“Two,” she supplies obediently.
“See? That’s the hardest job in the world.” Is he being condescending? Does he mean it, or, worse, only wants to mean it? She can never tell. “And a lot of times, this is the mind’s way of saying enough. The good news is I can prescribe something that should help take the edge off. Have you tried a triptan before?”
She feels murder pumping from her heart. By the grace of God there are no sharp objects within reach because otherwise she couldn’t guarantee his safety. The pain borders on violence and she wants it out, out, out.
Off her look, he gives a casual wave of his hand—yes, yes, he gets it, no worries. “I can use an alternative. Not a problem. But.” His fingers hover over the keyboard. “Remember that’s just going to treat the pain, and the pain is the symptom. Not the cause.”
“You’re sure it’s not something—” She’s choking down the desire to leap at his throat and shake him. Her molars smash together. She will stay polite. She will hold it together. She will show this man mercy, for he knows not what he does. “I’m worried when I look online that—”
“Dr. Google. Well.”
It must be frustrating having laypeople like Mary Beth believing that WebMD is as valuable as a very expensive and hard-to-achieve medical degree. But it is also frustrating, she would like to point out, to feel as though your brain is going to ooze through your eye sockets. “I just mean that you’re sure it’s not something more serious?”
The doctor puts his glasses on his nose. “It depends what you mean. There have been new studies showing a statistically significant link between certain mental health disorders and migraine headaches. If you’re serious about this, then personally, as a next step, I’d suggest being evaluated by a psychologist as soon as possible. But for today, go home, get some rest, take a nap.”
Again with the naps! In the middle of the day! That’s the prescription, that’s the treatment plan? Sure, doc, seems reasonable. Not like she has things to do. Has he ever stopped to wonder why being a mom actually is the hardest job in the world and not just something thoughtless people say?
It’s because there’s never a day off—not just a day, but an hour, not so much as a minute. Is she sick? Is she feeling under the weather? Too bad! There’s no one to cover her interminable shift; she’ll get off when she dies. She is non-fungible. Doctors may be replaced eventually through artificial intelligence, and last time she checked there are robots that can do surgery, but mothers’ jobs are never, will never be, in danger.
There isn’t time for a nap. There is never time for a nap because of a mother’s Forty-Five-Minute Rule. That’s what she wants to shout in his pruned face. She is always supposed to be somewhere in forty-five minutes. Not enough time to go home and take off her too-tight pants and watch an episode of Love Island. Take any point in her day and the same will be true. And today that somewhere is Noelle’s school, where she’s supposed to be meeting with Darby and Miss Ollie. In forty-five minutes.
EIGHT
On the drive, Rhea listens to Bitch, Please, a motivational audiobook by Zazzy Tims, recommended by her new investment advisor. A little grabby for Rhea’s usual tastes, but she tries not to hold that against it.
Zazzy—a sassy white Midwestern lady with an inverted bob on the thumbnail image—walks women through the ten most common excuses they make for themselves, the ones that keep them from realizing their dreams, and answers each excuse with a resounding “Bitch, please!” coupled with a humorous essay about her own rise in the business world.
Rhea cuts the ignition, snapping Zazzy off mid-sentence and filling her little lime-green Kia with bloated silence. Beyond the windshield, a bluebird day unfurls over the Little Academy campus, fucking with her whole vibe.
She goes over it again in her head because once she steps foot on that pavement, there’s no turning back.
Yesterday she put in a formal request for Bodhi to change classrooms and was rejected flat out. Some kind of freeze on all transfer requests, the front office said, thanks to this crazy situation with kids biting the bejesus out of each other. That was Wednesday. Today is Thursday, tomorrow Friday. Tomorrow Miss Ollie emails Marcus and gives him ideas about how things ought to go with her son.
Rhea runs her fingers along the border of the thin manila envelope in her hands. Is she really going to do this? Is she prepared to ruin a woman’s life? Her breathing is even, her pulse steady. She’s not flying off the handle. This is not the Rhea of seven or eight years ago. The one who made a stupid snap decision that nearly ruined her whole life. Even though she knows that Rhea is in there, waiting, biding her time, this one has thought it through. This is different. This is about her child.
She unbuckles her seatbelt and climbs out.
NINE
Darby’s stalling. It’s amazing how easy it is to stall with a smartphone; she used to have to get creative. When she received Miss Ollie’s very nice, very nonthreatening request for a meeting to “touch base,” her first thought had been: Can we not? Though you’re not allowed to say that when it comes to your kid. You have to care. You have to care so much and you have to do it all the time. You have to care which school to send them to and about the evils of YouTube and whether they’re sharing and the changing consistencies of their diaper contents and high-fructose corn syrup. All of it matters because apparently every parent is one wrong move away from raising a serial killer.
But sometimes—only sometimes—Darby would appreciate a time-out from all the paying attention and keeping an eye on, just a month or two break from giving a shit. Maybe it’s one thing for the parents with easy children, who frankly ruin it for everyone, but Darby has a wonderful but difficult daughter.
So she will show up and listen and not get defensive at this meeting. She will lean forward and ask questions. She’ll welcome an outsider’s perspective. Anything to understand what makes Lola tick. Because Darby is realizing more and more that she has no idea.
And she especially doesn’t know what any of this has got to do with Noelle and Mary Beth. She hopes it’s not the biting. Please, anything but that.
I wish I could bite you. Lola had sounded so cold and calculating yesterday in the car; she can be sweet, she really can be. But Darby knows better than to say this in the meeting. She sounds like a crazy person, even to Griff, who just this morning suggested they send their four-year-old to some kind of experimental group therapy he’d read one stupid article about. Sometimes, Darby feels like she’s seeing someone who isn’t really there. A different version of her little girl.
Whatever it is, she’s glad Mary Beth will be there. Mary Beth is a world-class carer.
As if on cue, a text pings her phone from Mary Beth. Bad news, it reads.
TEN
In her car, Rhea’s hands still tremble in her lap, where no one would know they’ve been trembling for a full fifteen minutes before the first responders ever got there. An ambulance, three police cars, and a fire truck.
She’s now been staring at the vehicles blocking the pickup lane, her pulse booming in her ears. A hard thwap on the driver’s-side glass startles her.