Yes, this year is presenting a new set of challenges, but that’s also fine. Because isn’t the primary role of a parent to equip a child to deal with new challenges? To model appropriate emotional responses? To label their feelings in order to better deal with them?
“I feel bad,” murmurs Mary Beth, who, prior to leaving home this morning, acted as a human buffet for her daughter, triggering the start of another horrific headache episode, if anyone cares. No? No one? Well, okay then.
With a terse smile and without removing her oversized sunglasses, Mary Beth hands the school parking attendant, in his snazzy bright yellow sash, her photo ID. A new protocol. Fine, but new. Only a precaution to avoid media stepping foot on campus unannounced; nothing to be alarmed about, but there are a lot of sickos and perverts in the world so be vigilant.
Mary Beth glances up to the rearview. Her daughter’s ocean-blue eyes stare calmly out the window, her hand resting gently on the head of her stuffed duck, Chicky, who travels shotgun in the car seat’s cup holder. A big pink bow rides high on her loose blond curls.
Meanwhile, Mary Beth’s own eyes water from the pain radiating out of her stupid, defective eye socket. By night, Mary Beth grows her spreadsheet, collecting any small scrap of information she can find like a mother bird building her nest. She’s outlined a few schools of thought currently gaining traction within the Little community.
First are the parents who are certain the problem must be nutrition based, that the children must not be producing enough hemoglobin on their own. However, so far no luck in getting insurance to cover the suite of lab tests required to confirm. Therefore, popular amongst these theorists is a push for a diet high in iron and folate, but as anyone who’s encountered a picky four-year-old knows, spinach isn’t exactly high on their preferred menu. Others have suggested that pediatric Renfield’s must somehow be related to the children’s teeth. Mothers compare notes: Did your child use a pacifier as a baby and for how long? Maybe a strong physical urge to clamp down, the way some babies have stronger urges to suck or like how it sometimes feels good to bite on a towel. But no dentist has heard of such a thing. There’s an open debate as to the safety of offering kids rawhide chew toys meant for dogs. Then there are the parents—namely those of George, Maggie, and Tamar—who believe that if their child hasn’t caught the syndrome, it must be evidence that they themselves know better; that they’re doing something right. Of course, they’re too polite to say so in public, but the notion is there, floating in the air.
The morning draws Mary Beth to a previously scheduled doctor’s appointment, as though it’s an inevitable conclusion to the events spinning around her orbit. The gravity of it all.
The clinic doctor’s words have been ringing in the hollowed-out shell of her skull: If you’re serious about this, I would suggest being evaluated by a psychologist. She is serious about it. Deadly. Dramatic measures may be warranted.
In the waiting room, she collects every pamphlet on every condition from seasonal depression to general anxiety disorder to schizophrenia and stuffs them into her purse. She then sits down with the excessive paperwork and begins answering the questions methodically, although she has to wonder if she really is the most credible witness when it comes to her own mental health.
How often do you exercise? That’s a tricky one. When the girls were babies, Mary Beth could stroll for an hour, often more than once a day. Nothing stopped the infant tears more quickly than “outside.” But “Exercise” is not the current life phase she’s in.
Do you drink alcohol? Yes. How many times per week? She grimaces. It occurs to her that over time, her answer to this question has gone up instead of down. She would have thought the natural trajectory of her drinking habits would follow the opposite curve, but then when she was twenty-five, she had no idea how long the time between dinner and the girls’ bedtime could last. A glass of wine or a breezy gin and tonic is an easy enough way to bring a spot of joy to an otherwise barren wasteland of a two-hour stretch. Just one. Always just one. But when she adds the week up, her answer of five suddenly feels damning.
Are you often irritable? No. Well. Only when her children are irritating or when she’s stuck in really bad traffic. Because raising kids does require a lot of driving during rush hour, so she’s not sure the question is fair on its face.
Are you ever irrationally angry? Define irrationally, she thinks, pen hovering. Like, she knows she shouldn’t get so annoyed when Noelle refuses to get in her car seat until she’s buckled Chicky. Also, it should be sweet when Angeline still crawls into bed in the middle of the night at least three or four times a week. And yet … and yet. More often than not, both of these things evoke rage. The kind of rage that makes her yell. Her dirty little secret. No one would suspect it but she is a mother who yells now. Even if she doesn’t think of herself that way. Even if to her own ear she sounds ridiculous.
Do you cry without warning? Now Mary Beth sighs. Show her a mother who doesn’t cry at the news or because she had to give the last half of her chocolate bar to a seven-year-old.
She scans her answers. If anything, they feel like symptoms of motherhood. There’s a line where Mary Beth is invited to describe her reason for the visit. She scrawls: Migraines; am I depressed??? Then hands it back to the receptionist behind the sliding window.
Mary Beth opens up an artsy magazine and tries to focus her aching eyes on the photographs of models wearing clothes no one would ever buy. She feels like she might throw up. The door to the inner office opens and she hears, “Mary Beth?”
She flips the magazine closed and stands up to see that the female nurse waiting to usher her inside is Zeke’s mother, Megan Tolbert. Even from here, Mary Beth can make out her neat writing in the “Reason for Today’s Visit” section.
“I—I didn’t know you worked here,” she stammers.
TWENTY-TWO
“Mission accomplished?” Darby asks her husband upon his return from putting Lola down for bed, now looking about an inch shorter than when he’d left to head upstairs.
Well, don’t look at me that way, she thinks defensively. It’s not her fault she had the wherewithal to call dibs on Jack this evening because everyone knows Jack is the easier one to get to bed—much less time spent on negotiations that go nowhere—and yet she does feel a little at fault. Like, as the mother, it’s always her sworn duty and hers alone to take care of the hardest bits, the way the Secret Service has to take a bullet for the president. Where did that stupid feature come from, anyway? It seems hardwired into her, but who programmed it there? That’s what she would like to know. Whether this bug might be one that’s fixed for future versions of mothers. She has her doubts.
Darby leans down to try to stuff another dinner plate into the dishwasher, never a method to her madness, dishes face this way and that. It used to drive Griff bonkers, but now they’ve got bigger problems, so that’s nice.
He shrugs. “She kept trying to tell me this story about this photograph in her picture frame. It’s that woman. You know the one? On her dresser. I don’t recognize who it is—”
“Oh, shoot.” Darby pauses to switch on the garbage disposal. She lets the rattle die. “That’s the one that comes in the frame when you buy it. The stock image. I haven’t changed it out yet.” She’s not nearly as embarrassed about this as she should be. She’s been meaning to replace it with the photo of Lola petting a stingray for her birthday at the aquarium, but then never got the picture printed. She used to get pictures printed all the time. She took disposable cameras to sleepaway camps and college parties. Such a surprise to get the photographs back, opening the flap of the envelope and sliding the glossy pictures out to flip through, careful to avoid fingerprints. It feels sort of pointless now. She has gobs of pictures on her phone. It runs out of memory space at an alarming rate. She’s the queen of pulling out her camera right after her kids do something particularly cute or precocious, Darby’s voice in the background, What were you saying about your bear? Tell me again that thing about your brother? Could you sing that song for Mommy, just one more time, please? Her children stare blankly at the camera, or worse, pick their noses. Darby can’t imagine not taking this detailed record of her kids. She can’t imagine how it would look if she had a lock screen on her phone depicting a background other than Jack and Lola looking adorable. It’s like wearing a wedding ring out in public. You don’t have to, but you really should if you don’t want to invite questions about your commitment. And so it is: Her phone, like her brain, is running out of mental space thanks to her to children.