Then I noticed a cell phone sitting on the desk. It was vibrating with an incoming call. “Watson’s Organic Grocery” it said on the screen. I hesitated. Should I pick it up? I let it go to voice mail. When I glanced at the screen again I saw there were twenty-one unread text messages. I opened one or two and quickly surmised that this must be my work phone. Everything seemed to be entirely related to Lolly’s Pops, and none of the questions and points of business were things I was familiar with. I thought briefly of trying to wade through the messages but decided to ignore them all for now. I knew from my day at Toast how complicated stepping into the running of a business was. And I wasn’t here to run Lolly’s Pops. I was here to spend time with Rory and now the girls. I set the phone back on the desk and closed the door to the office gently behind me.
While I waited for Freya to awaken, I tidied the house and did a load of laundry. Before I threw it in the washer I clasped Rory’s ratty old T-shirt to my chest, allowing myself that small indulgence, burying my nose in it. Every moment seemed significant and yet so normal. It was all so fleeting, so precious and mundane. I made myself some lunch, did the dishes, and puttered around, waiting for Freya to awaken from her nap and Sophia to get home from school. A car horn honked in the drive at a little after three. Sophia came bounding up the driveway, her giant backpack bouncing on her shoulders.
“How was your day, sweetie?” I gave her a big squeeze, marveling at the fragile birdlike feel of her collarbone, the scent of her hair. Syrup and strawberry shampoo. I had missed her. In some way I felt I had been missing these two girls all my life. It was a thought that cut me to the bone.
“Good. We had spelling, and I got four right and one wrong,” she told me gravely. “I forgot what makes the ‘sh’ sound, so I put ‘sip’ but it was supposed to be ‘ship.’ ”
“Well, four out of five is still good,” I assured her. “You’re stilllearning, right? Do you want a snack? How about we feed that growing brain of yours?” I walked with her into the kitchen, relishing the simplicity of the moment. I cut apple slices and found some Annie’s cheddar bunny crackers in the pantry. Since when did I allow so many processed snacks in the house? What had happened to my eco-friendly, less-is-more, farm-to-table ethics? Surveying my pantry stuffed with Costco-size snack boxes, I surmised that those ethics must have died a slow death somewhere along the road of parenthood.
As Sophia ate her snack, we chatted about her day. A boy named Atticus had pulled her hair on the swing set. The class was getting a hamster as a class pet, and she wanted to name it Butterscotch because her teacher, Mrs.Thatcher, told them it was going to be a golden color, but another girl, Isabelle, insisted they should name it Goldie, which Sophia felt lacked imagination.
“Butterscotch is a better name because it’s poetic,” she told me earnestly. “Gold is just a color.”
Toward the end of snack time, Freya came trudging down the stairs, trailing Bunny, groggy from her nap and in a grouchy mood. I plied her with crackers and apple slices, which seemed to improve her outlook slightly, but she still glowered at me like a tiny gremlin from the table.
After snack they begged me to play with them. For the next couple of hours we made Play-Doh animals, drew pictures, galloped around the house with My Little Ponies, had a dance party, pretended to be going on a pirate treasure hunt, and played hide-and-seek. I was buzzing with energy and completely exhausted at the same time. Being a mommy was incredibly hard work.
The moments ticked by slowly as the afternoon wore on. It was all normal and slightly boring, and yet I was captivated by the girls. Every word, every second, I fell more in love with them. I couldn’t get enough. Was this what motherhood felt like? I wondered, glancing at theirheads bent low over a game of Chutes and Ladders as Sophia helped Freya move forward five spaces. Was it this sweet ache lodged in the center of your breastbone, a powerful feeling of protection and adoration of these little people in equal parts that eclipsed all exhaustion, all inconvenience? It was boredom and panic and satisfaction and heart-melting sweetness all rolled into one. It was its own kind of bliss.
I kept my eyes firmly off of the clock, choosing to ignore the fact that the hours were slowly slipping away, that my time with them would soon be over. It was not nearly enough. Maybe parenthood always felt a little like this, like there was so much love and never quite enough time. It all was going so fast.
Just as the sun was sinking low over the trees we heard the garage door open.
“Daddy’s home!” Sophia jumped to her feet in excitement.
Dinner! I hadn’t even thought about dinner. I panicked for a moment, but when the door opened, Rory was carrying a pizza box.
“Honey, I’m home!” he exclaimed in a very poor imitation of Ricky Ricardo fromI Love Lucy, then dropped into his normal voice. “Sorry I’m late. Traffic was the pits.”
I untangled the plastic diamond tiara from my hair and gave him a joyful, sloppy kiss, taking the pizza from him.
“Daddy, Daddy, pizza, pizza!” The girls were bobbing around him, bubbling with anticipation.
“It’s my turn to choose the movie for family movie night!” Sophia shouted jubilantly.
“Yes, but first a bath for you two little rascals,” Rory announced, planting a loud kiss on Freya’s cheek. “Why are you so sticky?” He pulled back and looked at her skeptically. She giggled in response. He shot me a look over her head. “Want me to take them up and bathe them?”
“I’ll do it,” I offered quickly. “You get things set up down here.”
Bath time was a twenty-minute affair involving lots of bubbles, bath crayons, tears over Freya having her hair washed, an argument between the girls about who got to sit near the tub faucet as that was the place with the most bubbles, and at least two tsunami waves of water over the side of the tub that drenched the front of my sundress.
At last the girls were moderately clean, toweled off, and in matching rainbow-unicorn nightgowns. We ate slices of cheese pizza and cut-up apples and all cuddled up together on the couch while we watchedFrozen, Sophia’s pick.
“Do you think we’ll ever get to watch a different movie?” Rory whispered in my ear. “I literally had a dream that I was Elsa lost in the frozen woods last week. And I was singing all the songs, even the high notes. Are they too young forAlien?” He was holding the remote as he was the appointed fast-forwarder for any parts Freya found scary. The girls were transfixed, humming along to every song.
“If we’re lucky, maybe we can swap it out forBeauty and the BeastorFinding Nemonext year,” I murmured back, nestling against him on the comfy couch. He leaned his head against mine, and for one perfect moment, the world stood still. I let myself stay there in the moment, listening to his heartbeat, curled up against him, the two girls so close I could reach out and smooth their wet hair. I had never felt so utterly content. I wanted it to last forever.
31
Both girls drifted offbefore the film was over. I took Freya, and Rory picked up Sophia. Freya wrapped her arms and legs around me like a starfish, still asleep. I gently carried her upstairs, careful not to rouse her. We tucked them into bed in their room, standing over them for a silent moment. The night-light illuminated their sleeping little faces, angelic in stillness. I would not see them wake in the morning. The thought constricted my heart with grief. I would never again hear Sophia call me Mommy or turn around to find Freya streaking through the living room in her cowboy-bunny underpants.
“We sure made good ones, huh?” Rory whispered, gazing down at the girls with a look of pure adoration. I nodded wordlessly, unable to speak around the lump in my throat. I’d known them for only a day, it was true, but it felt unbearable to lose them now. Every day from now on I would know that they were what I could have had.
For the first time I wondered if it had been a mistake to take the lemon drop. It was agony to think of never seeing them again. It seemed impossible. I leaned over and pressed a kiss on Sophia’s forehead,smoothing Freya’s flyaway hair and burying my nose against her pillowy cheek that was still somehow slightly sticky, even after a good scrubbing. I looked back once more from the doorway, cementing the scene in my mind. For a day they’d called me Mommy. For a day they had been mine.
In the dimness of the landing, Rory came up behind me and wrapped his arms around me. I leaned back into him, resting my head against his chest. I needed him.
“Want a drink? We can sit by the pool.” He sounded tired.
