by Darien Gee
“Mom, Brady won’t let me play with the airplane. My airplane, the one I got for Christmas.” Noah folds his arms across his chest and looks cross.
Frances puts away the dry packages of spaghetti. “Can you give him something else to play with? What about his fire truck?” She starts clearing the table, readying it for breakfast instead.
“He hates that fire truck. He wants my airplane, but it’s mine. I’m going to hit him.”
“Noah.” Frances frowns. “We do not hit in this family. Got it?”
Noah isn’t fazed. “Then I’ll lock him in the closet.”
Frances is glad there’s nobody here to witness this, especially any of the caseworkers who did the home study for the adoption.
“Noah, you’re a big boy. Find something else to play with.”
Noah huffs, “Mom!” but turns and stomps back to his room. Frances listens for a yell from Brady, but it doesn’t come. In a few minutes they have to go pick up Nick from a friend’s house, so they’ll have to stop playing anyway.
When the spaghetti sauce is transferred to a container to cool and everything else is washed and put away, Frances grabs her keys and calls to the boys. “Time to get Nick. Everybody in the car!”
When there’s no answer, Frances walks down to the boys’ room. At some point they’ll outgrow this house but for now, Frances likes how cozy it is. All three boys share a room and she likes knowing that at night, they’re all tucked in and together. She’s an only child and she always longed for a sibling, always wished she had a brother or a sister to share a room with, to grow up with. Maybe that’s why Mei Ling feels so right, so perfect for their family. The boys have one another just like Reed has Jason, but Frances knows that having a little girl is going to change everything for them, and for the better.
Reed teases her that it’s all about the fluffy pink dresses and frilly hairbows, but they both know it’s much more than that. It’s about the softness that comes with having a girl in the home. For Frances, this sweet angel is her long-held wish, her secret hope from the day she married Reed. She always knew she’d have a daughter, and it always surprised her whenever she found out she was having a boy. She wouldn’t trade her sons for anything, of course, but always there was the waiting, the expectation. Now it can be put to rest. The daughter she has been waiting for is finally coming.
Frances turns into the boys’ room and gasps. Noah and Brady are standing around the remains of a toy airplane, which Noah is proceeding to smash to bits with a plastic baseball bat. Brady is laughing as pieces fly everywhere.
“Noah Tyler Latham! You stop that right now!” Frances hurries forward as Noah takes another swing at the airplane.
“Can’t, Mom,” Noah says. “Airplane crash.”
“Airplane crash!” Brady repeats, delighted. He’s three. He claps as a plastic shard flies across the room. “Boom!”
“Boom!” Noah roars, and brings the bat down as Frances tries to grab it. He nails her in the foot and she tumbles toward the beds. “Oh! Sorry, Mom.”
Frances catches herself, then gives her foot a shake. It stings, but she knows nothing is broken.
“I thought you liked this airplane,” she says grabbing the bat as Noah readies for another swing.
“Nah,” Noah says with a shrug. “We’re over it. Right, Brady?”
Brady beams. “Right!” He scoops up an armful of parts and tosses them in the air before Frances can stop him.
“Stop! Boys, get in the car now.” She pushes them toward the door. “And then you’re cleaning this up when we get home.” She gives Noah a firm look.
“It was Brady’s idea,” Noah starts to protest. “Make him do it.”
“Brady is three.” Frances points toward the garage. “GO.”
Noah trudges out the door with Brady on his heels. Frances stares at the destruction in their wake. She loves her sons, but this supposedly typical-boy behavior is too much. She sees Mei Ling’s picture in a frame on the boys’ dresser, and feels herself soften once again. Already Frances feels back in balance, no longer outnumbered by all the testosterone in the house.
“You and me,” she says, rubbing her foot. She touches the frame gently. “Tea parties and dress-up. We’ll show these boys how it’s done.”
Chapter Three
Connie checks the kitchen clock, then quickly unties her apron and washes her hands. She has a few minutes before their day officially starts and she’s done as much as she can for now.
She hurries upstairs, then quietly opens the door to her bedroom and slips inside. Before Madeline bought the tea salon, it had been a B&B so Connie’s room is more of a suite than a room, with a small sitting area and a nicely appointed private bath. It’s included in her pay, which is more than she received at the laundromat where she was an attendant for almost five years. There’s a tiny window alcove where Connie curls up every morning to write in her journal. Sometimes she’ll go out on the small balcony and sit in one of the wrought iron chairs and gaze at the backyard where they’ve renovated the gardens and added outdoor seating.
But now she kneels on the floor by her bed and lifts the bed skirt. She reaches underneath until her fingers curl around a handle. She pulls out a suitcase, old and battered. She presses buttons on either side of the handle and the latches pop free.
Inside is the familiar musty smell of mothballs and time. It’s mostly empty since Connie has moved her clothes into the armoire and antique dresser, her belongings having found a place in this space Connie gets to call her own. All of her belongings, that is, except this. A plastic folder that’s cracked along the seam and held together with a thick rubber band. Connie pulls off the elastic, snapping herself in the process. Her wrist is stinging as she opens the folder and pulls out a series of photographs.
Connie at four, Connie at eight. Connie at the state fair with blue cotton candy stuck in her hair. Connie selling Girl Scout cookies. Connie with her father at the swimming pool, water streaming down her face as she grins atop her father’s shoulders. She was ten there. A year later he would die of a heart attack, slumped over his desk at home, the ink from his fountain pen smeared across a sheet of paper.
There is only one picture left. Connie at thirteen. She’s at a petting zoo, flanked on one side by a small herd of Boer goats, and on the other, her mother.
Connie touches the photo, runs her fingertips along the goats, the outline of her mother’s face. Connie looks for a hint, for a sign of whatever her mother must have been thinking. In the picture her hands are on Connie’s shoulders. They’re both wearing Bermuda shorts and sandals, sleeveless shirts, broad sun visors, a smile for the camera. Connie had no idea what was going to happen next, a mere few days after their return home. She found the empty bottles of sleeping pills first. An accidental overdose, they said.
Connie was put with one foster family after the next. None of the families she stayed with were all that terrible, but they weren’t that wonderful, either. The first family ignored her mostly, and Connie probably would have stayed there if they hadn’t been arrested for lottery mail fraud. The husband in the next family was a chain smoker and Connie would feign lying on the floor, her hands around her neck, pretending to choke. “Get this damn girl out of here!” he’d bellow to his wife. Connie didn’t last there long. The next family had other children who treated Connie like dirt but Connie didn’t care anymore. They didn’t know her, didn’t have any idea what was going on inside of her. When she made honor roll for the school year, they left her alone, dubbing her as both weird and geeky, someone not worth their time at all.
By the time she was sixteen Connie figured out that if she could prove to the judge that she was one-hundred-percent self-supporting, she could be legally emancipated before the age of eighteen. She found a part-time job, a cheap place to stay above the Pizza Shack. She was able to juggle school easily enough, and when her foster family announced that they were moving, the judge looked at all her paperwork, at the thick file showing
her foster-care history, the glowing recommendations from her teachers, the absence of any living relatives. A swipe of a pen and she was free.
Connie puts the pictures back into the folder, stretches the rubber band around it once again. She hasn’t shown these pictures to anyone, not even Madeline. She might one day, but for now it feels safest like this, a small dose that reminds her of who she is and what she had. Once upon a time, she was part of a family. And once upon a time, she was loved.
“Connie!” Madeline calls up the stairs. Connie quickly begins putting everything away. “Connie, we have more goat drama!”
Connie slides the suitcase under the bed and blows out her breath. Serena was eating her way through Madeline’s garden so Connie put up a makeshift fence. Serena has been bleating her protest ever since, making life unbearable for everyone within earshot.
Madeline is anxious for her to find Serena’s owners, but Connie can’t bring herself to do it. As good as Madeline is to her and as much as they talk, Madeline has a whole other life and set of friends, family. Connie has herself, Madeline, and now, Serena. She just wants a little more time with her, that’s all. Besides, there must have been a reason Serena chewed through that rope, right? And who knows what her previous owners were like? Connie can’t send Serena back home without doing a little research first and knowing she’ll be okay.
There’s a knock on the door. “Are you in there?”
“I’m here.” Connie opens the door, brushes a lock of hair from her face.
“Serena’s found her way into Walter Lassiter’s garden again,” Madeline informs her. “And I believe he has the water hose out.”
“Oh!” Connie hurries past her and clambers down the stairs. “I was planning on reinforcing the fence tonight. I’ll do it now.”
“We have those quiches that need to go in the oven soon,” Madeline reminds her.
“Quiches! Right!” Connie hollers over her shoulder, almost tripping. “I’m on it!”
She emerges from the back door in time to see Walter aiming the hose at Serena. “That’ll show you to get into my petunias!” he hollers. A spray of water hits Serena’s back and she startles, then dodges unsuccessfully as Walter sprays her again. Connie watches, horrified, unsure of what to do. Madeline has come up behind her.
And then Connie sees it, a gleam in Serena’s eye.
“Serena, no!” Connie shouts, but it’s too late.
Serena has her head down and she’s charging Walter Lassiter. Walter drops the hose and runs for the house. “Dolores! Help!” He’s almost to their back door when Serena bumps into his butt, pushing him off balance enough to fall into the lilac bushes by his house.
“Oh dear,” Madeline murmurs, her hand covering her mouth, stifling a laugh. “This isn’t good.”
Serena is trotting back toward them, smugly satisfied, and heads toward the fenced area of the property. She nudges the gate open and slips inside.
Walter Lassiter is upright now, brushing the dirt off his pants. “I’m calling animal control!” he yells at them before storming into the house. Dolores is standing on the steps with a helpless look on her face. She lifts her shoulders in an apologetic shrug.
Connie looks at Serena, who’s back in her pen and munching on grass, oblivious. Connie clears her throat. “I think I’ll put those quiches in now,” she says. Madeline just nods her assent, and the two women go inside.
Max waves the paper in front of Ava’s face, tugs on the frayed hem of her skirt. “Mommy, look.”
“Hold on, Max.” Ava squeezes one more lemon into the water, then gives the solution a stir, the bottle caps tapping gently against one another. She’ll soak them overnight to remove any rust, then take a soft toothbrush and work the groove of each cap with soapy water, making sure to remove any remaining debris. She’ll finish with a layer of clear lacquer and then, once they’re dry, she’ll be able to start working on them.
He tugs again. “I drew free people. You, me, and Daddy.”
“Three,” Ava corrects automatically as she throws away the discarded lemons. “Th-th-th. Three.”
“Free,” Max repeats solemnly. “F-f-f. Free.”
Ava sighs. She hopes it’s baby talk that Max will grow out of some day, that a speech impediment won’t be one more thing he has to deal with.
She wipes her hands and turns to her son. “Okay, let me see.”
Max beams and holds up his picture. Sure enough, there are three figures. No distinguishable body parts, just round blobs with dots for eyes and a nose, a squiggly mouth, varying in size from small to big.
“Wow, Max, that’s wonderful.” Ava kisses the top of his head, sweaty from a full day at preschool. It’s the second week and she still hasn’t gotten into a routine with bath and bedtime, two things she’d been casual about in the past, but she doesn’t want him tired in the morning. Or hungry, which means she needs to do some meal planning, too.
The tuition was a stretch, but she couldn’t do it anymore, the 24/7 with no breaks, no backup. The school offered financial aid, which helped, but still it’s a big bite out of their budget, right after rent. Max cried every morning last week (as did Ava, the minute she was out of sight of the school) but now he’s either resolved to being there or likes it. Last week she’d been stunned with the sheer quiet of their small house and didn’t quite know what to do, her long to-do list evaporating into thin air as she sat and sat, her mind a blissful blank. But this week she’s back on track. She’s been doing legal transcription work at home and while the pay is good, the work is inconsistent and there aren’t any benefits. She can’t go back to doing what she used to do and her jewelry will hopefully supplement their income, but Ava knows it won’t be much. No, she needs to find a full-time job now that Max is in school.
“Okay, into the tub for you,” she says, sticking the picture on the fridge with a magnet. Max’s chest puffs out proudly and Ava is overwhelmed with love for her son. His eyes look large behind the thick glasses, a bright beautiful blue that reminds her of someone else she loves, too, and the heartache begins.
Max races off, struggling to take his shirt off, his skinny little legs carrying him as fast as they can. Ava prays he doesn’t run into a wall. He doesn’t.
“Bubbles?” he begs as he steps out of his pants.
“Not tonight—” she begins, because the bubble bath is reserved for special occasions and not regular school nights, at least that’s what she tells him. The real reason is because it’s expensive. Max has mild eczema and can’t use the cheap stuff on the grocery store shelves.
She touches the picture on the fridge. Maybe Max said it right the first time.
Free. Ava wants to be free, wants the same for Max.
“Mommy?”
“Okay,” she says. “Bubbles it is!” She rushes up after him, giving his naked torso a tickle as Max bursts into peals of delighted laughter.
Isabel lays on her back in the middle of the living room floor, staring up at the ceiling. The smell of fresh paint has yet to fade but Isabel doesn’t mind—on the contrary, it reminds her that things are no longer the same. Her walls are so pristine that she’s reluctant to put anything back on them. Calendars, pictures, paintings, it doesn’t matter. She likes how spare everything feels. If anything, she should take more out. The furniture, the end tables, the floor lamps. Strip it all bare. Start from scratch.
Isabel laces her fingers together, rests them on her chest. For once her mind isn’t with Bill or that homewrecker, but with the freshly painted walls, the past slowly being replaced by the present. What should she do next? Tackle the exterior? Wash the screened windows? So many choices. Isabel notices how pale her skin looks against her white blouse and the white cotton cuffs of her shorts, the only clean things in her closet. She hasn’t had a tan in years.
Plain vanilla, she thinks. That’s what Bill used to call her. He meant it affectionately because she was so fair, so even-keeled, so go-with-the-flow, but Isabel always felt struck by the comm
ent, as if he were saying that she was boring. Colorless. When he left her for Ava that was the first thing to cross Isabel’s mind. Ava, with her brightly colored dresses, her painted toenails. Ava, full of color, while Isabel was the sort of woman who blended in with the walls.
She hears the sound of someone walking up the steps to the porch. Then a crack, a splintering of wood. Isabel sits up, her ear trained to the door. There’s muttering, then a knock.
“Isabel? I know you’re in there. Open up.”
Bettie Shelton. No surprise there. It’s either her or the Jehovah’s Witnesses as the rest of the neighborhood has taken to leaving Isabel alone.
“Isabel? I’ll have you know I practically put my foot through a rotted board on your stairs. I could have fallen straight through! I’m not going to sue, but you’re going to have to find somebody to fix that thing.”
Yeah, that would have been Bill. The weekend he left her he was going through his list of honey-do’s—cleaning the gutters, power washing the windows. He was in the middle of mowing the lawn when he stopped. Just stopped. Isabel was in the kitchen, scrubbing out the oven, when he appeared in the doorway and told her he was leaving.
He seemed genuinely full of regret. He loved Isabel, but he loved Ava, too, and she was pregnant. He looked so sorrowful that Isabel almost felt sorry for him. Almost. He packed his things fast, as if he knew exactly what he was going to take and what he was going to leave behind. He left the lawn mower by the maple tree and it was a week before Bettie Shelton eventually rolled it into the garage.
The house is in sorry shape and Isabel knows this—she’s let a lot of things go. It’s not only the money but the time, the brain power needed to figure out what to fix and what to replace. She just doesn’t have it. She’s managed the past four years with things being the way they are, so what’s a couple more?
