Elizabeth Wrenn - Second Chance

‘I’ll stay home with the kids.’

‘For God’s sake, they’re teen— They don’t need a—Oh, never mind.’ He closed his eyes, shook his head, and left.

I sat on the bed, peeling the panty hose from my legs. I looked up to see myriad fat Deenas looking at me. The closet door mirror was angled just right to catch my reflection in the dresser mirror, making multiple mes, each disappearing into the next. I wadded my panty hose up in a ball and threw them at the mirror. But they had no substance or weight and merely arced limply for a few feet, and dropped silently to the carpet.

When the house was still again after Neil had driven away, I came downstairs in my pruney bathrobe, walked into the kitchen, and was greeted by three unpacked lunch bags on the counter and Hairy sitting on the desk meowing for food again.

‘No,’ I told him. ‘You have your dry food. You only get wet food in the morning.’ His meowing ratcheted up a notch. I couldn’t stand the noise, so I gave him several Pounce treats in his bowl. As he devoured them, I began unpacking the lunch bags, pulling out dirty Tupperware containers, chip bags and largely unused napkins. As I was throwing the trash away, Matt came into the kitchen.

‘Hey, Mom,’ he said laconically, not looking at me, walking straight for the pantry. ‘How come you didn’t go with Dad tonight?’ He’d pulled open both pantry doors and was hanging on the handles, which I’d asked him approximately three hundred times not to do. He stared with a bored expression at the choices in front of him.

‘I— I’m not feeling well.’ I was struggling to open a small Tupperware container in which I’d packed Matt’s favorite homemade chocolate pudding. Lainey preferred the store-bought variety, feeling that anything else would make some sort of horrific social statement to her friends. But Matt said he preferred mine, which made me happy, although I’d evidently packed too much because he hadn’t finished it. I pulled again at the stubborn top, unable to leverage it. Just once I’d like to see a commercial not about how well a lid holds, but how the hell to get these small ones off their containers.

Matt grabbed an opened bag of popcorn from the pantry. ‘What’s for dinner?’ he said, shoving a handful in his mouth.

‘Yeah, I’m hungry.’ Lainey had suddenly appeared behind me. I was sure the only reason they were home on a Friday night was because they’d expected their parents, both of them, to be out.

‘I thought you guys were going to order pizza. Didn’t Dad leave money on the desk?’

‘No, he said since you were home, you’d cook.’ Lainey was fingering the tie of my robe. ‘You know, Mom, I don’t like this color as well out of the store. You should have gotten the pink. Don’t take this the wrong way, but this purple kind of makes you look a little fat.’ She stood a step back from me, a sympathetic expression on her face.

And just what was the right way to take that comment? I wanted to ask her. But I didn’t. I didn’t want to start crying again. What was it about adolescent girls that they thought some sort of verbal disclaimer made plunging a knife into your gut okay? It didn’t really help that I knew she wasn’t trying to be deliberately hurtful.

I looked at Matt, who was crunching another mouthful of popcorn, his hand already back in the bag, gathering the next handful. ‘So, like, are we going to eat soon?’ he said, rather messily.

My hands tightened into a chokehold on the Tupperware. Then, to punctuate the tenor of my evening, I felt the perspiration begin to ooze out the pores of my forehead and upper lip, the familiar temperature surge building in me like an overheating engine.

I pulled off my bathrobe, grabbing the top of my worn pj’s, pulling it in and out rapidly, trying to cool myself. I looked at my kids. I didn’t know what to say. I hadn’t planned anything. I knew I could always make a tuna casserole. But I hadn’t planned on cooking tonight. I didn’t want to cook tonight. The anger I’d felt upstairs surged again. I wondered if other women going through the change had anger flashes, in addition to hot flashes. I put the Tupperware bowl on my hip and ripped the lid off, losing my grip and inadvertently flinging the lid across the kitchen. It Frisbeed its way right into Hairy, who, his white fur spattered with chocolate pudding, stood, yowling and hissing at me.

‘Dammit!’ I yelled.

‘Maw-ahm!’ yelled Lainey, rushing toward Hairy, but stopping just short. ‘Poor kitty!’ She glanced back at me, eyebrows up. ‘And you owe me another dollar.’

Matt bent forward, laughing and spewing little globs of half-chewed popcorn across the tile floor. ‘Now he’s a Dalmatian cat!’ He convulsed in laughter again.

‘Poor kitty,’ repeated Lainey, still not touching him, trying in vain not to smile.

I handed her a wet paper towel. ‘Wipe him off, please, Lainey.’ I dabbed at the chocolate on my robe with a wet sponge.

She took the paper towel from me but merely held it, as she was overcome finally with laughter. ‘ I’m not the one who threw pudding all over him,’ she said, leaning on the desk and covering her mouth, then turning away, as if she didn’t want Hairy to see her laughing at him. He had a blob of pudding on one side of his forehead, a Groucho Marx eyebrow. I was worried it would go into his eye.

‘Okay, fine, I’ll clean him up.’ I snatched the paper towel from her, and she grabbed her stomach with both hands and bumped into Matt, who was also still convulsed with laughter. I wiped Hairy’s eye, then, with a grunt from both of us, lifted the enormous chocolate-spattered cat from the desk and took him to the sink. ‘Sorry, Hairy. It was an accident.’ He glared back at me, the angry-looking face that is every Persian’s lot in life now looking downright murderous.

‘I’ll be downstairs,’ said Matt breathlessly.

‘Me too,’ said Lainey. ‘Call us when dinner’s ready.’ Holding Hairy firmly in the sink, I watched, my mouth open but nothing coming out, as she reached over Matt’s shoulder into the bag of popcorn as they descended.

In the next couple of hours I bathed the cat, put a bandage on the scratch on my arm, swept the kitchen floor, made and served a tuna casserole, and folded and put away some laundry while the kids ate. I wasn’t hungry after Lainey’s comment. While the kids watched a movie, I did the dishes, mopped the floor and dusted, all in the name of therapy.

At nine o’clock I headed up to bed, wanting to be asleep before Neil got home. I wasn’t, but I again faked it. It was a mystery to me how I could perpetually be so tired and yet have so much trouble sleeping. But I was getting very skilled at playing possum. I lay still, on my side of the bed, the edge really, my back to the center. Neil came into the room, undressed, was in the bathroom for quite a while, then finally slipped in on his side. Thankfully, he didn’t reach for me.

But pure guilt made me reach for him. I fulfilled my wifely duties then returned to my edge.

I lay for close to an hour, frozen in my assumed position, till I was sure he was asleep. Then I silently slid out of bed, wrapped myself in my new prune-colored, fat-emphasizing robe, and went downstairs to the kitchen. I pulled out the tuna casserole, grabbed a fork, and shoveled in a big mouthful. Then another. Still chewing, I loaded up the fork again, gazing at the pictures and memos on the door of the fridge. An upcoming birthday party invitation from one of Lainey’s friends. A shopping list. Matt and Lainey’s wallet-sized school photos. A picture of Sam with his friends at a graduation party. Another mother had given it to me. And under a magnet from a car mechanic was an old snapshot of Rocky and Fordy, both going after a stick in the lake. I stared at it, holding in one hand the ancient white CorningWare we’d gotten so many years ago as a wedding gift, and in the other my laden fork. I swallowed what was in my mouth, looked at my forkful, and let it drop back into the casserole. I put the lid on and pushed the dish back into the fridge. I put my fork in the dishwasher and quietly closed the door. Tightening the tie on my robe, I walked down the second flight of stairs to the den. I sat, turned on the computer, ner-vously pulled at the cuticle of my index finger, waiting. As it hummed into being, the monitor’s dim blue screen softened the too-clean room. I clicked, typed, and clicked again, until the Google box appeared. I took a deep breath, then carefully typed in the letters, one by one: