Other People's Houses(15)
She washed her face carefully, mixing water with some special cleansing grains she bought at the one store that carried them, the scent of roses and chalk signaling the end of the day. She enjoyed the feeling of them under her fingers, the way they held their hard edges in the water for a moment before succumbing and blooming into solution. She rinsed her face, looking for stray molecules of clay with her eyes closed, the contours of her face reassuring her. Still alive, then. Toner, again with the scent of roses, then moisturizer, firm strokes up her throat. She felt a tiny sore spot and tipped her head; the merest hint of beard burn, right under the edge of her jawline. She looked at it coldly, why couldn’t young men shave properly, then pulled her heavy pale pink dressing gown from its hook and went to help Charlie with the kids.
Charlie looked at his wife as she came out of the bathroom, bringing the scent of roses with her, the smell he associated with her, and with her being his. He loved this Anne, the one that emerged without a scrap of makeup, without her elegant outfits and cool eyes, her pauses in conversation, her judgment. She was wearing the cashmere and satin dressing gown he’d bought her for Valentine’s Day the previous year, the cost of which had made him pause for a moment before the memory of her skin against his blew his reservations away. He thought of this as the real Anne, the one that only he knew. Her eyes met his and they both smiled.
“Are you ready for bed, pumpkin?” she asked Kate, who ignored her and snuggled into her dad. He shrugged over her head, and Anne went to see what Theo was up to.
Unsurprisingly, he was on his computer, playing Minecraft. She sat on his bed, making a small stack of paperbacks slither to the floor, their irregular thuds on the rug reminding her suddenly of the sound of apples dropping at night, back when she was a child in Yakima County. Her children’s childhood was so different from hers, she wondered what sounds would pull them back—sirens and helicopters were their nightingales and falling fruit. She asked her son what he was building.
Theo looked at her with bright eyes, happy to tell her about it. “A fortress, right now, but I just finished the gardens. Do you want to see?”
“Sure.” Anne didn’t really understand Minecraft, but she loved it when the kids shared their ideas and projects with her. Her own mother had never been in the least bit interested in sharing her thoughts with her children and their opinion was utterly irrelevant to her. She’d expected them to love her and follow her instructions, and they did. It never occurred to her they might want more, and they had given up waiting for more to be offered. Maybe she’d had nothing to give.
Theo navigated through the half-finished structure he was building and outside, coasting above what were apparently acres of farmland. There were serried rows of plants, separated by mere pixels, fields of digital corduroy.
Theo was listing, “Carrots, wheat, sunflowers, potatoes . . . and over here we have chickens, cows, and ocelots.”
Anne raised her eyebrows. “Ocelots?”
He shrugged. “I like them.”
She smiled. “Who doesn’t?” She stood up. “It’s time to get off now though, and go to sleep.”
He looked at her, surprised. “But I still have homework.”
“You’re supposed to do it before you go online, you know that.” Her stomach sank; she didn’t have time to get angry now. “How much do you have?”
Theo looked worried and pulled his backpack closer across the floor. “I don’t know. Sorry, Mom, I only meant to go on for ten minutes after dinner and lost track of time.” His mom said nothing, and he found his homework quickly. “A math sheet and a chapter to read.” He looked up at her hopefully. “That’s not too bad, right?”
Anne sighed. “OK. No computer tomorrow at all. You have to do homework first, OK?” She walked out, saying over her shoulder, “Get ready for bed now, we’ll read the chapter together and you can do the math sheet in the morning before school. It’s too late to do it now, you need to get some sleep.”
Behind her Theo’s eyes cleared. His mom always knew what to do; she was as reliable as the sun. If he was naughty she would issue a consequence, if he was good she would issue a reward, and if he needed a hug her arms would already be open. He was by nature a worried child, concerned about unseen dangers, worried that somehow he had messed things up. His mom never seemed to worry, and she was the trellis his little vines twined around.
She walked back into her bedroom, where Kate was drifting off to sleep next to Charlie, who was on his phone and paying no attention. He looked up as Anne came in and raised his eyebrows in a question, indicating their daughter.
Keeping her voice low, Anne said, “You keep her, I’ll deal with Theo, then sleep in her room, OK?” Anne and Charlie slept in the same bed maybe twice a week, moving from bed to bed as their children dictated. Both of them would rather sleep than get a chance to be intimate with each other. Charlie, at least, was glad his libido seemed to have gone into hibernation. As a younger man it would have killed him to be next to Anne but not able to reach out for her in the night, tugging at her nightgown until she woke up and came to him. But now he loved the gentle sounds of a sleeping child, the occasional foot in the face a small price to pay for the feeling of being a family. Sometimes he would wake in the night and walk from room to room, counting his blessings as they slept.
He nodded at his wife and blew her a kiss, which Anne pretended to catch and press to her lips, tossing him one in return. He turned out the light, pulled the sheet over Kate who was now gently snoring, and went back to checking e-mail on his phone.