Lovely Wild. Megan Hart

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       TEN

      THE FIRST DAYS of summer vacation are the best. The kids haven’t had time to get bored, they still have their annual trip to the beach to look forward to and sleeping in is still a luxury and not yet a habit that will need to be broken when school starts again. It’s only been a week, though, and they haven’t yet settled into any routine. Now Mari’s not sure they will.

      Because this year, Ryan’s home.

      This is bad for several reasons. One is because Ryan isn’t used to the way things are in the house when he’s not there. He snaps at the kids for watching too much television and manufactures chores for them to do in the name of “helping” her, though Mari has the house utterly under control. She neither needs nor wants her children scrubbing toilets and changing sheets, no matter how little she cares for the tasks herself. She’s told him this before, when Ryan says the kids need more responsibility and she says, let them be kids. Teaching them to take care of themselves and turning them into their personal maid service isn’t the same thing. He’s either forgotten their previous conversations or doesn’t care. Or maybe, she thinks, listening to the muffled sound of Ryan lecturing Kendra on something Mari knows their daughter will ignore, Ryan simply believes himself to be the better parent.

      On another day, another time, this thought would slip away from her with no more than a blink and wink of effort. Today, with her husband still home after a week and a half, Mari’s patience is worn to transparency. They rarely argue. The house and the kids have always been her domain. Now without the respite of Ryan leaving for work, Mari finds herself chafing under his constant suggestions and advice. Never mind that he’s never cleaned a toilet, scrubbed a floor or folded a basket of laundry in his life, now he knows just how it should be done. She hasn’t quite snapped at him. Not yet. It will surprise him if she does, and she’d rather not.

      There’s another reason it’s bad that Ryan is constantly home. It means something has changed in their lives. It’s been a long time since she felt this way—uncertain of what is coming next or how to handle it.

      There is a way to relieve the sting of this anxiety. Mari stretches high, fingertips searching the back of the cabinet, behind the special Thanksgiving table decorations she usually forgets to use on the table. There. She snags a package of snack cakes, chocolate, shaped like hearts. The wrapping is gone in seconds, the sweet creamy cake clutched in her fist.

      They gave her hot, wet mess in a bowl, she dug her fingers into it, it burned, she tossed it down. They came with yelling hands and faces, open mouths. When she told them what happened, they took her hands and held them tight so she could not speak. They gave her a spoon, instead.

      They made her normal.

      Mari stops herself from shoving the cake into her mouth. Her jaw aches. Her throat closes, making it hard to swallow. She finally manages to throw the cake into the trash, then has to drink from the faucet to wash away the taste of her own desperation.

      She’s never without her secret stock of snack cakes, but it’s the first time in a long, long time that she’s wanted to eat one that way. Gobbling and desperate. Mari closes her eyes for a moment, then shakes off the desperation.

      Rough time, she thinks fleetingly before focusing on the cupboards in front of her. Tea, coffee, spices. Containers of candy sprinkles and cake decorations from Kendra’s fascination a year or so ago with making fancy cupcakes. Luxuries, not necessities, and at seeing this, the excess, calm should wash over her, but it doesn’t. Nobody should be able to survive very long on rainbow jimmies and silver marzipan buttons. But it’s surprising what people can survive on.

      Kendra stomps into the kitchen, scowling. “Mom. Can’t you talk to Dad? God!”

      Mari turns from her silent contemplation of the bounty in her cabinets. Kendra sees this and sighs. Her arms fold across breasts larger than her mother’s (the result of better childhood nutrition or genetics, who knows?). For a second, Mari sees a woman in front of her instead of a girl and she’s more ashamed by how threatened she feels СКАЧАТЬ