Cutting Teeth(45)
It goes without saying that this is very bad news.
She can still taste the butter from her bagel this morning. It might have gone a little rancid on the dish. She still ate it, though. That’s where she’s at, by the way, should anyone want to know her whole mental state. Rancid, but only a little, and down the hatch it goes.
Actually, minutes before that, she’d begun to feel kind of pleased with herself in a vague, non-self-congratulatory way because the turnout for “Who Feels Sad?” with Pastor Ben Sarpezze is good, exactly as she expected it would be. Ten families from Little, and not just Miss Ollie’s class, have arrived and taken a seat in the school’s multipurpose room, which is basically just a big, empty room with blue carpet and a wall of full of mirrors.
There’s Marcus with Bodhi, and both of Lincoln’s moms are in attendance. Of course Megan has brought Zeke and Roxy scrolls Instagram next to her daughter, Maggie.
“Can I please sit here?” She watches Noelle ask George’s mom, polite and proper as if she were one of Kate Middleton’s kids, though not the oldest, who Mary Beth thinks she remembers throwing a tantrum in public—poor Kate.
Noelle is wearing a navy-blue T-shirt dress with a cat appliqué that Mary Beth had purchased online just this week. One of Mary Beth’s favorite relaxation activities is putting items in her digital cart. Knee-high socks for the girls. Straw purses that will go with anything. Sunglasses. Vintage knickknacks for that weird open spot on the built-in shelves. Bamboo-thread throw blankets. Half-zip pullovers for Doug. She debates and debates, adding them one by one only to leave them there hanging in the ether until they sell out or disappear or she forgets about them entirely. It soothes her, thinking about all those things she could own.
But this week, she hit “order.” Window after window, she scrolled through her tabs on her browser and confirmed purchases. Each time, she felt a rush of adrenaline charging her up. Again and again and again. The boxes started arriving on her porch this week. Anyway, she thinks it’s good for Noelle to have a new outfit for today, for a time like this, something to make her feel spiffy.
“That one’s mine,” Mary Beth pointed out proudly to Pastor Ben when he arrived. The adorable little girl in the brand-new dress. Isn’t she pretty? Isn’t she well-mannered and clean? she wanted to say.
And then came the news about Katia. A mother in the hospital, a school of other mothers doing the math. She’s going to be okay. She’s going to survive feels like thin consolation, especially when some say she refused a feeding. Didn’t offer a vein. Listened to her child scream and cry and wail for her and responded like a father who pretended not to hear his baby wake up in the wee dark-thirty hours of the morning. She didn’t make herself—What were Rhea’s exact words?—joyfully available.
“Doesn’t your heart hurt when you hear your child crying for you?” they used to ask each other at the beginning when their littles were all much littler. “Can’t you just not stand it?”
Apparently, Katia had withstood. The attack happened in the middle of the night, when Asher snuck down from his bedroom, the way another child might go in search of a glass of water. His mother’s screams must have startled them both because he latched on to the edge of her armpit and wouldn’t let go. Likely nicked an artery with his canine. Her husband thought she was being murdered—which was nearly true.
The vocabulary was undeniable—an attack. A child attacked a grown-up and now all the adults in the room seem to be unsteadily attempting to catch their balance.
Pastor Ben pulls up a flimsy folding chair in front of the small semicircle of kids. “Who here is sad?” he asks with a frown.
Several of the parents tentatively raise their hands along with the children.
A year ago, she sat in this exact same spot, part of the three-year-old curriculum to celebrate Dr. Seuss’s birthday. (Mud, crud, dud, flood, blood, she rhymes in her head.) Now she listens to Ben describe angels and beautiful songs and a white-fluffy-cloud version of the kingdom of heaven.
“Have any of your families ever moved to a new house? Or maybe when your grandmother comes to stay, she has to go home to somewhere far away? You can think of it like that,” he suggests. “Miss Ollie came to visit and then it was time for her to return home to heaven.”
“Do you mean Miss Ollie moved to heaven?” Maggie crawls onto her knees.
What Mary Beth likes about Ben is how seriously he’s taking the children’s questions, as though they are brilliant, insightful questions from esteemed theology professors, not four-year-olds. He trains his entire being on Maggie and her Instagram-scrolling mother. “She did. You can think of it as her new home address.”
Ah, that’s perfect, thinks Mary Beth. Very palatable. Just what they need.
When she floated the idea of the counseling session to the other parents, she endeavored to be thoughtful and respectful. She used a very inviting font in her email. All faiths welcome, please come if you believe your child may benefit from processing the pain with a trained professional. No pressure. That was her other motto. It’s just that kids listen to strangers far better than they listen to their parents; it’s a scientifically proven fact.
“Will she send us postcards?” asks Zeke. “Because my grandma sends us postcards from Boca sometimes.”
“Great question,” answers Ben, all Johnny-on-the-spot. “She will, she definitely will, but they’ll be heaven postcards. Like when a bird sings an extra-pretty song or a flower blooms or a butterfly flutters by, those are heaven postcards and you can bet some of those are from Miss Ollie when she’s thinking of you.”