All day long at Robert Kansas Elementary School, Willow dreaded returning to her father’s house. Because no matter how sad or detached her mother had been for the last couple months, Dad had been all of those things but worse for years. He had been cold and mean when she wanted to watch her TV show and he said she could only watch for fifteen minutes. He was cold and mean when he slammed that vase on the fireplace. He was cold and mean when he dangled her favorite purple socks over his head on Sundays for The Box. And he had been cold and mean when he turned her lights off without giving her a kiss good-night. And he had been cold and mean when he didn’t notice Willow standing in his bedroom while he slammed his naked body into that naked woman. He had been cold and mean when he took her from Mom’s without asking. He was cold and mean when she woke up this morning in her bed, and he hadn’t told her how she got there. He was cold and mean when she left for school this morning without a word about Mom.
And Willow dreaded how cold and mean he would be when she got back home from school today.
But when Willow and Asher walked into the kitchen late that afternoon after school, Dad was wearing an apron and had bowls, and spices, and vegetables, and all sorts of pots and pans waiting on the counter. They were scattered awkwardly across the marble counter.
Asher stopped abruptly at the newness of the scene at his father’s.
“Awe we gunna do SCIENCE?” he asked as his blue eyes darted around the countertop and his fingers swirled around the edges of the assorted bowls.
Rex stood in place in his unstained apron as his chef’s hat sank over his forehead. Rex raised one of his thick eyebrows at his son.
“What?” Asher said, giggling a little bit. “It looks like an expewiment!”
“I thought we’d try cooking tonight, kiddos,” Rex said as he forced a smile. “You know, have some fun. The farmer’s market just opened for spring and I got us some veggies to cook with. What do you think? Should we give it a whirl?”
Now he was looking at Willow. Straight at her. His look begging her to say okay. Begging her to try. To try cooking with her father. To try forgiving him for what was happening. To try loving him. Willow had given those same begging eyes to her father before. While riding on her bicycle. While attempting to kick a soccer ball. While swirling her blue-ish purple-ish milk around in her cereal bowl. She knew what it was like to want love so badly that your eyes asked for it. She looked up at her father and let her eyes reply, Okay, Dad.
So Willow slid into the apron draped over the counter and let her father tie the strings around her back. Because Willow saw the same thing her brother did. This was an experiment. An experiment in bringing Rosie’s kind of love into his home. An experiment in bringing the creative, exciting, free-flowing love Rosie brought to them all the time. An experiment designed to see if he could provide this kind of love for his children too. The kind of love he knew they liked. An experiment designed to see if Willow and Asher could absorb this kind of love from their father.
But out there on the table was Rex’s kind of experiment. With all of the ingredients so meticulously measured and placed into separate vessels. The cookbook open to the recipe page that had been recently highlighted. Everything so sterile and organized. But, when Willow noticed that Rex had taken the Don’t Touch sign down from the side of the table, she decided to press a smile though her teeth and read the first step from the splayed-open cookbook on the other side of the counter.
And Rex guided Asher’s hand as he placed already-chopped onions, and mushrooms, and peppers into a pan. And Willow mixed exactly two cups of ricotta cheese, and exactly two cups of mozzarella cheese and two large grade A eggs in a bowl. And they watched Rex meticulously layer pasta, and then cheese, and then vegetables, and then pasta, and then cheese on top of one another. He didn’t want Willow and Asher messing up the ratios, he said. And then Rex placed the tray of lasagna into the oven and set the timer for exactly forty minutes.
Asher pressed his face against the oven for at least twenty of those minutes. And he licked his lips and made slurping noises while Rex quietly cleaned the dishes and Willow quietly set the table.
Willow hadn’t known cooking could be so structured. So serious. So silent. But for tonight, it beat her lonely word searches on her lonely beanbag chair.
And when the oven timer dinged, Asher held a fork up next to his face and stretched his eyes so wide. Rex tilted his head, looked straight at his son and tapped the final highlighted direction of the recipe three times.
“We have to let it cool for fifteen minutes, Ash. It says it right here.”
Asher frowned dramatically, lowered the fork to his side and slumped over his plate.
And when exactly fifteen minutes passed, Rex sliced the lasagna into a perfect four-by-three grid and served each of his children the dinner they had made with their father.
“GWOSS!” Asher shouted and spit his mashed-up mush of pasta and cheese and vegetables from his mouth onto his plate. He marched over to the pantry and grabbed a bag of Parmesan Goldfish and shoveled its contents into his mouth.
Willow waited for Rex to shout. To force Asher to finish his dinner anyway. But he didn’t. He just stared down at his plate and forked bite after bite of bland lasagna into his mouth. The pasta wasn’t good.
All three of them knew it.
With a growling tummy, Willow jammed her fork into her rectangular pile of lasagna and looked forward to the next Spaghetti Sunday.
* * *
When Spaghetti Sunday rolled around, Willow had to face the truth of what was in front of her. Because up until now, the formidable wall of denial she had built was so high Willow almost couldn’t see over it. But tonight, her mother’s emptiness stared her right in the face over several cartons of uneaten Lo Mein from the Chinese take-out place around the corner.
Earlier in the evening, unprompted, Willow had donned her favorite apron and helped Asher into his. They raced each other upstairs, bumping elbows and laughing the whole way up to get their mother.
“Spaaaaaaghetti time!” Asher shouted when he reached Mom’s door. But the door was shut. Again. Willow tried twisting the knob but it stuck rigidly in its place. Again.
“I ordered Chinese,” Rosie forced out from the other side of the door. But she spoke straight from her throat, too tired to put any diaphragm behind words. “It should be here soon. Go play. I’ll meet you down there in a minute.”
Asher nonchalantly slid down the railing but Willow lingered. She pressed her ear to the door. She couldn’t decipher any sounds but she could feel her mother’s tears saturating the air. She could feel the damp depression of the room behind the closed door. It had happened. The fear had its way with her heart. And now, in front of that closed door, Willow’s heart was torn in shreds by the claws that had been progressively sinking themselves deeper and deeper into her.
Rosie joined her children at the table for dinner, but only in body. She swirled her soy sauce around with a chopstick as she leaned her head on her arm. There was nothing left of the mother she used to be inside of her.
Asher stuck his face into a pile of white rice and sat back up with several grains stuck to his face. “Rice fweckles!” he shouted, revealing his big tooth gap. Willow looked over at her mother. This was the kind of thing Mom loved. Used to love. The kind of thing she would laugh about, and then replicate on her own face. The kind of thing she would do every subsequent time rice was put in front of her.
But Rosie didn’t react at all. Even Willow could see there wasn’t a thing in this world that could bring a smile to her face.
And without intending to, Willow absorbed her mother’s sadness from across the table. And she sat there in her seat at the kitchen table as her mother pushed a single grain of rice from one edge of her plate to the other. Over and over and over again. Over and over and over again until she went upstairs and slipped under her empty sheets.
* * *
Willow fell asleep in her bed slowly and in tears but woke up suddenly to the clicking of the first rain of spring on her roof. She felt her full bladder pressing against her belly. “Don’t go,” Willow pleaded with herself audibly as she felt her bladder swell. “Please don’t go.” But before the fear of the storm was going to cause Willow to wet the bed again, she unraveled herself from her covers and ran to her mother’s room. The purple glasses would help. She burst through the door to Mom’s bedroom. But her mother’s bed was empty and uncharacteristically stiff. The sheets were still ruffled and the pillows were still scattered, but there were no signs that a body had been curled up in there. And the pillow had no indent to indicate a head had been pressed into it. It was all so firm and cold. So unlike the bed that Willow had tucked herself into next to her mother so many times. But at the sound of another wave of rain drumming on the roof, Willow wrapped herself in Mom’s taut sheets and squeezed her eyelids shut. Even though she was alone in there.
Thoughts began to orbit and then swirl so fast Willow was dizzy with it. Dizzy with the knowledge that things were never going to be the same with her mother.
I need those glasses.
I need Mom.
I need those glasses.
I need something.
From anyone.
Something.
Anyone.
Something.
Anyone.
I need those glasses.
I need Mom.
I need those glasses.
I need something.
From anyone.
Something.
Anyone.
Willow’s bladder pulsed again as she lay frozen in her bed, afraid that any movement might shake the urine loose. “Don’t go,” Willow said to herself, now more forcefully. “Please don’t go.” And thoughts of her mother continued to swirl all around until she fell back asleep.
But before she even drifted into another dream of her mother the way she used to be, Willow half woke up to a pair of strong hands sliding gently underneath her back. She forced one eyelid open a crack. It was her father. Curling her up in his arms. Draping her wrists over his shoulders and around his neck. Pressing her cheek into his chest. Willow’s body was still heavy with sleep and she let her dad carry every ounce of her weight. Her torso bounced up and down with the steady cadence of her father’s steps.
From Rosie’s bedroom doorway to his car in the driveway, Rex carried Willow so gently and so lovingly. And for that same distance, Willow allowed herself to be carried. Feeling that gentleness. Feeling that love.
As Rex placed her delicately in the back of his car, Willow felt her father’s lips on the top of her head. A little kiss. A little, gentle, loving kiss. Willow smiled and drifted right back into sleep with her seat belt resting on her chest and her head on the warm leather of the car seat.