“Actually, Aelgifu—sorry, Freydis—was already awake when I came in here. Which was why I was trying to lift her from the cot when I—”
“When you dropped her?” Hannah says.
“I wouldn’t call it a drop…” Mebel’s voice trails off guiltily. How in the world did she end up in this position, wringing her hands and standing like a guilty schoolkid in front of Hannah? She tries her best to channel her late mother-in-law, who had commanded fear out of all her daughters-in-law.
“What’s going on?” Sammy says, appearing in the doorway while yawning. “Why are the twins up so early?”
“Ask your mother!” Hannah snaps. She calls out to the nanny to follow her, and they leave the room with the twins, who are both shrieking by now.
The silence they leave behind them is thick and heavy. Mebel stares at her only son. Sammy stares after the open door with confusion. Then he turns toward her. “What happened?”
“I came in to check on my grandchildren.”
“Did you hear one of them crying or something?”
For a second, Mebel is tempted to lie and say yes. But then she thinks of Henk and the numerous lies he must have told her to cover up his affair, and the thought of lying, even if it is a small one, sickens her. “No. I just wanted to see them.” At the last word, her voice wobbles, threatening to break.
Sammy sighs. “Mami, I understand this must be a hard time for you. That’s why we’re here. We want to help you through this. But you can’t just barge into our bedrooms. We need”—he searches for the right word before finally settling on an English one—“boundaries.”
“What is this ‘boundaries’?” Mebel says suspiciously. She’ssuspicious of English words. English words are like men—inconsistent, fussy, and make you look stupid when you pick the wrong one.
“It’s like”—Sammy scratches his chin—“you know, like a wall that you can’t cross.”
“You mean like separate rooms? Don’t we have that already?” With a huff, she strides out of the kids’ bedroom and down the stairs.
Sammy hurries after her. “Kind of like separate rooms. But do you see how it defeats the purpose of sleeping in a separate room when you can just barge into our bedroom anytime you like?”
“I most certainly do not barge in anytime I like,” Mebel says in a reasonable tone of voice as she walks into the kitchen. “I always wait until morning, in case you are making me more grandbabies.”
Sammy closes his eyes. “You know what I mean. I don’t think it’s healthy for you to come into our room first thing in the morning.”
“It’s not first thing in the morning. I’ve had my breakfast,” she says, gesturing at the used dishes on the kitchen island. “I’ve had time to make you freshly squeezed vegetable juice—”
“Please, please stop making us the vegetable juice,” Sammy says.
“Nonsense, it’s so good for your gut health. Everything starts in the gut, you know. There’s a reason why it’s called the body’s second brain.”
“Mami, just—stop!”
Growing up, Samuel has always been a sweet-natured boy, quiet and shy. He rarely ever raised his voice. And so, in thismoment, when he does exactly that, it reaches deep into Mebel’s brain and freezes every part of her. She stares at him, dumbfounded. Her little boy, who now has a wife and three children. Her little boy, who is all grown up and has a family of his own. And it sinks in then, with terrifying clarity. Sammy doesn’t need her anymore. Even her grandchildren have no need for her. They all have nannies who know their routines much better than Mebel does. And the thought, terrifying in its coldness, seeps through her papery skin, spreading ice throughout her veins. If she is no longer needed as a wife or as a mother, then where does that leave her?
She thinks of her social circle. She and Henk belong to half a dozen clubs, each one more exclusive than the last, and so they have plenty of friends. But said friends are mutuals, and Mebel has no delusions about her inheriting any of them in the divorce. All the club memberships are under Henk’s name, after all, with her trailing along as “the spouse.”
“Mami? You okay?” Sammy is saying, and it sounds as though his voice is coming from so far away.
Mebel sees the future unraveling before her. Long days and even longer nights, the hours stretching like taffy until being conscious becomes an unbearable chore. Maybe she might pick up drinking, pretending that she has decided to become a whiskey connoisseur, sipping a glass each night, then two, then passing out drunk until late morning. She would waste away slowly, her skin puckering up like drying orange peel, the helpers whispering to one another about her slow demise as she gently decays in her lonesome.
I guess that’s how you’ll die, after all, her brain says.Notquite as exciting as being eaten by a shark in the swimming pool, but I daresay it would be less messy, and you could at least have an open casket funeral.
No. She mustn’t let that happen. She can’t. She clamps down on her spiraling thoughts. Without thinking, she says, “I won’t go down without a fight.”
Sammy regards her doubtfully. “Um…okay?”
“I mean it. I won’t!” Mebel’s chest rises impressively. “I am going to win your father back.”
Instead of applauding her, Sammy merely stands there and stares.
“For the children’s sake,” Mebel adds, in a magnanimous voice.Look at me, she thinks.Look how I’m setting aside my pride, my ego, and sacrificing everything for the sake of the kids.
