Lovely Wild

If Ryan said the sky was green, Mari could be counted on to give it a curious glance and a shrug, a smile. To go along with it. Not that she couldn’t be stubborn, because she could hold tighter to an idea or a desire than anyone he’d ever known. When Mari wanted something, she sewed herself up tight inside it, so whatever it was she’d set her sights on became a part of her. Inextricable. It was just that she so rarely wanted something hard enough to hold on to it that way.

So, she wouldn’t press him for answers about what had happened. What was still happening. He could give her any number of explanations, and she’d accept them the way she’d always done because he’d never given her reason to doubt him. She trusted him.

Sometimes, Mari’s trust in him was a weight Ryan wasn’t sure he could carry. Sure, he’d always liked it that way, pitying his buddies whose wives controlled the bank accounts, their sex lives, hell, what their husbands wore. What cars they drove. But that trust was a huge responsibility, too.

Lying in the dark beside her and hearing the soft whistle of her breath, that low chuckle that told him she was dreaming again, inside that place he could never go, Ryan wanted to wake his wife and tell her everything. Confess. Spill it out, no matter what might happen. He wanted to turn to her, take her in his arms, kiss her until her eyes opened and she focused on him.

But then somehow the alarm was going off. He’d slept without knowing it. Daylight filtered through the windows, brighter than he expected, and in the sunshine the truth suddenly didn’t seem as appealing as it had in the dark.

THREE (#ulink_94fbea2f-9cb6-56ab-b8d9-f46378baa1a1)

THE BOY IN front of her looks very seriously at the glass measuring bowl, ducking so he can see directly into it. From this angle, his face is distorted through the glass. All big eyes and twisted mouth. He’s concentrating fiercely, pouring exactly the right amount of oil.

“Is this enough, Mama?”

Mari eyes the red line on the glass bowl. Shimmering golden oil inside it. And her boy, looking up at her now as though the answer to this question is very, very important. She supposes to him, it is.

“Looks good to me, honey.”

“Now the eggs?”

“Now the eggs.”

Ethan carefully takes one egg. Then another. He cracks the eggs into the small glass cup the way Mari taught him and checks each yolk carefully before dumping it into the oil. As far as she knows, her son has never cracked open an egg and found a half-formed fetus inside, but Mari has. The eggs she ate in childhood weren’t like the kind you get in stores, all of them candled to make sure they’re okay before they’re shipped off to market. Chickens penned with roosters often had eggs with babies waiting inside. Mari always cracks them first into a separate container.

“Three eggs. A third of a cup of oil.” Ethan reads this from the cookbook, one finger pressed to the stained pages. A massive volume, over five hundred pages, it’s the only cookbook Mari’s ever owned. It had been a gift from her adopted father, who’d considered cuisine as much a part of her curriculum as reading or writing. An important life skill, he’d said, to be able to make more than boxed macaroni and cheese. Being able to cook a decent meal was part of being an adult. “Quarter cup of water. We forgot the water.”

“Go ahead and add it.” Mari doesn’t hand it to him, knowing he wants to do it himself.

Ethan adds the water. “It says we should mix it.”

“Yep. Put it in the bowl and turn it on. Low,” Mari emphasizes, because Ethan’s been known to flip the speed to high and spatter the kitchen with batter.

He giggles. Her heart swells with love for her boy who reminds her so much of herself. Yet who all too soon will become entirely more foreign to her than that mixer.

Already his legs and arms are growing longer. His fingers and feet bigger. If she were to press her hands to his, palm-to-palm, his would be nearly the same size. Sooner than she knows it, he will be a teenager like his sister. After that, a man.

And what will she do then? When she can no longer hold him on her lap. When she is not the one he comes to for fixing boo-boos and putting together toy trains that have fallen apart. What will Mari do when her boy turns into something else?

She doesn’t understand men. Never has. Probably never will. Sometimes she will stare at the damp towel tossed on the bathroom floor instead of hung neatly on the hook and wonder how Ryan, who was raised by a woman for whom there was no such thing as being too neat, can stand being such a slob. How he can blow his nose so raucously in the shower like he’s the only one to use it, or leave his dirty socks in a pile by his favorite recliner until at last, frowning, he comes to her wanting to know why the sock drawer is empty. It’s because he never had to pick up after himself, of course. His mother never made him. Nobody had done that for her; she’d learned early on how to take of herself. Clutter and mess disturb her, remind her of bad days long past. Mari can’t stand to live in filth.

If Ryan’s asked to clear away a dish or return a gallon of milk to the fridge after drinking from it, he gives Mari a blank look as though she’s asked him to perform an unexpected brain operation. Asked to fold towels, he leaves them rumpled and in leaning stacks, not neat piles. She has learned over the years to simply move behind him, tidying, a silent force he doesn’t even notice but would surely miss if it were gone. Her job, she supposes. To keep the house together, her husband and children organized and on track. Her job, Mari thinks while watching her son, to make sure her children are capable and responsible human beings who can cook and clean and take care of themselves.

Ethan, lower lip pulled between his teeth in concentration, lifts the measuring bowl and prepares to pour the contents into the metal one he needs to use with the mixer. Slick fingers, a hard tile floor. All at once there is glass and oil and eggs all over, and a small boy’s cry echoes in the kitchen.

“Mama, I’m sorry!” Ethan moves toward her with one hand out before Mari can stop him.

“No, Ethan—”

Too late. One bare foot comes down on shattered glass. He cries out again, this time in pain. There is blood.

Blood, and the low, harsh panting of a dog’s breath. Four punctures in the back of her hand, but pain all over her. The dog growled, lunging again, and Mari didn’t take a second to think about it. She kicked, hitting it in the jaw. The side. The dog yelped and fled, but she stood with her wounded hand cradled against her and watched the blood spatter on the floor until everything tipped and turned and she ended up on the ground, her burning face pressed to the cool, smooth surface....

“Mama!”

Mari is no longer frozen. That long-ago time, those long-ago sounds and smells, don’t fade away. They simply vanish. Pushed aside as she leaps across glass to lift her boy.

She settles him on the kitchen island and plucks the shard from the sole of his foot. She twists to drop it in the sink, careful to avoid the glass on the floor with her own feet. Mari grabs a clean dishcloth from the drawer, folds it into thirds and presses it to the wound.

“It hurts,” Ethan says.

“Let me take a look.” Mari lifts the white cloth, stained now with red. The wound is oozing too much blood for her to get a good look, but it appears that the glass has sliced a long section of Ethan’s foot, and the skin is flapping across the cut.

“Shh,” she murmurs. Presses the cloth against the wound. “This might need stitches.”

She could do it herself, of course, but Ryan would frown on that. Taking Ethan to the hospital will take time and expense, and ultimately, nobody can do a better job at tending her child’s hurts than she can—but nevertheless, it’s not what’s done. Just like picking mushrooms from your yard, sewing up your son on the kitchen table is bound to lead to whispers and looks of the sort Mari should be used to, the way she’s accustomed to blood, but would like to avoid, anyway.

“Nooo!” Ethan wails, and she hushes him as the back door opens.

“Gross!” Kendra, incredibly, stops midtext to stand in the doorway and stare at the bloody, oily, eggy puddle on the floor.

“I cut myself,” Ethan offers through tears.

“I have to take him to the place where they fix people when it’s an urgency.” Mari says this matter-of-factly, but Kendra’s already blanching, turning her face. More like her dad than her mom, that’s for sure.

“Emergency,” Kendra corrects. “I think I’m gonna puke!”

“Text your dad, please,” Mari says. “Tell him I’ve taken Ethan to the hospital.”

“Do I have to go, too?”

Mari thinks, knowing she’s always been able to trust her daughter who might have a flair for drama but who’s still a good kid. “No. But nobody’s allowed to come over. Don’t answer the phone unless it’s me or Daddy. Don’t answer the door. Don’t use the stove.”

It’s a little overkill, but Mari’s not thinking quite straight. The smell of the blood is teasing her head into spinning again, and she blinks away the past. Focus. Focus. This is now, she thinks. I am here.

Kendra’s already tapping her dad’s number into her iPhone, a much-coveted birthday gift that never leaves her side. “Got it.”

“Mama? Will it hurt bad? The stitches?”

“Yes. But they’ll give you something so it doesn’t hurt so much.”

“A shot?” Ethan’s lower lip trembles; a bubble of clear snot forms in one nostril.

“Yes. A shot, probably.”

“Nooo!”

“You can have the shot, which will help the pain,” Mari says, “or you can choose to not have the shot and take the pain when they stitch you. Up to you, buddy.”