Chapter 15

Ariel

After mothers’ group the next day, I nibbled on fancy crackers and eyed Justine. She wouldn’t look at me, and I feared our friendship was over as soon as it had begun. I was about to give up on her when she showed up at my elbow, her smile as in place as her outfit. She was as good at being perfect as I was at being a wreck. I made myself smile back at her.

“I’m sorry,” I said after I swallowed my mouthful of cracker. “I should have told the girls they couldn’t be on the trampoline. I should have respected your wishes.”

She waved my words away like stinky cigar smoke. “Bygones,” she said. “I’ve already forgotten about it.”

“But—”

She patted my shoulder and pointed toward the emptying room. “Better go get your boys,” she said and whisked away. I slunk out of the room feeling chastised by Justine’s dismissal and unconvinced of her profession of forgiveness. She didn’t seem like one who moved forward quite so easily.

Later that afternoon I was calling the boys down to lunch only to be completely ignored except by Lucky, who always showed up when food was being offered. I headed in the direction of their playroom, grumbling and snatching up stray toys and discarded items as I walked. “Always look for things you can tidy up while you’re on your way somewhere else,” Justine had instructed me. I carried the items up the stairs and moved to the doorway of the playroom to find Donovan with a flashlight looking up Dylan’s nose while Duncan sat beside them on his haunches, a worried look on his face. He glanced sideways just in time to spot me.

“Uh-oh, guys,” he said and pointed. Donovan dropped the flashlight and looked at his brother as if to say, “I tried, but you’re on your own.”

“Dylan, what’s going on?” I asked, not wanting to know the answer yet compelled to ask.

I looked down to see Dylan pointing to a Star Wars action-figure gun jammed halfway up his nose. “It’s way up there, Mom,” he said, sounding like he was afraid to breathe. He moaned. “Is it going to be stuck there forever?”

I resisted the urge to scare him by saying yes and instead walked to the phone to dial the number for the pediatrician. After I had made an appointment, I directed the boys into the minivan. I only thought I was going to have the afternoon at home. Not wanting to sit for an undetermined amount of time with three wild boys in a small waiting room, I impulsively dialed another number. Justine answered right away, as if she was waiting by the phone. I explained what had happened and asked if she would watch Donovan and Duncan while I took Dylan to the doctor’s office to retrieve the offending weaponry. Justine was only too happy to come to my rescue.

As I drove away from her house, I thanked God for good neighbors and hoped that, if nothing else, we could at least be that to each other.

I smiled at the receptionist as we walked in, and she waved us to the waiting-room seats. Dylan ran off to play with the trains in the kids’ area, and I tried not to think of what kinds of germs could be lurking on those surfaces. I hadn’t thought to bring anything to read, and the doctor’s office typically had only medical magazines. There was only so much information on treating chicken pox and head lice that I could enjoy. I sighed and leaned my head against the wall, closing my eyes. The low noises of the office lulled me into a twilight sleep—aware of my surroundings but resting at the same time. It was as close as I came to a nap, and I welcomed the chance to sit quietly and think of nothing at all.

When I opened my eyes, Erica and her daughter were sitting right across from me. She smiled, and I smiled back without showing any teeth, then busied myself with the magazines that I hadn’t been interested in earlier. Heather snuggled against Erica, and while I wanted to ask why they were there, how long they had been coming to that doctor, and other things, I kept my head down and didn’t say a word to her.

When they called my name and I looked up, our eyes met again and something like recognition flashed in her eyes. Recognition and hurt. I collected Dylan from the train table and followed the nurse to the exam room, not looking back at Erica so I didn’t have to see the look on her face again. Part of me wanted to run back and apologize to her, but another part of me remembered Justine’s words of warning. I hardly knew her, after all. I owed her nothing. The doctor retrieved the toy without much fanfare. Thankfully, Erica wasn’t in the waiting room when we left.

I swung by Justine’s house to get the boys, and she invited me in as though the trampoline fiasco had never happened. We talked about the mural she wanted to help me paint on the large blank wall in my bathroom, and she showed me pictures of some of her other work. When I congratulated her on her talent, she shrugged, spots of color blooming in her cheeks. She looked away, showing the boys a space mural she had painted for a friend, which of course prompted them to beg her to do the same for them. I told them I needed a bathroom mural first. She leaned in, smiling. “I used to beg Laura to let me paint that wall. I know just what we can do. It’ll look perfect.”

Just before we left, I told her about seeing Erica. “I didn’t talk to her,” I said. I hoped she would tell me not to be ridiculous, that we should treat people with basic kindness and that I had taken it too far. I waited for her to say something like that, something the leader of a large Christian mothers’ group would say.

Instead she patted me on the shoulder. “That was probably a good thing,” she said. “No use in encouraging her. You are smart to protect yourself and your family. Your marriage,” she added, raising her eyebrows.

I nodded soberly and ushered the boys out the door. As I drove toward home, I ignored the gnawing feeling in my stomach, writing it off to hunger because I still hadn’t eaten lunch.