An Imperfection in the Kitchen Floor

by Heather Greenleaf

  “He wouldn’t do that. He knows I want to travel and need money to do so.”

  “Your father likes the idea of you leaving, then, does he?”

  “Well,” I stopped walking abruptly, forcing Ellis to stop short and nearly plow into me. “No, you’re right. Papa doesn’t actually want me to go.” I looked at the painting in my hands. A willow tree from Willow Grove. Would I ever paint the trees in the Grand Canyon Forest Reserve? I felt tremendously foolish. And it had been such a pleasant afternoon.

  “Tish, I think it is wonderful that you…”

  I held up my hand to stop him. “It was nice seeing you, Ellis. It is time I got back home.”

  He reached out his hand to grasp my arm, but I turned away avoiding it and his arm fell to his side. I began walking again, out of the park and back up the hill toward home.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Molly

  During our quiet moments, Hayden’s newness amazed me. His hooded black-brown eyes and bulbous belly were things remarkable, special, about my child. I loved holding him, loved his way of pulling his knees to his chest and snuggling into me like a tree frog. But then he would wake up.

  If he wasn’t sleeping, Hayden’s squall gusted day and night. He wailed and I answered with ineptitude. I had no idea how to keep him happy. Corey headed to the office and Hayden sucked on my breasts, screamed in my ears, pooped on my arms, and threw up on my chest. Without my complete attention, Hayden hollered for it, and once he was crying, it was hard to pull him out of the fit. I hadn’t cooked a meal since his arrival. I yearned for bed by seven-thirty, ready for the day to be over but knowing I would be awakened again in too few restful hours.

  A few nights after Corey went back to work, I found myself sitting up, my mind emerging from the depths of dreams slowly, slowly. What day was it? What was that sound? Before I was fully awake, I was moving out of the warmth of the covers and across the cold floor of the bedroom. As my cognizant mind caught up with my unconscious one, I realized where I was and why I was awake. The baby was crying.

  The clock read 3:42 and my stomach sunk, realizing I had only fallen back to sleep two hours ago. As I moped past Corey’s side of the bed, I heard him snore.

  In the nursery, I fed Hayden and settled him back in his crib. I don’t even remember how I got back to bed.

  The next morning dawned like all the rest, Hayden as alarm clock, my breasts full and leaking at the sound of his cries. I looked at the clock. 6:21. He had slept only two more hours since the last feeding and my body felt like lead. With a quick good morning peck, Corey jumped out of bed to shower, peppy and ready for work. I stumbled and swayed into Hayden’s room to change his diaper. I settled back in my own bed and he latched on.

  I heard the pipes creak as Corey turned off the water and padded back into our room, a towel around his waist. His hair was streaming and his chest dappled with drops of water. I had no sex drive but could still see how good-looking he was. I cringed at the comparison of our appearances. My hair felt heavy with grease and I felt the sag of my once-perky breasts with every pull from Hayden.

  “Going to do some unpacking today?” Corey asked.

  “Uh-huh. I’m sure going to try.”

  “Don’t throw away anything of my aunt’s just yet, though, okay? And, it would be awesome if you could find my golf gloves. I need them for Sunday.”

  “Wait, you’re not going to be home on Sunday?” I asked, panic rising. “For goodness sake, Corey, can’t we just see how I do by myself this week? I thought I could at least count on you this weekend.”

  “Not this weekend. I have a golf outing. Boss mandated.”

  He came over to me and kissed the crown of my head, no doubt smelling my dirty hair. He then kissed Hayden, who became distracted and fell off my breast. A wail escaped his little mouth.

  “Get out of here; he has to concentrate! We don’t quite have this down yet,” I said as my free arm shooed Corey away and the other latched Hayden back on.

  Corey tromped down the stairs and out the front door. I heard his SUV back out and drive away. Eager for a change in scenery, Hayden and I moved downstairs.

  Because my body was so used to constant motion—hustling in the kitchen during the rush, hauling pots full of water, and pulling large pans out of the oven—all of these new sedentary hours felt slothful. Lethargy overwhelmed my limbs, perhaps from inactivity and boredom even more than my sleepless nights. I had never been at home much during the day before; I’d go to the gym or out for a run, and then head into the restaurant kitchen to make prep sheets or complete purchase orders before service that night.

  Shackled to Hayden, I was imprisoned. And there were so many boxes to unpack. We shuffled around them as I bounced my ornery bundle. I examined the ancient dark paintings that hung on the walls in gilded frames. Curious, I tilted up a small panel painting depicting an unidentifiable European town and peeked behind. Beneath lay a stark white patch of painted wall, a precise square that hadn’t been faded by sunlight over the years. I sighed, adding fresh paint to my mental list of things in the house that needed improvement.

  After twenty more minutes of swaying and bouncing up on the balls of my feet, Hayden finally fell asleep. I climbed the stairs, each one its own Everest. Easing Hayden slowly away from my body, I lowered him down at just the right angle, like all the books said, with his head higher than his bottom so that he wouldn’t feel like he was falling and startle awake. I stood stock still for a minute after letting go, anticipating the wail, but he stayed silent. Hayden was asleep. Victory!

  Afraid to breathe, I tiptoed out of the room. A loud creak filled the space. The throw rug Corey had put down hid a minefield of creaky wooden boards beneath. I quickly picked my foot up, but the board groaned louder upon release. At a run, I escaped.

  In the hallway, I grabbed hold of the doorjamb and craned my upper body around the wall to see if Hayden was still sleeping. Thankfully, he was. I let out my breath and went down the stairs. At the bottom, the Jack and Jill stairway split and I followed them to the right and into the library where boxes sat waiting to be unpacked.

  Locating the baby monitor, I flicked it on and set it atop some boxes. Hayden lay still and I could hear the soft cadence of his breathing. I ripped open a box nearby and found my books inside. The shelves in the library were already crammed with Aunt Tish’s books. Where would ours go?

  I looked around at all she had left behind. To Corey, everything here held a special memory from his childhood. Everything. The rocking chair they sat on together as Aunt Tish read him a story, the table where she would rest her coffee and his hot chocolate, the old knickknacks, the old books. Some, or ideally all, of it would have to go if we were ever going to fit our life into this house.

  I hauled my books out of the box, stacking them on the floor. Then, one by one, I pulled down Aunt Tish’s books, filling the empty box and making room on the shelf for mine. Corey could go through hers before I donated them. Volume by volume, the books came off the shelves, along with ancient dust. I glanced over the titles, familiar with some. Classics like Wuthering Heights and Uncle Tom’s Cabin went into the boxes, along with shelves of travel photography books and thick hardback art museum catalogs.

  A small black bound book, tattered and faded, was tucked in among them. I contemplated its shabbiness for a long moment, running my fingers over the ragged leather, feeling rather kindred. I opened the book. A piece of paper fluttered out, the inner edge torn loose from the binding. It was a recipe, handwritten and titled “Perfection Salad.” What in the world was that? Gelatin, cabbage, celery, and pimentos. Yuck. Mixed, solidified, and cubed. No, thank you.

  I placed it aside and flipped through the rest of the book. A folded menu tucked inside caught my eye. Hess’s Delicatessen, it read. This must have been Aunt Tish’s place. The left listed take-out meats and deli salads, including that Perfection Salad, and the right listed sandwiches and light meals for fifteen cents. It must have been the menu when th
e place first opened. I wondered when that was.

  There were more menus inside, the prices steadily increasing, I assumed at pace with inflation, and pages of recipes for the dishes listed as offerings. The food was so old-fashioned and strange—Oyster Salad, Orange Feather Cake. I wanted to linger and imagine the outcome of each of these recipes, remember what it was like to lose myself in the process of cooking.

  But just then, I heard Hayden on the monitor. My enthusiasm turned quickly to annoyance. I searched through the box maze and found the device, green lights blinking the staccato of his screams. I could see on the screen that he was flailing his arms and ready to be picked up, needing to be comforted.

  With a sigh, I set the black book back on Aunt Tish’s shelf and climbed the creaky stairs up to Hayden. The foyer clock said it had been only twenty minutes since I first placed him into his crib.

  ●●●

  Later in the week, Jocelyn stopped by. Colten and Rowan were in camp, and so she arrived unencumbered by my raucous nephews. When I answered the door, she sauntered in, wearing a royal blue velour tracksuit and running sneakers, her tight abs hinted at under the white baby tee peeking out from her unzipped jacket. Her hair and makeup were perfect, and I wondered if she was heading to the gym that way.

  “Hi, Molly. Are you still in your pajamas?” In her French manicured hands, she held out a casserole. I greeted her with a half-hearted kiss on the cheek, trying to take her comments in stride.

  She leaned in to accept my greeting, but then away suddenly.

  “You have spit-up on your shoulder. Looks like you have lost almost all of your baby weight, though! You are so much skinnier now than you used to be, even before you were pregnant. Motherhood agrees with you!” I took the casserole and the backhanded compliment. How heavy must she have considered me before I was pregnant?

  “Where is that beautiful baby?” she asked. Finding him in his swing, she walked over, bent down and cooed to him for a few moments. Then she stood, glanced around and said, “It doesn’t look like you have settled in much.”

  “No, I guess we still have a lot of boxes to empty,” I sighed, resolving myself for a long afternoon of criticism.

  “Doesn’t all of this clutter drive you crazy? And Corey? He likes things neat, right?”

  “I suppose he’d prefer it if we were fully unpacked, but when we got here, there was so much cleaning to do, and then Hayden arrived…” I stopped myself, refusing to make any more excuses. I changed tack. “Thank you for the casserole.”

  “Oh, sure. It isn’t restaurant quality, like Corey is used to from you. It’s just something I whipped up after my Pilates class. Are you cooking much these days?”

  “No.”

  We settled onto the couch. A moment went by in unpleasant silence.

  “Oh, well,” she recovered, “just focus on the baby. Aren’t babies just wonderful? Enjoy every moment. He’ll never be this sweet and tiny and helpless again.”

  Thank goodness! A short guffaw escaped my lips. If Jocelyn noticed, she didn’t react. She plowed right on. “How is Hayden sleeping?”

  “Not very well, actually. He’s up every few hours.”

  “In a few more weeks you should absolutely try the Ferber method. There’s no other way. My boys didn’t need it—they slept right through the night by six weeks all on their own—but I have friends who swear by it.”

  “Maybe,” I said, not yet sold on the idea of letting Hayden cry it out. “I can’t even get him to sleep in the Pack ‘n Play for his naps yet.”

  “Oh, you just have to! Put him down. He’ll get used to it. No wonder your house is in such a state. He is in his crib at night, isn’t he?”

  I hesitated, wondering if I should be honest with her. Why not? She’d judge me either way. “Most nights…though sometimes I fall asleep nursing and he ends up with us in our bed.”

  “Oh no! What if you roll over on to him? Co-sleeping is very dangerous. And Hayden will get used to sleeping with you and never want to sleep anywhere else.”

  She spoke with such authority on the matter, I thought maybe she had to put an end to her boys sleeping in the bed with her and Hank, so I asked, “Your boys didn’t have any trouble sleeping in their cribs?”

  “No, no.” She waved her hand as if my question were ridiculous. “What diapers are you using?”

  I sighed. Of course her boys slept through the night, in their own perfect cribs, in their perfectly clean house, and they probably also woke up cheerful and full of smiles. They were monsters now, though, and I found some comfort in this.

  Without waiting for my answer, Jocelyn continued, “You must not get the diapers with the blue dye. They made Rowan break out in the worst hives. And don’t use anything but Quadruple Cream. The others are just a waste of money. Do you have a place figured out yet for swimming classes? Or maybe music? I’ll send you an email with all the places Colten and Rowan loved. You should get registered soon. They fill up quickly.” She looked me over again. “You’ll actually have to get dressed, though. What will the other mommies think?”

  That I was drowning. They would think I was drowning. And I was. Though maybe there were some other “mommies” out there who were feeling lost too? It didn’t seem like it. If idyllic Facebook feeds were any indication, it was possible that all new mothers were exactly like Jocelyn. In her presence, I felt like the only woman alive to struggle with motherhood.

  Although I was sure that Jocelyn had sniffed out my incompetence the moment she walked in the front door, there was no way I would ever admit it. Especially not to her. I refused to let her see how defeated I was, outmaneuvered by an infant. So I shut up tight like a clam for the rest of our conversation, and pretended to value her sage advice. I nodded. I listened. I smiled. Everything was under control. When Hayden started arching his back, a sure sign he was about to wail, I picked him up out of the swing. A distant version of my voice told Jocelyn that I loved motherhood, it was hard, but worth it. Holding Hayden, I started bouncing around the room. Yes, I was getting used to living in the suburbs. Yes, I would sign up for a few of the classes, thank you for suggesting that. Yes, I would, of course, take a shower before taking him to them. To prove that I would heed her advice about Hayden sleeping out of my arms for naps, I walked him over to the Pack ‘n Play and settled him down. The moment he left my arms for the cold cradle, he began to wail.

  Part of me felt vindicated. My mind screamed at Jocelyn, “See this isn’t so easy. Hayden is a hard baby! He isn’t an automaton like your kids. He needs more. I’d like to see you handle Hayden for the day!” I held my tongue, though, too tired to stand up to any further barrage of her opinions.

  “Well, that’s my cue!” Jocelyn said, jumping up. “Your little man may need to eat again! Make sure he is gaining weight! If you ever want to switch to formula, let me know. I’ll tell you the best one to buy. Enjoy the casserole! I’m glad that both of your men will get real food today!” And with that, she air kissed my cheek, staying far away from the spit-up shoulder, waggled her perfect nails in the air at Hayden, and rushed out the front door.

  ●●●

  I hated to admit it, but Jocelyn’s casserole tasted good. I sneaked a bite before putting it into our nearly empty fridge. It was cheesy and rich in carbs, just the way I liked it. There was no way we were going to eat it though. I wouldn’t let the first home-cooked meal Corey and I shared in this house post-baby to be cooked by Jocelyn.

  Because we had nothing else, I resolved to go the grocery store. I worked up my determination between bites of buttered toast—the most exciting thing I had recently summoned the energy to prepare. As I mumbled to myself about the things I needed to get, crumbs fell into Hayden’s fine hair. I brushed them away.

  After tummy time, I changed his diaper and settled down on the couch to nurse him. I flipped on the television—just while he nursed, I told myself. I was one episode of Golden Girls away from fresh air and human contact, even if it was just the checkout girl.
I was one half hour away from supplies for a real meal.

  Everything went according to plan. Hayden finished eating without falling asleep and was still happy. A little dance around the room produced a good burp and I started to get him into his onesie jacket. Chatting non-stop in that high-pitched just-for-babies ridiculous voice, I buckled him into the seat, grabbed the handle with a heave, and hooked the carrier seat into the crook of my bent elbow. I turned toward the front door feeling accomplished. I was going to make it out the door!

  And then I heard it. A low rumble that kept escalating and mutating into a loud spurt. I knew right away what the sound was: an up-the-back poop.

  “Okay, little man, you aren’t going to deter this trip. We’re just going to quick change you, and then right back on the road. We still have time to get to the store and back before you will want to eat again.” I continued my incessant burbling as I moved him to the changing table. Out of the jacket, which had been hit and stained, out of his outfit, which had been smeared and was likely unrecoverable, and out of his diaper, which threatened to continue its overflow on its way to the pail. A few once-overs with wet wipes would be good enough for now.

  Soiled clothes went in the hamper. A new diaper, outfit, and coat went on the baby. The baby went back in to the car seat. I went to the sink for a good hand-washing. Twenty minutes later, we were finally out the door.

  ●●●

  The grocery store was worse than I imagined it would be. Hayden cried the entire time we were there. I cooed at him and stroked his face as I walked and pushed the cart, his seat nestled deep inside. By the third aisle, I was gritting my teeth, pasting on a pained smile and plowing through.

  A few older women offered a sympathetic word and other mothers trudged along, tugging their own children behind, nodding at me in understanding. I paid for, bagged, and loaded the groceries in the trunk to the soundtrack of Hayden’s unending unhappiness.

  I pulled into the driveway, barely missing the trash cans, completely frazzled. I turned off the ignition. I could see Hayden, though he faced backward, via the baby mirror. Strapped into his carrier, his little face was puckered red with anger, his mouth wide open in an angry howl, bare gums and back of his throat visible. I rested my head on the steering wheel in front of me and tried to take a calming breath.