Mary Kubica - Every Last Lie

The cemetery, too, charged an arm and a leg for the cost of the plot, the cost to dig the plot, the cost of a headstone and the graveside service, for all of us to stand around the uncovered hole and cry. But that wasn’t all. There was still the cost of a hearse to carry Nick’s body from the morgue to the funeral home to the cemetery, the cost of flowers that I didn’t want or need, but were tradition, as the funeral director told me, and so I ordered those, too, sprays of white that filled the church.

The credit card has been maxed out.

I can’t afford to fix the air conditioner or have it replaced. For now we will have to sweat. My father wants to help, he’s told me, with the funeral fees. “Please, no,” I said, laying a hand on his arm. My parents aren’t lacking for money, and yet retirement put them on a fixed income, which my mother’s never-ending medical expenses chip quickly away at. It will be years still until social security and Medicare kick in. But there is money, my father has said, though I’ve told him no. “Please, no,” I said, wanting him to save that money for his and my mother’s needs, remembering the bounced check from my mother’s internist and trying to decide if it was for lack of money, or a simple mix-up with the bank.

Nick’s mother and father have money, but never once have they offered to help.

* * *

In the afternoon Maisie, Felix and I drive to the store. It took great cajoling for Maisie to climb in the car. There were many things she wanted to do apart from grocery shop. A new episode of Max & Ruby was about to begin, she was thirsty, Maisie—who never likes to pee—needed to pee. Three times. And then once inside the car, coaxing her into the car seat and beneath the smothering straps of a five-point harness was another matter, a feat only accomplished after handing over my smartphone with its Candy Crush app. Oh, how Maisie loves her Candy Crush, matching her pieces of candy and swiping them from the screen. With the phone in hand, she almost forgot she was confined to a chair, in the type of contraption that only days ago collapsed under the burliness of a white oak tree.

But for me, the fear was still there.

Maisie’s hand goes to the harness, and I snap at her, “Don’t touch it. Leave it be,” hoping she won’t see the swelling or redness of my eyes. Undoing her own harness has become Maisie’s latest pursuit. She’s discovered that pressing the buttons will undo the whole darn thing and set her free, though her fingers are too small, her fine motor skills too gauche to do it herself. And yet she tries, quite an undertaking for a four-year-old, but something she’ll figure out soon enough. “Play your game, Maisie,” I say so that her mind will go elsewhere and forget about the car seat straps. And it does.

We drive. As we make our way down our street of older historic houses, past the park and the small shops of an upscale suburban downtown and through newer, cookie-cutter homes, the momentum of the car lulls Felix to sleep. Known as one of Chicago’s five collar counties, ours flanks the city to the south and west, one of the fastest-growing counties, an area that added almost two hundred thousand people over the course of just ten years. A Cooper’s hawk sits perched at the top of a utility pole, eyes appraising the fields for its next meal. Maisie sees this and points a finger out the window. “Birdie, Mommy,” she tells me, and then to Felix, who’s sound asleep. “See the birdie, Felix?” I tell her that I see. Felix says nothing.

Suburban sprawl they call this, when the expanding population spills into rural America, making Chicagoland home to over ten million people. Our suburb is often outclassed by some of the more sought-after towns around, and yet the new construction in our area is second to none; for half the money you get twice the house, a promise that lures people in droves. The schools are top-notch, the demographics just what Nick and I were looking for when we purchased our home: a white-collar community with a median age of thirty-two. There would be plenty of kids for ours to play with. Good kids. Good kids whose college-educated parents made over a hundred thousand a year. Crime in the community was limited to theft mainly; violent crimes almost didn’t exist.

As we drive through the cornfields, past newer subdivisions that flaunt their energy-efficient and custom-made homes, Maisie idly kicks the back of the passenger’s seat and chants, “Faster, Mommy, faster.” Maisie likes to do things quickly. But I will not speed despite Maisie’s request; I know better than to speed.

We work our way to the main hub of town. I park in the grocery store lot, sliding in between a minivan and a pickup truck, and heft Felix and his baby carrier from the car, urging Maisie to follow suit. But Maisie doesn’t follow suit.

“Come on, Maisie,” I beckon. “The sooner we finish, the sooner we can go home.”

But Maisie just kicks her feet against the back of the passenger’s seat, refusing to come. She grips my phone in her hands, the annoying Candy Crush theme music making my head ache. “Come on, Maisie,” I try again, changing tack. I say this time, “You can play the game inside.”

But Maisie doesn’t come.

I gather a shopping cart from the rack outside and set Felix and his carrier inside, moving to Maisie’s side of the car. Snatching the phone from her hands, I listen to Maisie squeal. She fights me as I unfasten the harness and try to force her arms and legs to the other side of the woven strap. “No!” she says as she kicks her hot-pink Crocs at me.

“Get out of the car right now,” I insist, and it takes every ounce of patience I have not to snap. Fatigue and grief are a lethal combination, though I can’t give in to despair. I might have lost my husband, but Maisie has lost her father. Though she doesn’t quite know it yet, she, too, has been hurt. I stroke her hair and ask nicely for her to come.

“No, no, no, no, no,” she bleats as I wrench her small body now—all thirty-seven pounds of her—out of the car and onto the concrete, holding her hand too tightly so that Maisie cries out in pain. By now Felix, too, has begun to cry, awoken by the glaring afternoon sun, which blares in his half-open eyes. The car has stopped moving, the undulating motion that lulled him to sleep gone. He whimpers first, and then he screams, and I grope at my pockets for something to plug the leak. I find his pacifier and stuff it into his mouth, less gently than I would have liked to, and begin to push the cart with one hand while dragging Maisie with the other across the lot.

All that I want is infant formula. Infant formula and baby bottles.

“We’ll be in and out in three minutes,” I promise Maisie, but three minutes is a lifetime to a child. The warmth of the day engulfs us the second we step from the air-conditioned car, heat rising up from the blackened asphalt beneath our feet. The store seems suddenly so far away as Maisie schleps along with tiny, baby-sized steps, her hand trying to wiggle free of mine. I make promises; I offer rewards. “We’ll get popcorn when we’re through,” I say, telling her how we can swing by the food court on the way out. “A Slurpee, too,” I say, hoping that the promise of a frosty soda drink will make Maisie pick up the pace. But Maisie doesn’t pick up the pace. If anything, her feet slow, her hand pulling back on my hand so that there’s the sensation of swimming upstream. The single word—no—continues on repeat as I push Felix and tow Maisie through the parking lot while passing mothers turn with steely eyes to stare, and I see in their eyes the judgment, the condemnation, the disapprobation. Oh, how easy it is to judge when we don’t know. Maisie’s feet drag along the concrete, her objections becoming more and more shrill as she quietly—and then forcefully—screams, “No!”