by Liz Zuercher
The Millers live down the street from Little Chad, backing up to the hill.
Marcy Miller pulled into her
driveway after taking the three big kids to school. The baby had fallen asleep in the car seat and she was so
preoccupied she grabbed the bag of stuff she’d picked up at the drug store and
was in the kitchen unloading it before she realized she’d left him in the
car. That made her start to tear
up and she shook her head hard to make it stop.
“Don’t do that,” she told herself
out loud. “Don’t cry, don’t cry,
don’t cry,” she said, willing herself to get a grip. She went back out to the garage and opened the back door of
the black Chevy Suburban and looked at her son. So sweet. So
peaceful. He was a really good
baby. She had nothing to feel sad
about. It’s what she’d wanted – a
passel of children and a beautiful home and a great husband who would do
anything for her – why didn’t she feel happy? What was wrong with her?
Marcy unhooked the clasp on the
baby’s seat harness and lifted his dead weight, feeling a twinge in her lower
back. At almost a year old he was
getting to be a chunk of a baby.
Her other three had been slight like her, willowy and light, but Jack
was going to be more like his dad.
Tall. Solid. Substantial. Jack’s head fell to her shoulder and he whimpered like a
kitten and then lifted his head, looked around and started to cry.
“Shh, shh, it’s okay, Jack,” she
said quietly. “We’re home
now.” She ran her hand over the
top of his head, smoothing down the tufts of thick brown hair that stood on
end, making him look like a little ragamuffin. He was still in his footed jammies, the ones with Superman
flying around, red and blue and yellow on a white background that had turned a
little dingy no matter how much color safe bleach she put in the washing
machine. He quieted and laid his
head back down on her shoulder, putting his thumb in his mouth.
The phone was ringing as she and
Jack walked into the kitchen. She
put Jack into the high chair and picked up the receiver, but by that time the
caller had given up. She didn’t
much care if they’d left a message.
She wasn’t in the mood to talk to anyone anyway.
Jack was starting to fuss,
pounding on the high chair tray, so she grabbed the box of Cheerios from the
pantry and poured a few onto the tray.
She filled up a sippy cup with apple juice, handed it to him and hoped
he wouldn’t fling it across the room the way he’d just discovered was lots of
fun. Thank God today he just
wanted to drink his juice and play with the Cheerios. She couldn’t deal with a feisty kid today, not this morning.
She was making a slow cooker beef
stew for dinner, so she started cutting up vegetables and getting the meat
browned. The onions made tears
come to her eyes again and this time there was no stopping them. Her period was late. She looked at the drug store bag on the
counter. She was afraid to use the
early pregnancy test. She was
afraid of what it would tell her.
God couldn’t be doing this to her again. Please God, I just can’t do it again. Isn’t four enough? She put the butcher knife on the
cutting board, pulled out one of the bar stools and sank into it, burying her
head in her arms on the counter, tears flowing strong now.
She prayed for forgiveness from
God and her husband and their evangelical parents and her pastor for not
wanting another child. She prayed for
it not to be true. She prayed for
guidance.
“Jesus, help me,” she cried out
loud.
Just then Jack let out a joyful
squeal and threw the sippy cup across the room, where it hit the tile floor,
popping the lid off and sending sticky apple juice all over the floor and the
cabinets. Jack laughed like a wild
animal, so pleased with what he’d been able to do, and he looked at her with a
big grin and sang out, “Mama!
Mama! Cup!”
Marcy couldn’t help herself. She let out her own wild animal scream
at the top of her lungs, and Jack’s face turned from delight to fear to clouds
of concern. His laughter stopped
and he started to cry along with his mother.
* *
* * *
Marcy didn’t listen to her phone
messages until after she’d picked the kids from school, dropped Charlie off at
soccer practice and took Tiffany to her dance class. Carl would pick them up on his way home. Ashleigh had a big project for school
that involved looking through magazines and cutting out geometric shapes that
occurred in nature, so Marcy had set her up at the kitchen table with a stack
of magazines, blunt scissors, a glue stick and construction paper.
She put Jack down for a nap and
wished she could lie down herself, or fill the bathtub with hot soapy water for
a long soak. Or walk out the door
and never come back, she thought.
The idea stopped her in her tracks halfway down the stairs. She didn’t mean that, she told herself. Yes you do, came into her head. You certainly do want to run away, get
as far away as you can. But what
good would it do? Her family still
needed her. She had
responsibilities, huge responsibilities that couldn’t be ignored. She loved them all, but she was so
tired. It all felt so
overwhelming.
She thought about the pregnancy
test. She hadn’t been able to
bring herself to use it yet.
Instead, she had hidden it under her bathroom vanity, deep in the back
of the cabinet behind a Costco-sized box of tampons that she hadn’t needed for
at least six weeks by her calculations.
Maybe tomorrow she’d do the test.
Maybe she’d get her period tonight and wouldn’t have to take the test.
“Mom?” Ashleigh was calling
her. “Mom, I need help.”
“Just a minute,” Marcy
replied. “I’m coming.”
After she showed Ashleigh what a
diamond shape was, she checked on her crock-pot stew and started putting
together a salad, which she figured the kids wouldn’t eat. She’d try anyway. Maybe she’d get lucky. Right. Lucky would be not having another baby so soon, or ever
again.
She thought about calling her
mother, and picked up the phone.
That’s when she remembered someone had called in the morning and she
hadn’t picked up in time. The line
was beeping, so she listened to the message. It was Kristen.
Something about a meeting of the moms tomorrow morning. Something about Eddie Petrocelli’s fake
animals. Who cares, Marcy
thought. Who cares what he puts in
his front yard? What business was
it of hers? Of theirs? But she erased the message and dialed
Kristen’s number anyway. Maybe it
would be a distraction.
* * * * *
Marcy sat at the kitchen table by
herself, lost in thought. The kids
had been fed and tucked into bed.
For the third night in a row Carl was working late. She looked over at the empty place
setting where he should have sat and eaten dinner with them, the stew that was
his favorite and had been cooking all day. She had set a pretty table with the slate blue woven place
mats, the cloth napkins he preferred with a swirly pattern of blue and white
and beige and the silverware they had gotten as a wedding gift from Carl’s
grandmother. Slate blue candles
sat in pewter holders waiting to be lit, and the potted ivy in the center of
the table reached out arms of green toward the edges of the table. Carl liked the dinner table to be a
calm, soothing place for the family to gather at the end of the day, which was
hard for Marcy to manage with four children under the age of ten. Still, she tried to make things nice
for the family, for Carl.
The stoneware soup bowl waited on
the placemat for the stew to be ladled into it, but by this time, ten o’clock,
Marcy was pretty sure Carl wouldn’t want stew when he got home. He had called at four in the afternoon
to let her know he’d be late again.
He wouldn’t be able to pick up the kids from their activities, so Marcy
had had to wake up Jack from his nap and load him and Ashleigh into the
Suburban to make the rounds for the other kids. The three bigger kids were all starving when they got home,
so Marcy scooped up some stew for them and sat them down at the kitchen counter
to eat while she fed Jack and nibbled at a piece of sourdough bread she’d
buttered and put under the broiler to go with the stew. She didn’t bother with the salad for
the kids – they wouldn’t eat it anyway and she didn’t feel like listening to the
whining that would definitely follow the setting out of anything green and
leafy. Even though they didn’t
finish all their stew, she let them have ice cream bars for dessert so she
wouldn’t have to deal with the please, please Moms. She didn’t have the will to be a diligent mother tonight,
except when it was bedtime.
Tonight she was desperate to get all the kids to bed.
By eight o’clock the kids had all
been either sent or put to bed, and Marcy curled up on the sofa to wait for her
husband. She watched a mindless
show on television until nine o’clock, when she decided she’d better eat
something and grabbed the salad from the fridge, poured some ranch dressing
over it and picked at the bits of chopped tomato and lettuce. Nothing tasted good. She dumped the rest of the salad down
the disposal, turned on the water and flipped the switch, welcoming the loud
grinding sound that drowned out the noise of the thoughts in her head. She tried to imagine another baby. The thought of physically having another
baby in the first place made her shudder.
And then taking care of it.
That was a whole other thing.
She stared down at the disposal.
She wished it were as easy as shoving the salad down the drain – not
having a baby. She was horrified
that such a thought would pop into her head and she flipped off the disposal to
stop the grinding.
“Forgive me, Lord,” she
whispered.
Standing at the sink, she looked
out the window at her back yard.
She couldn’t make out much in the dark, but she thought she saw something
moving beyond the rear fence. She
blinked her eyes to try and focus, but it didn’t help. She couldn’t make out anything and
figured she was imagining things.
By ten o’clock as she sat alone at
the kitchen table, she knew what she would have to do. Carl would never understand, but he
would have to respect her decision, wouldn’t he? She sat waiting to tell him that she thought she was
pregnant again, and that she just couldn’t have another baby.
At eleven, she put the stew away
and washed out the crock-pot. She
put away her husband’s soup bowl and set the silverware back in the
drawer. Picking up Carl’s placemat
and pretty cloth napkin, she carried them to the dining room buffet and
smoothed them into the top drawer.
The unlit candles and ivy plant stayed on the kitchen table like they
always did. Leaving the light on
above the cooktop for Carl, Marcy climbed the stairs to the master bedroom and
went to bed. Her morning would
start early, so she couldn’t afford not to sleep. Sleep was elusive, though.
At midnight she heard the garage
door open. She heard Carl stumble
over something downstairs and make his way up the stairs and into the
bedroom. She didn’t move from her
side, her back to him, when he got into bed smelling like garlic and jasmine,
rolled away from her and went to sleep. Marcy stared into the darkness.
