By the time a woman reaches her late thirties, the anorexic mystique has evaporated. What looked waifish and perfume ad-esque at eighteen devolves toward . . . deflation. There were other reasons too, but Roger drew that one from his quiver, and pierced my shriveled heart.
With the polish of a maître d’, he balanced Ginger in her cat carrier under one arm while pulling a trim Samsonite with the other. He called “Goodbye!” to Katie and Raymond—the former moist-eyed beneath the sofa, the latter napping. The latch clicked.
The first week: Katie’s damp pajamas and rebuffed attempts to help her change, followed by Googling “waterproof sheets” at 11:53 p.m. Fourth week: Raymond pulling himself up on the furniture for the first time while I laundered Katie’s nightgowns. Ninth week: Raymond waking at midnight, three thirty, five o’clock, and a quarter after six, as I stumbled, bleary-eyed, to hurl Katie onto the toilet. Every Sunday: Katie passing the detergent, scrambling to rescue her books from Raymond’s grasp. “When is Daddy coming back?”
Three months of 1,100 daily calories (thinness = desirable; organ failure = less so) and calendar-page activity:
- Easter baskets (kids only)
- Childcare drop-off/pick-up
- Splashing (every available puddle)
Me: 87.3 pounds.
Today, Saturday, the three of us have reached a tacit stalemate after an eight-hour tripartite cage match. I took the early lightning laundry round. Raymond won the hostile nap medallion. Katie threatened a late surge by refusing a walk at precisely the moment petulant hail spurted from the skies. Now, Roger calls and announces that our former nanny is pregnant, thereby taking the prize.
I say, “She’s going to gain fifty pounds.”
Roger says, “See you next Tuesday,” or similar, the exact imprecation lost beneath a seismic thunderclap. He hangs up.
I stifle a word.
Raymond catapults carrot mash toward the oven. Katie looks up from her meal, her face a question.
Then: a low whine, waxing into a shrill foghorn outside. Stretched gooseflesh across my frame. Katie’s fork bounces dully against the hardwood. Raymond’s spoon drops out of trebuchet alignment.
I mentally survey our townhouse’s windows. No saving the second floor living room or third-floor bedrooms except by cracking everything open, and hoping. But as we’ll be huddling together in the street-level foyer, I consider the frosted-glass panes in the front door.
“Katie, honey,” I murmur, “can you please get the Cheerios boxes out of the recycling?”
She produces an Oscar-worthy moue. “What’s that noise?”
“Now, please.” I say, collapsing Raymond’s pack-and-play with an origami petal fold. I hustle it into our Harry-Potter-style understairs pantry on the ground floor of our townhouse.
“I can’t find any!” she calls from upstairs.
“Katie.”
“Why’re you downstairs?”
“We need to tape them over the windows, Katie. Please.” I rummage through the toolbox Roger wants back. I told him I’d exchange it for child support. Oooh, duct tape!
The alarm again.
“Mom!”
“Come downstairs with the boxes!”
I rip off a series of sticky strips, forming dull tinsel bunting along the door frame. Katie arrives and I demolish the boxes until they lie flat, tame. “Stand on the—” I look around, knock sneakers and boots aside. “Here, use the shoe shelf, and start taping, please.”
“But—”
“It’s a tornado siren. We’ll be just fine down here.”
I race back upstairs, then re-descend with Raymond, my old college-relic boombox, and a copy of Beezus and Ramona. I unearth from the pantry an applesauce tube for Raymond, a juice box for Katie, a Diet Coke for myself. And I read, full-voiced, drowning out the unholy wail of the siren punctuated by hideous stillness. The electricity goes out. The afternoon gleamings filter down from the living room and bathe Katie’s face in green. I read with operatic volume over the sounds of exploding glass mingled with an oncoming train whistle and a rush of noise like the inside of a car wash, encircling a screaming child in each arm—
And—
When my eardrums and sanity press against the edge of collapse—
The sound stops.
I set the book down, but not the children. Now silence reigns again and the three of us look at one another, still unready to speak.
Eventually, the radio crackles an all clear.
Raymond squirms, so I set him down on the linoleum. He immediately pulls himself up with my shoulder. Katie says, “If Daddy hadn’t taken Ginger’s cat carrier, I could have stood on that.”
“You were really helpful, honey. Thanks.”
She nods, then nestles back against me.
I can just reach the Bacardi bottle to tip a little into my can. A well-earned sixty-six calorie splurge. Katie hands me the book so I can finish reading Chapter 4. She laughs when she discovers Ramona has taken just one bite from every apple in the dark cellar, chasing that fleeting bit of sweetness.
Linda McMullen is a wife, mother, diplomat, and homesick Wisconsinite. Her short stories and the occasional poem have appeared in over sixty literary magazines, including Drunk Monkeys, Storgy, and Newfound.