Willow’s mother winked when she told them she would pick them up from school even though it was Dad’s night. “I want to make up for some lost time with my noodles,” she said as she waved goodbye through the window.
The image of another night at Mom’s was the only thing getting Willow through the day at Robert Kansas Elementary School. She counted down the hours until she would be at Mom’s again. And she couldn’t help but smile a full red-lipped smile when she met Asher at the pickup circle and took position on the curb with her word search to wait for Mom. Willow watched Amy and then Sarah and then Greg and then Erin and then Annelise hop into the back seat of their parents’ cars while she and her brother waited and waited. Asher was occupied with an overflowing anthill while Willow was half-attuned to her word searches and half kept an eye on the entrance to the pickup circle. But when Asher reached boredom and sat down next to his sister with his chin in his palms and his elbows on his lap, Willow started to worry. And her tummy started to turn. And her bladder started to tickle. It was cold and it was getting still and dark.
“Please. Not again,” Willow said so quietly into the air. She could see a cloud of her breath on the tips of her lips as she said it.
But then Willow heard the familiar roar of her mother’s car approaching just as the tingle of anxiety in her belly was reaching her chest. She saw the big googly eyes on the front of Lili Von coming around the bend of the pickup circle. There she was! She knew Mom would be there. Willow couldn’t keep the corners of her mouth from turning up as she stood up excitedly with her word search book in her mitten and waited for the car to gently stop right in front of her on the curb. But Rosie’s car continued speeding toward Willow and Asher, swerving wildly between opposite curbs. And without slowing down, the two front wheels leaped over the curb, and then came to a screeching, jerking stop. For a moment, everything was so still. The twilight, the school, the car, the street. Willow, Asher. Their eyes wide. Everything was still except for the pink-haired troll swinging back and forth from the rearview mirror.
Rosie lifted her heavy arm and waved slowly at her children with just her fingers through the windshield until they were ready to move. And Willow and Asher made their way into the back seat without any help with their backpacks, or kisses on their cheeks, or questions about their day. As her children got in the car, Rosie massaged her temples. And the eerie quiet around her endured until the grumble of the engine picked up again. Rosie silently put the car into motion and resumed the pinballing from curb to curb. And as Rosie turned out of the pickup circle, the sharp torque of the car thrust both Willow and Asher toward the right window. Their seat belts had barely enough time to tighten around their chests.
As Willow regained her position in her seat, she reached over and squeezed Asher’s hand. She squeezed it tightly as she looked straight out the windshield at the road ahead. Willow watched trees and cars and the yellow lines of the street pass as fear clawed its way up one rib and then the next and then the next, creeping its way toward her heart.
And when Asher, Willow and Rosie pulled into the driveway, Rosie dragged her shoes and walked into her house without a kiss or a hug or a story or a song or a plan for dinner. She pulled her feet up the front steps and let the door creak closed behind her.
Willow helped Asher with his backpack and walked into a quiet house. She poured a bowl of Lucky Charms for her brother and then herself, but neither of them said a word even though they were both thinking about crayon colors as they watched their tinted milk turn colors.
The same fear that was climbing up her ribs in the car, the same fear Mom had nearly vanquished at the beach with her kites and her stones, had its nails all the way inside Willow’s heart again. Could it all go away, Willow thought, if she were to just go upstairs and ask her mom to come down and cook dinner, or do the Time Warp, or paint the walls, or squish tomatoes, or put food coloring on her vanilla ice cream? It would all be so easy, Willow hoped, willed.
So, with her heart in the talons of fear, Willow walked up the stairs, concentrating on each foot on each step, and slowly made her way to her mother’s closed bedroom door. She pressed her ear against it before walking in. There were no sounds, but she could feel her mother breathing in there. Feel her mother slowly inhaling and exhaling. But when Willow entered, she walked into an empty quiet room with an unmade bed and a burning candle. She moved slowly through her mother’s room to the door of her closet. And when Willow peeked her head around that door, she found her mom.
She found her mom lying on the floor with one arm twisted unnaturally at the shoulder and her legs bent out. She found her mom with her underwear exposed and her bangs splayed messily across her forehead. She found her mother with her eyes shut and her chest rising and falling slowly but fully. Willow tried hard to swallow as fear tightened around her throat. She shook her body into motion and went to get two pillows from her mother’s bed. And then she placed one under her mother’s ear and one in the space on the floor next to her heavy head. And then Willow dragged the heavy comforter from the bed into the closet and tucked the edges underneath her mother’s sides.
She returned for Asher and the two of them watched TV together until Willow ushered him into his bed and tucked the sheets around him in a similar fashion. And then she returned to the floor of her mother’s closet and pressed he body into her mother’s until she could feel her mother’s heart beating against her. Willow let herself drift into sleep, but could not ignore for one more second the fear that was swaying back and forth.