Molly fell into the hypnotic monotony of sorting intermingled puzzle pieces belonging to three different puzzles. Under other circumstances, she would have marveled, as she so often did when cleaning up toys, that this was how she was forced to spend her heartbeats; that this drudgery was part of love, part of the mission of mothering a human. Today, though, she appreciated the concreteness of the task, the mindlessness, the scattered evidence of the children’s vitality, the sound of Ben breathing in the crib.
On her way back out to the kitchen, she knelt in the hallway, endeavoring to peel off the floor a sparkly dolphin sticker that some kid had stomped onto the wood.
She looked up from her task, at the fish conquering the kitchen ten feet away from her, and then she knew.
The fish was attacking the kitchen just as Molly would have: first the countertop across from the sink, next the countertop to the left of the sink, next the countertop to the right of the sink. The empty beer bottles in a row on the windowsill, rinsed for recycling. A few squirts of the orange-clove spray on the countertops, an unnecessary flourish but somehow fortifying before confronting the hill of dishes in the sink.
“You can take the mask off now, don’t you think?” Molly said coldly.
The fish ignored the question.
Just then Viv emerged from the bathroom, and Molly was trapped: couldn’t snatch off the mask, couldn’t press Moll toward the door.
“I’m scared of the Sugar Plum Fairy,” Viv said. “I need warm milk to not be scared.”
Moll was already opening the fridge. She poured milk into a mug and zapped it in the microwave and stirred in vanilla extract and brought it to the table.
“Thanky, Fishy,” Viv said. But, putting the mug back down after her first sip, she missed the edge of the table.
Viv and Molly and the fish stared at the white explosion on the wooden floor, a many-pointed star sharp with ceramic shards.
It was the fish who shepherded Viv away from the mess. It was the fish who fetched the dustbin and the paper towels and the orange-clove spray.
Molly sat on the couch, holding Viv, who was still shaking from the shock of breaking something so completely. They watched the fish clean up the mess. She was methodical, meticulous, and it was mesmerizing. They observed how carefully she scanned the floorboards for splinters of ceramic, plucking each one up in a square of paper towel, like a person picking rare flowers.
“Mommy, are you hating me?” Viv said.
“There’s this phrase.” Molly squeezed Viv close. “Don’t cry over spilled milk.”
“What’s phrase?” Viv said. “Who cried?”
The fish perked up, looked up, as though she wanted to answer Viv’s questions, all three of them, but then, remembering herself, she looked back down, returned her attention to the floor.
17
For the second night in a row, Molly went through Viv’s bedtime routine dreading the thing that awaited her on the other side of the door. Once again, the dread cast the light of the sacred upon the mundane: the glow of the night-light rendered the toothbrush and the toothpaste and the pajamas and the blanket golden, as though everything Viv touched took on a mystical sheen. Midas? Molly had enough wits about her to remember the name, though she couldn’t recall the moral.
She lay down in the small bed beside Viv and whispered into her ear: “We can’t turn on the light to read books because it might wake B.”
But Viv, as it turned out, had already followed her brother into sleep; the background whisper of his baby dreams, his body slumbering aggressively in the crib, had entranced Viv out of the known world.
Molly wanted to sway to sleep in the hammock of her children’s breathing.
In her back pocket, her phone buzzed with a text. So how’d it go, Queen Fish? Costume fit OK? Still trying to recover from yr bait & switch ;) seriously tho no hard feelings LOL, I get it. Give the birthday girl six million kisses from me. And then a series of Erika-esque emoticons: a mermaid, a dolphin, a pair of hearts, a red balloon, a kiss.
18
Moll had removed the fish mask and set it on the table beside her. Her hair was moist and her face looked rubbery, waterlogged. The sight of it made Molly feel as though she too had just spent several hours inside a barely ventilated fish mask.
She wished she had the baseball bat in her hand. But going to get it seemed more dangerous than standing still. Not that she knew what she would do with the weapon if she did have it.
Molly watched herself, her body yet not her body, breathing, blinking, shifting in the chair, adorned with iridescent scales. Moll had done something (picked off her scabs? put makeup on her bruises?) so now her resemblance to Molly was impeccable. Her hands folded on the table before her; her nails tidy, clean. Molly could not look away, the way sometimes you cannot pull yourself away from your face in the mirror. She sank into the chair across from Moll. She couldn’t contain the twin sensations at war within her: one of utter familiarity, one of utter unfamiliarity.
“Share them with me,” Moll said.
“I can give you money,” Molly said. “I can give you my clothes. I can help you find a place to live.”
“I can give David the letter when he gets back next Saturday.”
“The letter?”
“Asking for a separation.”
“What?”
“I had forgotten about it too. But then I remembered. Last June. That rage. Sitting at the kitchen table at two in the morning. Insomnia between Ben’s night feedings.”
“I wrote that in a nightmare. It doesn’t even exist.”
“But it does. I have it. You—I—we saved it in the filing cabinet.”
The chair slunk out from under Molly. She slid to the floor. Pressed her back up against the wall. Covered her face with her hands. Considered the other secrets Moll possessed: the amount of stress she felt about how little money he made, the envy she occasionally felt toward unmarried, childless Roz, that night he thought she was happy when actually she was sad, the sexual positions that were more satisfying with her ex. The infinite blackmail material we all have on ourselves.
Eventually, the sound of a body standing and moving toward her and sitting next to her against the wall. A leg and hip and arm alongside her leg and hip and arm. A throbbing awareness, a sort of tingling heat, at each point where their bodies touched.
Molly scooted away. She did not want to be contaminated.
“You’re evil,” Molly said.
“Then you’re evil,” Moll said.
Moll’s hand was too fast, a snake around Molly’s wrist, tightening. She could tell that Moll was stronger, much stronger, than she had ever been. Two weeks leaner, two weeks fiercer, powered by grief. Moll’s other hand now gripping Molly’s hair, wrenching the roots. The tingling heat increasing to a boil.
I have suffered so much more than you, you woman of comfort and happiness, you unperturbed wife, you mother of two unbroken children, why do you keep forgetting that you would behave the exact same way if the tables were turned?
You aren’t thinking straight. I’m sorry, but you’re not well, you’ve been through too much. It’s untenable. Absurd. To share the children. Think of them. How bizarre it would be to have two mothers rotating in and out. Even if they couldn’t tell us apart, they would know—kids know—and they would be wounded.