Free Every Day by Elizabeth Richards Page A

another bath. I think about fucking. Fucking isn’t even interesting enough to be a goal, I think. Not even a means to an end. Fucking is just something one does when one can, if one feels like it. Fucking Simon. Fucking Fowler. Fucking anyone. It’s unreasonable to think of it as meaningful. Fucking makes so little difference, except when it leads to pregnancy. Adequate descriptions of fucking do exist, mind you, but they don’t differ much, one to the next. If memory serves, marriages don’t fail because of fucking or nonfucking. They fail because something else gets lost. Simon and I have lost something along our busy way. A tenderness, time to devote to each other that doesn’t feel like duty. It isn’t our fault. In this loss, we’re blameless, just like everybody else.
    “Mom?” Isaac again, whispering from the hall this time.
    I jump, a roar of water threatening tub’s rim.
    “Are you sure everything’s okay?”
    It terrifies, how much they need me, how much they depend on the structure I’ve set up and lost faith in.
    “Yes, lovey. Get your rest. You’ll need it for another day of monster control.”
    “You got it,” he says, not sounding at all gratified, just faint, at the end of something.
    •   •   •
    The next morning, I get out Froot Loops for the lot of them, and our oversize Portuguese bowls. I’ll give them what they want to eat while I tell them what they won’t accept. By seven-thirty they’re assembled, perched, hungry, cheerful from a good night’s sleep. This is what I tell them:
    “Dad has business in Brooklyn the rest of the week and the hours are strenuous, so he’s staying in the city instead of driving two hours home. He’ll call us each night to speak to everyone and he’ll be back on Friday.” I bring my face up in a smile of sorts, the kind Fowler’s specialist might have displayed after relating the desperate news. What I’ve related is a partial truth, i.e., a lie. Having related same, I fulfill my role as the liar Simon accused me of being.
    This is what they tell me:
    Isaac: “Good deal.”
    Jane: “God, Mom, why do you have to be so serious? It’s to cringe.”
    Daisy: “Da. Da-eee.”
    We pass on to other matters, the pickup arrangements, postcamp entertainments, the dinner issue. Then last-minute gatherings and into the car to camp.
    It’s a brilliant day, not hot, just clear and breezy. My husband has left me, I’m sure of it. I’m afraid. We travel crisp suburban roads to the parkway, get on, fly. There’s so much cheer in our car. Even Jane’s incisive summing up of Isaac’s faults and his sleepy dismissal of her as subhuman are refreshing.
    “You probably like that gay guy. All your friends have dirty hair.”
    “Dog meat.”
    “Moose breath.”
    “At least people can see my teeth.”
    This last Jane doesn’t need. The day her braces were put on, the world ended. After a night of roaming the house, looking out for the dawn, and drinking more wine than is good for anyone, I come to Jane’s rescue and tell Isaac, “When you’re not ripping your sister to pieces with them.”
    •   •   •
    When I let them off, Jane doesn’t even ask me to walk her to her group’s meeting place in front of the high school cafeteria.
    “You should take a nap when Daisy takes a nap, Mom,” she decides. “You look really tired.”
    “Thank you, muffin,” I tell her. “I like it when you look out for me.”
    Isaac sighs good-bye, taps the door after he shuts it. “I’ll get a ride home,” he says.
    “No you won’t,” I say, my mind on Garland.
    “You’re still a kid,” Jane taunts. “Even if you’re nine feet tall.” And she’s off, head down, all determination and purpose.
    Isaac looks to the treetops in despair. “Later.”
    Daisy wails for a while after this, over the sudden absence of her siblings, but I coax her into a stretch of calm with the song about the Beluga whale. She kicks her feet, pounding the car seat with