“That’s the—” Mary Beth protests, but they both fall silent. “It was locked before…”
The supply room is as clean as if nothing ever happened. A rainbow of construction paper, stacked bins of glue sticks, primary-colored finger paints, Popsicle sticks, ziplock baggies, latex gloves, and hand sanitizer await.
“I think it’s okay. We’ll just be a minute.” Darby eyes a bucket of gleaming grown-up scissor blades behind Mary Beth. “Here, let me take a peek.”
Mary Beth’s fingers are chilly to the touch.
“Oh, it’s not even that deep.” Darby leans down for a better look, turning Mary Beth’s hand this way and that.
“Ouch, that hurts.” Mary Beth retracts her hand, reproachful.
“Sorry. I did tell you to be careful. I think you can get away without stitches. I bet the nurse has some of that surgical glue or maybe a butterfly bandage. It’s in a tricky spot.” Darby turns to search the cabinets for a first aid kit, trying not to think about Miss Ollie, only able to think about Miss Ollie. Where was her body? Is she standing in the same spot?
“I’m an idiot,” Mary Beth groans.
“You’re not an idiot.” Darby’s voice is muffled within one of the cabinets, which has the comforting but tickly smell of dust. “You’re a distracted mother.”
“That’s a terrible thing to say.”
“It is?” Darby’s fingers close around the shiny red-and-white plastic of a first aid kit and she hauls it up. “Why?” Inside, she finds a coil of gauze. “Hold still,” she commands.
“Distracted mother means bad mother. They’re the same thing. Synonyms. Distracted mothers are the ones too busy playing Candy Crush and having affairs with their pool boys and popping Vicodin to notice her kid’s just wandered into oncoming traffic. Watch it.” She glances down to where Darby is sloppily wrapping her hand up in the white gauze, crissing and crossing with no particular pattern, displaying exactly the same level of skill as she had with the egg carton creatures. If nothing else, she’s consistent. “Is that me?”
“That’s a bit harsh, don’t you think? Our eyes are supposed to be laser-focused on our kids at all times? No texting while mothering, is that it? I don’t mean the Vicodin part, but distraction just means not giving something your full attention. Do my kids really need my full attention or can I have some of it, too?” Darby finishes up her terrible bandaging handiwork.
“Did you see the way they looked at me?” Mary Beth’s white shirt has several dark smears of blood across the front that might not come out. “Even Noelle.”
“Maybe especially Noelle. But that’s to be expected. You’re her mom.”
Mary Beth examines her fat, clumsy hand. “You don’t think they would have…”
“No. Of course not. I mean, they’re four.”
The color is returning to Mary Beth’s face. She smooths her hair into place. “That’s true,” she says, her voice still weak. “I mean, they still get put in time-out.”
* * *
“Excuse me, but do you mind telling me why the kids are lined up like they’re expecting a firing squad?” Darby has just led Mary Beth back to the classroom to gather their giant mom purses, it being the end of the school day anyway.
“Darby.” Mary Beth tuts.
Well, they are.
Mrs. Tokem glares back at them. “There’s a situation. Someone defecated.” The way she says it gives Darby goose bumps. Defecated.
“Yikes.” Mary Beth cradles her injured hand. “Who?”
“Just what we need,” says Darby, who actually does smell something funky now that she’s had a moment to process.
“That’s what we’re trying to figure out,” says Mrs. Tokem. “It’s disgusting.”
“God,” Darby mutters as she scans the room. “I hope it wasn’t Lola.”
Mary Beth points. “Oh dear.” A fresh, steaming pile of you-know-what is in the cubby beside Mrs. Tokem’s polka-dotted lunch box.
“What’s going on now?” Lena Feinstein is the first to arrive for pickup and Mary Beth does the honors of finding a polite, non-shaming way to catch her up.
“Oh my god. There has to have been witnesses,” says Lena. Wait. How is Lena so confident that it’s not her daughter? It feels unfairly presumptuous. Does Bex have a bulletproof anus? The Arnold Schwarzenegger of sphincters?
“But how did a child pull down his or her pants and complete his or her business without a single person noticing?” Mary Beth muses.
The same way a teacher got killed, probably, Darby thinks darkly. One thing after another after another after another.
“It was an accident,” Darby assures anyone who is bothering to listen. She senses another crisis coming on. She reviews where they are in the process. Mitigation, preparedness, response, recovery. Best to skip straight to step three, as it stands. “Not the end of the world.” She tries to sound chipper while watching Lola, who is busy scratching a bug bite on her knee. Darby’s 99 percent sure that her daughter would not mistake a cubby for the toilet, but it pays to be vocally kind in the unlikely event that 1 percent doesn’t work out in her favor. “Just so long,” she says, circling back to mitigation and preparedness, “as it doesn’t happen again.”
* * *
“Mommy,” says Lola, “did you know octopuses eat their arms when they’re bored?” She’s been in good spirits ever since the unsettling incident in the classroom, which wasn’t even that unsettling—probably.
At the changing table, Darby wrestles Jack’s arm into a onesie while he attempts to crocodile roll out of her grip. “Is that true?” She breathes heavily.
“It’s true.” Lola beams. The fringe of her bangs has grown too long and keeps getting caught in her dark fan of eyelashes.
“Then that’s definitely going on the science fair board.” Darby tugs the zipper from Jack’s big toe up to the base of his throat. “There.” He squeals as she scoops him up. He feels like a sausage busting out of its casing—is she feeding him too much? His chubby arms wrap around her neck and his hand pats her back slowly.
Her heart swells with a fierce love, written in the marrow of her bones and preserved and reinforced through billions of years of evolution. She thinks: My life without these two small, small people wouldn’t be worth living. Maybe it’s the intensity of that feeling itself that’s so terribly exhausting—will science ever know?
“Is Noelle’s mommy still hurt?” Lola can be so attuned to other people’s feelings, so kind. Once Lola told Darby that when she thought about her little brother she felt like she might cry and Darby had to explain the phenomenon of happy tears. She wishes other people had a window into the Morton house to witness these moments with Lola, but then maybe everyone wishes for that because whose children ever perform on command? Child actors, she supposes.
“She’ll be fine.” Darby sets Jack down on the floor, but Jack has other ideas. He wants up, up, up. His fingers pinch and he begins to whine. “Just a scratch,” Darby reassures her daughter. She groans with the effort of retrieving Jack again. “Thanks for asking.”