ROB
IT’S THE CHICKEN pox that makes me sure—my husband is having another affair.
I find the first blister on Annie the morning of the Goodwins’ party. She is in the bath and the window is a blue square of winter sky. The shadows of bare sycamore branches lie sharp across the white tile. Annie sits cross-legged in the tepid water. Her lips move, some secret song only for the plastic animals that bob around her. Annie won’t bathe at a temperature warmer than blood. She doesn’t like things too salty or sweet or sour, and her favorite stories are ones in which nothing happens. She is wary of extremes. I worry about her physically, my fragile second child, in a way I don’t about Callie. Annie is small for nine and people often assume she is younger. Callie worries me in other ways.
The party is the Goodwins’ January tradition. They call it their “blues banishing bash.” They’re a perky family who live next door on the left. Their two smart sons Sam and Nathan are near Callie’s age; they have interesting friends as well as great taste in wine and food and art. It’s the one occasion in the year our whole family looks forward to. We always have the best time at the Goodwins’.
Annie bends over and whispers to the rubber duck in her lap. The sight of her vulnerable spine, the dark paint-licks of hair clinging to her neck—these things make my throat close up hot. I don’t know what it’s like for other people but love and nausea are often indistinguishable to me.
“Arms up,” I say. Annie obeys and as she does I see it: a red mark on her upper arm. I recognize it instantly. I put my hand on her forehead, on her back. Both are warm—too warm.
Annie scratches at the rash and I enclose her hand in mine. “Stop,” I say gently. “That will make it worse, my little beet.”
She makes a small sound of dismay. “I’m not a beet,” she says.
“A cauliflower, then.”
“No!”
“A rutabaga?”
“No, Mom!” But she stops scratching. She is a docile child.
I find that I am scratching my own arm in sympathy. I sometimes confuse my children’s bodies with my own.
* * *
I PUT ANNIE to bed and go to the bathroom cabinet. Here are the crowded shelves of a busy family with two children. I push aside old cough syrup, disposable razors, nail scissors, Irving’s diabetes medicine, my birth control pills, a water pick we never use, painkillers, a broken powder compact. I must clean this out when I have a minute. At the very back I find what I’m looking for: a full bottle of calamine, neck all crusted up but still good. I bought it a few months ago for Callie’s eczema.
Annie’s temperature is 101.5 and her eyes are even more unfocused than usual. I should have caught this earlier, I really should have. The stinging reflux of guilt washes over me. She scratches at her arm.
“No, sweetie,” I say. I get her mittens from the dresser, fetch duct tape from Irving’s toolbox, and fasten the mittens to her pajama-top sleeves. I give her Tylenol and cover her in calamine.
“Rob,” Irving calls up the stairs. His voice is rough with morning. “Oatmeal’s ready.” He clears his throat, coughs. “And coffee,” he adds.
I sit by Annie and let the exhaustion take me for a moment. I always find my younger daughter’s presence soothing and conducive to thought. We have been on this merry-go-round for so long, Irving and I.
I make a decision tree in my head. Then I go downstairs to break the news.
* * *
CALLIE IS TALKING high and feverish in the kitchen. “And they caught him,” she says, “because of the gas station surveillance footage. That’s where he bought the cement.”
“Where did you hear that, sweetie?” Irving says with an edge in his voice. I almost feel sorry for him. Callie likes to talk about murder at breakfast. “What have you been reading?”
“Just stuff,” says Callie. “Just around. The woman was acquitted. It’s difficult to prove. They had injected him with air, just air! It causes a pulmonary em-bo-lism. Emblamism? No, embolism.”
I join Irving at the coffee maker. “Annie has chicken pox,” I say quietly. “I don’t understand how it’s possible. When was she exposed? And she’s vaccinated.”
“It’s not a hundred percent effective.” Irving’s eyes are sunk deep in dark pouches, gleaming like secrets. Last night was a bad one.
“Trust us to be in the unlucky percent,” I say.
He smiles tightly and spoons oatmeal into Callie’s bowl. Cartoon deer run around the inner rim, just above the mealy grounds. He adds four slices of strawberry and begins to pour on that sickly syrup Callie likes. I place a warning hand on his shoulder. Not too much. Callie’s body seems to refuse to tell her when she’s full. If she is not gently checked, she will eat until she is in agony, until she throws up. I can’t handle two sick children today.
Irving shrugs me off like a horse flicking away a fly and keeps pouring syrup. Irving loves sweet things but cannot have them. He stuffs his daughter with the food he longs to eat. But he’s not the one who stays up with her at night.
Callie sits at the table, watching us. She saw me trying to stop him pouring her too much syrup, I know she did. Unease bubbles up. I can never tell what Callie is thinking.
“Poor Annie,” she says, nibbling a nail. “Sad face.” A recent habit of hers, talking like those little pictures you get in a text message. I find it alternately enraging and amusing.
Irving puts the oatmeal down in front of Callie. She is large for her age, golden-skinned, with a broad angular face and fervent green eyes. When she speaks it is pinched and effortful, as if she’s being squeezed like an accordion.
“Mom can look after Annie,” Callie says. “Dad, me and you will go to the Goodwins’ on our own.” She scoops up oatmeal with her finger and puts it in her mouth, eyes on me. “Party hat, wineglass.” Irving and Callie have a little club, all their own.
Irving looks at me, one eyebrow raised. It’s the look he gave me in the bar, the first time we met. It used to make my heart beat fast and splashy. The intimacy of it. His silent question, to which only I have the answer.
“Use a spoon, please,” I say to Callie. “No, sorry, hon. We all have to stay home. You can carry the chicken pox on your clothing. There will be lots of little kids at the party and we don’t want to risk making them sick.”
“Rob,” says Irving. “Let her go.”
Irving wants to put on his party self, be the handsome science professor, raise his eyebrow at people who haven’t seen it a hundred times. Most of all he wants to be in a crowd with her, eyes meeting at a distance as they talk to other people, hands leaving moist prints on their wineglasses, the longing between them stretching across the room like fine gold wire. I’ve seen it before and will again, no doubt.
“I want to see Nathan and Sam,” Callie says.
“You can see them any time,” I say. “They’re next door.”
“Not if I break my ribs,” Callie says. “Not if I get hepatitis. Not if I drink bleach and die.”
“Callie, please. There will be babies, pregnant women, old people there. Maybe unvaccinated children. Do you want to be responsible for them getting sick? I mean it. We’re staying home. I know how fast these things spread—if even one of my fourth graders gets flu, they’re all sick within the week.”
Callie’s scream starts low in her abdomen, like the growl of a big cat. Then it rises like a launched rocket, ear-shattering. It is so loud I feel it like a punch, see it in the air like stars. Irving bends over her, speaks in her ear. Callie screams higher and higher. I meet Irving’s eyes. I allow the corner of my mouth to turn up, the merest fraction. Contradict me again, I think at him. I dare you. Tell Callie that you and she can go to the party.
He lowers his gaze and strokes Callie’s shoulder, murmuring about pancakes. Her screaming stops. It gives way to little giggles. She and Irving stare at me. The same little smile plays about both their mouths. They have the same lips. And it sets me off, even though I know it shouldn’t.
“That’s it!” I shout. “You go and clean your room. Change your sheets. Maybe that will get rid of the weird smell in there.”
Callie covers her mouth and laughs into her palm. Irving gets up and starts doing dishes, like it’s nothing to do with him. I stare at the back of his head, the red place where the barber went too close, and I wish I could throw something, like he does. But I’ve got no power here.
I take Callie’s abandoned bowl of oatmeal and carry it upstairs. I put it on Annie’s rash in cooling handfuls. She puts her hot little cheek against my hand, and that helps some.
* * *
I TEXT HANNAH Goodwin. Sorry! We have a case of chicken pox. Safest to stay home. Sad face. I delete the last in irritation. Callie’s habit is catching. Have fun, come over for drinks on the deck next week. R.
I read it over carefully and replace R with Rob x. That’s better. That looks normal.
* * *
“THIS WILL BE fun,” I tell Irving and Callie. “We’ll have a family day. Movies, games, Chinese food…”
Each of us has strong objections to the others’ movie choices. Following the path of least resistance we end up putting on something no one wants to watch, about a man followed around by a giant rabbit that might or might not be only in his mind. Irving sits between me and Callie, an arm around each. I check on Annie every half hour. We hear the music start next door just after eleven a.m. The laughter begins, high, excited conversation that soon builds to a feverish pitch. Once or twice there comes the sound of breaking glass. Irving turns up the volume but the movie is so stupid it can’t hold anyone’s attention.
“I’ll go to the store for oatmeal and calamine,” he says. I know what that means; I can see it in the tiny, repeated tensing of his jaw. He’ll go to the store and on the way home it will be natural to stop by the party for a drink. Just one, of course; at least that’s how it will start. I feel so angry that it’s difficult to see. Little black spots drift over my vision.
I say, “We already have oatmeal and calamine.”
“You might be infectious like Mom said,” Callie says, seriously. “You might make a little kid sick.” I feel a rare rush of love and gratitude toward her, even though I suspect it’s just because she doesn’t want to be left alone with me.
Beside me I feel Irving’s mood narrow to a point. No one speaks. On-screen, the imaginary rabbit follows the man. Next door, jazz plays through shouts of joy.
Eventually I say, “Enough,” and turn the movie off. This is family life, in my experience. Always trying to do things like the families in magazines or on TV, followed by the abrupt plummet of failure.
I’m not really a TV person. The first time I saw an action movie I nearly died of excitement, or at least that’s how it felt. These days I don’t understand why anyone bothers to watch soap operas or go to movies. I don’t even read or watch the news. Living is enough. It is so intense and painful.
* * *
IT TOOK MONTHS of pleading and blackmail to wear Irving down each time, but I won the battle to finish college, to get a teaching job, and after Annie, to go back to work. Irving is very big on traditional values. The only thing that swung it for me was that there was an opening at the kids’ school, which meant I could be in the same building as them all day. That and the fact that we needed the money. Irving’s father lost a lot in the big crash.
I love my job. At school I am known as the child whisperer. The name is a joke but it’s also a fact that with my students, I am magical. The withdrawn children blossom shyly under my care. The hyperactive, the manic, become calm and docile in my presence. A fourth grader known in the staff room as the terrapin, because of her tendency to bite when she is bored, writes me passionate book reports on Maya Angelou. I have no such powers at home.
I love my house too, a boxy Cape Cod set on a rational eighth of an acre of green, sloping lawn. It’s the woman who gives the house its energy, its style—isn’t that what people say? Two live oaks stand on either side of the door. The backyard has a pine deck shaded by the tall maples that line the alley. I built the deck over the course of three weekends, following a design I found in a library book. It really wasn’t difficult. I ordered the lumber and then I put it together like a puzzle. (One rare way in which Callie and I are alike—we both get most of our knowledge of life from library books.) Anyway, it’s lovely to sit out there at sunset or on a hot day, with the maples leaning over all green. I feel like I’m sitting in the treetops. It’s so easy to sweep clean, too. The neighborhood association never has to tell us to cut our grass or keep our two flower beds mulched, or sweep the limestone path that curves up to the white front porch. I keep it all in order. I love the yard, for its simplicity, its containment. It’s so different from where I grew up—hot dead sand and rock stretching on in every direction. Stare at all that space, day after day, and it begins to feel like a trap.
I feel safe here, among the neat rows of family homes. There is the odd gesture toward individuality—this yard has a birdbath or even a small pool. That clapboard is painted a daring shade of pink. Stained-glass windows, different styles of knockers, different kinds of stone for paving the path—these are the greatest extremes to which choice can go. But they are meaningful. They’re the marks people put on the world.
I said I felt safe here. Maybe what I meant was that my children are safe. Those two things don’t always go together. Maybe at some point everyone has to choose between one and the other. It’s better to be part of a unit—“The Cussens”—than individuals. You get noticed less, that way.
* * *
IRVING GOES INTO his study and shuts the door. Callie gets out her drawing pencils. She never has a problem entertaining herself, and I never have to nag her about schoolwork. There are startling, unexpected patches of relief in her personality. She sits at the rolltop desk in the living room, bent very close to the page. The pencil makes its drowsy sounds. She starts to hum tunelessly. It’s annoying, and I want to tell her to put on her glasses, but I thrust down both these impulses. I learned tactics early on. I pick my battles.
* * *
BY ONE P.M. Annie’s rash has spread. Her mittened hands are clutched under her chin; dark hair lies across her cheek, fluttering with her breath. I check the tape on the mittens, which is secure, and move the hair away from her mouth.
“Too bright,” she murmurs, so I draw the curtains, plunging the room into vague silver dark.
“Do you want the star lit?” I whisper.
“Yes,” she whispers back without opening her eyes. I go to the windowsill and turn on her night-light. The lamp is the shape of a star and it glows luminous in the dim room; the softest pink, the color of cotton candy, or the depths of a pale peony, the color little girls dream in. I always feel that Annie is safer when the lamp is lit. I know that doesn’t make any sense.
When I look up, Irving is standing in the doorway. I hadn’t heard him approach. He has always had the ability to stand perfectly still, as though no breath moves in him. It’s unnerving in a living thing.
“How is she?”
“She’s sleeping.”
“Don’t take your stuff out on the children, Rob,” he says. “Callie really wants to go to the party. Let her. You can’t keep her home because of Annie.”
Annie stirs, opens one eye. “Water,” she says in a small voice.
“Sure, sweetheart. Mommy will get it. Out of my way,” I say to him through rigid lips as I pass. “You did this.”
He turns a furious back on me and goes to the bathroom to take his diabetes pills. It will take him a couple of minutes to find his meds. I moved them to the back of the bathroom cabinet, hid them behind an old tub of Vaseline. A petty gesture but that’s the kind of thing that’s available to me, these days.
* * *
THE FIGHTS ALWAYS start differently and they always end the same, with us arguing like snakes, hissing as I load the dishwasher or fold laundry and he grades papers, his pen stabbing the air, both wary of our children sleeping above. We have been doing it for years. Eventually we fall into bed exhausted, weakened by the venom that consumes us.
Last night it started with our electric toothbrushes, which were out of power. Both were connected to their chargers but someone threw the switch that controls the bathroom wall sockets, so they went flat. Callie has a bad habit of playing with switches.
It began with the toothbrushes but it wasn’t long until we started on Katherine the lab technician. Irving works late hours. This doesn’t bother me. The lab technician works late, too. Katie, as he calls her, wears a perfume called Sentient. I know this because it is all over his suits. His closet reeks of it.
I hissed with clenched fists, throat closed up so tight that the words squeezed out like bile, eyes burning.
Irving started pointing. He never touches me—he points instead. His stabbing finger trembled an inch from my face, jabbing in time with his words. “You wanted this,” he said. “It’s all you wanted when we met. Now you’ve got it, all you can do is whine.”
The mess of adult life, where you’ve both dug in so deep, where blame is a tapestry so tightly woven that it cannot ever be unpicked.
* * *
I AM TRYING to read when I hear Annie crying upstairs. “No,” she sobs. “No, no!” I open her door. She and Callie are struggling over something, wrestling it back and forth. It is the pink star lamp. Annie’s head is thrown back, her mouth a black o of sorrow. Callie is as expressionless as ever, but her lower lip is caught between her teeth. “Give it to me,” she says in her tight voice. “Or someone will die.”
“I hate you, Callie,” Annie says. “God hates you.” She lunges with a mittened fist.
I thrust them apart. Somehow the pink lamp is still intact. I take it from Callie’s damp grasping hands, stow it safely out of reach on the windowsill. Goodness knows why Callie wants it.
Copyright © 2022 by Catriona Ward
