Stephanie Frazee
Carrie held the crying baby at arm’s length so Jared could see her breasts. “Look at this.”
Two streams of blood trickled from the underside of her left nipple.
Her husband looked up from his laptop. “What happened?”
Carrie gnashed her teeth together.
“Jesus.”
Benjy squirmed in Carrie’s hands, gurgled, and spit up.
“Mama, the baby is gross.” Madeline was on the living room rug cutting off her dolls’ hair with safety scissors.
“Jared?” Carrie indicated the mess with her eyes.
He had resumed typing. “Just set him down.”
“If I set him down, he will immediately roll over, and then I’ll have to clean spit up out of the rug.”
“Okay. One second. I’m sorry. I have to respond to this.”
Carrie’s arms were tired. Benjy twisted, and the spit up mashed between her fingers. The blood had trickled down to her waistband. “Jared, please.”
“One second. I’m sorry. I’m almost done.”
Their dog, wiry and arthritic, hobbled over to sniff the puddle of spit up. Carrie tried to push him away with her foot. Benjy screamed. “Jared. FFS.”
The dog’s tongue moved in slow arcs on the floor. Carrie pressed against his side with her foot. She could have booted him across the floor easily, but he might never walk again if she did, and she did not need a paralyzed dog on top of everything else.
“Mama. The dog is gross. Mama. Make the baby stop crying.”
Carrie kicked Madeline’s dolls aside. Shiny acrylic hairs spread across the rug. She laid Benjy down. He slammed his fists against the floor and wailed. “Jared.” Carrie gestured to the baby. The dog sniffed Benjy’s head, and his tail began winding up. “I’m going to clean myself up.”
“Okay. I’m sorry. At least he’s staying on his back.”
In the bathroom, Carrie washed her hands and wiped the blood from her stomach. Her stomach: a Japanese cheesecake. She grabbed the flesh of it and squeezed. Fury pulsed through her. She let go. Closed her eyes. Breathed. Unclenched her jaw. She examined the underside of her nipple. Two tiny horizontal incisions. She dug around in the drawer until she found the lanolin. She opened the cap. Not lanolin; it was diaper cream. She opened the drawer again. The sound of glass breaking came from the living room. The dog barked.
Madeline held her hands over her ears and rocked back and forth. “Mama. The dog is bad.”
Jared crouched with his laptop in one hand and pushed the dog away from the baby with the other. “His tail—my beer.”
Carrie lunged to pick up Benjy, who had rolled onto his stomach and was army-crawling across the rug toward a large piece of glass. He gripped an old rawhide, covered in hair and fuzz. His face was tomato-red and glistened with tears. Jared gave the dog another shove, and the dog reared back and vomited.
“Mama. The dog makes me sick.” Madeline flopped sideways to the floor.
Jared had frozen in place, his laptop held aloft in one hand, the other still out to hold off the dog, though it had disappeared down the hall.
“Paper towels, Jared. Go get them. Madeline, off the floor. There’s glass everywhere.”
Jared set his laptop on the couch and ran into the kitchen. “We’re out of paper towels!”
“Under the sink!”
Carrie scooted Madeline off the rug with her foot while holding Benjy. He dropped the rawhide and flailed at her breasts. She gave him the uninjured nipple. He calmed enough for her to pick a piece of glass out of his hair, another from the front of his shirt. He grabbed for her hair and she saw a thin line of blood on his palm. She spread open his hand but didn’t see any glass. She pressed the padded flesh and felt nothing sharp lodged in the cut, but there was a bite mark around one of his fingers. “Madeline! Did you bite your brother?”
“No. He’s too gross.”
Jared stopped at the edge of the living room. “I found them.” He set the paper towels flat on the floor and rolled them out over the vomit and beer, as if he were unrolling a carpet.
The paper towels unfurled across the rug, bounced over the broken glass, and stopped near Carrie’s feet. She wondered if the inability to use paper towels properly was grounds for divorce. She wondered if she should allow Madeline to continue playing with that piece of glass until she finally learned a lesson. She wondered what it would feel like to be a crying baby, free to scream and pound her fists on the ground. Maybe for the baby, it felt so good, so satisfying. She knew it didn’t feel good. She had seen it in Madeline, and now in Benjy: the fear. Their desperate eyes looking at her as though through a tunnel, having no way of knowing if she would see or hear or know what to do. It didn’t feel good, she knew. Being able to scream at anything that didn’t please you was just another stage of life impossible to appreciate at the time you experienced it.
Jared had torn the carpet of paper towels from the roll and was preparing to unroll another layer.
“Jared.” She slid her pinky into Benjy’s mouth to unlatch him, and he began crying again. “Take Benjy. Get Madeline out of here. All of you, go somewhere else.”
Carrie got the tub of disinfecting wipes, carpet spray, and a garbage bag. She wadded up the paper towels and threw them into the bag. She picked up pieces of glass and clumps of doll hair, wiped up the spilled beer and dog vomit, sprayed the rug. Benjy’s cries carried through the walls. Madeline shouted that the baby was too loud, stomped down the hall, and slammed her door. Carrie put away the wipes and paper towels and carpet spray, set the trash bag in the garage, vacuumed the remaining pieces of glass and strands of doll hair, and rolled the vacuum back into the closet.
Benjy was still crying and Carrie was still shirtless and now she had to pee. She went into the bathroom. As soon as she sat down, Jared came in.
“Carrie, he needs you.” Jared held Benjy out to her. “I’ve got to check on Madeline. She’s been too quiet.”
Carrie took Benjy to the bedroom. There was a smear of blood on the sheet from when he’d bitten her. She offered her intact nipple. She held his fist until his body began to relax, and she opened his palm. No sign of blood or a cut, as if she had imagined it. But the bite mark on his index finger. The imprint of incisors, both top and bottom. She dropped his hand.
Jared came back in with his laptop and propped himself up in the bed. “She seems exhausted. She’s tearing out sheets of her coloring book to relax.”
“As one does.” Carrie sniffed Benjy’s head. “We have to give him a bath later. He smells like beer.”
She closed her eyes against the onslaught of the room. Dirty clothes spilled out of the laundry basket, Madeline’s Lego bricks under the bed where Jared had kicked them a few days ago, a half-eaten sleeve of crackers and an empty box of cookies on the nightstand. Next to the dresser, the bag they’d taken to the hospital when she’d had Benjy, still not unpacked, the stress balls sliced by her fingernails and dirty clothes festering inside.
When she’d been pregnant with Madeline, they’d taken a natural birthing class. The instructor had given the mothers time each week to try different pain management methods. They held ice in their palms so they could figure out what worked best to distract them from the pain. For Carrie, it had been squeezing something with her other, ice-free hand. She’d tried squeezing Jared’s hand, but after a moment he’d pulled away from her, shook his hand out. She tried his forearm, his upper arm, his thigh. He’d cried out so loudly, the other participants had turned to look. Some of the other fathers had laughed sympathetically, but Carrie had been embarrassed, and concerned, by her husband’s impuissance. She’d felt his inability to take the pain she inflicted was somehow related to his capacity to be a good father. He’d bought her stress balls to squeeze instead. She had destroyed them while giving birth to Madeline. He’d called her Wolverine when he threw them in the trash. He’d given her a new set of stress balls before she gave birth to Benjy, and she’d decimated them as well.
During labor, she had groaned and pushed and growled and squeezed and tore and bled and bled and bled. Jared had been infuriatingly gentle with her, patting her hand, dabbing her sweat with a small cloth, trying to feed her ice cubes. So many times he had handed her baby Madeline, and now baby Benjy, so they could feed from her body; they pulled and pawed and cried and screamed and bit. This had been the root of her concern, she now knew: motherhood was violence, and her milquetoast husband could never understand it.
Madeline appeared at the door, her eyelids heavy. “Mama.” She climbed into the bed and leaned into Carrie. Carrie scooted the baby onto her chest so she could lie on her back, and she offered Madeline her arm as a pillow.
Jared leaned over Madeline and kissed the top of Carrie’s head. “It’s getting crowded.” He took his laptop and left the room.
Soon, Madeline’s breathing evened, and she flung her arm across Carrie’s stomach. Her hand unfurled. Carrie saw a line of blood across the palm. This was the hand that had been cut. She had mixed them up, her children’s hands. She was always mixing things up these days. Carrie stared at the line of blood until her eyes unfocused, and the blood doubled and tripled. She picked up Madeline’s hand. She licked her finger and wiped away the blood. The cut stretched from the base of Madeline’s index finger to the opposite corner of her palm. It was superficial, the kind of cut or scrape of mysterious origin Madeline came home from preschool with all the time, healed and forgotten in a few days. Carrie set down Madeline’s hand. She brought her finger to her mouth and licked away her daughter’s blood.
Benjy’s head rolled onto Carrie’s stomach. His mouth hung open, a drop of milk balanced in the corner of his lips. His two little teeth. In another six months or so, he’d have most of the rest of them. In a few more years, all her children’s baby teeth would be sitting in two little bags in Carrie’s dresser drawer, hidden under her bras and underwear, somewhere they’d never look, traded for dollar bills or more of the small plastic toys that were already taking over the house and turning it into a very expensive dumpster.
They pressed against her. Madeline sweated into her side, Benjy’s head on her stomach. How many more times would this happen? This could be Madeline’s last time napping with Carrie like this. There was no way to know something was happening for the last time until long after it was over—the last time they’d reach for her, the last time she’d carry them, the last time they’d fall asleep on her. She would have to get up soon to make dinner, and then it would be over, this time at least.
Carrie wedged her hand underneath herself, slowly so as not to disturb her children, and slid her phone out of her back pocket. She found an email in her work account and pulled up a report to print. She had to get the markups done by tomorrow morning. She checked her calendar. She had a presentation before lunch. She texted Jared.
Can you pick up the dry cleaning?
Today???
My suit’s there. I need it for tomorrow.
You have a ton of suits.
It’s the only one that fits.
You should buy another if you only have one that fits.
Can you go in the morning?
What time do they open?
Carrie Googled the drycleaner.
6:00 a.m.
I’ve got to be in the office for a meeting in the morning.
Carrie started to type but stopped. She could stop on her way to drop off the kids at daycare before work and change in her office. She’d have to unload and reload the kids, which would take longer than actually going in and picking up the clothes, but it would be easier than having this conversation. She closed her eyes.
“I’ll get the dry-cleaning in the morning, okay?” Jared stood in the doorway.
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll get it. I’m the one insisting on wearing the suit.”
“You sure?”
She recognized his look of knowing he’d made a mistake, his dark, apologetic eyes, the wild eyelashes he’d given to their children. But when she took in the whole of him, she had that feeling again, of getting mixed up—as if her husband had been replaced with a version of himself from a parallel universe, one with fewer trips to the gym and more DoorDash. It must have happened gradually, but she couldn’t remember the transition. When had he grown a patchy beard? When had his shoulders rounded, his belly formed? Since having her children, Carrie’s body had reverted to its animal state, existing for function and feeding. But she still knew herself in the mirror. If this man were not acting so familiar, she might think him an intruder in her home.
“Yes, I’m sure. I’ll pick it up in the morning. But can you get my report off the printer for me?”
He brought it to her a moment later.
“You brought me the good pen,” she said.
He smiled. “I wish I could join you all in there,” he said. “Looks cozy.”
“I thought you said there wasn’t room.” But he was already gone.
She tried to read the report. Her eyes passed over the first paragraph half a dozen times but she couldn’t take in the words. He should have said, No, no, I’ll get the dry cleaning. You do so much.
She did do so much. She never stopped doing so much. Her eyes closed. In her mind, she saw Jared’s belly breaching the doorway, a little belly now, but only a harbinger of what he’d look like in a few years. Fat, hairy, like any other husband. Her arm had gone numb under Madeline. Benjy turned his head on her stomach. The bite marks on his finger. She ran her tongue along her teeth. She was always mixing things up these days.
She lifted her breast. Two small scabs had begun to form below her nipple. She picked at them. She winced. The things she said to Madeline: never pick at a wound—it could get infected, it could scar. But she picked until the scabs came off and blood beaded in two thin lines. She examined the small scabs. Dried blood clots, collections of platelets. The way a body kept functioning in the background, the tiny infinite ways it managed to keep itself going. She put the scabs on her tongue and swallowed. She wiped the blood from the tooth-shaped wounds and licked her finger. It tasted no different from Madeline’s blood. She wondered if Benjy’s also tasted the same. She picked up his tiny hand and put his finger in her mouth. Her teeth slid into the bitemarks. A perfect fit.
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Stephanie Frazee’s work has appeared in or is forthcoming from Stone Circle Review, The Evergreen Review, Door Is A Jar, Roi Fainéant Press, Bayou Magazine, ONE ART, Juked, SmokeLong Quarterly, and elsewhere. She is online at www.stephaniefrazee.com and @stephieosaurus.