Excerpt: Childish Things

Ella was concerned about monsters again.

She poked one chubby finger towards the corner of the room. "What if something comes out from over there?" she asked.

"Over here?" Sandra scooted across the brightly colored rug, not bothering to stand up. It was a very small room. She peered at the small space between the dresser and wall. "What should we put here to make it safer?"

"How about Brown Bear? He is very strong. And brown."

"Brown Bear sounds like an excellent idea." Sandra pulled the big fuzzy teddy bear out of the stuffed animal basket and added him to the army of sentries lining the room.

"Now do you think you could go to sleep?" She tried to keep the exasperation out of her voice, but tonight the already long bedtime routine was stretching past the two-hour mark. She'd flipped the well-worn lullaby tape twice and wasn't sure if she could take another run through of "There Was An Old Woman..."

She though it was a somewhat gruesome selection for children's bedtime music anyway... I guess she'll die was not the best thought to drift off to sleep with. It was the same with the children's books though-- trying to avoid too much commercial Disney crap meant turning to the classics. And they seemed to require at least one beheading, blinding, stabbing, imprisonment, and-- absolutely always-- a forced marriage.

Why can't they make Fairyland a nice place? she wondered as she knee-walked back to the side of the bed and picked up a big squat pink volumn of Illustrated Classics for Girls. She flipped through the pages of witches, knights, and princess princess princess. Because it's not a nice place... came her own answer. She shook her head and scowled for a second. This was no time for such dark thoughts. She pulled on a tired small and started in on The Princess that Wouldn't Marry A Frog Under Pain of Bandishment or something like that.

Two princess and ten minutes of off-key singing later, Ella was sprawled on her back, pink Cupid-bow lips gently parted, snoring softly.
Sandra slowly stood up, wincing as her knee popped loudly, but Ella didn't move an eyelash. She backed out of the bedroom, ready to freeze at the slightest movement, turned and tip-toed down the hall. Past the bathroom she began to relax. He shoulders dropped a notch and she rolled her eyes briefly heavenward -- or towards the upstairs neighbor, hoping tonight wouldn't bring any 3am thumps or bumps. That was a long one.

She turned into the tiny kitchen. The mess wasn't too bad. A few minutes of dishes, a quick wipe down to get ketchup fingerprints off the table, crumbs off the counter. Then she pulled a water glass out of the cupboard and a bottle of twist-off top white wine from the fridge. She didn't quite fill the glass, but close enough. She felt empty-headed, not letting herself acknowledge that it just might actually be the end of the day. Not until she was sitting down on the couch, feet on the peeling white coffee table, starring at the black TV screen. There was something restive about the black screen. It was like the moment after leaving a loud concert when your ears still buzzed, expecting the next barrage of sound and finding nothing...

She was waiting for the next demand, the next squeal, the next bump-and-cry, the next moment, basically, of being a mom. But, now, a little after 9pm on a Tuesday night, there was the slimmest of chances that it wouldn't come. Not, at least, for the next 10 hours. Tomorrow, bright and early, it would start up as if she'd only blinked, not fallen asleep for 10 hours. Would it be a demand for a particular breakfast? Or princess dress? or just a wordless wail?

Sandra sighed, sipped her wine, and tryed to call up some of the good parts of the day. She fastforwarded through the tantrums that always accompanied getting up and out the door, the guilt of leaving her at play school, the bit of her mind that never stopped worrying all through her work day, the rush to pick her up... then there was what was supposed to be their fun time. Playing before dinner, maybe a little TV after... but always there were other thigns that needed to get done: phone calls, dishes, laundry, just the endless chore of picking-up-and-putting-away. What was supposed to be fun time for the two of them always dissolved into a half-hearted attempt to get her distracted enough so she could get something done. Or trying to get Ella to help out-- kids her age were supposed to love to help out. But a dish would be knocked over, water spilled, dirt-piles stepped in, and Sandra would find her temper flaring, this tiny infraction just the last straw after another long day.

It's not as if she were working down in a coal mine, she tried to tell herself for the tenth time that day. It was like a mantra: she didn't have it bad, not at all, not in the grand sceme of things. They had a roof over their head (even if that "roof" was occupied by a loudmouth 50 year-old who tramped and stumbled around his apartment all hours of the night), food on the table (not always take-out), and, if not a life of leisure, at least one that let them go to the park or museum on the weekends.

She took a sip of the sharp, too-sweet wine. Yep. It was more than 99% of all the people who had ever lived had managed.
She rubbed her feet together, unaware that she'd also started to worry at the edge of a frayed nail on her pinky finger. Too tired to focus on a book, too worried about waking Ella with TV or radio, she found herself slipping into to the usual evening game of "how did I get here?"

It was a little bit dangerous, she knew, this indulgence in day dreaming. At least her busy day meant that usually it wasn't much effort to keep her mind on her work-- be it work-work or the work of being a single mom. But at night, on her own, it was almost impossible not to let her mind wander a little. She was careful to keep her thoughts in check-- just the past. The real past. No fairy tales, no ideal fantasies about the future. It was too easy to get lulled into that old familiar trance. And that was not how the bills got payed, the dishes done, or the toddler cared for.

Wasn't there a line-- from a book? a poem? a long-ago cancled TV show? about the time for putting childish things aside... or was it the things of childhood? Something like that. No matter, the words didn't matter. It was the principle of the thing that appealed to her. And it sounded better than "For every season... turn turn turn," which would just get stuck in her head.

The past. The recent past. Those were safe enough streets to wander down. Not always pleasant-- she wasn't always very kind to herself about the choices she'd made, how things had played out. But she could have done worse. She was hardly the first girl to marry to fast, too young. First love. It seemed impossible that it would ever sour, ever burn itself out.

You grow up thinking marriage was it-- the Happily Ever After that lead to some fuzzy, ill-defined, but undeniably good and fulfilling future. Even three-year-old Ella knew that was how it worked. The problem was finding the right guy, slaying the dragons, convincing the cruel, overbearing King or evil Queen to let you marry. Once the princess was freed from her tower, what could possibly go wrong?

Your prince could decide you're insane for one thing. You could get pregnant two months before the wedding; Prince Charming could loose his job and end up mopping around the house, revealing all sorts of annoying habbits while you hover over the toilet with morning sickness. He could decide that a fairy tale isn't as interesting as a made for TV movie-- hanging out with the guys, starting to visit bars during the day instead of looking for work, resenting her career (which managed to move forward despite the three-month-long spat of morning absenteeism). And, despite all this, the wedding-- because you couldn't just back out of something like that. I mean, there were relatives coming from out of state what your life and future happiness compared to non-refundable hotel bookings?

She snorted into her wine. This wasn't quite the meander down memory lane she had been hoping for this evening. But there it was pulled up in front of her in full technocolor glory. It was stepping outside the here-and-now that was important, where it took her was less so. And for some reason she didn't want to dwell on, the negative memories always came through a little sharper than the positive ones. Probably because part of you likes the punishment-- picking at old scabs she'd realized once and hadn't ventured to reexamine the issue since. Self-realization and introspection were not, despite the time she spent mooning over the past-- usful endeavors. No, it was better to watch it all roll by like some day time soap opera rerun blarring in the background while her mother ironed a never ending stack of cloth napkins.

Nope, too far she chided herself, bringing her thoughts back to the more recent past. Further back, before college, before Joe, things were a little muddled. It was hard to stick to the facts. There were too many day dreams layered on day dreams. Too much of her time spent in that in-between state she just barely skimmed now. No venturing into the forest, just walking in the sun-lit meadow, occasionally stepping into the shade of the trees. But that was all. If she was tempted to go any further she might as well stop now. Go pay some bills, check the news or weather or read about the TV shows she didn't watch. She didn't pay for internet access, but could almost always pick up a WiFi signal from one of the neighbors. Of course she prefered to "borrow" bandwitch from the upstairs guy-- seemed only fair.

She called up one of her favorite memories. A cool morning on campus. Meeting Joe for coffee before class-- back before he dropped out. There had been something so grown-up, so business-like about it-- even though they were both usually scruffy-haired and wearing some variation of black or gray sweats and jeans, usually with the school logo across the back. But there was steaming cups of coffee, and the hustle and bustle of students and professors rustling papers, organizing notes, double checking this or that in oversized, spiral-bound readers.

She would always get their first-- usually prompt by nature, she made of point of grabbing a seat in the back, but with a view of the door, so she could watch him come in, see him scan the faces in line before looking around the tables for her. That was the best part. That he was looking for her. Sometimes, if it took him a few extra seconds to find her on an especially crowded morning during mid-terms or something, she would see a tiny crease wrinkle his brow. And it thrilled her. He was worried, worried that she wasn't there. As if she could stay away. As if she ever wouldn't be there for him.

Of course, in the end, she was the one who left him.