. “El, I’m so sorry,” I said as I moved in and gave him a hug. I pulled back and looked at him, holding his shoulders. His eyes were wet.
“Where were you, Mom?”
The office lady not-so-stealthily side-eyed our exchange. “I was at a work thing, and then Savannah got sick and they couldn’t get you. I rushed straight here,” I explained, realizing that none of the logical details would change his emotional state. I remembered what it felt like to be a kid and to think that your parents had forgotten you somewhere. It felt like you were in a nightmare.
“I thought you were at the end of the line of cars and I kept waiting and waiting and then when I didn’t see you . . .” The reliving of it made him crack. “. . . I got scared.” I wiped the warm teardrops off of his cheeks and hugged him tightly, while looking over his shoulder to make sure Violet and the minivan were still there. I felt seasick. Being home with my kids meant that I hadn’t experienced many moments like this. It felt awful.
“Let’s go, Honey.”
He stood up and grabbed his backpack. “Where’s Violet?” he asked. I waited until we were outside, away from the nosy office lady, to answer him. I’d been judged enough that day and leaving children in cars—even for two minutes in the shade within your eye line—was a touchy topic.
As we pulled out, Elliot said, “I was wondering if maybe we could go get that Pokémon pack that I’ve been wanting. You know, since it’s been a rough day and all.”
And there it was. That edge. That spot where an already gut-wrenching parenting moment is splintered into something even more complicated and seemingly manipulative, and there’s no way out that doesn’t feel like total shit. After leaving Elliot for dead after school, all I wanted to do was comfort him. The last thing I wanted to do was to say “no” or negotiate about Pikachus. And yet.
“Not today. I think we could all use some down time.” In the rear-view mirror, I saw his head drop. My nausea returned. Maybe it was the archaic granola bar I’d mainlined minutes before, but it was most likely the familiar parental guilt.
We pulled into the garage. Four more hours to go before Aaron would hopefully be home. I felt grateful to be walking into a house with no glass tables. I had $1,200 of blood money in my pocket, but I was pretty sure it hadn’t been worth bringing myself and both of my kids to our collective knees. Everyone had been traumatized today.
All of my rules had been slapped out of me. When Aa
ron walked in the door, the only light in the room was the glow from the TV that shone off of our three faces watching back-to-back Cupcake Wars. A bowl of spent edamame shells sat on the coffee table. Dinner.
“Why’s it so dark in here?” Aaron asked, turning on the kitchen light. I recoiled like a vampire. I might’ve even hissed. Violet went running toward him with sudden, full energy.
“Dah-dee, dah-dee!” He picked her up and they melted into a big hug. I opened my mouth to speak, but couldn’t think of how to sum up all the violations of the day, so I shut it. Aaron walked over to me on the couch and kissed me on the head.
“JT must’ve worn you out,” he whispered into my ear.
“I wish,” I groaned. Aaron moved over to Elliot and gave him a kiss on the head too.
“Mom forgot me at school,” he chimed. Great. Thanks, Elliot, for always keeping everyone up to date with the latest. Aaron’s eyebrows raised. To hear that I wasn’t completely on top of managing the kids was new to him too.
“It turns out I can’t be a stay-at-home mom and a working mom at the same time,” I said throwing my hands to my sides, just like the emoji. “And I’ve scheduled an emergency session with June tomorrow, so I don’t have to download my whole day to you. Instead we can watch rich people go on exotic trips with people they hate.” I was referring to Real Housewives. “On second thought, let’s skip that one tonight. I’ve had my fill of rich people.”
“Man, it must’ve been really bad then,” he joked as he headed to the fridge. Even though I didn’t want to recall my painful day entirely, it was unusual that he completely took the out and didn’t inquire further at all. Just like forgetting to pick up children from school was a new occurrence in my life, so was Aaron and I not engaging about our days.
After the kids were asleep and we pillaged the snack cabinet in tandem, Aaron and I sunk into the couch.
“This day,” I said, exhaling.
“Yeah, no kidding.” He must’ve been referring to his own tough day dealing with whatever the cute little pickle incident was. He picked up his phone. I’d shown too much restraint all day. I couldn’t help myself.
“So do you want to know anything about my day?”
“Sure,” he forced, eyes still affixed to his phone. I said nothing. He finally looked up. “Are you going to tell me or not?”
In the history of marriage, those words never ever led to anything good.
“Never mind,” I said.
He ran his hands through his dark hair and pressed his palms on the sides of his face. “Look, I care, April, but I had a rough day too. I just want to chill out. You told me that’s what we were gonna do since you see June tomorrow. Am I wrong, did you not say that?”
“You had a rough day too? Did you have to wear another human being on you during your meeting? Did someone slap you in the face in front of fancy people drinking champagne who said you shouldn’t be allowed to have children? Did your son cry in your arms because you left him somewhere?” I unloaded on him like a baby with reflux. I didn’t want it to be a competition for whose day was harder, but, well, it was, and mine was. There was nothing at Aaron’s work that could’ve trumped my day unless there was a gunman and a white couch.
He threw his arms up. “I know, I know. Your day is always harder than mine. Your life is always harder than mine.”
“It actually is, Aaron, because I’m multitasking every single fucking moment of my life while people accost my face.”
“I know being with the kids all day is hard, and God, I wish I could make it easier for you, but I can’t. It’s not easy to sit here and see everything be so hard for you. When do we get to the part where something gives you some relief? Wasn’t a babysitter supposed to help? Wasn’t getting back into sewing supposed to help you? I haven’t seen you in a week for this?”
I felt like I’d had the wind knocked out of me by a four-square ball, like in fourth grade.
“I’m allowed to have a hard day too,” he said, looking away and shaking his head. I was silent on the outside, while a storm surged inside, his shaking of the head noted in the internal scorebook of marital misdemeanors. He was right about asking when the fuck would anything give me real, tangible relief from the shackles of motherhood. I was as frustrated about that as much as he was. I had been making progress, until today, when it all shit the bed. This day had almost broken me and here I was six hours later, facing the final blow. It was too much, again, so I saved myself, again. I stood up and walked to the stairs.
“You’re just going to walk away? Is this a new thing you do?”
I stopped before the first step and turned around. “This day needs to end. I can’t possibly handle one more thing. Even if you think I should be able to.”
I turned back around and went upstairs. He let me go.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Asking for a Unicorn
I didn’t move a muscle during my eleven hours of sleep, and I had a crick in my neck to prove it. It was astounding how much more rested one could feel when they went to bed at 9 p.m. instead of midnight. When I awoke to Violet’s yells, I actually felt human, for a moment.
Despite the marital tension that awaited me, which had become annoyingly common as of late, I felt relief that at least I wouldn’t have to be both a working and a stay-at-home mom today—and that Lucinda was coming to the rescue while June would surely help me make sense of yesterday’s collapse and what it meant for the future of my mental health.
On my way to Violet’s room, I heard Aaron and Elliot laying in his bed, talking intensely about a topic near and dear to their hearts: why Ariel from The Little Mermaid didn’t write a message to Eric, describing the whole voice debacle and urgent need for a kiss. Elliot was passionately arguing that if Ariel could sign her name on the contract with Ursula, that meant she must know how to write the English language and therefore could’ve easily sidestepped the entire ordeal by reaching out to Eric via pen and ink.
I stood in Elliot’s doorway as Aaron passionately nodded in agreement. I hated that Aaron and I had unfinished business from last night and the day already felt shaky because of it. I didn’t want to contemplate what to say or not say, or if I should even look in his direction, and who owed who an apology. I wanted one damn day without heaviness and for everything to just go back to functional, even if it meant sweeping this corpse under the rug. We were both doing the best we could, for fuck’s sake.
And then it happened. Somewhere between the internal evaluating and accidental meeting of eyes with him, I just let go. There was no pat on the back nor applause when it happened. I simply smiled at him, surprising even myself. The amount of energy it would’ve taken to teeter in relationship purgatory was far more than it took to just move forward, and my subconscious knew that before I did.
Elliot threw the covers off both of them and came at me. “Mom, today is desk sale day at school. I’m gonna go find stuff to bring.”
Desk sale day was when all the third graders brought their personal junk to school and sold it to each other. Pretty much Marie Kondo’s worst nightmare. They used “scholar dollars” (AKA the hush money they’d earned for following the prison rules in class) and Elliot could make it rain scholar dollars with all the rule-following he did, which meant that he would come home with more junk than he left with. The Bin of Pointless Crap wins again.
“Hi,” Aaron said to me, putting his arm around my waist and leaning his chin on my head. I couldn’t tell if this was denial, acceptance, or the gateway drug to divorce. But life went at warp speed with kids, and sometimes there just wasn’t enough time to handle every little marriage dispute with the utmost care. Sometimes letting things go was an act of grace, not disconnection, Right?.
I plopped myself comfortably on June’s couch, like a teenager at a friend’s house, then noticed she had what looked like a fresh manicure—nine hot pink fingernails and one black pinky nail.
“What a pleasant surprise to see you so soon,” she said, taking a
seat. It pained me not to be telling her a success story.
“Everything started out so promising. But then my career ended in a great glass room with a toddler and a bag of Cheetos.” June’s eyes dilated incrementally as I kept listing off the atrocities of the previous day. “I was naïve to think I could be a mom and do anything else outside of that. My heart is an idiot.”
There was a long uncomfortable silence. June sat with her chin resting on her hand and her foot bouncing. She looked like she was trying to figure out where to go next with me and was without something immediately helpful to say. I waited, staring at the carpet so intently that I could see the microscopic loop of each fiber brushing up next to my Toms.
“Let’s go back to the part that sounded do-able. How do we get you back to that place?”
“I guess I could just keep it simple with the shirt orders and only take a few,” and never do a pop-up again, I said, completely deflated, nearly mumbling.
“Hmm. Sounds like you don’t want to do it on a smaller scale, like when things seemed to be working. Is that right?” I felt a splash of embarrassment, as if I was asking for a unicorn. But I was only asking for equal opportunity. Aaron had that unicorn.
“I want to say yes to things, like Aaron does. He gets asked to do art shows and doesn’t hesitate one bit. He doesn’t ever have to get a babysitter because I am his built-in babysitter. I didn’t sign up for this. Who wrote these rules?” I breathed out in frustration.
“I hear you, April. Motherhood invites us to reassess the things we gave up to become mothers—and even wives. Some pieces you can take back and some you can’t, as is part of any life transition.” Her words touched me in a low, painful place.
“When Aaron and I met, we were both following our dreams. He loved my independence and I loved his creativity. We were equals. And then we weren’t.” My throat burned its familiar burn as I worked through the tightness of my anger. “I cannot make peace with this. I want to, but I can’t.” I imagined a giant curtain, faking all us women out. The second we have a baby, the curtain drops and we see that equality was a total fucking lie. This gig is biologically unequal out the gate.
Adult Conversation Page 13
