Lovely Wild

“It’s not obvious to me.” Kendra groaned and rolled onto her back to stare at the stick-on plastic stars attached to Sammy’s ceiling. The fan blades whirring around made them seem to pulse and vibrate, which made her head hurt. She closed her eyes.

“My mom said we could order pizza. You want pepperoni and mushroom?” Sammy poked Kendra with her toe.

“I think I’m gonna go home.”

“What? Dude, no!” Sammy frowned and sat up. “Why? Are you mad? Don’t be mad, Kendra, God!”

She wasn’t mad. Well, a little. Still mostly embarrassed. “I’m not. I just don’t feel like having pizza for dinner. My mom’s making chicken parm.”

For a second, Sammy’s face fell, and Kendra felt like shit for rubbing her friend’s nose in the fact that her parents had left her alone again. But then Sammy tossed her hair with a shrug, so they both could pretend she didn’t care, and it was cool between them even though Sammy had kind of ruined Kendra’s life for now.

“He does like you,” she said again in a lower voice when Kendra was leaving. “I’m sorry he’s being a jerk about it.”

“That’s what boys do, right? Be jerks?” Kendra said, like she had tons of experience, when they both knew Sammy’d almost lost her virginity last summer and Kendra, so far, hadn’t even been French-kissed.

Sammy looked wistful. “Yeah. I guess so.” She brightened. “Hey, I have an idea. Let’s invite them over!”

“Who?”

“Rob and Logan!” Sammy was already whipping out her phone and scrolling to dial.

Kendra tried to grab it from her hand. “No way!”

She wasn’t fast enough. Squealing, Sammy rolled over the bed to bounce upward, phone triumphantly in hand. “Yes, way!”

“Your mom and dad said—”

Sammy’s face twisted. It was the wrong thing to say. Kendra had lost this battle, for sure.

“Eff them,” Sammy said coldly. “They’re both out screwing other people right now. They think I don’t know. Shit, they each think the other one doesn’t know. So as far as I’m concerned, I can have a few friends over.”

Kendra didn’t know what to say. She knew things with Sammy’s parents were bad, but not like that. Other people? She didn’t even want to think about her parents doing it with each other, much less anyone else.

So that was how she found herself in a dark room, lit only by a few candles, sitting across from Sammy with a Ouija board between them. Rob sat on one side, Logan on the other. The boys had found the liquor cabinet and helped themselves to peach schnapps with dust on the bottle, mixed with some orange juice. Kendra refused it, the smell turning her stomach.

Sammy’d had a whole glass already. Her eyes gleamed. She was acting weird, all jerky and hectic, like she was hopped up on something. It was because of the boys, Kendra thought, watching her. She was showing off.

“Spirit, is there someone in this room right now you have a message for?” Sammy intoned before breaking into a giggle.

YES

“What’s the message,” Logan said.

SAMY, spelled the board. LOVES

Sammy took her hands off the planchette so fast the plastic piece spun around and almost scooted off the edge of the board balanced on their knees. “Not funny, Kendra.”

“I didn’t do anything.” Kendra looked at Rob and Logan. “I didn’t!”

Rob nudged Sammy. “Sammy loves...who?”

Under Kendra’s fingers, the planchette jerked toward the letter L. She took her fingers off it immediately. Sammy stared at her. Rob, teasing, snatched up the planchette and settled it back into the center of the board.

“C’mon, let’s ask it something really freaky,” he said. When nobody answered him, he looked up. “What? C’mon!”

“I’m going to go home.” Kendra stood. The room spun a little, which wasn’t fair since she hadn’t even had a sip of booze. She stared down at Sammy, her best friend.

Sammy was slowly turning green. She got unsteadily to her feet and headed for the small powder room off the rec room. “I’m going to puke.”

“Can’t handle her alcohol,” Rob said with a shake of his head. “Lightweight.”

Kendra looked at Logan. They’d been friends since fourth grade, when Miss Beatrice had made them work together on the project about El Salvador. In sixth grade he’d been with her when her sled went out of control in the park and she hit a tree. Logan had been the one to walk her home. In eighth grade, they’d gone to their first formal together, as friends, but he’d bought her a corsage and she’d bought him a boutonniere, and his mother had taken pictures. Hers had forgotten the camera. Kendra still had one of the pictures in her top drawer, under her socks. She’d been looking at it a lot more, lately.

“I’m going home,” she said and didn’t wait another second for anyone to try to stop her.

Not that any of them did. Sammy was busy yakking, Rob was raiding the liquor cabinet again. And Logan...Logan didn’t like her in that way.

Her phone buzzed from her pocket as soon as she got out the front door. It was Sammy. Kendra swiped to read it, though she wanted to ignore it.

Don’t be mad

Kendra typed as she walked. When?

Last year. When you were at camp. But he really likes you. I swear to God!

So Logan was the guy Sammy had almost gone all the way with, not some stranger she’d met at the beach like she’d said. It made sense. Kendra could hardly be mad, in a way, since it wasn’t as if she and Logan had a thing going on. She understood why Sammy would’ve wanted to get with him, and why she hadn’t told Kendra about it.

But she didn’t understand why Sammy would’ve lied about Logan liking Kendra.

She didn’t answer the text, her stomach sick and churning, her throat tight and hot. Her face felt stretched. Like if she blinked too hard it would crack and fall off. A mask.

“Hey, Kiki. I thought you were staying over at Sammy’s.” Mom appeared in the kitchen doorway as Kendra put her foot to the stairs. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Kendra started to say, but the words got lost in a sudden uprush of tears.

Her mom’s hand squeezed her shoulder, guiding Kendra to the dining room table. “Sit.”

Kendra sat. Mom sat next to her, saying nothing. Waiting while Kendra sobbed, handing her a napkin when the snot ran too freely. When Ethan wandered in, Mom murmured for him to go away and leave them alone, though he did pause to give Kendra a bewildered look first. When the tears tapered off, Kendra blew her nose and waited for her mom to ask her what had happened.

Instead, her mom got up and disappeared for a moment, returning with a crinkling package she opened. She handed Kendra a pack of chocolate snack cakes from her secret stash without a word. Kendra stared at it for a moment, then took a bite. It wasn’t very good, but she ate it, anyway.

Her mom at last said quietly, “Do you want to talk about it?”

That was the last thing Kendra wanted to do, yet she opened her mouth and spilled out her guts, anyway. “...And I know she says he likes me, Mom, but he doesn’t. Not like that. He must like Sammy.”

“Why? Because he fooled around with her?”

“Well. Yeah.” Kendra swiped at her face.

Mom laughed softly. “Kiki...I know you don’t need me to tell you that boys will take chances when they get them. It doesn’t mean they love the girl they take them with. Or even like her all that much, sometimes. And even if he did, it doesn’t mean he doesn’t also like you.”

“She’s my friend,” Kendra said miserably.

“He’s your friend, too. Both of them have been for a long time.”

Kendra looked at her mother. “Is that supposed to make it better?”

“I don’t know. Does it make it worse?”

“No.” Kendra took a deep breath, considering what her mom had said. “Not worse. But not better.”

“Maybe it won’t get better,” her mom said, “for a while.”

They sat in silence for a minute or so. Kendra’s mom took her hand, squeezing the fingers. Kendra squeezed back.

“Did you ever like a boy who didn’t like you back?” Kendra asked.

Her mom coughed a little. “Umm...no.”

“Because you were pretty,” Kendra said sourly, looking at her mom’s thick dark hair and vivid blue eyes. In her wedding picture, she looked like a movie star. Kendra’s own hair had been blond and curly as a kid, but now it was just straight and plain and sort of brown.

Her mother looked surprised, eyes wide, mouth dropping. “Pretty, me? No. Oh, Kiki.”

“Ugh, Mom, you were so pretty.” Kendra scowled.

“Not when I was younger.”

“When you married Daddy you were pretty,” Kendra said.

Her mom nodded after a moment. “I guess so. He thought so, anyway. And your dad’s the only boyfriend I ever had.”

Kendra wasn’t surprised. She’d known this, even though knowing it and really believing it weren’t the same thing. “Really?”

Her mom looked uncomfortable, which made Kendra wish she hadn’t asked. “Yes. Really.”

“Wow,” Kendra said when the silence between them grew too big. “That’s...”

“It’s what it is,” her mom said firmly and stood, clapping her hands together. “Dinner is almost ready. Let’s set the table. And after dinner, I need to run to the mall. We can look at those sneakers you wanted.”

It felt a little bit like bribery, but if so, Kendra didn’t mind. It was what some parents did when their kids felt bad about something. Bought them stuff. It was what some of them did to distract their kids from asking questions, too. Whatever her mom’s reasons, a new pair of shoes couldn’t take away the sting of realizing Sammy and Logan had been together.

But it helped.

TEN

THE FIRST DAYS of summer vacation are the best. The kids haven’t had time to get bored, they still have their annual trip to the beach to look forward to and sleeping in is still a luxury and not yet a habit that will need to be broken when school starts again. It’s only been a week, though, and they haven’t yet settled into any routine. Now Mari’s not sure they will.

Because this year, Ryan’s home.

This is bad for several reasons. One is because Ryan isn’t used to the way things are in the house when he’s not there. He snaps at the kids for watching too much television and manufactures chores for them to do in the name of “helping” her, though Mari has the house utterly under control. She neither needs nor wants her children scrubbing toilets and changing sheets, no matter how little she cares for the tasks herself. She’s told him this before, when Ryan says the kids need more responsibility and she says, let them be kids. Teaching them to take care of themselves and turning them into their personal maid service isn’t the same thing. He’s either forgotten their previous conversations or doesn’t care. Or maybe, she thinks, listening to the muffled sound of Ryan lecturing Kendra on something Mari knows their daughter will ignore, Ryan simply believes himself to be the better parent.

On another day, another time, this thought would slip away from her with no more than a blink and wink of effort. Today, with her husband still home after a week and a half, Mari’s patience is worn to transparency. They rarely argue. The house and the kids have always been her domain. Now without the respite of Ryan leaving for work, Mari finds herself chafing under his constant suggestions and advice. Never mind that he’s never cleaned a toilet, scrubbed a floor or folded a basket of laundry in his life, now he knows just how it should be done. She hasn’t quite snapped at him. Not yet. It will surprise him if she does, and she’d rather not.

There’s another reason it’s bad that Ryan is constantly home. It means something has changed in their lives. It’s been a long time since she felt this way—uncertain of what is coming next or how to handle it.

There is a way to relieve the sting of this anxiety. Mari stretches high, fingertips searching the back of the cabinet, behind the special Thanksgiving table decorations she usually forgets to use on the table. There. She snags a package of snack cakes, chocolate, shaped like hearts. The wrapping is gone in seconds, the sweet creamy cake clutched in her fist.

They gave her hot, wet mess in a bowl, she dug her fingers into it, it burned, she tossed it down. They came with yelling hands and faces, open mouths. When she told them what happened, they took her hands and held them tight so she could not speak. They gave her a spoon, instead.

They made her normal.

Mari stops herself from shoving the cake into her mouth. Her jaw aches. Her throat closes, making it hard to swallow. She finally manages to throw the cake into the trash, then has to drink from the faucet to wash away the taste of her own desperation.

She’s never without her secret stock of snack cakes, but it’s the first time in a long, long time that she’s wanted to eat one that way. Gobbling and desperate. Mari closes her eyes for a moment, then shakes off the desperation.

Rough time, she thinks fleetingly before focusing on the cupboards in front of her. Tea, coffee, spices. Containers of candy sprinkles and cake decorations from Kendra’s fascination a year or so ago with making fancy cupcakes. Luxuries, not necessities, and at seeing this, the excess, calm should wash over her, but it doesn’t. Nobody should be able to survive very long on rainbow jimmies and silver marzipan buttons. But it’s surprising what people can survive on.

Kendra stomps into the kitchen, scowling. “Mom. Can’t you talk to Dad? God!”

Mari turns from her silent contemplation of the bounty in her cabinets. Kendra sees this and sighs. Her arms fold across breasts larger than her mother’s (the result of better childhood nutrition or genetics, who knows?). For a second, Mari sees a woman in front of her instead of a girl and she’s more ashamed by how threatened she feels by this than the fact Kendra’s embarrassed by her kitchen quirks.

“Mom! Hello!”

If Mari has her way, Kendra will never know what it feels like to want for anything, much less a meal. She doesn’t explain herself, though. She and Ryan have never talked to the kids about the way Mari grew up. Ryan, she thinks, is happy not to be reminded, and Mari is certain she wouldn’t be able to package her life into a shape her children could possibly understand.

“What do you want me to talk to him about?”

“He’s just... Gah!” Kendra throws her arms wide, infuriated in the way only teen girls can manage. “He’s all over me about my room. And being on the phone! He said I had to get off my computer, too. That I had to find something to do. Well, Mom, being on my computer is doing something.”

Mari looks to the ceiling. Silence from upstairs. “Your dad’s under some stress right now, Kiki.”

Kendra bites her lower lip. “His job.”

“Yeah. His job. So let’s try to give your dad a break, huh?”

“What happened?”

Ryan is experienced at parental white lies; Mari doesn’t know how. “He’s been put on probation.”

“What did he do?” Kendra says flatly.

“There was some trouble with a patient.”

The girl sags, head drooping. “Sammy says she heard that Dad got in trouble. She heard her mom talking about it.”

Sammy’s father is also a doctor. Family medicine, not psychiatry, but Mari supposes the medical community, even in Philadelphia, might be small enough that rumors spread. From what she knows of doctors, they like to talk. So do doctors’ wives. And daughters, apparently.

Ryan is in trouble, and with something more than a frivolous malpractice suit. Mari isn’t sure just how much, or what kind, or what for, though she knows it has something to do with a patient who died. Suicide comes along with the job, Ryan told her long ago, the first time one of his patients killed himself. Doctors have to be prepared for it. He’d cried back then, horrified and ashamed of what he must’ve felt to be a huge personal failure. He hadn’t wept this time.

“Sammy says her dad said one of dad’s patients is the woman who jumped in front of the SEPTA train.”

“You heard about that?” Mari is startled and shouldn’t be. Kendra’s plugged in to things Mari’s always hearing long after the fact.

“Yeah. Everyone at school was talking about it. Logan—” Kendra’s voice cracks for a second before she clears her throat and continues “—said his older sister was on the train when it happened. They made everyone stay on until they could get her out. She was squished.”

Mari wrinkles her nose. “Kiki.”

“That’s what Logan said.” Kendra doesn’t seem to take any glee in this morbid news, but she’s not terribly disturbed, either.

The parenting magazines would say Mari should be concerned at her daughter’s lack of compassion, but since she’s well acquainted with how easy it is to find distance from tragedy, she can’t be. “So you and Logan are talking again?”

Kendra skips that question. “Squished right between the train and the platform. She made everyone late.”

Mari shakes her head, at last finding reproach. “She died. Be kind.”

“Sorry. But was she? Dad’s patient?”

“Daddy’s patient got squished by a train?” Ethan has appeared from the basement where he’s been playing video games with the sound turned low and the lights off to escape Ryan’s attention. The strategy had worked so well Mari had forgotten he was there. “What?”

“It’s going to be okay,” Mari says. “We’re going to be all right.”

Both of her children turn to look at her with nearly identical expressions. She might expect a hint of doubt from Kendra, who’s growing up too fast and has naturally begun doubting all adults, but not from Ethan. Still, both of them have turned to stare with half-open mouths and raised brows.

“What?” Mari says.

“You...” Ethan starts to tear up. At eight he thinks he’s too old to cry but hasn’t yet mastered the ability to hold back tears.

“Lame,” Kendra mutters and crosses her arms again. “Really lame, Mom.”

Mari repeats herself. “What?”

She tries to think of what reason they have for such shock. Her voice echoes back at her. What she said moments ago. The tone of her voice. Then, she understands.

Ryan’s always been the one to tell the kids about the Tooth Fairy, Santa, the Easter Bunny. Myths of childhood Mari never learned from experience and therefore couldn’t share. This is the first time she’s ever consoled them with a statement she’s not sure is true.

“Oh, God!” Kendra bursts into sobs. “It’s bad! It’s really bad, isn’t it? Is he going to jail? Did he do something that bad?”

Mari wasn’t terribly put off by Kendra’s bland description of the dead woman’s demise, but she is disturbed by how easily her daughter assumes her father could be guilty of something worthy of jail time. “Kiki. No. Daddy’s not going to jail.”

“But it’s bad, isn’t it?” Kendra’s sobs taper off, and she swipes at her eyes, smearing her mascara.

Ethan’s crying silently, silver tears slipping down his cheeks. Mari gestures and he moves close enough for her to hug. She reaches to snag Kendra’s wrist, even though the girl’s not much for hugs anymore, and pulls her close, too. The three of them hug tight. Mari’s arms are still long enough to go around them both. She holds them as hard as she can.

Her children have never really known anything terrible, and she will do whatever’s necessary to make sure they never do. “It’s going to be fine. I promise.”

They both sniffle against her. They both pull away before she’s ready to let them go. Ethan rubs his nose with a sleeve while Kendra has the sense to use a tissue. Mari looks again at the ceiling. Somewhere above is her husband, the father of her children.

“I’ll be back,” she says. “You two take some change from the jar near the phone and walk down to the Wawa for some slushies.”

She doesn’t need to tell them twice. It’s a privilege their dad would squawk about; even though he wants them to “get out of the house and do something,” walking a few blocks to the convenience store isn’t one of them. The world’s a dangerous place, Ryan says. Mari knows he has no real idea of what that means.

He’s locked himself in his office, where she hears the shuffle and thump of him pulling open drawers. When she peeks inside she sees he’s pulled out half a dozen file boxes from his closet. The papers are spread out all around him and he’s bent over them, studying them so fiercely, he doesn’t even notice she’s opened the door until she raps lightly with her knuckles.

“Ryan?”

“Yeah, babe.” He pushes his hair back from his forehead.

The sight of him looking so rumpled when Ryan is always so put together lifts another current of unease inside her. “What are you doing?”

He gives her a smile so broad, so bright, so full of even, white teeth, there is no way she ought to be afraid. “I’m doing it. I’m going to do it.”

“Do what?”

“I’m finally going to write a book.”

Mari isn’t sure she ever knew Ryan wanted to write a book. Frankly, she can’t recall ever seeing him read a book. Magazines, yes. Medical journals and Sports Illustrated and Consumer Reports when he’s on the hunt for some new toy. But books? Never.

“What kind of book?”

His gaze shifts just a little, cutting from hers to look over the piles of folders and papers. “A case study.”

“So, not fiction.” That made more sense to her.

“No.” Again, that shifting gaze, the cut of it from hers. “But that’s not the best part, babe. This is even better.”

He holds up a folder. The front of it says Dimitri Management Rental Properties. She doesn’t know what that means, but something about it doesn’t sit well. “What?”

“C’mere.” Ryan gestures, and Mari goes.

He settles her onto his lap and nuzzles against her, hiding his face for a moment before lifting it. His eyes are shiny bright, his smile, too. He looks so much like his father that her breath catches. Ryan doesn’t notice.

“You know I love you, right?”

“I hope so,” Mari says. “You married me.”

He laughs a little too loud for the space and for being so close to her. “And you know I’ll always do my best to take care of you, right?”

Something twists deep inside her. “I know that.”

His hand tightens on her while the other puts the folder on the desk. “And you trust me, don’t you?”

“Of course I do.”

“We’re going to move.”

Alarmed, Mari shifts on Ryan’s lap to look into his eyes. “What? Where? Why?”

“Just for the summer,” he says quickly. “Someplace that’ll be great for the kids. For us, too. A place that’ll be perfect for me to write and for you all to just get away from the city.”

She doesn’t point out that they don’t exactly live in the city. “Ryan. What aren’t you telling me?”

“I don’t want you to worry,” her husband says. “Let me take care of this.”

“What about our house?”

“I’ve arranged to rent it to a psych fellow.”

“And where are we going?” He’s taken care of everything, made all the arrangements, but she still has to ask.

Ryan draws in a deep breath. “Pine Grove. Babe, I’m going to take you home.”

ELEVEN

MARI HAD MADE dinner. Nothing special. Pasta with sauce and some salad from the cold box...no, the refrigerator, she reminded herself. She’d set the table. Two plates, one. Two. She stopped herself from counting them out on her fingers. When she caught herself singing under her breath, she stopped herself from that, too. Leon didn’t like it when she sang. He said it distracted him.

He enjoyed the food, though. “You’re becoming quite the little cook.”

His praise, as always, warmed her. She wanted to stretch herself like a barn cat, rub herself beneath his hand. But Leon never touched her. Not since she was small.

He asked her about her studies. What lessons she’d completed. Had she practiced her handwriting? She must get better at cursive. Had she read the book he’d left for her on the desk?

“I tried.” Mari pushed pasta around on her plate, her belly full but appetite not sated. Sometimes, she felt like as long as there was food in front of her, she would eat it until it made her sick.