Red Clocks(34)

“The lesson he just learned,” says the wife, “is that if he screams long enough, he’ll get what he wants.”

“Well, good. It’s a hard world.”

“We are the dinosaurs, marching, marching.

“We are the dinosaurs. We make the earth flat!”

“Could you take him for a walk?” says the wife.

“It’s raining,” says Didier.

“His raincoat’s on the banister.”

“He doesn’t look like he wants to go for a walk.”

“Please do this one tiny thing,” she says.

“I really don’t feel like it.”

“I’m never alone.”

“Well, me neither. I’m with those trous du cul all day, five days a week.”

“Didier”—slowly, carefully—“will you please take him out. Bex will be back in an hour, and I’ll make lunch, but until then, I would like to be alone.”

“I’d like to be alone too,” he says, but heads for the banister. “Come on, Jean-voyage.”

Herd crumbs into palm.

Spray table.

Wipe down table.

Rinse cups and bowls.

Put cups and bowls in dishwasher.

Soak quinoa in bowl of water.

Rinse and chop red bell peppers.

Put strips in fridge.

Rinse quinoa in sieve.

Put clean, uncooked quinoa in fridge.

Pour water from quinoa soaking into pot of ficus tree.

Spray mist onto snake-like arms of Medusa’s head plant.

Pull clothes out of dryer in basement.

Fold clothes.

Stack clothes in hamper.

Leave hamper at bottom of stairs to second floor.

Write laundry detergent on list in wallet.

Plip, plip, plip, says the kitchen tap.

Nobody on this hill even likes quinoa.

She pulls the kids’ plastic pumpkins down off the high shelf.

Over a month since Halloween. She told them the candy ran out.

In the empty kitchen or the sewing room, she eats sugar nobody knows about.

She allows herself, now, three coconut crunches. And one almond smushie. And one packet of candy corn.

This is what you’re missing, Ro! Ramming stale candy stolen from your own children down your throat.

How can the wife hope that Ro doesn’t get pregnant? Doesn’t publish her book on the ice scientist?

Plip, plip, plip.

As if Ro’s not having a kid or a book would make the wife’s life any better.

As if the wife’s having a job would make Ro’s any worse.

The rivalry is so shameful she can’t look at it.

It flickers and hangs.

It waits.

So cold in this house.

She takes off her sweater and pushes it between the back door and the kitchen floor, which is, she notices, sandy with crumbs.

She goes for the broom but ends up with her phone.

Saturday morning: her mother will be puttering, cleaning, paging through magazines.

They see each other, of course, make visits—Thanksgiving is next week—but that’s not the same as having her here, in pinches, on spurs of moments. A hundred miles is too far for an unplanned pinch.

She is thirty-seven years old and pines for her mother.

But won’t she be thrilled, thirty years hence, to learn that Bex and John are pining for her?

She can see John’s little face bigger but still with its translucent emotions, clean feelings surging and waning, her tidal boy. He will always want her.

Bex has too strong an instinct for self-reliance; she’ll be fine on her own.

“Hi, Mom,” says the wife. “What’s your weather?”

“Drizzling. Yours?”

“Oh, um—just gray.”

“Sweetpea …?”

“The sprites are good,” says the wife.

“Susan, what’s going on?”

“Bex’s class is doing the Mayflower, and John is obsessed by dinosaur songs.”

“With you, I meant.”

“Nothing,” she says.

“What time do you want us on Thursday?” says her mother. “I’m bringing candied yams. I think they’ll be a hit.”

Everyone on this hill hates yams.

“Come as early as you feel like. I love you, Mom.”

Plip, plip, plip.

Shell’s perfect mother will drop Bex off in fifteen minutes, and the girl will be full of praise for the fun she has with that family, the plucking of wild berries, the baking of homemade berry pie sweetened only with Grade B maple syrup because refined sugar is toxic.

Then she’ll want help with her worksheet. Write down the weather for each day of the week. Was it sunny? Was it foggy? Was the ocean cheerful or angry?

At the rim of sleep, she dreams of how Bryan would fuck her, the big thick plunge of him, the brawny thrusting, he’s a shoving leopard, lord, he does not tire, all that soccer, those extra-long muscles to drive the blood heartward— “Meuf.” A pinch in the rib meat.

“Nnnnnhhhh.”

Didier’s breath on her neck. “It bugged me what you said today. To John.”

“Nnnnnhhhh.”

“Bugged me a lot.”

“Are you joking?” she whispers. “You say ‘fuck’ in front of them all the time. I say it once?”