“Anyway,” said Marjorie, “a grown man afraid of donkeys? Don’t you find that a bit peculiar?”
Cora accepted his proposal that night.
* * *
It wasn’t that Cora was terribly afraid of being abandoned, or cheated on, by Todd. If he did, he did, and that was the way of people in long-term relationships. Their bodies wavered as their eyes wandered; the monotony of laundry and dishes and appointments dragged. Yet she couldn’t imagine him working up the courage to take off his shirt with anyone else, and so even if he fucked someone else, she was sure that only she would have had that intimate part of him on her lips.
It made her feel special, that only she knew that part of him.
* * *
Cora was pregnant again shortly after they married. She’d been careful with her birth control, same time every day, even though it was eight at night and sometimes she downed it with a cold beer. Then she forgot to be careful, and when the lines showed up on the plastic strip Todd called and made an appointment.
“I hope it’s a boy,” he told her. Cora was hurt by this, and not entirely sure why.
There were a range of exams to go through to make sure the child stayed in her as long as possible. Hormonal imbalances, genetic disorders, physicals. She was asked if she smoked or drank much. Neither, of course, not when she was carrying someone else, but Todd stared at her and mouthed, “Marjorie,” but Cora knew that Marjorie would risk the ire of her neighbor for her and smoke outside.
Cora made sure that Todd got tested too and sat nervously in the room as the doctor questioned him about his medical history. Was there anything wrong with his family’s blood or their chromosomes, those letters arranged in what looked to her like a random order, but must have meant something to those who knew how to read it? Were the kidneys alright, did his grandparents have diabetes? Did all their hearts beat like metronomes, or did they skip every once in a while?
She imagined they must have been looking at that four letter code to find something that says how far the scars go, and what sort of scars were light enough to form something like a healthy child.
But what if whatever is wrong is written so intrinsically on the smallest part, that it cannot be seen, and we need a stranger to hold us up to the microscope and tell us what our true selves really look like?
All normal, of course. Both of them.
* * *
Cora could not say if the pregnancy was easier or harder than an average one. She scanned the books and the internet confessionals and mommy blogs and found the information overwhelming and competitive. Todd was ever attentive, and Winter and Summer cooed at him and said how very much they were jealous, which Cora supposed she may have appreciated once, but now felt too tired to feel much of anything at all.
After they found out it would be a girl, even though Todd asked the doctor to be sure and wave the ultrasound all around Cora’s belly to find some sort of elusive penis that was not going to sprout between its legs, she put her hand on his and he settled.
“You’ll love her anyway, won’t you?” she asked, annoyed at herself for being worried.
“Of course,” Todd said, squeezing her hand back. “That’s not what I’m afraid of. You know, it’s just…a man wants to see himself in a boy.”
* * *
Fiona was a beautiful child, carried to term, all six pounds and seven ounces of her. She came out with Todd’s face, except scrunched and bloody, and without any scars, except the one that all people would eventually share on their navel, when the last bit of Cora would wither and blacken and fall off. They put her in Cora’s arms and she was so depleted she didn’t love her daughter at first. Love seemed too much energy then. She wanted to sleep. Marjorie, who stumbled in between her many smoke breaks, nagged a nurse until they took the child to the nursery over Todd’s protests.
“Let mom have her rest,” Marjorie said in a voice which brooked no argument. She then slipped a wrapped package into Cora’s bed. It was soft, and Cora fell asleep on it.
Later, when Todd was looking over his child, tentatively touching her balled up fist, Cora knew that she did love her daughter.
Cora forgot about Marjorie’s gift until they were at home. She went in first while Todd struggled with his unfamiliarity with car seats, leaving her to drag their hospital bag in the door and dropping it. She pulled out the gift and squeezed it between her hands.
Todd came in with Fiona a moment later. “What’s that?” he asked.
“It’s from Marjorie. I forgot to open it at the hospital.” Cora peeled away the tape as carefully as she could, being raised in a family that reused wrapping paper. She immediately regretted not doing so privately. It was a stuffed donkey.
“Is this her idea of a joke?” Todd asked, stiff and hard-lipped. Betrayed.
“You know how she is,” Cora said. “She doesn’t have family, so she has to poke the replacement.”
“Throw it out.”
“I can’t do that.”
“I don’t want that in the house.”
“It’s just a toy. We’ll put it in the nursery closet and trot it out when she’s over to make her happy. Okay?”
“That’s not funny.”
“What?” Cora asked, honestly confused.
“Trot.” Todd said, as one would a curse word.
“Oh, come on. It was a slip of the tongue.”
When he was out of the room, Cora allowed herself to quietly laugh at the joke.
* * *
Cora did not expect him to be the perfect parent—it was, after all, hard for her to even love a ball of flesh that did little more than shit and cry and break the skin on her breasts—but she did think that he would be better at it than he was. He did not break any of his previous commitments to the daughters of other men, continuing to help out with the Girl Scouts and coaching softball. It was hard for her, the first few years, to not resent his face, wet with sweat and smiling, when he came home dragging the metal bat behind him, exhilarated and clammy. But then he would take her in his arms and kiss her, and Cora loved the smallness of the gesture. Winter and Summer were inclined towards grand ones, hundred rose bouquets that slowly rotted in their bedroom, or spontaneous trips to Europe, or hiring a quartet to sing songs to one another of a love long since dead, but renewed with each verse. No, Cora believed it was better to be happy with smaller things, like the way her daughter laughed when she was in the bath, or the way Todd would fall asleep on the recliner as he watched baseball, a bit of drool at the side of his lips, and smile at her when she woke him and told him it was time for bed.
* * *
She quit her job when Fiona was three years old. Only Marjorie had anything negative to say about it. Summer and Winter believed it was necessary for a mother to be with her child, which made Cora wonder if they had been judging her for not having quit sooner. Todd was equally supportive, though she suspected it was because he did little in terms of childcare and this took the burden off of him. He refused to give up coaching softball or assisting with his local scout troop, which Cora took issue with as it often left her home alone with her toddler, but no matter what argument she posed, Todd would not relent.
“What are you going to do with all that time?” Marjorie asked.
There were arguments to be made, but Cora did not voice them. Raising a child took up her entire day. Doctor’s appointments, feeding, cleaning, amusement, sneaking into the shower during naptime, fighting to enroll her in the best preschool they could afford and settling for the second best one, because the first best had a waiting list Cora had not been able to crack. Still, preschool was coming within a year, and that would open up her mornings.
“I’m teaching myself how to sew.”
“The domestic arts,” Marjorie said, her voice dry.
Cora shrugged. “Todd said I could darn his socks. But I want to make
outfits for Fiona. Costumes. Halloween will be fun this year. I was thinking we could be themed. She can be Cinderella and I’ll be the fairy godmother.”
“And Todd as Prince Charming? If you say so,” Marjorie told her. “No man is a prince. Not even the royals.”
Fiona played on the floor between them with the stuffed donkey. She loved the damn thing, but because Todd felt so uneasy around it Cora only let her play with it at Marjorie’s. It made her dread visiting, because it meant when they left she’d have to take it away from Fiona and stick the stuffed beast in the trunk, which only resulted in sobs and wails the whole drive home, but she was not about to give up her chance to speak to a grown woman during the day.
“I don’t know why a man would be afraid of a toy,” Marjorie went on. Cora stayed silent, not willing to have this argument again. Marjorie didn’t understand the sort of sacrifices that went into a marriage, how most of it was choosing which arguments to have, and which to stay silent on, and which ones required you to sink into yourself until you barely recognized where you went, or what you wanted, and only comfortable dullness remained.
“You’re like that penguin,” Marjorie said, taking a long drag at the window.
“What penguin?” Cora asked. “Are you watching documentaries again?”
“You learn a lot from animals. There’s this one. In Antarctica. It started walking to the middle of the continent. There’s nothing there, you know. Just ice and mountains. Damn thing was going to die. The people filming it aren’t supposed to get involved, but they did with this one. They turned him around, towards the ocean, thinking he was just confused about which way had the food. But the damn thing just switched direction and walked off towards the center again. Walked off to die all alone out there.”
“And this penguin is me?” Cora asked.
“Stubborn,” Marjorie noted.
Cora watched Fiona trot the donkey across the floor, cooing. “You need to expand your viewing habits. But maybe that can be the backup idea. I’ll make penguin costumes for all of us.”
* * *
Fiona was five when Cora began to suspect. “I think Todd is having an affair,” she told Winter and Summer over drinks on a rare night out when she had convinced Todd on one of his non-coaching nights to babysit.
Summer and Winter exchanged looks. “Darling, are you sure?” Winter asked as Summer grasped her hands with an alacrity that made Cora wonder if they had been waiting for this moment and practiced a routine.
Summer hummed. “It’s not the end of everything if he is, of course. We believe you if you say so. Plenty of marriages survive a little in flagrante delicto.”
Winter nodded. “It’s true. Remember Ruben and Rachel? She was tipping every dark-haired man who came across her line of vision, but Ruben never left her. I think they were happier for it.”
“Oh yes, that’s true,” Summer agreed. “Though I always assumed Ruben was gay and that took the pressure off. But we shouldn’t be jumping to conclusions. Do you have any proof?”
Cora shook her head. “No, not really. Not like, in the traditional sense. He doesn’t seem to be bonding with Fiona. He rarely spends any time with her and when he does he says he can’t because of that damn donkey Marjorie bought her. So I hide it whenever he’s home. Which is damned difficult because Fiona just screams and screams for it. I have to slip it into her bed when he’s not looking. She loves the thing.”
“Oh, that’s not uncommon. You’re just going a bit mad because you’re home all the time. Stir crazy-baby.”
“She’s five.”
“That’s still a baby.”
Winter patted her hand. “You need to put your foot down and tell him that you want him to spend more time with Fiona. And you. You can’t just let him go out and have a life without you: you’re the mother of his daughter.”
“He seems like he’s scared of her whenever he’s with her. He looks terrified.”
“Men.” Winter and Summer nodded, with Winter seeming to take no offense. “They’re not good with kids.”
“I don’t think that’s true,” Cora said. “He’s good with the softball girls. They love him. They write him cards. Hell, he received Valentine’s cards from a few of them last year. They’re on the fridge.”
“Ah, crushes,” Summer said, leaning her head on Winter’s shoulder. “Do you remember those?”
“No,” Winter said, laughing.
* * *
In September, the girls won their softball championship game. It also marked a year since Todd and Cora had been intimate. Todd insisted they celebrate at their own house with the girls, and so Cora planned to make a spread of healthy snacks: cucumber slices with dill sauce, homemade hummus and pita, glazed carrots and rolled up ham with cheese, but Fiona had been sleeping worse than usual and her teachers said she had been acting out at school—raising her fist to the boys—and so Cora ordered pizza and picked up a few buckets of cheap ice cream at the store.
The girls danced and sang off-key karaoke along with the radio, scarfed pizza or played with Fiona. Todd sat in his armchair while two of the girls sat on either side of him, high-fiving him or begging him to speak to the high school coach about their skills for when they tried out next year. One of them, a brunette with freckles and blue eyes (they all looked fairly similar to Cora, and she struggled to remember their names) put her head on his shoulder and laughed when he said something which she must have found funny.
“Your daughter is so cute,” a blonde told her, and Cora smiled at the compliment. “Coach Tee said you make costumes for her?”
“Yeah,” Cora said. “She likes to dress up like animals. I’ve made a butterfly, a duck, and a penguin.”
“Oh wow!” said a different blonde, sidling up to them. “Can we see?”
“Oh, sure,” said Cora, bored out of her mind and more than willing to show off her handiwork, which she had, she believed, gotten quite good at. “Let me see if I can get her to wear one. Fiona,” she called. “Do you want to show everyone your duckie costume?”
Fiona ran over to Cora and nodded her head, which made the two girls clap their hands. Cora reached down and picked her up and began to carry her up the stairs.
“Coach Tee,” she heard one of the girls say on her way up. “The downstairs bathroom is occupied and I gotta go. Do you have another one?”
“Let me show you,” Todd said, followed by the sound of his body rising from the recliner. “It’s upstairs.”
Cora went into Fiona’s room and closed the door. Fiona asked for her donkey to hold, and Cora, after making her promise that they would leave it in the closet when they went back downstairs, grabbed it from the top shelf and handed it over. Fiona was often irritable when being undressed, and she figured giving in to the request might make it easier.
She managed to take off her shirt with little trouble, though Fiona fidgeted and argued when Cora went to take off her pants.
“You’re going to be too hot if you wear this and your duckie costume,” Cora told her, even though she had long since figured out that arguing with a child often got her nowhere.
It was a struggle, but Cora managed to get her pants off. There was a new bruise on her thigh, which when they first started to appear had sent Cora into an alarmed meeting with Fiona’s teachers, asking them what kind of rough housing they were doing at that school, as well as her doctors to be sure that nothing was medically wrong with the girl, but everyone, including Winter and Summer when she mentioned it, reminded her that kids fall, were rough with one another, and bruised all the time. She eventually let it go once she saw Fiona run around the house in a sugar-craze and bumped her forehead into a door. That bruise had been awkward to explain.
“You need to be more careful,” she reminded Fiona, who was hugging the donkey to her chest. “Do you want mommy to kiss it and make it better?”
“No,
” Fiona said, rubbing her face against the toy.
“Okay,” Cora said, holding up the duckie costume. “One foot in at a time.”
When Fiona was fully costumed, she made a beeline for the door with the donkey in hand. Cora snatched it right before Fiona managed to make it out the door, and only kept Fiona from protesting by reminding her that she had guests who wanted to see her in all her duckie glory. Fiona ran out, and Cora put the donkey back on the top shelf of the closet, behind a pile of folded clothes. She heard the squeals of delight coming from downstairs. The duckie had been a triumph.
She stopped in the hallway when she saw Todd and the brunette. He was leaning over her and whispering, and Cora couldn’t make out what he was saying. When the girl saw her, her eyes went wide and she ran down the stairs, taking two at a time. Todd turned to look at her.
“What was that?” Cora asked, not sure if she was breathing anymore.
“Didn’t want her to get lost,” Todd said. “Kids, you know? They go through stuff if you’re not careful.”
“Yes,” Cora said, and watched him retreat back down to the girls.
How old were they, she wondered. Twelve? Eleven?
* * *
That night, after the girls were gone and everything cleaned, she did not say anything more to Todd about it. She did not know what to say, or what to think. It was nothing, certainly, though she stood longer in front of the fridge than normal, looking at the Valentines from the girls and wondering just how deeply they pressed their markers onto the paper to make those red hearts.
She went into Fiona’s room to tuck her into bed, making sure to give her the donkey.
“Everyone loved your duckie, darling,” she said.
Fiona smiled and cuddled the donkey to her chest.
“Donkey is getting a bit old,” Cora said. “Maybe we should get you a new one?”
“No mommy,” Fiona said. “Donkey keeps the dreams away.”
“What dreams?”
“I don’t know.”
Cora cajoled, but nothing would budge Fiona to say more.
Strange Folk You'll Never Meet Page 10
