Helen Phillips - The Need

“It really will take me a while to get over your slaughter of my plants,” Norma said. “But still, do you want another cup of tea?”

Norma was tall and keen and now, often, ill. The word BLOOD on the whiteboard on the fridge had been replaced by the word PAY , in the same blue letters.

“How was Arizona?” Molly said, trying to think of what one ought to say.

“I thought I was supposed to be the one in danger of senility,” Norma shot back.

“I should—” Molly said, struggling to facilitate a graceful exit. Feeling guilty, rude. “—the kids.”

Norma was, as ever, unruffled. “Yes, I thought you were in a rush to get back to them. Go! Go! Don’t forget to tell them I got them a dodo.”

Driving home she thought of the night—she refused to believe it was only five nights ago—when Moll, silent and unknown, had driven her to Norma’s house. The way the car had smelled of papier-mâché.

Through the side window Molly spied Erika giving the children a snack at the table. She snuck across the yard, went to the basement to look for Moll.

Standing at the bottom of the steps, Molly took note of the cardboard box (now shoved partway under the futon) that Moll had brought down two nights ago, the box containing their most mundane favorites, the scarf, the hoodie, the T-shirt, the socks. At the time she had believed it was a threat, a sign of Moll settling in, taking possession of all her precious things. Only now did it occur to her that Moll had brought it down so both of them could be a little more comfortable during their long cellar hours, could have a hint of solace.

She checked every corner, every shadow, but Moll was not in the basement.

Upstairs, the kids were out of sorts, and Erika was out of sorts too. Erika was never out of sorts. She took the cash from Molly and hurried off, gathering herself just enough to mutter, “Sorry, I’m so not feeling great.”

Viv kept begging for things (a video, a Popsicle), and, weak, Molly acquiesced.

Ben didn’t want to do anything except nurse. Even once he had drained both breasts still he wanted to suckle. She let him, held him, but after a while it became ridiculous and she had to get dinner on the table. She pulled him off her and set him on the rug, surrounded by toys. He howled as though she had orphaned him.

Where was Moll?

She finally put her foot down vis-à-vis the videos and instructed Viv to entertain her brother. Viv built a block tower. Ben knocked it over. Viv screamed at him. Ben tried and failed to throw a block at his sister.

“Relax!” Molly found herself shrieking. “Relax!”

Neither child would eat a bite of the dinner she had prepared. No pasta? No carrot? No banana? No graham cracker with peanut butter?

No! No! No! No! No!

Come to think of it, the food was repulsive to her too.

Bath time, early bedtime. She could make it. Somehow she would make it.

Oh, but Viv did not want to take a bath. She could remember the last time she had taken a bath and she did not like to take a new bath until she had forgotten her old bath.

Ben calmed down a notch or two in the warm water. Molly took refuge in the honeysuckle scent of the baby wash. She realized how acutely part of her was waiting, ever alert to the possibility of Moll’s footsteps in the other room.

Viv ran up and down the hall, chanting. Only after a few minutes did the words of Viv’s chant register with Molly:

“In my scary dream, I saw the mystery! In my scary dream, I saw the mystery!”

“Viv,” Molly called. “What’s that you’re saying?”

“A song.” Viv skipped into the bathroom, grabbed one of Ben’s bath cups, scooped up water, and tossed it at his face. He cried.

“Viv!” Molly roared.

“I was cleaning him,” Viv claimed, skipping away. “In my scary dream, I saw the mystery!”

“Where did you hear that song?” Molly yelled down the hallway.

“In my scary dream! I saw the mystery!”

“Vivian, where did you hear that song?”

“In my head,” Viv chirped.

Molly wanted to probe further—what the fuck?—but Ben was upset, wet from bathwater and wet from tears, a bedraggled little otter, so she pulled him dripping out of the bath, onto her lap, forgetting to place a towel there first.

“I’m doing a good job rhyming, right?” Viv poked her head into the bathroom.

Ben threw up on Molly’s shoulder, a spew of half-chewed raisins and breast milk.

She twisted him around and he threw up again, this time on her knees and on the bath mat and on Viv’s toes.

“Turn on the light! Turn on the light!”

It was—what?—the middle of the night.

Who was talking to her? Was Ben talking to her? Ben was not talking to her. Ben could not talk. Ben was sleeping beside her in the big bed because she once heard of a baby who choked to death on its own vomit. Ben’s skin was hot, too hot, to the touch. And in the dark someone kept telling her to turn on the light. And that person was becoming more upset by the second.

She couldn’t find the switch for the bedside lamp.

She found the switch for the bedside lamp.

Viv was standing beside the bed.

“I’m bad,” Viv said.

“You’re bad?”

“I feel bad.”

“Bad how?”

“Can you cover that mirror?” Viv was staring at the mirrored closet.

“Cover the mirror?”

“Please,” Viv implored.

“Why?” It was a big mirror. She had no idea how she would go about covering it.

“I’m scared to see myself in the mirror.”

“Why?” She reached for Viv’s hand. Too hot to the touch.

Viv threw up on the pillow, on the sheets, on the rug, on Molly.

Her body woke her before daylight with a single pressing need.

She understood that her nausea was residual, merely a form of empathy for the two small humans who now slept (parched, fitful) beside her.

She had cleaned up so much last night—had lost count of the rounds—the children trading off—then overlapping—the only measure the laundry hamper reeking in the corner.

She leaned over them, breathed them in—their grassy aroma, her favorite smell in the world, obscured, now, by the stink of bile. The odor invaded her pores. The odor was to blame (she lay in bed, believing it) for this false response in her own stomach.

She hated throwing up. The beast within tearing through one’s tamed body. Like giving birth. That same absolute loss of control.

Like orgasm too, but the opposite.

But this was no time for such thoughts.

Because she finally had to admit that the sourness was real, deep inside her—that she had to claim it, do something about it.

She extricated herself from the foul bed, the clammy children, and went to the bathroom and held the toilet.

Which was not as clean as one would have wished.

She considered fetching the toilet bowl cleaner from the cabinet, swooshing that blueness around the interior, sanitizing the victim of her embrace.

She discovered, though, that she had crossed the line: was past the point of being able to fetch and clean.

She crouched.

At first she hoped she wouldn’t. Then she began to hope, fiercely, that she would. She just wanted to have the thing out of her. She just wanted to be free of it.

She waited.

It would not come.

She waited, an increasingly impatient passenger in a train station.

It did not come and it did not come and then, evil, it came.

In the bedroom, someone was throwing up.

She could not stand. She could not stand.

She stood. She walked to the bedroom.

Her foot slipped on a slick patch on the floor.