“What are you talking about?”
“You promised me a bubble,” she said, her voice cracking.
“I’m trying, Maribeth. But keeping you in the bubble and keeping the house running and keeping on top of my job is no easy feat.”
“Welcome to every fucking day of my life.”
His jaw twitched. “Look,” he said in a measured tone. “I know you’ve been through an ordeal and you’re in pain, but can you try not to lash out at the people who are in it with you?”
“If I ever meet those people, I’ll be sure to keep that in mind.”
“You know what, you’re being really . . .”
Childish. That’s what she thought he’d say.
“Selfish.”
Selfish! She was being selfish? All she did was take care of everyone else. For the first time in her life, she needed to be taken care of, and this was what she got? She felt tears of rage come to her eyes and then shame because damn him if she was going to cry.
Selfish?
Jason. Elizabeth. Her mother. They could all go to hell.
10
Maribeth woke up the next morning draggy, fatigued, and achy, like she’d been hit by a truck in the night. She had not felt this wretched since the hospital. She was supposed to walk but it was raining out. This had prevented her mother from taking the kids to school because she hadn’t wanted to catch a chill, so Jason had had to take them, causing him to leave late for some big off-site meeting and making him surly.
She put in a call to Dr. Sterling’s office. The nurse asked about her symptoms. Maribeth said that her chest hurt. And she was achy.
“During physical activity?” the nurse asked.
“No, when I’m resting.”
“I’ll have the doctor call you back.”
Five minutes later, the phone rang. But it wasn’t Dr. Sterling. It was her CPA’s office, calling to confirm that she had received and filed their return. “We never got your confirmation notice back,” the receptionist said.
“What return?” Maribeth asked.
“We overnighted the returns to you,” the receptionist said. “FedEx confirms receipt on the thirteenth.”
She’d been in the hospital then. She told the receptionist she’d call back and went to the hall table. She always dealt with the mail, sorted the junk mail, paid the bills, and since she’d been ignoring it, it appeared that it had just been piling up.
She quickly weeded out the catalogs and credit card offers and tossed them in recycling. She put aside all the get-well cards, bank statements, and bills in another pile. She saw nothing from the CPA.
Then she noticed a thick FedEx envelope shoved between the mail rack and the wall. It was marked URGENT! She tore it open. Inside was the tax return with a cover letter instructing her and Jason to sign and mail it by the fifteenth.
She double-checked the date on the envelope. October 12. The package had sat here for more than two weeks, in a FedEx overnight envelope, addressed to both of them, marked urgent, and Jason had not thought to open it.
She called the CPA back to ask what to do, but he was in a meeting. She called Jason at work. He didn’t answer. She remembered he was off-site so she e-mailed and texted him to call her ASAP. “Urgent!” she wrote.
Her phone rang. Dr. Sterling’s Gomer Pyle voice was on the other end.
“What seems to be the problem?” he asked.
“Oh, hi. I woke up today feeling really bad.”
“How so?”
“Exhausted, achy. My chest hurts.”
“When you’re active or resting?”
“Resting.”
“Does it feel like it did before? During your heart attack?”
“No. It’s more throbby.”
“Any shortness of breath?”
“Not really.”
“Dizziness?”
“I’m not dizzy, but I just feel . . . unsteady. And tired. Worse than I have since any of this began.”
“I wouldn’t worry about it. The chest sounds skeletal.”
“What about the achiness? And the exhaustion. Also, I have a headache.”
“That sounds viral.”
“Isn’t that dangerous? I mean, am I compromised? I live with a pair of four-year-olds.”
“While an upper respiratory infection isn’t ideal right now, it’s not going to kill you.”
“How reassuring.”
“If your children are anything like mine were, they always have something.”
“They’re disease vectors.”
“If you’re really concerned, remove them for a few days. But it just sounds like you have a garden-variety touch of something and the chest pain is a normal part of healing.”
“I really don’t feel right,” Maribeth pressed on. “Are you sure I shouldn’t come in?”
“If you think it’s urgent, go to the ER. Otherwise, I’ll transfer you to reception. You can come in tomorrow.”
“I’ll call if I’m not better.”
“Sounds like a plan, Maryann.” He chuckled at the rhyme.
“Maribeth,” she corrected. But he’d already hung up.
HER MOTHER POKED her head in the bedroom. “Did I hear you on the phone with your doctor?”
“Yeah. I’m not feeling that great.”
“What did the doctor say?”
“He was no help.”
Her mother pursed her lips and shook her head. “Doctors don’t know anything. I’m going to call Herb Zucker. He had the same surgery.”
“Please don’t.” She didn’t see how Herb Zucker, seventy-eight years old and retired, could have anything relevant to say about Maribeth’s life.
“Don’t be silly. I’m here to help.”
After her mother disappeared to make the call, Maribeth thought about whom she really wanted to talk to: Elizabeth. The old Elizabeth, the one who, when Maribeth had come down with chicken pox at the age of twenty-four, had rented her every Cary Grant movie and bought her a pair of cashmere mittens to keep Maribeth from scarring herself when she scratched. The Elizabeth who’d visited her last week felt about as relevant to her life as Herb Zucker did.
Then she thought of Nurse Luca. Insurance covered the nurse visits for a week but she could pay for a visit out of pocket.
She went to the pile of mail and fished out the bank statement. There was $52,000 in the savings account she’d set up after receiving the bequest from her father. Maybe it wasn’t enough to cover a down payment and closing costs on a house (or let’s face it, an apartment) in anywhere but the farthest reaches of Brooklyn, but it was certainly enough for a session or two with Nurse Luca.
She called the nurse service. They said they’d get someone out first thing tomorrow and put in a request for Luca.
Outside, it was pouring. Which meant the window in the kitchen would leak. She rooted around in the pantry for the bucket and put it under the leak. Her mother was sitting at the table with a cup of tea, chattering away on the phone, to Herb Zucker presumably. They didn’t seem to be discussing cardiac care. At one point, she looked up. “The phone’s beeping.”
“Probably needs to be charged.”
Then her cell phone rang. It was Jason.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“We didn’t pay the taxes,” Maribeth said.
“What?”
“The taxes. The returns, the payment coupons, they’re sitting on the hall table with all the other mail you didn’t bother to open.”
“Shit, Maribeth, you scared me. I thought something bad had happened.”
“Something bad did happen. We didn’t pay our taxes.”
“Something bad and irreparable. You have to stop sweating the small stuff.”
“Death and taxes. They’re linked together for a reason,” Maribeth said.
“What are you talking about?” Jason asked.
“It’s not the small stuff!” Maribeth cried.
“Try to keep things in perspective,” he said.
br /> Perspective? Try this perspective. My fist smashing into your face.
“They’re not going to haul us off to jail,” he said. “We’ll just pay a penalty or something. Everything will work out fine.”
“Everything will work out fine? Have you looked around lately?”
“Yeah.”
“Does it seem like it’s working out?”
“Yeah, it does, actually.”
“In case you haven’t fucking noticed, I had bypass surgery.”
He paused. “I noticed. And you’re getting better.”
“I’m not getting better.” She was yelling into the phone now. “I’m getting worse!”
“The doctor said you’re doing fine. You’re just getting yourself into a state.”
A state? She was dancing on a surfboard, juggling knives, while they all went about business as usual. But it wasn’t business as usual. She’d had open-heart surgery. And in spite of what Jason and Dr. Sterling thought, she wasn’t getting better. And if she didn’t get better . . . How would they manage? When Jason couldn’t even pay the goddamn taxes on time.
“I hate you!” she yelled. Then turned off the phone and threw it across the room, burying her head under the pillow and crying herself to sleep.
11
She was dreaming of water. She could hear it. The ebb and flow of the waves.
Plink. She felt it now. It was raining inside her dream. Plink. And inside her room.
And then the bed shook and Liv shrieked, “Wake up! We have lice! Wake up now!”
She forced her eyes open. Liv was standing above her, along with Oscar, and Niff Spenser. All three of them were dripping wet.
“There was a check at school,” Niff explained. “We tried to call, but we kept getting voicemail, so I volunteered to bring them home.”
The beeping. It was the call waiting.
“Where’s Grandma?”
“Napping,” Oscar said.
“The front door was open so I just let us in,” Niff said.
Maribeth blinked and looked at the clock. 12:13.
“Lice?”
“Unfortunately, both Oscar and Liv have them.” Niff lowered her voice. “Pretty bad, the teachers said.”
“So what do I do?” she asked Niff. “Use that shampoo?”
“Oh, no, those chemicals are quite literally poison,” Niff said.
Oscar had no grasp of hyperbole. He jutted out his lower lip, a sign of imminent tears.
“Nobody’s poisoning anybody,” Maribeth said, reaching out to pat his head and then swerving and going for his shoulder instead.
“You can hire nitpickers to do it, but I learned to do it myself,” Niff said. “There are videos online. You have to be very thorough to get the nits. They’ll be checked before they’re admitted back into the classroom and there’s a strict no hat or wig-sharing policy for tomorrow’s Halloween party.”
Shit. Halloween wasn’t until Friday but for some reason the party was tomorrow.
“We can’t miss the Halloween party,” Oscar said, chin going full tilt now.
“You’re ruining everything!” Liv yelled at Maribeth.
“Liv! Manners!” Niff looked aghast. She turned to Maribeth. “I can help if you want.”
“Thanks,” Maribeth said. “We’ll take it from here.”
AFTER NIFF LEFT, Maribeth looked up a couple of nitpickers online. No one could come today, and besides, they would cost four hundred dollars, for the twins, plus more to check the adults in the household.
Her mother, up from her nap, padded into the bedroom in socked feet. “Did I hear the twins?”
“They were sent home from school with lice,” she said. “We have to get rid of them.”
“I think you use kerosene.”
“No, you don’t use kerosene. We use Pantene and a special comb, like this one.” She pointed to her screen. “Can you run out to the drugstore for me?”
Her mother’s eyes flitted to the window. It was pelting down a nasty, gray fall rain. “In this weather? I don’t think I should.”
“Someone has to go.”
“Ask Jason.”
“He’s working off-site today. He won’t get home until late.”
“Doesn’t everything here deliver?”
“Rite Aid does not deliver.”
“Can’t you order on the computer?” Her mother gestured to the screen.
“I could but it wouldn’t get here in time. I have to comb them out before school tomorrow. They’re not allowed back in until they’re clean.”
“Can’t Jason get the comb tonight and you do it tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow’s the Halloween party,” Liv hollered from across the loft.
“We can’t miss the party,” Oscar bellowed.
Maribeth sighed. “I’ll go get the comb.”
“I don’t think you should go out in this weather,” her mother said. “It’s not the end of the world if they miss one party.”
Hearing this, the twins began to cry.
Maribeth reached for her coat.
AS SHE SLOGGED through the rain, Maribeth wondered a few times if perhaps she was dreaming. It was a comforting thought because then this wasn’t really happening. She wasn’t out here, in the rain, walking to the drug store. When her local Rite Aid didn’t carry the type of comb she was after, she almost cried. The pharmacist took pity on her and called across the street to a competing chain, which did have the comb.
She lugged everything home. The errand, which in her healthy days would’ve taken fifteen minutes, had taken nearly an hour. She was wet, cold to the bone, and depleted, like something essential was draining out of her.
Back at home, they negotiated a movie—Enchanted—and then the three of them sat down on the sofa. She did Oscar first, guessing, correctly, that he’d be more compliant. He bopped his head to the “Happy Working Song” while Maribeth pulled out the disgusting creatures, one after the other. A half hour later, she was still pulling out nits.
“When is my turn?” Liv asked.
“I’m tired of this,” Oscar said.
“Why don’t you switch for a while?” her mother suggested. She had joined them and was now watching, too, as if this were family movie night.
Maribeth went to rinse off the comb and empty out the bucket under the leaking window. She made a mental note to call the super to apply another coat of sealant that never fully worked.
She dampened Liv’s hair and began to brush the tangles out. “Owww!” Liv screamed, bucking so hard she nearly head-butted Maribeth. “You’re hurting me.”
As gently as she could, she tried again. Liv whipped around. “I said, you’re hurting me!”
“Let’s try putting the conditioner on,” Maribeth said wearily. She began to squirt it on Liv’s head.
“It’s cold!”
“It’ll warm up.”
She pulled the comb through her hair. “Oww!” Liv yelled.
“Calm down!” Maribeth snapped.
“You calm down,” Liv yelled back nonsensically.
Maribeth sank back into the sofa. She remembered those TV commercials for bubble bath from her youth.
Calgon, take me away, she thought.
Anyone?
“Why are you stopping?” Liv shrieked.
Maribeth spread the conditioner through Liv’s hair. Then she gathered a small bunch of hair and combed through it. Out came four fat bugs. She went through the same bunch of hair, more bugs. Once more, and yet still more bugs.
She was infested. She was patient zero. They probably all had it now.
Her own head started to itch.
She went through the clump again. More bugs, and the telltale egglike nits, too. Again and again. And still more crap came out. It was never ending.
“You’re hurting me!” Liv yelled every time Maribeth ran the comb through.
“I can’t hear the movie,” Oscar complained every time Liv yelled.
“Shut up,” Liv yelled every tim
e Oscar complained.
“Mom,” Maribeth said after several rounds of this. “Can you maybe sit between them?”
“Oh, what a nice idea. Scootch for Grandma.”
Liv’s hair was full of tangles. When the teeth caught on a particularly extravagant knot, Liv screamed and spun around. “I hate you!” she yelled. Then she shoved Maribeth right in the chest.
It hurt. It knocked the wind out of her. But most of all, it shocked her. But what shocked her more was what she did. Which was to hit Liv back. Not hard enough to hurt, but hard enough to betray.
Liv’s mouth curled into a stunned O as she absorbed what had just happened. It was only after Maribeth apologized that Liv started to bellow.
It was the part of the movie when the Susan Sarandon character went from animated to live action. Maribeth’s mother thought Liv was crying because she was scared. “It’s okay, honey,” she said. “The witch dies in the end.” As if death was a comforting notion for a four-year-old.
Liv kept on crying, and then Oscar started up, too. Her mother suggested that they put on a different movie.
Maribeth excused herself, went into her room, where she too started to cry.
12
The next morning, Joanne, the Wilsons’ babysitter, arrived at seven to comb out the twins’ hair. Apparently, she’d instructed them to sleep with some kind of oil and a shower cap, which seemed far too easy, but such was the Jason way. After yesterday’s crying jag, Maribeth had called him with the news that the kids had lice. “You fucking deal with it,” she’d fumed to his voicemail. And he’d called the Wilsons. Shocker.
Joanne had offered to walk the twins to school with Maribeth’s mother. “Go kiss Mommy good-bye.”
Liv pouted as she puckered her lips sourly and turned toward Maribeth. Part of Maribeth wanted to refuse the kiss. She understood that she was the mother and had to be the adult here, but for once, could someone cut her a break?
Apparently not. Jason had slept on a blow-up mattress in the twins’ room last night. A lot of trouble to telegraph his contempt. Maribeth, meanwhile, had not slept at all.
Policeman Oscar shuffled over for a kiss and then the twins left, along with Joanne and Maribeth’s mother. Jason, who should’ve left for work an hour ago, paused by the bookcase. “Are you going to get out of bed today?” he asked.