Five(11)

“He shat in my shoes. That’s not a phase, that’s intent. I’m sorry, I feel for you, Emma, I do, but I can’t work for you anymore,” Michelle said, and hung up.

“This isn’t happening,” Emma said to herself. Then she called, “Gideon!” trying to modulate her voice. Her panic was not about missing another day of work. She was far past caring about that. She understood she wouldn’t be going back to her job anytime soon because she wouldn’t find another Michelle. Her panic was instead focused on her son and what he had done. And what he would do next.

“Gideon?” she called to him. He was on the living room sofa staring at the TV. He pressed all the buttons on the remote control and landed on a plastic surgery reality show where doctors were siphoning yellow fat from a headless, naked torso.

“Look at me,” Emma said, turning his face gently with her hand to face her as she sat on the coffee table in front of him. He flinched out of her grasp.

“Yes, Emma,” he said, flatly, trying to watch the surgery over her shoulder.

“Did you do that to Michelle’s shoes on purpose? Did you mean to do that?”

“I wanted Cheerios. She didn’t listen,” he said, looking past her at a different body flayed open now on the screen.

“Good riddance to bad rubbish, Emma,” he said in a deep voice, repeating some TV show he had seen. “Now say to me, ‘Clever boy.’?”

“Clever boy,” she said, absently. Stupid, stupid bitch, she thought then.

She thinks it again now with a gash over her eye she can’t bear to look at in a mirror, with her hands curved around her mug of tea. But she tries to push the thought away, along with the job she was forced to leave, and the collection of Cartier she sold, and the Porsche that was repossessed when she could not make her payments because she could not work, because Gideon needed her. Being needed. Another feeling she had never known before. As the first sip of tea scalds her tongue she is thankful for the sliver of burn, relieved that she is not completely numb. She is still here. He has not made her into a ghost. Not yet.

She waits and listens. She can hear the TV blaring in Gideon’s room. She walks upstairs quietly. She looks at him from the doorway of his bedroom, his soft profile, his golden, flawless skin of childhood, his rounded chin, his precious elfin nose, slightly upturned, his lips gently parted in wonder as he stares, unblinking, into the animated ocean and listens to a starfish talk.

He is beautiful, she thinks. He should change his pajamas, she thinks, but…

She gently closes the bedroom door. She secures the bolt she had installed at the top of the door on the outside. And the one on the bottom. It will be a while before he tries to get out.



* * *





She makes another cup of tea. She hears a thump on the floor above and waits in silence. She freezes for a moment, hand suspended holding the milk, tilted, ready to pour. She hears nothing further, pours the milk, takes a sip.

At the kitchen table, she sits down to make a list: balloons, cake, candles, pizza, party bags. Gideon’s birthday is next week. She browses on Amazon on her phone with one hand as she drinks her tea with the other and plays a game with herself that she calls Normal Mother.

She orders a set of ten Batman plastic party bags with matching paper plates, cups, napkins, and table cover. She buys marbles, those small super bouncy balls, individual tins of slime, gummy sweets, bottles of bubbles. They come in packs of ten or twenty. But she only needs one of each of these items, of course. No, two. She’ll make herself a party bag as well, to match his. She’ll set the table, blow up the balloons, she will make it special. It’s his birthday, after all, he shouldn’t miss out just because of last year. Just because she knows his classmates’ parents would all decline if she invited their children this time. She briefly touches the gash on her forehead. She still hasn’t looked at it. But she can feel the blood has dried.

“Now Mama needs a new pair of shoes,” she says to herself, as swipe, swipe, she switches to Net-A-Porter. She clicks and buys and clicks and buys beautiful things that she has no reason to wear. Rich Bitch clothes she would have worn before motherhood. New clothes for an old life.

She buys an asymmetric, silver, long-sleeved, form-fitting maxi dress. She buys white leather disco boots and a clutch shaped like pouting red lips, more artwork than accessory. Click, click, click. She exhales deeply when she gets the order confirmation by email. It is better than chocolate, better than wine, better than sex. Of course, she will return all of it after it arrives, she must. But it’s worth this moment of bliss.

“Emma, what about self-care? Have you tried yoga, meditation, journaling, a bath, a book club?” asked her therapist, the last therapist or the one before that.

That was when Emma stopped seeing him or her because they hadn’t been listening. They had not heard her say that Gideon needs to be supervised every second that he is awake, and also when he is asleep, and that anyone she has ever hired to help her has quit. So reading and bath taking and tree poses are not options. Nor is journaling, the most shocking suggestion. As if she would ever document her days with her son, as if she would ever make a record for social services or police or lawyers or true crime documentary filmmakers to use someday when she knows that they, inevitably, will be involved.

Instead, she buys designer clothes she cannot afford, then puts them on and forgets, for just a few minutes, about Gideon and his play therapist and his occupational therapist and his learning needs specialist and the pediatric urologist and the educational psychologist and his private prescriptions and the neurodiversity nutritionist and private school fees. The night nannies, the day nannies, the sleep nannies, the sleep specialist, and all the money she has spent on tests, assessments, evaluations, scans, treatments, special diets, medications, herbal remedies, holistic therapies, traditional therapies, counseling for herself, for him, family counseling for them both together, therapeutic toys and games, a therapy swing, a sensory room that he destroyed within minutes. Private tutors because he was missing too many days at his private school where she also paid for a part-time classroom assistant to get him through the day. She is running out of money, and it’s been so much money, for every expert and nanny and teacher and specialist too afraid to tell her the thing that all of them saw in him but could not bring themselves to name because he was so young. And that they didn’t want to believe was true.