Kay looks down at Addie. It has to work. Please, dear God, let it work. For this little girl. Don’t let him catch a cold. Don’t let him have one cut. Let nothing stand in their way. She will say the rosary for them. Tonight. When Addie’s asleep, she will turn the lights low. She will sit still and say the rosary and pray for them.
She learned these prayers after Benny, after all that time more than twenty-four years ago. She wonders as she has often wondered if she’d prayed more while Benny was alive could she have saved him? A counselor told her that’s a ridiculous thing to think, but she doesn’t know. She just doesn’t know. Maybe she wasn’t a good enough Catholic.
She looks down at Addie, who has her hands on the aprons. Can Kay do this? Can she be okay with this child? She wants to lie down. She wants to go outside and sit on the bench she put under the tree that Benny used to climb. It’s been over twenty years, and she is still paralyzed in some ways. She has gotten used to it. She has been this way longer than she had Benny. How can that be? But she plays the part well of a woman getting by.
“Um, this one,” Addie says, and pulls the red apron free. Plain red. Kay would have guessed one of the more ruffled or lacy ones. She holds her braids gently and loops the top around Addie’s small neck. The girl drowns in the fabric. It hangs to her feet.
“Let’s get you tied up.” She carefully folds the bottom panel up and winds the tie two times around her waist. “Adorable,” she says, and Addie poses. “I have to take your picture,” she says.
Soon she pulls the chair over to the kitchen island, and Addie helps her measure vanilla and brown sugar. She carefully cracks two eggs into a small bowl. Kay stands beside her, and something about this makes her grateful, makes her melt in a way. She had forgotten about children, which is odd to say because she has never forgotten about her son for a second. But she forgot about how fully attentive you have to be when a child is in the house. They make it more real that way. Without them, you can just go through the motions. But they will not let you phone it in.
It used to be all about Benny. Benny letting the screen door slam. Benny getting their small dog riled up. Benny with his, “Hey, Mom,” and, “Uh-oh,” and, “Hang on.” Benny leaving his headphones and Walkman on the counter, or on the back of the toilet. “Benjamin,” she’d say. “Forget something?”
Did she ever bake cookies with Benny? She doesn’t think so. Why hadn’t she? All she has thought about since he died are lists of things she didn’t do with him: let him do the Columbia House CD club, buy him the Super Soaker water gun he wanted, take him to that professional wrestling event a few towns away. And the regrets. So many regrets. She remembers shushing him when she was on the phone. She remembers sending him to his bedroom because he dropped a bottle of apple juice on the kitchen floor, and it made such a sticky mess. Once, as a baby, he wouldn’t stop crying, and she let him scream by himself in his crib for half an hour, so red and worked up and sad. Another time, as a toddler, she grabbed his arm too hard because he accidentally elbowed her in the mouth.
God, she hates that she wasn’t perfect every single day with him, she hates how she sometimes ignored things he said. She hates that she used to feel a slight dread when the school day ended, interrupting the quiet peace of having the house to herself. But all parents must feel that way. If he had grown up and lived, it would be lost in a sea of a thousand other things, good and bad, and he could have forgiven her for any deficiency. She could have made it up to him. She hates other things, too: that he had clothes in his closet with the tags still on, that he never got to have a girlfriend, that the truck probably dragged him. She winces.
But wait. The feeling of her hand on top of this child’s hand as they gently tap the egg against the rim of the bowl—this feeling is familiar. They did do something like this together, she and Benny. Was it French toast they used to make? Yes, yes, she remembers him in this kitchen, maybe on the same chair, cracking eggs.
She savors the feeling of her hand on a child’s hand again, and the memory comes back like a paper airplane lazily gliding into a window. She feels a surge of warmth and familiarity. Benny standing beside her. Her body remembers, can feel him there. He loved to plunge the bread into the batter. Then he’d say, “Flip,” and he’d flip the bread with a fork before they carefully put it into the hot frying pan. He loved the sizzle of butter against the bread. He would sprinkle cinnamon over it when it was done. He’d say, “Kaboom.” Yes, they did that. Yes, yes. Tears rim her eyes, but Addie doesn’t see. Kay is thankful for this memory. She feels a release of something, a great relief.