“Yes that was me. How many stories about children’s bowel movements are you currently juggling?”
“Honestly?” Blythe sighs. “A lot. No offense, but every time I ask about a friend’s baby—and I’m just being polite, mind you, I don’t actually care, except about my nieces, calm down—they tell me about their baby’s poop. How often, the sounds, the consistency, the blowouts. And it doesn’t get that much better when the kids get older. Exhibit A.”
Mary Beth’s fingers clench around the steering wheel. Blythe is an okay aunt. When the girls were babies she was always buying them beautiful clothes in the wrong sizes—designer peacoats, size eighteen months, only obviously at eighteen months it’d be mid-July. That kind of thing. And she has never, ever offered to watch them overnight. Or for an evening so that Mary Beth and Doug could go out for dinner. As an aunt, Blythe enjoys tea parties and going down waterslides and reading bedtime stories in roughly half-hour increments.
“Nobody mentioned what a large percentage of my life would be focused on feces when I had kids.” Mary Beth tries to bite back her natural inclination to seethe. Sisters. “I never have enough battery on my phone anymore because Noelle has to watch something when she goes potty. Seriously, the amount of time I spend worrying about the frequency of Noelle’s and Angeline’s toilet visits is startling.”
That’s right, Blythe, it’s not all waterslides and Goodnight Moon over here.
“Are you trying to prove my point or…？”
“No,” says Mary Beth. “I’m trying to tell you about the Bandit. Because it’s actually gotten kind of serious.” Mary Beth tries to sound suitably ominous. She feels like she could use some perspective from an outsider.
“Got it. So it’s a boy in Noelle’s class.”
“No.” Mary Beth swears it’s like her sister isn’t even listening. She keeps track of her sister’s inside jokes about her new boss and who wasn’t invited to which dinner party and offers thoughtful suggestions for adult birthday gifts. And none of that is inherently more interesting because it doesn’t involve kids. In fact, the second you mention kids, people act like you’re such a snooze. Where is the great American novel about motherhood? Is it really so much less fascinating than middle-aged men with alcoholism and angsty affairs? And anyway, what Mary Beth is detailing is actually a compelling mystery, if anyone would pay attention. “That’s the unsettling thing,” she stresses. “Nobody has any clue who it is.”
“A regular Houdini—no, no, wait—” Blythe snaps her fingers. “Poodini.”
“Oh. That’s good. Do you mind if I steal that?”
“Be my guest. I saw that interview of the mother in your class on TV, by the way,” says Blythe. It seems that everyone has seen that damn interview.
“Rhea,” Mary Beth says. “She’s my friend.”
“She made this whole bloodsucking thing—I can’t remember what you called it—sound not all that bad. Maybe you’re letting it get into your head too much.”
Into her head too much? Mary Beth could laugh. Into her head? There are four-year-olds toting thermos cups containing multiple ounces of their parents’ blood into class because it’s been decided, collectively, that’s what’s best for the children. Robin checked into a hotel while on her period.
“I know what happened to that teacher—” Blythe continues.
“Noelle’s teacher.”
“It was horrific. Tragic. Really just ick. But, and I say this with love, you sound kind of nutty. I think maybe you need to get a life outside of the kids. Something for you, you know?” Mary Beth suspects that she does not say this with all that much love. “Have you thought about that? It can’t be your whole identity. Look at Mom. She’s sixty-five.”
“What about her?”
“Well, she’s going on that cruise, for one.”
“What cruise?”
“The one she’s leaving for this weekend. She’s going to be gone for a month. I’m sure she was going to tell you. She’s been busy packing. It’s with one of her online groups.”
“That’s … fantastic,” Mary Beth answers flatly. It’s not fantastic. It’s so not fantastic that her eyes are leaking tears completely against her will. How could her mother, who lives ten minutes down the road, leave for a month without telling her? She can’t express any of this to Blythe. Blythe thinks that between the two of them, Mary Beth gets the upper hand with Mom because Mary Beth’s kids get gifts and babysitting time and Blythe has expressed, jokingly only obviously not, that these “extras” should be accounted for when it comes time for her birthday, Christmas, and, eventually, inheritance.
But a life! An identity! And now she’s supposed to find those things while juggling a meager sex life, a four-year-old with a penchant for blood, and a murder investigation without free babysitting. She squeezes her eyes shut to keep from screaming and then suddenly remembers what she’s doing—driving—just as a horn from an oncoming car blares her back into her own body.
“I’m sorry, Blythe,” she says, breathless. “I have to go before I kill someone.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
Children, like show business, simply must go on, Darby thinks. Try having them in a catastrophe, just try. They still need dinner and baths and bedtime stories. She can’t sit on the couch and stare into space and cry and think properly. She must tend to Jack. She must heat up leftovers and tell him, “Just one more bite, just one more bite for Mommy.” She does it all according to routine. One foot in front of the other. On second thought, that’s probably the best thing about having children, too.
She’s developed a peculiar skill as a mother. She can read an entire picture book out loud, cover to cover, while thinking about something else entirely. She’ll reach the end of the book and literally have no idea what she’s just read. Nothing. It’s kind of amazing. So there she is, splitting her brain in two as she reads The Pigeon Wants a Puppy, complete with funny voices and a theatrical performance, and all the while she is thinking, thinking how she cut her leg shaving a couple days ago and used toilet paper to stop the bleeding. She threw the bloodied wads in the wastebasket and about half an hour later she passed back through and found Lola had pulled them out and was licking the dried spots of blood.
The first bite on her hand was scary. Such a terrible shock to her system. Her daughter meaning to hurt her like that. But that wasn’t even the truly frightening part. The frightening part was how Darby had loathed Lola in that moment, detested her, abhorred her. Whatever you wanted to call it, Darby felt it. There’s no way around it. She couldn’t stand her daughter then. It was like an out-of-body experience. The canine teeth sank through her skin and she might have thought: I don’t want to be her mother. The words felt familiar in her head, like an echo. What kind of terrible person thinks that about their child?
She wonders if Rhea even remembers those late-night texts they used to send to each other. Facts swapped back and forth to pass the time. Darby always had a penchant for true-crime tidbits, killing time by looking up the horrific deeds of notorious murderers. You wanna know what? She would text Rhea now if they were on texting terms at the moment, which she suspects they’re not. Murderers always became murderers because they had bad mothers. Watch a few episodes of Criminal Minds and her analysis will be proved unassailably true. Unloving, negligent, no-good mothers. Like Darby.