Lovely Wild

This is bad for several reasons. One is because Ryan isn’t used to the way things are in the house when he’s not there. He snaps at the kids for watching too much television and manufactures chores for them to do in the name of “helping” her, though Mari has the house utterly under control. She neither needs nor wants her children scrubbing toilets and changing sheets, no matter how little she cares for the tasks herself. She’s told him this before, when Ryan says the kids need more responsibility and she says, let them be kids. Teaching them to take care of themselves and turning them into their personal maid service isn’t the same thing. He’s either forgotten their previous conversations or doesn’t care. Or maybe, she thinks, listening to the muffled sound of Ryan lecturing Kendra on something Mari knows their daughter will ignore, Ryan simply believes himself to be the better parent.

On another day, another time, this thought would slip away from her with no more than a blink and wink of effort. Today, with her husband still home after a week and a half, Mari’s patience is worn to transparency. They rarely argue. The house and the kids have always been her domain. Now without the respite of Ryan leaving for work, Mari finds herself chafing under his constant suggestions and advice. Never mind that he’s never cleaned a toilet, scrubbed a floor or folded a basket of laundry in his life, now he knows just how it should be done. She hasn’t quite snapped at him. Not yet. It will surprise him if she does, and she’d rather not.

There’s another reason it’s bad that Ryan is constantly home. It means something has changed in their lives. It’s been a long time since she felt this way—uncertain of what is coming next or how to handle it.

There is a way to relieve the sting of this anxiety. Mari stretches high, fingertips searching the back of the cabinet, behind the special Thanksgiving table decorations she usually forgets to use on the table. There. She snags a package of snack cakes, chocolate, shaped like hearts. The wrapping is gone in seconds, the sweet creamy cake clutched in her fist.

They gave her hot, wet mess in a bowl, she dug her fingers into it, it burned, she tossed it down. They came with yelling hands and faces, open mouths. When she told them what happened, they took her hands and held them tight so she could not speak. They gave her a spoon, instead.

They made her normal.

Mari stops herself from shoving the cake into her mouth. Her jaw aches. Her throat closes, making it hard to swallow. She finally manages to throw the cake into the trash, then has to drink from the faucet to wash away the taste of her own desperation.

She’s never without her secret stock of snack cakes, but it’s the first time in a long, long time that she’s wanted to eat one that way. Gobbling and desperate. Mari closes her eyes for a moment, then shakes off the desperation.

Rough time, she thinks fleetingly before focusing on the cupboards in front of her. Tea, coffee, spices. Containers of candy sprinkles and cake decorations from Kendra’s fascination a year or so ago with making fancy cupcakes. Luxuries, not necessities, and at seeing this, the excess, calm should wash over her, but it doesn’t. Nobody should be able to survive very long on rainbow jimmies and silver marzipan buttons. But it’s surprising what people can survive on.

Kendra stomps into the kitchen, scowling. “Mom. Can’t you talk to Dad? God!”

Mari turns from her silent contemplation of the bounty in her cabinets. Kendra sees this and sighs. Her arms fold across breasts larger than her mother’s (the result of better childhood nutrition or genetics, who knows?). For a second, Mari sees a woman in front of her instead of a girl and she’s more ashamed by how threatened she feels by this than the fact Kendra’s embarrassed by her kitchen quirks.

“Mom! Hello!”

If Mari has her way, Kendra will never know what it feels like to want for anything, much less a meal. She doesn’t explain herself, though. She and Ryan have never talked to the kids about the way Mari grew up. Ryan, she thinks, is happy not to be reminded, and Mari is certain she wouldn’t be able to package her life into a shape her children could possibly understand.

“What do you want me to talk to him about?”

“He’s just... Gah!” Kendra throws her arms wide, infuriated in the way only teen girls can manage. “He’s all over me about my room. And being on the phone! He said I had to get off my computer, too. That I had to find something to do. Well, Mom, being on my computer is doing something.”

Mari looks to the ceiling. Silence from upstairs. “Your dad’s under some stress right now, Kiki.”

Kendra bites her lower lip. “His job.”

“Yeah. His job. So let’s try to give your dad a break, huh?”

“What happened?”

Ryan is experienced at parental white lies; Mari doesn’t know how. “He’s been put on probation.”

“What did he do?” Kendra says flatly.

“There was some trouble with a patient.”

The girl sags, head drooping. “Sammy says she heard that Dad got in trouble. She heard her mom talking about it.”

Sammy’s father is also a doctor. Family medicine, not psychiatry, but Mari supposes the medical community, even in Philadelphia, might be small enough that rumors spread. From what she knows of doctors, they like to talk. So do doctors’ wives. And daughters, apparently.

Ryan is in trouble, and with something more than a frivolous malpractice suit. Mari isn’t sure just how much, or what kind, or what for, though she knows it has something to do with a patient who died. Suicide comes along with the job, Ryan told her long ago, the first time one of his patients killed himself. Doctors have to be prepared for it. He’d cried back then, horrified and ashamed of what he must’ve felt to be a huge personal failure. He hadn’t wept this time.

“Sammy says her dad said one of dad’s patients is the woman who jumped in front of the SEPTA train.”

“You heard about that?” Mari is startled and shouldn’t be. Kendra’s plugged in to things Mari’s always hearing long after the fact.

“Yeah. Everyone at school was talking about it. Logan—” Kendra’s voice cracks for a second before she clears her throat and continues “—said his older sister was on the train when it happened. They made everyone stay on until they could get her out. She was squished.”

Mari wrinkles her nose. “Kiki.”

“That’s what Logan said.” Kendra doesn’t seem to take any glee in this morbid news, but she’s not terribly disturbed, either.

The parenting magazines would say Mari should be concerned at her daughter’s lack of compassion, but since she’s well acquainted with how easy it is to find distance from tragedy, she can’t be. “So you and Logan are talking again?”

Kendra skips that question. “Squished right between the train and the platform. She made everyone late.”

Mari shakes her head, at last finding reproach. “She died. Be kind.”

“Sorry. But was she? Dad’s patient?”

“Daddy’s patient got squished by a train?” Ethan has appeared from the basement where he’s been playing video games with the sound turned low and the lights off to escape Ryan’s attention. The strategy had worked so well Mari had forgotten he was there. “What?”

“It’s going to be okay,” Mari says. “We’re going to be all right.”

Both of her children turn to look at her with nearly identical expressions. She might expect a hint of doubt from Kendra, who’s growing up too fast and has naturally begun doubting all adults, but not from Ethan. Still, both of them have turned to stare with half-open mouths and raised brows.

“What?” Mari says.

“You...” Ethan starts to tear up. At eight he thinks he’s too old to cry but hasn’t yet mastered the ability to hold back tears.

“Lame,” Kendra mutters and crosses her arms again. “Really lame, Mom.”

Mari repeats herself. “What?”

She tries to think of what reason they have for such shock. Her voice echoes back at her. What she said moments ago. The tone of her voice. Then, she understands.

Ryan’s always been the one to tell the kids about the Tooth Fairy, Santa, the Easter Bunny. Myths of childhood Mari never learned from experience and therefore couldn’t share. This is the first time she’s ever consoled them with a statement she’s not sure is true.

“Oh, God!” Kendra bursts into sobs. “It’s bad! It’s really bad, isn’t it? Is he going to jail? Did he do something that bad?”

Mari wasn’t terribly put off by Kendra’s bland description of the dead woman’s demise, but she is disturbed by how easily her daughter assumes her father could be guilty of something worthy of jail time. “Kiki. No. Daddy’s not going to jail.”

“But it’s bad, isn’t it?” Kendra’s sobs taper off, and she swipes at her eyes, smearing her mascara.

Ethan’s crying silently, silver tears slipping down his cheeks. Mari gestures and he moves close enough for her to hug. She reaches to snag Kendra’s wrist, even though the girl’s not much for hugs anymore, and pulls her close, too. The three of them hug tight. Mari’s arms are still long enough to go around them both. She holds them as hard as she can.

Her children have never really known anything terrible, and she will do whatever’s necessary to make sure they never do. “It’s going to be fine. I promise.”

They both sniffle against her. They both pull away before she’s ready to let them go. Ethan rubs his nose with a sleeve while Kendra has the sense to use a tissue. Mari looks again at the ceiling. Somewhere above is her husband, the father of her children.

“I’ll be back,” she says. “You two take some change from the jar near the phone and walk down to the Wawa for some slushies.”