In the background, Jack watches his sister from his high chair, where he regally munches on soggy noodles and canned green beans like: What’s the fuss.
“Deep breaths. Let’s try to calm down.” Darby channels the lessons of a certain cartoon tiger. “Can you count to four with me? One … two … three…” Lola’s tantrums trigger a diarrhea of energy in Darby, the final reserves of vitality and resolve slowly squirting out her ass.
She wonders if there’s some safety precaution she ought to be taking on behalf of her daughter, the way you’re supposed to roll someone onto their side in the event of a seizure.
The back door beeps. She can literally see the moment Griff’s face hits the tantrum air.
“Who died?” he asks, glumly dropping his car keys onto the kitchen counter.
“Miss Ollie!” she screams, but mainly because it’s very, very loud and she is very, very close to losing her shit.
There was a time, she remembers, when she used to feel like they really had their shit together, by the way. But ever since having children, they’ve let their shit get everywhere. Filling up trash cans, in the bathtub, sometimes even in her hair.
She watches his face carefully. “Wait, what?” She tries to decipher what she sees there. Shock? It definitely seems in the shock family. God, but maybe she needs to get her eyes checked. She could have sworn she saw … for an instant … just in passing …
One thing’s for sure: She should never have gone into that school without Mary Beth.
“Lola’s teacher,” she says in a tone that implies this is somehow, some way, his fault. “Miss Ollie died during school today, which you would know if you were answering your phone.” Or if you were there, she thinks grimly. But why would he be? It certainly has been a day. A long, terrible day.
“I’m sorry it … died … too.” Perhaps, and this is just a thought, there should be a different word for what happens to cell phones when they stop working temporarily than the one for people who cease to exist permanently. “Jesus, what happened?”
“I don’t want to say.” She makes eyes at the children. Jack shrieks, could be happy, could be mad, they’ll know in a minute.
Griff follows her look, nods. Then he grips her arm, fingertips digging into her bicep, and drags her roughly into the pantry.
“Ouch, Griff, too hard.” She shrugs him off.
Surrounded by all of the junky stuff from the middle of the grocery store that health magazines tell you not to buy, they’re forced to stand close enough together that she can spot all the gray flecks in her husband’s stubble.
“Sorry.” He runs his palm down his cheek and he does look apologetic, more like the adorably sheepish man she first met when watching him get repeatedly and flagrantly passed over again and again while trying to order a drink at a crowded San Antonio bar all those years ago. He was the least pushy man she had ever met. “What happened?” he repeats.
She imagines the inevitable newspaper reports: “Teacher Slain at Local Preschool.” Only the local preschool will be their preschool. Little Academy.
“My impression is that it wasn’t of natural causes.”
“Suicide?”
She takes a shaky breath. “Supposedly two of her fingers were sliced off, so that seems … unlikely.”
She’s already been warned not to expect an official cause of death to be released possibly for months, but other tidbits have reached her over the course of the afternoon. The director and assistant director of both Little Academy and RiverRock Church have been notified on an “as-needed basis” about the extent of the damage to the preschool supply room. Blood. There was a lot of blood spilled on scene.
For the first time, the realness is crashing in on her, what happened, what it means.
He looks away, unfocused eyes trailing off in the direction of the Pirate’s Booty, may the sight give him comfort. “And that’s why Lola’s freaking out?”
Outside the pantry, Lola’s pitch and volume remain remarkably consistent.
“Not exactly.” She’s begun to feel claustrophobic. She’ll need to get out of this cramped space that smells like stale crumbs and long-since-spilled marinara sauce soon. “I don’t know. It’s been a long day. We have no idea what the kids might have seen or heard or—”
“Well, have you asked her?” He surprises her with his emotion.
“Yes, Griff, obviously I’ve asked Lola,” she responds calmly—not usually her role, but fine. “But, you know, she doesn’t really like to talk about school. When I tried, she asked me if triceratops have nipples.” He pinches the bridge of his nose like he’s getting a headache. “Do they?”
He glowers at her and, for a moment, she feels like she doesn’t recognize him. He looks mean—no, cruel. “Does she even know?” he asks.
“In so many words.” Darby pokes her head out to check on the kids. Jack is arching his back in the high chair; he wants down. Lola kicks her feet into the hard floor.
Griff’s Adam’s apple bobs. “Sorry,” he repeats. “I just don’t know how to handle this.” He means her. Lola. He doesn’t know how to handle his daughter. It’s a long-running source of conflict between them, their competing theories on the best way to parent. Darby believes their daughter’s behavior is a family matter without a silver-bullet solution; it will be improved gradually through firm boundaries and a consistent, united front. Meanwhile Griff often prefers the path of least resistance in tandem with a half-assed strategy of outsourcing the issue to “professionals who can handle it.” Neither theory has been proven in their household, barely even tested.
Together, they emerge from the pantry to face their children. Darby removes the high-chair tray and begins unbuckling Jack, reluctantly freeing him from his confines. Lola lifts her chin off the ground and Darby is afraid that one of these days Lola’s going to seriously injure herself. “Mommy, please, Mommy.”
Please what? What, Lola!
“I’ve been hearing things,” Griff says softly.
“What things?”
“On the text chain with the dads in Lola’s class.”
“There’s a text chain?” she asks. “And you’re on it?”
“I didn’t ask to be.” He walks in a slow circle, hands on his hips. Jack eats food off the floor. “The biting. Some of the dads have said, you know, it’s a thing in their house.” She looks questioningly at him. “Like they’re starting to allow it. Like, I don’t know, like maybe it’s some kind of—okay, one of the dads who is some kind of doctor I think said it might be a vitamin deficiency or a perceived one or I can’t remember exactly what he called it.”
“What are you saying?”
He shakes his head, regrouping. “A lot of the kids are biting in this one class at this one school, all at the same time, and there’s something there, some conclusion to draw, I mean, don’t you think?” Is he hoping for this to be true? Whatever this is. Because that would mean maybe the thing that’s wrong isn’t with their daughter specifically, but with all the kids, is that his thought process? Parenting should be fucked for everyone, not just them.