NINETEEN
mother’s morning out
sloane
The boat trip with my sisters had done me a world of good. Coming home made me realize what a world of good Vivi did me. I had taken for granted over the past few months how much my sweet niece played with Taylor and AJ.
Now, this afternoon, sitting in my bedroom that seemed to be getting smaller by the minute, I realized I needed to get out of there. Me. The girl who didn’t even want her children to go to school because she was so terrified something would happen to them and it would be all her fault felt like she needed a break.
AJ was sitting on the floor arranging coins from biggest to smallest, and Taylor, whom I was trying to read to, was knocking over each of AJ’s stacks as soon as he finished them. AJ had made a particularly tall tower with probably fifteen coins. I was very proud of his motor skills. I thought Taylor was completely engrossed in a Shel Silverstein poem—until he wriggled in my lap, kicked out his leg, and the stack was gone. “Mommy!” AJ wailed.
“Taylor, that’s enough,” I said, a little too forcefully. “I’ve had it. I’ve told you five times not to do that, and now you’re going to your room.”
“Noooooo!” Taylor screamed, flailing on the floor. I grabbed him by one arm and one leg—I’d learned from experience that during a full-on tantrum, I couldn’t hold him the regular way. One arm and one leg made him madder, but it gave me a safe grip with which to remove him from the situation.
I walked into his room, set him on the bed as gently as I could, and said, as if a mid-tantrum kid could even hear you, “You stay here until I tell you to come out.”
I closed the door behind me, and the screaming continued. He’d calm down. Eventually.
AJ was still stacking when I got back to my room. “Look, Mommy,” he said proudly.
He had completed his task once again. “Good job, bud,” I said. “Now I want you to make a pile of change for me that equals one dollar.”
He nodded.
“One hundred cents is one dollar.”
“Exactly,” I said. I wanted at least one member of the family to be good with money. I smiled thinking again of that zero balance and smiled even bigger when I realized that since my debt had been cleared, despite my stress levels with Adam, Emerson’s illness, and the kids, I hadn’t bought one single thing. Not so much as a juice box, which Mom was handling right now. It would be a good chance for me to build up our savings.
Caroline walked into my bedroom, Grammy on her heels. “Well, hello there,” I said. “Did the screaming bring you up?”
“Something like that,” Grammy said, looking around at the floor. The room was fairly neat, but AJ’s school things were spread everywhere. I thought again how much easier it would get when Taylor was three or four and could do work at the same time as AJ.
I sensed an ambush coming, but I wasn’t sure what sort of ambush it would be. “So,” Caroline started, “I have the best idea.”
“No,” I said.
Caroline crossed her arms, looking hurt. “Not no,” she said. “You don’t even know what I’m going to say.”
“Right,” I said, “but I can already tell I don’t like it.”
Grammy laughed.
I ran my hand through AJ’s hair while Grammy said, “Wow, AJ, I’m going to bring my change up here and let you sort it.”
He lit up. “OK. That would be so cool. Wouldn’t it, Mommy?”
I nodded and grinned at him. “Hurry up,” I said to Caroline. “I need to go get Taylor out of time-out.”
“I was just thinking that our poor mother has hardly been able to work for months and the last month wasn’t able to work at all.”
I wasn’t sure what she was getting at.
“I thought it would be nice,” Caroline continued, “if we helped her at the store so she could get caught up on all her design projects.”
I still didn’t say anything but eyed her warily.
She continued, “I could run the store, you could paint a little.” She paused. “I thought we could market these cool live paint sessions with you, and it would really help sell your art.”
“What a waste of your breath,” I said, getting up off the floor.
“What do you mean?” Caroline asked.
I walked toward the boys’ room and said, “I mean, I said ‘no’ to begin with. That’s still my answer, and everything in between was just a waste of breath.”
Caroline leaned against the door jamb, arms crossed, as I knelt down in front of a now-calm Taylor. “Taylor, you were in time-out for not listening to Mommy. When Mommy speaks, we listen, and we always do what Mommy says right away.”
The new discipline book I was reading said this was more effective for kids under the age of three than trying to explain why the exact behavior was wrong, i.e., pushing over AJ’s coin stack.
“Do you have anything to say to Mommy?”
Taylor nodded, his little lip stuck out. “Sorry, Mommy.”
He hugged me, and I said, “Thank you, Taylor. You may go play now.”
I was so relieved. Some days this routine took an hour because the child absolutely refused to apologize, and we’d have to keep repeating the cycle. It was exhausting. But it was working.
When I got up, Grammy was standing behind me. “Darling,” she said gently, “I know you’ve been having some money troubles, and it’s time for you to stand on your own two feet. You need to be able to support yourself in case . . .”
She trailed off, and I could feel the anger welling up inside me. “In case what, Grammy?” I paused. “There’s no ‘in case.’ Adam is coming home. Adam supports our family. That’s it and that’s final. I don’t want to hear about it again.”
“No,” Grammy said, putting her hands on her hips. “I’m going to say this. I love you, Sloane. You’re a beautiful, talented, artistic bright light. It has bothered me for years that once you married Adam, you became this . . .” She paused, searching for the words, then finished, “this Stepford wife.”
I gasped, and Caroline scolded, “Grammy!”
The anger was rising in my chest. “How could you say anything negative about Adam at a time like this?”
“Darling,” Grammy said. “I’m not saying anything negative about Adam. Adam is perfect. It’s you who’s the problem.”
I wanted to protest again, as tears of humiliation sprung to my eyes. I wanted to fight her on this. But I knew she wasn’t wrong. I had lost myself, and I needed to do something for me—before it was too late.
All the same, I was indignant as I walked back to my bedroom. Who was she to even consider that Adam wouldn’t come home? Of course he would. It was preposterous to consider any other scenario. Still, it would be nice to get out of the house a little bit more. And going back to work would get me to my savings goal much faster.
I turned so quickly Caroline almost bumped right into me. “I will help Mom at the store, but I will not paint in public.” I was really enjoying painting. Loving it, actually. But it wasn’t time.
Caroline put her hands up. “Fine,” she said.
“That’s my girl,” Grammy said.
Caroline squealed. “I’ve already signed the boys up for Mother’s Morning Out.”
I looked down at my precious little babies on the floor, the babies who had never been cared for by anyone outside of their family—except for a couple of moms on post who, let’s face it, were my family too. How could I possibly leave them?
Then AJ picked up one of my hair ties and flicked it at Taylor. Taylor started crying. I looked at Caroline. “When do I start?”