Never Have I Ever(18)

“Davis,” I said quietly, and my voice sounded so normal. “You have Oliver. Please don’t mush him.”

He cracked an eye and rolled toward us on his side, putting one big hand out to span Oliver’s chest.

“No baby mushing,” he mumbled.

I slid out of bed and changed into yoga pants and a fresh T-shirt in the near dark, then went to stir Maddy as if this were any morning on a school day.

She was nothing but a grumpy heap of covers that said, “Go away, Monster.”

I grinned. “You’ll miss the bus.”

“Got a ride,” the heap whined, so I let it be. When Shannon’s mom drove them, she could stay in bed an extra fifteen minutes.

I went downstairs and pushed the button on the coffee machine. I was still off caffeine, though I’d sometimes steal sips from Maddy or Davis. I swung into my morning routine, getting a load of the never-ending laundry going, emptying the dishwasher, sautéing mushrooms and tomatoes for the scrambled eggs.

It felt like a performance, like I was saying, See Wheys, and Char, and neighborhood, and world? I am the kind of person who makes real food, protein and vegetables, to start her family’s day off warm and right. The kind who sets a healthy three hundred calories’ worth aside on a plate for herself.

No one had come down by the time I’d finished cooking, so I folded their eggs into tortillas with avocado slices and salsa and wrapped them up in tinfoil to keep warm.

I went to the foot of the stairs and called, “You guys are running late.”

“Poo-splosion!” Davis called back. “Don’t come up here, honey. Run. Save yourself.”

That made me smile. The kind of small disaster that defined my current life was unfolding normally upstairs. “Hey, Mads? You better not be still in bed.”

“Blah!” Maddy yelled back. She sounded vertical at least.

Just as I finished my breakfast, Davis came hurrying down with a nearly naked Oliver in his arms. He shifted his hands under Oliver’s armpits, then held him out to me. “Take this wretched, pooping baby!”

“Ahmamamama!” Oliver said, reaching, babbling a sound that wasn’t quite a word but I thought still meant me. His dangling legs kicked in excitement, though he saw me every day, all day.

I propped him on my hip, and he got himself an anchoring fistful of my hair. Davis pulled a onesie with cartoon dogs sprinkled all over it out of his pocket and offered it to me, draping it over his arm with a flourish, like a ma?tre d’s napkin.

“I had to strip the sheets,” he said. “They’re in a plastic hamper on the landing, and this boy here? I ran him under some warm water in the shower because otherwise it would have taken enough baby wipes to create a whole new landfill.”

I looked at my husband, standing in our sunshiny kitchen, having a regular morning-time conversation while the baby we’d made together pulled my hair and blew raspberries. I had to turn my back and blink away the tears that sprang up unexpected in my eyes. This ordinary life, full of laundry and diapers and kitchen curtains with apples printed on them, was so precious to me. This morning it also felt frail.

“You were very brave,” I told Davis, working to make my voice sound normal as I got his to-go breakfast off the counter. “I’ll put the sheets in as soon as the washer clears, and then I’ll bleach the bathroom.”

“Bleach can’t save it. Once Maddy leaves for school, you and Oliver should go outside and burn the house down.” He checked his watch. “Sorry to leave it with you, but . . .”

“I got this,” I said, trading him the egg burrito for the onesie.

“Southwestern style?” he asked, all hopeful, and when I nodded, he said, “I do not deserve you.”

“True,” I said, and hoped it didn’t sound as ironic as it felt.

He dropped a kiss on the corner of my mouth, and he was gone.

I got Oliver dressed and then popped him in his high chair, sprinkling a handful of Cheerios on the tray to keep him busy while I mixed baby oatmeal with stored breast milk and opened up a jar of pureed apples. I was about to call Maddy again when a car horn sounded and she came hurtling down the stairs. She’d paired her short blue shift dress with green knee socks patterned with demented deer heads. These things didn’t go together on any planet, nor with her battered orange-and-aqua tennies. As she dashed past, I caught a glimpse of mascara and a smear of gooey pink lip gloss. My girl lived ninety percent of her life in leggings and ratty T-shirts, so why was she decked out in full Mads regalia?

“Love you, Monny-Monster!” she hollered over her shoulder.

I stood up. “Breakfast!”

“Not hungry!” she shouted from the living room.

“Hold up, Mads!” I called. “Madison!”

The only answer I got was the front door banging shut. Loud. I scattered more Cheerios on the tray to keep Oliver busy, grabbed the burrito off the counter, and ran after her.

I yanked open the front door just in time to see an Infiniti convertible, cherry red and gleaming, peeling away with the top down. Maddy’s bobbed curls ruffled in the same wind that was streaming Luca’s long black hair.

I wanted to leap off the porch and run after them, shrieking like a harpy, I was that angry. She’d never once been allowed to ride to school with an unsupervised teen driver, much less the male of the species. I’d gotten deliberately misleading words from the grumpy heap of covers, and then she’d lurked upstairs until the last second, no doubt to avoid conversation that might lead her into a direct lie. But they were already too far for me to catch them, music blasting too loud for them to hear me. Plus, I couldn’t leave Oliver alone with Cheerios for more than five seconds without worrying about choking.