“Put him down,” she told me. I gasped and startled the baby in my arms.
“Violet! Why are you in here?”
“Put him down.”
She spoke calmly, directly. As though it were a threat. I sensed she was somewhere near the closet; I couldn’t see her in the faint spread of light from under the closed door. I turned slowly, trying to catch a different perspective of the room, and waited, letting my eyes find the nursery’s objects in the dark. Her voice came from the other end this time.
“Put him down.”
“Go back to bed, honey. It’s three in the morning. I’ll come in and rub your back.”
“I won’t,” she said slowly, her voice low, “until you put him down.”
My chest began to tighten—that feeling again, the creep of anxiety. It was back in an instant, like she’d snapped her fingers to wake me up from her spell. That tone used to haunt me. I can’t go there again with you, I thought, my mouth dry. Why had she been in here? What was she doing?
I’d huffed to show her how silly she was being, but I listened to her.
I laid Sam in his crib and felt around the mattress for Benny. He always held it near his face. I couldn’t find it.
“Violet, do you know where Benny is?”
She tossed it at me and left the room. She’d taken the bunny from his crib. She’d been watching him while he slept.
She’d been so close to him.
I closed the door behind me and followed her to her room.
I sat softly on the edge of her bed. I slipped my hand up the back of her strawberry-patterned pajama top onto her perfect, silky skin. She loved to have her back rubbed. By you.
“Don’t touch me. Get away from me.”
I pulled my hand out of her shirt. “Have you been in there before to watch Sam sleep at night? Do you do that sometimes?”
She didn’t answer.
My heart raced as I went back to our bed, slowing at Sam’s closed door to make sure he was quiet. I was ashamed of myself for the thoughts that came to my mind. And then: I could bring him to my bed. I could make sure he’s safe. Just for tonight. Just this once.
We were past this. We were supposed to be past this.
I took my phone out of the bedside table drawer and I looked at photos of her until you stirred gently beside me, bothered by the blue light. I was looking to find something in her face, but I didn’t know what. I went to Sam’s room and brought him back into bed with me.
40
She’s just been so good lately, you know? It came from nowhere.”
We were in bed the next morning, early, Sam on the floor with his board books. I lied and said Sam wouldn’t settle after Violet had been in his room and that’s why I’d brought him into our bed. I rolled into you, missing your warmth. You reached for your phone and I studied you. Your chest, the new gray hairs, the way you twirled them between your fingers while you read your emails.
“You’re probably making something out of nothing. Again.”
But here’s what you didn’t understand: There weren’t many places my mind wouldn’t go. My imagination could tiptoe slowly into the unthinkable before I realized where I was headed. While pushing a swing or peeling sweet potatoes. The thoughts I had were awful, they were harrowing, but there was something satisfying about letting myself go there. The extent of how far she might go. What could happen. How my worst fears might feel if they came true. What I would do. What would I do?
Enough. I’d snap back and cleanse my mind: The children. The squeals. The life in their eyes. Everything is just fine.
I left the kids with the babysitter after school and joined Grace for a pedicure. The sitter was coming once a week then, a small break I cherished. I picked a color called Charcoal Dreams that felt suitable for the new chill in the air and tried not to breathe too deeply as the woman picked at my unloved cuticles. She put my foot on her thigh and seemed to be bracing herself for the work of a tradesman—the skin on my heels could have been shaved with a cheese grater. Petroleum jelly at night, she suggested, under a thick pair of socks. I didn’t care enough about my heels to do something like that and almost told her, but this was her life after all—feet—so I simply thanked her for the tip.
Grace talked about the vacation she’d just returned from. Cabo with her mother for her seventieth birthday. The bartender had made them prickly pear margaritas at the swim-up bar. Something about a new self-tanner. I tuned her out. I thought of the kids at home, of how the babysitter said she would tidy the kids’ bedrooms. Of how Violet would want to play in the basement instead, and Sam would whine until he was plopped down there, too. He wanted nothing more than to be near her lately, always reaching for her when she walked by, and calling out for her from the crib—“Bye-ette! Bye-ette!”—when he woke up in the morning. That made me smile, thinking of his broken baby talk. Grace moved on to some brothers she had met, something about a rancher from Iowa. Were there ranches in Iowa? I thought of that space down there in the basement where they’d be. It was unfinished, slightly damp, but clean enough for Sam to cruise around now that he was on the move. I thought of how we needed a new carpet. Something with a low pile, easy to clean. And some storage for toys. I thought of how you stored your sports stuff down there, too, how your golf bag barely fit down the narrow staircase. Of how you’d put your clubs down there the day before. Of how Violet liked to pull them out and pretend she was at the driving range. I thought of the sitter always wanting to clean, even though I told her she didn’t have to. Of Sam obsessed with Violet’s every move. Of the weight of the driver in her hand. Of the way I’d seen her swing it. Like a weapon. Of his small, feathery head. Of how easily she could do it. Of how it would take only a second. Of the crack. Of whether or not there would be blood. Brain damage, or just blood?