Things You Won't Say

by Sarah Pekkanen

  Keeping busy would be a good thing. The photographers and news vans had decamped from the front of her home, but Jamie knew any breaking tidbit would bring them rushing back. So maybe now was the time to get out.

  She’d sensed a growing unease in the children. They’d watched way too much television lately, and had fought more often, and their meals hadn’t been as regular or healthy. Last night, Eloise had freaked out because there was a tag in the back of her pajamas that itched, even though she’d worn those pajamas dozens of times. When Jamie couldn’t find the scissors to cut it out, Eloise had started screaming. Emily had thrown a book at her sister and yelled, “Shut up,” Eloise had screamed louder, and Sam had hidden under the covers, plugging his ears with his fingers. Jamie had wanted to join him.

  She’d yelled at the girls, and they’d both cried, which had made Jamie feel awful.

  She wanted her life back so desperately. She wanted her biggest worries to be about the electricity bill, or the fact that she couldn’t button her favorite jeans, or the state of the kitchen floor. She wanted to be annoyed with Mike because he’d gone out with the guys after work and had lost forty bucks in a poker game.

  She couldn’t push back hard enough against the fear and despair pressing down over their house. In the end, all she could do was this: Take Eloise to the doctor. Make a mental note to pick up a new bathing suit for Emily, since the bottom of her old one had almost rubbed through. Put a load of dirty clothes into the washing machine. Hold together their shredded existence as best she could.

  She gave the kids frozen waffles with Mrs. Butterworth’s syrup for breakfast and added green grapes on the side to assuage her guilt. Then she piled them all into the minivan, because Mike had disappeared somewhere without telling her he was leaving. He’d probably just gone for a run, and she hadn’t mentioned the doctor’s appointment to him, but why didn’t he consider the fact that she might welcome some help—not to mention his company—this morning?

  “Am I going to get a shot?” Sam asked.

  “Absolutely not,” Jamie said. “You had your checkup a few months ago, remember?”

  “Maybe they forgot to give me one then.” Sam began biting his nails.

  “Definitely not,” Jamie said. She tried to keep her voice calm and steady, knowing her son just needed reassurance. They all did.

  Her gas tank was almost empty, so she stopped to fill it up, sweating in the strong sun. Her cell phone rang and she pulled it out of her pocket and glanced down. Sandy. She hesitated, then hit the Ignore Call button, telling herself now wasn’t a good time to talk.

  She lifted her hair off the back of her neck and fanned herself with her other hand. There was a Starbucks next door to the gas station, and she was hit with a deep craving for a Frappuccino with whipped cream and caramel sauce. She could almost taste the icy sweetness. Her mouth watered as she watched a woman come out of the store, clutching a plastic cup with a domed lid, the precise object of Jamie’s desire. It would be a bright point in a dismal day, a tiny treat to lift her spirits.

  But then she thought about all that would be required: She’d have to find a parking spot and unstrap Eloise and usher all the kids into the coffee shop and negotiate their demands for snacks and drinks. She’d end up spending fifteen bucks and someone would be whining because they got a pink cake pop instead of a yellow one. Eloise would probably have to go potty—she loved investigating new restrooms—and Jamie would have to drag the other kids into the bathroom, because how could she leave them standing in the middle of Starbucks alone? Eloise would insist on doing it “self!” and Jamie would cringe every time her little girl touched the toilet seat or the handle to flush, imagining viruses and plagues attaching themselves to her toddler’s fingertips. Jamie would scrub hands and get everyone back out of the restaurant and wrangle them into their car seats . . .

  She paid for the gas and drove on to the pediatrician’s office. After they checked in, Jamie found a few empty seats in the waiting room. Sam sat down next to a kid who coughed, wetly, directly on him before Jamie gestured for her son to move to another spot.

  “Mrs. Anderson?”

  She blinked when she heard her name and looked up to see a nurse standing in front of her, holding a chart. Jamie wondered how many times the young woman had called her name.

  “I’m sorry,” Jamie said. She stood up, took Eloise’s hand, and motioned for Emily and Sam to follow the nurse to the exam room, which contained a dog-eared copy of Highlights magazine and a few plastic trucks in a bucket under the table. The nurse tucked the chart into a plastic sleeve on the door and exited.

  Jamie wanted the Frappuccino. She wanted her husband back. She wanted a Xanax.

  “Can I have your phone?” Emily asked.

  Jamie handed it over immediately. She didn’t have the strength for a battle.

  “Can I?” Sam echoed.

  “Me!” Eloise demanded.

  “Five minutes each,” Jamie said, knowing the strategy wouldn’t prevent fighting. She knew she should try to engage the kids in a game of I Spy, or tell them a story, but she was too weary. She looked at her watch. Their appointment had been set for twenty minutes ago. If Jamie had showed up twenty minutes late, the receptionist might’ve told her to reschedule—there was a little engraved brass plate right by the sign-in sheet with that warning. Yet Jamie often waited that long to be seen. She’d switch except for the fact that she liked her pediatrician, and things probably wouldn’t be any different at a new practice. She’d read somewhere that doctors were perpetually overbooked, under pressure to hustle as many patients as possible in and out every day.

  “My turn!” Eloise grabbed for the phone, and in the ensuing tussle it fell to the floor. Jamie heard a sharp crack, and when she picked it up, there was a spiderweb pattern in the glass.

  “It was her fault!” Emily said as Eloise started to cry.

  “It’s fine,” Jamie said. It was only a stupid phone. She handed it to Eloise, who looked suspicious about the lack of a lecture.

  “Are you mad?” Sam asked.

  She reached out and stroked his hair. “No,” she said. He leaned into her and she curved an arm around him. Emily began helping Eloise play a game, being uncharacteristically patient. Jamie listened to their sweet, high voices mingling and she felt Sam’s thin body huddling against her own, and a tremble of fear ran through her. Despite everything, the kids were happy. But if Mike was found guilty, they might have to move to another state to escape the backlash. The kids would leave the only home they’d ever known and say good-bye to their friends and school. They’d move to a crappy apartment and she’d have to get a job and she’d never be around. The thought that she might be unable to protect her children from a terrible future made her insides wrench.

  Suddenly her fear transformed into anger toward Mike. Why hadn’t he been more careful? Didn’t he realize his actions would affect all of their lives? He’d obviously had post-­traumatic stress disorder, and he’d refused to get help because of his macho stubborn pigheadedness. It was a good thing wives weren’t permitted to testify on behalf of their husbands, because if she were called to the witness stand, she’d take the oath, then she’d remove her hand from the Bible and lies would tumble out of her mouth. She’d sell her soul to save her family.

  The door to the exam room swung open, and Jamie looked up to see the pediatrician, a woman with gray hair who had a miniature teddy bear clipped to her stethoscope.

  “Hi there,” she said, and for some reason Jamie’s eyes filled. The pediatrician made her think of her mother. It wasn’t that the doctor resembled her mom in any way. But being around a kind, older woman who cared about her children’s well-being made Jamie imagine how life might’ve been if her mother had lived. Sometimes Jamie wondered whether her mom might’ve embraced Jamie’s kids in a way she never had her own; she hadn’t been a bad mother, just a somewhat distant one
. Her primary allegiance was to her husband, not her children, which Jamie now understood wasn’t an uncommon family dynamic a few decades ago. Jamie could almost see the ghost of her mother beside her now, looking at her grandchildren with a mixture of love and longing, saying, “Oh, honey, did you see that expression on Emily’s face? That’s just how you used to look when you were mad.” The mother who lived in Jamie’s heart made up for all of her past transgressions.

  The pediatrician managed to get the iPhone away from Eloise—Sam triumphantly claimed it—and then she perched on a wheeled stool so she could be at the little girl’s eye level. She explained how her stethoscope worked and listened to Eloise’s heart before proclaiming it strong and healthy. Jamie was grateful for the chance to blink away the tears in her eyes.

  The doctor completed the physical before turning to Jamie.

  “So,” she said, smiling. “Your little girl is perfect. Do you have any questions for me?”

  “I’m perfect,” Eloise informed Emily.

  “As if,” Emily said absently as she watched Sam play Angry Birds.

  “There’s just one thing,” Jamie said. She glanced at her older daughter. “I know we’re here for Eloise, but . . . Emily’s teacher mentioned something about her fine motor skills in her final report card. She recommended we look into occupational therapy this summer.”

  The pediatrician nodded. “I can write you a prescription,” she said. “Will your insurance cover it?”

  “I have no idea,” Jamie said.

  “It’s expensive,” the doctor said. “Just so you know.”

  “How expensive, generally?” Jamie asked.

  “About a hundred bucks a session.”

  Jamie let out her air in a whoosh. “Isn’t there something else I can do?”

  “You could let her play with Play-Doh more to get her fingers strong, and let her draw as much as possible.”

  “Okay,” Jamie said. “That sounds a lot better.”

  “Get some scissors and have her practice cutting, too,” the doctor said. “I’m not too worried about it. She’s still young and some kids just take longer to develop than others. If she’s still struggling next year we can talk about OT.”

  “My dad’s in jail,” Eloise announced.

  “No he isn’t, dummy!” Sam yelled.

  “He’s not! And Sam, don’t call her that,” Jamie said. “She just got confused . . . I don’t know why she said that . . .” She could feel her cheeks turn hot.

  “Mrs. Anderson.” The doctor put a hand on her shoulder. “I know your family must be under tremendous stress.”

  So she knew, too.

  “How are you holding up?”

  Jamie gave the only answer she could in front of her children: “We’re okay, thanks.”

  The doctor reached for a pad and scribbled something down. “In case you need someone to talk to,” she said.

  That was another hundred-dollar-an-hour extravagance they couldn’t afford, but Jamie nodded her appreciation and slipped the note into her pocket.

  They left the office, and Jamie corralled the kids into the van and rolled down the windows, releasing the blistering air. She tried to think of what to do next. The house was a disaster, she had at least three loads of dirty laundry piling up, and breakfast dishes cluttered the sink. Mike would probably be home by now. But he’d be working out, or mowing the lawn, or watching television. Avoiding her again.

  Last night he hadn’t even come to bed. When she’d crept down the basement stairs in the middle of the night to check on him, she’d seen him sprawled across the couch. He hadn’t accidentally fallen asleep there; he’d brought down a sheet and a pillow. The television was on, washing a thin blue light across his face, but Mike was asleep. She’d started to shake his shoulder, then she’d withdrawn her hand. Why bother waking him up? It wouldn’t be any less lonely if he was next to her in bed.

  For the first time, Jamie was gripped with the feeling of not wanting to go home, despite the fact that it was her favorite place in the world. Their house had scuff marks on the baseboards and magnetic alphabet letters on the refrigerator (the k had long since gone missing) and the lower dishwasher rack had a malfunctioning wheel that always got stuck. There was a squeaky floorboard outside of Emily’s and Eloise’s room that Jamie had to tiptoe around so she didn’t wake her daughters at night. The toilet in the kids’ bathroom had just started to run—she had to remember to mention that to Mike—and pen marks decorated a kitchen wall, charting the growth of their children. But Jamie had never wanted to live in a showplace. She’d once gone to another family’s home for a school function and was awed to see the couches were creamy white, and the tables were glass. On the center of the dining room table was a tall, thin glass vase containing precisely seven lemons (Jamie tried not to think about the jumble of old mail, car keys, notebooks, Happy Meal toys, and tubes of lip balm and sunscreen cluttering her scarred dining room table). Everything was lovely and elegant, but it didn’t feel like a home. The marks and imperfections of Jamie’s house bore testimony to all it had endured, forming its character. It was much like her marriage in that way—their old battle scars showed in the furrow that had formed between her eyebrows, and in the way either of them could say a single word and an entire history would unspool in both of their minds. She wouldn’t want to wipe clean the evidence of all that living, either in her house or in her marriage.

  “Mommy? Aren’t you going to drive?” Sam asked.

  She should put the van in gear and go buy child-size scissors and Play-Doh along with Eloise’s bathing suit. But Jamie felt paralyzed, a now-familiar tightness spreading across her chest. Her breath came in shallow gasps.

  “Mommy?” Sam asked.

  She dropped her head onto the steering wheel. Maybe she should just drive away! She had a credit card and a full tank of gas. They could head to the beach and stay in a cheap motel. They could escape the dishes and laundry and knowing looks. And she could have a break from Mike, because being around him right now felt worse than being apart.

  The thought was so tantalizing she was reaching to put the car in drive when her phone rang, startling her. She glanced down and saw it was Lou calling. She snatched up the phone like a lifeline.

  “Hi,” she whispered. What was she thinking? They couldn’t abandon Mike.

  Lou didn’t seem to notice anything amiss in Jamie’s voice. She was packing in preparation for her move, she said. “I can’t touch my new roommate’s food,” Lou said. “Did I tell you that? I’m thinking I might stroke her bottle of orange juice in the morning, though.”

  The words came out of Jamie’s mouth before she knew what she was going to say.

  “Come live with us,” she said, her throat thick with unshed tears. “Please, Lou. I need help.”

  •••

  Lou hadn’t been bullied in high school. She’d mostly been ignored, which she hadn’t minded. She’d been like a fourth stringer warming the bench at a football game; she’d never truly expected to get a chance to play.

  She knew she could thank Jamie for the fact that she hadn’t been teased. Jamie wasn’t in the popularity stratosphere, but she was well liked, partly because she was pretty and nice and partly because she wasn’t intimidated by anyone. The goodwill surrounding Jamie flowed over to encompass Lou like a puffy cloud. Sometimes Jamie would motion for Lou to join her at her lunch table, if there were empty seats—an honor seniors never bestowed upon lowly sophomores. Jamie’s friends always said hi to Lou when they passed her in the hallways, too. Lou knew her high school experience might have been very different were it not for her sister, because Jamie had set the ground rules for how Lou was to be treated early on.

  Once when Lou was in ninth grade, she’d stopped in the bathroom between classes. She heard a group of girls come in a moment later, and Lou recognized Jamie’s voice. She was about to flush
the toilet and come out to say hello; then she heard Jamie say, “Why do you care if my sister comes along?”

  “I mean, we might meet some guys there,” said another girl.

  “So?” Jamie said. “It’s just a stupid movie. If you don’t want Lou to come, then maybe I’ll just hang out at home with her and invite some other people over.”

  Lou imagined Jamie locking eyes with her opponent, like a wolf defending her territory. There were a few other people in the bathroom, too, but the room felt still, as if everyone was holding their breath.

  “Sure, she can come,” the other girl finally said. “No big deal.”

  “Thanks!” Jamie said, her voice gracious in victory. “I like your nail polish, by the way.”

  Yes, Jamie was sometimes frazzled and bossy and impatient. But Lou never doubted that her sister had her best interests at heart. Jamie invited her over at least once a week for dinner and always made broccoli because she knew it was Lou’s favorite vegetable, and she encouraged Lou to attend all of the kids’ school events. She was constantly enveloping Lou under their family umbrella, an extension of her inclusiveness in high school.

  Jamie had never asked her for anything before, other than to occasionally babysit, which wasn’t a real favor since Lou always enjoyed it as much as the kids did. So when Jamie asked her to move in, Lou didn’t hesitate. She canceled her lease and forfeited her deposit that same day. Lou could take over Sam’s room, Jamie said, and he was going to use the bottom bunk in Henry’s room until things settled down.

  Now Lou walked to the elephants’ enclosure and called for Tabby. The day was already hot and humid, and Lou’s khaki shirt was sticking to her back. Funny how she didn’t mind the heat a bit when she was outside, but it felt suffocating indoors. Tabby came close enough for Lou to reach out and run a hand over the elephant’s big, floppy ear.