The anxiety that seeped into Cora’s brain didn’t stop in that body part.
There was the knot in her stomach which reminded her of the wet, tangled mess of clothes knotted up in the corner of a fitted sheet in the dryer and it was a toss-up as to which mess was harder to figure out. In another life, before she was a mom of three, Cora had been a project manager. She was used to juggling a dozen people’s different needs, schedules, and to-do lists. But this skill set wasn’t easily translating to her home. Because these employees, sorry, children, didn’t receive a salary and thusly, had no motivation to listen.
Cora tried to make herself laugh, imagining her brood dressed in pantsuits and ties, waddling into cubicles, smearing peanut butter and slime on every available surface but she was running on fumes and there was no well of energy for any kind of smile, let alone a legitimate chuckle. There was, of course, all the usual housekeeping: the never-ending pile of laundry with stains that occasionally made her shudder when she contemplated their origins. It was funny - when she’d been pregnant with her first baby, a son who they ended up appropriately naming Wiley, she’d had a friend tell her that there was nothing your kids could ever do to gross you out. The diapers, the vomit, the messes, being a mother would make you immune to reacting to any of these quagmires of parenthood. When Wiley had his first stomach bug, after eating a dinner of blueberries, chicken, and pickles, Cora quickly learned that this assumed universal truth did not apply to her. She vomited right alongside her ten-month-old. And she hasn’t eaten a pickle in seven years.
Wiley wasn’t the problem. He was a good kid, now seven years old and a few months into second grade He got into the usual shenanigans and, yes, she did catch him and the neighbor daring (and succeeding) in getting each other to eat worms after the rainstorm yesterday. But she didn’t have to helicopter him, for the most part. And, even though the idea made Cora want to puke and hide in a closet, there probably wasn’t anything wrong (at least from a health perspective) with eating worms. Her second kid, Penelope, wasn’t exactly a tornado of childhood energy either. Penelope loved arts and crafts and fixing things. Cora had learned from a very young age that putting her middle child in a kitchen chair with some glue, popsicle sticks, and buttons could entertain the munchkin for an easy 90 minutes. If she and her husband, Bobby, were being honest, the ease of raising Penelope had made them want to try for a third. And that’s how, eighteen months earlier, they’d found themselves in a familiar wing of the hospital, welcoming Bobby Jr.
Bobby had been a different kind of kid than his brother and sister from day one. First of all, when he came out all wriggly and kicking and screaming, the doctor counted four blood blisters on each heel. Cora had certainly been kept awake at night for months at the end of this pregnancy with his kicking but hadn’t realized that even in utero, Bobby Junior knew how to get attention. He’d started crawling at six months old which made him highly ambulatory from almost the get-go. And Cora had already been prone to anxiety and what was, in retrospect, probably a little bit of postpartum depression. So, for the past year, she’d been on extremely high alert.
She was such a light sleeper that she’d wake up when the wind changed direction, even when all of their bedroom windows were closed. She’d rush to Wiley’s room for a bad dream or Cora’s for a whimper and a drink of water, and then Bobby Jr’s as he seemed to think that 3 am was the perfect time for the whole family to wake up and engage with a stimulating conversation in baby babble. Yes, she was exhausted.
If you listen to us because you too, have difficulty sleeping, you know the toll that endless hours awake in the night can take. You can feel so groggy but also confused and disoriented. Maybe you find yourself talking to people and saying things like, “I don’t know if I already told you this, but-” and then they interrupt you, hopefully gently, and say “Yes, you told me about it at midnight. And at 2 am. And 5:30. And then you called me about it this morning.” Or you do something like put your dog in the car instead of your kid. Maybe you lose the remote control and find it in the cheese drawer next to the cold cuts. You may leave the house wearing two different shoes or have forgotten the shoes altogether and find yourself at your local Kroger in your 90s bunny slippers. These are all hypothetical situations. But this was the headspace where Cora found herself living. And, there was this mental health cherry on top, she was, unconsciously, becoming a little paranoid. Which makes sense - if you feel like you can’t trust your own brain, how do you trust anybody else’s?
Shuffling out of the grocery store with all the things she didn’t need, forgetting both whole milk and children’s Tylenol, her bunny slipper’s soft bottom repeatedly pierced by the parking lot’s gravel, Cora walked up and down the spaces, searching for her silver minivan. It wasn’t where she’d left it. She knew it.
“It’s stolen,” she told herself. And her stomach sank to just above one of the bunny’s pink ears. Now what? Call the police? Tell the manager? The milk was going to go bad in the sun while she waited! (Cora had yet to realize that she’d forgotten all the dairy products.) She pulled out her key fob, frantically pressing the ‘lock’ button, straining her good ear for the reassuring sound of a Toyota’s beep. Just as she thought that she heard a muffled noise, she was interrupted.
“Mama!” Cora whipped her head around and saw that little eighteen-month-old Bobby Junior had managed to wiggle himself out of the cart’s child seat and was climbing down the side to open the can of Pringles that she’d bought while thinking about soccer sign-ups. Oh, Cora…
“Bobby!” she screamed, catching his pudgy body before it plopped onto the ground. And that’s when the shopping cart began to roll. Cora chased it, Bobby wailing on her hip, the store’s Starbucks employees enjoying the Frantic Mother Show on their smoke break. The cart picked up speed, heavy with the weight of seltzer water on a 2-for-1 special. It rolled and weaved and then slammed directly into a bumper, leaving a dent the size of a toddler’s fist. Luckily, it was a 2016 Siena Mini Van and, ok, maybe this wasn't lucky, but it was… hers.
Once the grocery bags were loaded into the trunk, Baby Bobby was strapped into his car seat, and Pringles cans were opened because who could even deal with thinking about calories at a time like this, Cora sat in the driver’s seat, blasted the A/C and refused to cry.
You got this. She told herself. It’s just the baby phase. Soon, you can go back to work. Maybe Bobby’s parents will finally move to town and be able to help.
She was very conflicted about the idea of sharing a zip code with her in-laws but this was a desperate moment.
When they got home, Cora chugged two cups of coffee and forced herself to tackle her to-do list. She picked up the house, put away the kid’s clothes, vacuumed the previous night’s popcorn fight, folded her 400th load of laundry, put the groceries away, and prepped dinner. She put Bobby in his stroller (this time, triple-checking that he was buckled in) and took the dog around the block. She got back in the car, picked up Penelope, then Wiley, then her husband’s allergy prescription at the pharmacy. She was all the way home before she remembered that she had forgotten the milk.
It was Tuesday, so Cora made tacos. It was supposed to be an “easy” dinner, meant to take the mental load off and facilitate an easy clean-up. But dinner for a family of five is never easy. Unless you’re a bunch of Grizzly Bears all feasting on the same dead Elk. But, even then, someone had to go out and kill it. So, yeah, never easy.
Bobby the Dad put down Bobby the baby and Cora got the older two into a bath and their pajamas. She begged, pleaded, and cajoled for them to brush their teeth, their hair and agree on a bedtime story. Then get cups of water, bandaids for “owies,” ointment for bug bites, and pillowcases without “scary ducks” on them. By the time she turned out the lights, Cora had one of those nights where you fall asleep within seconds of your head hitting an alien-printed pillow in a three-year-old’s twin bed. Cora didn’t even realize she’d fallen asleep until around midnight when she woke with a start.
Maybe it was her surprise at not remembering falling asleep in the first place. Maybe it was the sheer, total, and all-encompassing exhaustion. Maybe it was a weird sound or a pot fell from the drying rack next to the kitchen sink- the point is, who knows what it was - but a familiar pit of anxiety formed immediately in her stomach. She pushed her feet into her decomposing bunny slippers and walked downstairs. And what she saw, she will never forget.
The kitchen had been ransacked. Cora stood on the bottom stair, clutching the banister, her lips stretched apart like a Big Mouth Bass. She tried to call Bobby’s name but the words were stuck somewhere in her throat. She opened and closed her eyes, maybe ten or eleven times, just trying to take it all in.
Every drawer was open, its contents spilling out onto the Home Depot flooring. Boxes of food and utensils had been dumped and spread across the counter and area rug. A brown goo covered the kitchen island wall - was that feces?- and the ants had already found a path to the chaos. Lights were on. The couch cushions were utterly disheveled. Core turned and sped up the stairs, shaking her husband from his sleep, trying her best to form at least one cohesive thought.
“Someone broke in,” she yell-whispered into his startled face.
“I’ll call the police,” he said, picking up his phone off of the nightstand, “you check on the kids.” Cora raced to the children’s bedrooms and thanked whatever entity above ensured that they were all fine, and sleeping soundly. Cora grabbed her pink robe from the bathroom floor and stood at her bedroom window, her heart pounding like an exploding bomb in her chest, waiting to see the lights of a police car. Bobby held her close as they stayed on the phone with the operator.
“How do we know that the perpetrator has left the premises?” Bobby asked the dispatcher. If Cora had had any wherewithal she would have found her husband’s choice of language funny. But everything was too scary to smile.
“The officers will enter through the front door and sweep the first floor while you wait.”
“Copy that,” said Bobby who worked in sales and watched too much Dateline.
“Um, Mr. Green? The officers responding are saying that the front door is locked.” Cora heard the words through the receiver and stared at her husband with a face of terror and shock.
“He locked the door behind him?” she whispered to Bobby.
“Sir, is there another door?” the dispatcher prompted.
“The back sliding door. By the porch,” Bobby whispered into the phone. He waited for the police officers to canvas the back of his house, find the dangerous criminal, and be interviewed by Channel 11 Eye Witness News.
“Sir, that door is locked as well. Do you feel comfortable coming down and letting them in?” This time, it was Bobby who looked like he’d seen a ghost.
“Yes, of course, be right there.” Bobby turned to Cora, squeezing her hand as if he were going into battle. She nodded because, really, that was all she could do.
Standing under the bright kitchen light, bleary-eyed, wearing her least attractive garment and, of course, bunny slippers, Cora tried her best to answer question after question from the young deputy with the notepad.
He wasn’t getting much. She couldn’t put it all together. She was so tired and simultaneously wired that she felt nauseous, especially with the sight of the brownish substance smeared across her wall.
“And, ma’am? Ma’am? MA’AM?” the young deputy attempted to rope her back into reality. “What is missing?”
Cora took Bobby’s hand. Together they walked around the living room, the small dining room, the kitchen, and the breakfast nook. For all of the wreckage, the insane mess, everything of value seemed to be in its correct place. Cora’s purse sat untouched on the bench by the door. Bobby’s wallet and keys were right on the table where he always left them. The kid’s iPads were plugged in by the hand-me-down desk, and Cora even had a necklace sitting on the kitchen counter that she’d been meaning to take to the jewelry repair shop for three months.
“I just- I don’t - I can’t,” But, yet again, Cora was interrupted. Bobby Junior, with his chunky cheeks and Mickey Mouse pajamas, was standing at the top of the stairs. Cora raced up the steps to hold her baby boy. His face was red. Bright red. But he wasn’t crying. Something else was going on.
“Mama?” Cora may have been utterly exhausted but that didn’t stop her maternal instinct from kicking into overdrive. She took a long look at her youngest son. What was his face saying?
“Wanted EEnut Utter.”
Eenut utter? What is he– her brain spun. Bobby Junior waved his hand, gesturing to the havoc on the floor below.
“I sorry.” The guilt in his little body was palpable.
Cora doesn’t remember who realized it first. Maybe it was Bobby who, although sleep-deprived, was nowhere near Cora’s level. Maybe it was the young deputy who was excited to prove himself as the newbie on the force and had consumed 24 fluid ounces of a Monster Energy Drink on the drive over. Maybe Bobby Jr’s face just said it all. But, that midnight on a Tuesday, the whole scene came into focus.
Cora rubbed her bleary eyes. She saw the open Costco-sized peanut butter jar next to the smeared, brown mess. She saw the shredded goldfish bag, the Pringles, the couch cushions. She no longer saw the work of a dangerous criminal. She saw her eighteen-month-old.
Now, standing on the landing, outside of his room, it dawned on her that this little rascal was fully capable of climbing out of his freaking crib. Cora was almost too tired to be embarrassed. She picked up Bobby Junior and held him on her hip.
“I’ve found the culprit,” she quietly called down to her husband and the town’s law enforcement. “It turns out that Bobby Junior can get out of his crib. And also, he really likes peanut butter.” She turned to her husband, another thought popping into her mom-brain. “We’re SO lucky that he’s not allergic.”
Bobby, the dad, nodded, still digesting what was going on in his house in the middle of the night.
“Your baby made a mess and you called the police??” The younger deputy was not amused. He had been very excited about making his first arrest on that particular evening.
“I am so, so SO sorry,” Cora began, her eyes welling with tears of who knows what emotion, “can you please, PLEASE, not tell anyone about this?”
Cora was already self-conscious enough at school drop off with her wild hair, sometimes leaky boobs, and of course, the bunny slippers.
“I’ll have to file a report,” said the deputy with a stern and utterly humorless voice. He clearly was less excited about doing paperwork than putting a person in handcuffs.
As Cora and Bobby said goodnight to the police and thanked them for their service, they trudged back up to their bedroom, sticking little Bobby squarely between them and locking the door. Cora dreamed about cleaning her kitchen.
They didn’t tell the other children about the night’s events. They even lied to the neighbors who’d noticed the cop cars telling them that their smoke detectors had accidentally gone off. They didn’t even tell the grandparents the truth about why Bobby Junior’s room had a new lock on the outside of the door.
You know how embarrassment is supposed to fade over time? How we are meant to ‘get over’ events, mistakes, and humiliation as if the ticking of a clock will somehow dilute those feelings? Well, not for Cora. It’s been years. Bobby Jr is in elementary school. She submitted this story while hiding behind a pool noodle display at the supermarket, hiding from the deputy, her face burning red at the midnight memory. At least the situation made her remember… that she was out of peanut butter.
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