Pineapple Street(11)
Suddenly Poppy was upon her, Hatcher right behind. “Mommy, can you fix it?” she asked. She was holding something for Darley in her outstretched arms, and it took several seconds for Darley to register what it was she had. Was it a sweater? Was it a paper bag? Was it? . . . It was a pigeon. And the pigeon was dead.
* * *
—
That night Darley’s mother came to dinner along with Georgiana, Cord, and Sasha. As Darley poured the wine, Poppy sat straight in her chair, a chicken nugget speared on her fork, and announced to the table, “Mommy was not pleased with me today.”
“Why, Poppy, dear? What happened?” her mother asked, ready to jump to Poppy’s defense.
“I found a pigeon under the slide at the playground and I picked it up. I don’t know if a dog bit it or if it had a sickness, but it died.”
The table was momentarily silent. “What did you do with it?” her mother asked, aghast.
“Mommy took it and put it in the recycling,” Poppy said sadly, gnawing on the nugget like she was eating a candied apple on a stick.
“The recycling? You didn’t just put it in the garbage?” Sasha asked with alarm.
“Of course I put it in the garbage. Then we came home, and I boiled her hands, and I am never letting the children out of the house again,” announced Darley, filling her wineglass to the rim. That was the thing about Sasha; she could always be counted on to say the most annoying thing in any given situation. It was a talent, really.
* * *
—
After dinner, her mother and siblings left, and Darley gave Poppy and Hatcher a long soak in the tub. She made it the bubbliest bubble bath, squirting as much soap in the water as she could without risking the children getting UTIs or eye pain. She scrubbed their hair until it squeaked and then toweled them off and slicked lotion on their legs and backs before sending them off to find their pajamas. Malcolm was working late, and so she read to both kids in her bed, book after book about tooth fairies and trolls, magic school buses and treehouses. They were still young enough to frequently be confused about the differences between real and pretend. They both believed in magic, and Darley was often torn about when she should intervene with the truth and when she should let them dream. Hatcher had been asking her lately to build him a shrinking machine, so they spent long afternoons taping together cardboard boxes and drawing on buttons and knobs, but the play sessions always ended with him inconsolable, devastated that the machines never really shrunk anything. Poppy talked about the tooth fairy incessantly, counting the days until she would lose her first tooth. Darley had once arbitrarily told her daughter that she would lose her first tooth when she was seven, and Poppy had taken it as gospel, outraged at the unfairness when a classmate lost a tooth at five and a half. When Poppy asked what the tooth fairy did with all the teeth, Darley had lied quickly, saying that the fairy gave them to babies who needed teeth, and this started a long and convoluted series of falsehoods about how the fairy got the teeth in their tiny mouths and how that was probably the reason babies were so fussy all the time.
After Darley finished the fourth book, she walked the children to their room and tucked them into bed. As she helped pull the sheet up under Poppy’s chin, her daughter looked at her, suddenly wide awake. “Mommy, what happens when you die?”
“Well, honey, it’s like we always talk about. We don’t really know what happens after we die, but in some ways, we stay part of the world forever. Our bodies go into the ground and become part of the earth, and then plants and grass and flowers grow, and we become part of those plants and maybe an animal comes by and eats those plants and we become part of those animals and it goes on like that forever.” Darley stroked Poppy’s hair off her forehead and watched her child frowning lightly in concentration.
“So the bird that died today?”
“Yes, honey?”
“Since you put the bird in the garbage it will be part of the garbage forever?”
“Oh, well, no. Someone will bury it in the ground,” Darley lied. “I love you so much, honey. Sleep well.” She turned off the light and backed out of the room, full of the understanding that her children were going to be totally fucked up.
* * *
Darley and Malcolm had two sets of wedding vows: The ones they said in church in front of God, their friends, and family, and the ones they whispered later that night in bed, holding hands and giggling at the false eyelashes still stuck to the pillow like spiders, the bobby pins Darley kept discovering lodged deep within her mop of sprayed hair. Holding hands, their wedding bands catching the light, they whispered: I promise I will never expect you to pack my suitcase, I promise I will never hide in my office and pretend to work when our friends are over, I promise I will never sit in the back seat while you drive me like a chauffeur, I promise I will never sleep with anyone but you.
* * *
—
Darley had friends, she had cousins, she had a vibrant social life filled with dozens of people she could call for a cocktail, for a tennis match, a manicure, or even, possibly, a kidney—but she didn’t trust anyone like she trusted Malcolm. Her husband was, without a doubt, the best person she had ever met. Together they had a marriage unlike that of any of her friends in that they never, ever lied. It was stunning how casual lying was woven into most married life. Her friend Claire had a bank account she’d never mentioned to her husband. Her godmother hid shopping bags behind the study door and waited until her husband was out to put the new clothes in her closet, cutting the tags and shoving them deep in the trash. Her best friend occasionally snuck off to get a haircut or a facial and told her husband she had a meeting, not because he would even mind, but because she said she just wanted to have something for herself. Darley didn’t get that at all. She could never function in a relationship full of cavalier deceit, and she knew Malcolm felt the same way.