The Push, Ashley Audrain [popular novels TXT] 📗

I felt like someone who’d been lost at sea having human contact again. I ran my finger along her forehead, brushing back her wispy fringe. She let me kiss her. She pulled the bottle away from her mouth and sighed – we were both so tired of fighting each other.

‘Are you napping when she naps?’ You spoke quietly, too, studying us.

‘I can’t nap,’ I snapped, the calm draining from my chest. She wiggled away from me. ‘There’s too much to do. Laundry. I’m trying to write. My mind won’t stop spinning.’

I tossed the bottle onto the coffee table and a squirt of milk sprayed on the pages I’d printed. I was thinking of showing them to you that night – it had been so long since you asked about what I was working on. I watched the beads of milk drip from the rubber nipple onto my sentences, blotting the ink.

You changed your clothes and came back and fell onto the couch beside me. Your hand patted my thigh. There was a time I would have asked about your day. The sadness of the distance that had grown between us again over the past few months was something we didn’t discuss. I was willing to let it fester in the background, and it seemed you were, too.

‘What’s that?’ You gestured to the wet pages.

‘Nothing.’

‘Confirm her day-care spot, if you want to. But only three days a week, okay? We didn’t budget for this.’ You rubbed your forehead.

I tried my best for the rest of that week. But we fell back into our daily combat. She started day care the following Monday and I can still feel the enormous sense of relief that washed over me when I placed her down on the welcome mat. She stared at her yellow rain boots until the teacher came to take her hand. She didn’t look at me when I said good-bye and I never turned around as I walked away across the wet lawn and out of the gate.

23

Your mother gave Violet her first doll.

‘Maternal instinct starts young,’ she said as she unwrapped fresh fish from the market and gestured to Violet on the floor. Violet had the plastic-headed baby tucked under her arm and hadn’t put it down since she’d gotten it. Baaaybee, Violet sang over and over, and poked the wide fluttering eyes that had lashes thicker than mine. The doll had an artificial scent like baby powder and was dressed in a pink sleeper.

I drank my wine and watched your mother make dinner – she’d insisted on cooking cedar-planked salmon with maple sauce even though I’d offered to order in. Violet brought the baby doll to me and put her on my lap. ‘Mama. Baby.’

‘Yes, sweetie. She’s cute.’ I rocked and kissed the doll as she watched. ‘Your turn.’

She reached up to put her wide-open mouth on the baby’s bald head. I hadn’t seen her act this affectionately before, except with you, although I didn’t want to give your mother the satisfaction of saying so.

‘Good girl. Kisses.’

The smell of fish filled the apartment. Your father had taken you to the hockey game. They were staying in the city for three nights. A hotel. A matter of space, I had said, although we had bought a pullout sofa just for them when we first moved in. I was still so tired even though Violet was sleeping better – I was too on edge to have your mother in our home for all that time. My feelings for her were complicated. I felt desperate for her help, anyone’s help, but I had come to resent her capability, how easy she had made everything seem for your entire life.

‘How’s day care going for our sweet girl?’

‘Good, I think. She seems to really like the teachers. She’s learned so much in just a few weeks.’

She topped up my glass and bent to kiss Violet.

‘And you?’ she asked.

‘Me?’

‘You’ve been enjoying your free time?’

She had spent nearly two decades taking care of you and your sister at home. Baked pies. Ran the PTA. She had sewn every pillow, drape, napkin, place mat, and shower curtain herself. I watched her blond bob swing as she cooked, the same length and flip she wore in every gold-framed family photograph in the hallway of your childhood home.

‘I’ve been writing more and catching up on things around here.’

‘You must count down the hours until pickup. I always did, once they were in school. You want a bit of peace and quiet and then you spend all day thinking about them.’ She smiled to herself, chopping dill. ‘Fox seems to be enjoying her. I always knew he’d make a wonderful dad. Even when he was little.’

Violet clanged the stove with a whisk, the doll’s foot in her other hand.

‘He’s incredible. He’s … the perfect father.’ It was what she wanted to hear, and in some ways it was true.

She smiled to herself and picked up a lemon and then watched Violet play for a moment before she grated the rind. I bent down to lift Violet and take her to the bath. She flinched when she felt my touch and I knew I had set her off – the ever-present knot in my stomach tightened. She wailed, thrashing her body against the floor tiles.

‘Come on, honey, bath time.’ I didn’t want to battle in front of your mother. I picked her up as she kicked and screamed and took her to the bathroom. I shut the door and ran the water. Your mother knocked a few minutes later and spoke loudly over the crying.

‘Can I help?’

‘She’s just cranky, Helen. She’s tired.’ But she came in anyway. By then I was soaked and Violet was nearly purple with rage. I rinsed the soap from her hair with a tight grip under her arm. When I lifted her out she could barely breathe from the screaming.