“Most of the others were anonymous women no one ever heard of, the countless, nameless women of history, a lot of them partners, accomplices to their murdering men. Some of them gone crazy, haunted by their own obsessive thoughts. And child-killers, lots of women child-killers. I guess if more men stayed home they’d be the child-killers, but they haven’t, in general, so that dirty job has gone to the women. Because you’re cooped up with them all day. Some days they’re the only human beings you see. So, of course, who else are you going to kill?”
“I’m sorry.” He didn’t know what else to say.
“Why? How do you know? Am I that obvious?” She looked anything but disinterested now, her eyes dark and shiny as she rose into a crouch as if to spring at him.
“I was talking about the scenarios, how hard it is to get past some of them, to shake them off. Believe me, I know.”
“You know, do you?”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to offend—”
“Do you know what it’s like to kill your own kids?” She staggered upright, awkwardly, almost falling over until Daniel reached out to grab her arm and steady her. She shook his hand off furiously. “Off! I didn’t say you could touch me!”
Both stood silent and shaking. “I’ll just go on my way now.” Daniel took a step away.
“Do you know how it works?” she asked.
“What? I don’t understand?”
“All this.” She ran her forefinger in a circle. “How all this works, what the rules are?”
He thought seriously of telling her to talk to Falstaff. “Not really. An insight here and there, but I don’t know much at all.”
“Can you tell me why they took me away from my kids before I could find out if they were dead or not? Before I could find out if I’d really killed them? Are they sick in the head or something? Who would do that to a mother?”
Daniel didn’t want to hear this story. But he couldn’t just walk away. “Do you want to tell me about it?”
She shrugged, and her face suddenly distorted, and she looked away, bowed and crying, which left her body off-balance and somewhat grotesque. He kept waiting for her to collapse, but she didn’t.
“They’d driven me crazy all day, but they were always driving me crazy, you know?”
He nodded. “Sometimes—they can be a handful. And they go right for your buttons.”
“For a long time I didn’t think I even wanted kids. I wanted a career, I wanted to feel like I was making some kind of difference in the world. Not that being a mother isn’t making a difference, not if you do it right, but I wanted to see what I could be first, without a family, with nobody else but me standing there.
“So I worked my way up, I became a manager. Then I was laid off, and that gave me time to think, and to wonder what it was I had to show for all I’d done. And you know that’s a hard question to answer—there are so many intangibles, but what I finally decided was, it didn’t feel like nearly enough. I don’t care how much logic you throw at it—if it doesn’t feel like enough it isn’t enough. I was living alone then, and I decided I didn’t like living alone. I wanted to have kids. The first guy, Paul’s dad, he turned out to be pretty much a disaster. Good riddance, and I’d still say that. Joey’s dad, he was very sweet, but we argued about the silliest things. That was me, mostly. I was disappointed, and I know I’m hard to live with when I’m disappointed. He finally couldn’t handle it and left.
“And little TJ, well, I’ll be honest, I drank a bit after Joey’s dad left. I don’t know who TJ’s father is. Listen to me, I sound like a damn soap opera.”
“No, it’s okay.”
“I sound like I’m just talking about ordinary crap!” She started crying. “I’m talking like nothing terrible happened!”
“Really, you’re okay. You’re just trying to tell your story. We all sound like that when we’re just trying to tell our stories.”
She nodded hesitantly, but he could tell by her eyes she didn’t really agree. He thought she might even be trying to offer him a smile, but she couldn’t quite pull it off. “I don’t know why I thought I could be a good mother—I guess I thought once the kids were there it would just come out of me naturally. I kept thinking about how it was going to be with them, how I’d make them happy and content and how appreciative they’d be, and the loving things they’d say. And even when they weren’t like that—Paul had such a rotten mouth on him, and Joey was always throwing tantrums and breaking things, and TJ, that baby just couldn’t stop crying—I kept telling myself that one day we’d be this unbelievable family I’d imagined, if only I did the right things.
“But I didn’t even know what the right things were.”
“I know—there’s no rule book. You just have to do the best you can.” She looked at him again as if surprised he’d spoken, surprised he was even there.
“They’d been driving me crazy all day,” she said again. “Paul was in one of his aggravating moods. He was always so bright, so clever. Math was easy for him, and he was always taking things apart, putting them back together again. He could fix pretty much anything. Smarter than me, and he knew it. He only listened to me when it suited him.
“He’d been doing this thing all day. Working up the two little ones, tickling them, then making them cry, then tickling them again. Between the tickling and the crying and the screaming they were so red-faced I thought they were going to pass out. He really knew how to play them, like they were his instruments. And they let him. If he let them rest for just thirty seconds they’d say ‘more’ or ‘again,’ so out of breath you could hardly understand them. They loved it. They loved it.
“But I’d had enough. I was ready to scream. All day, you know? All damn day. I told him nicely at first to cut it out, and he did for a little bit. He even said ‘sorry.’ But he didn’t mean it—fifteen minutes later he started up again. I used to spank him when he pulled that crap, when he was smaller. It never stopped him for more than five minutes. Joey too—never did a bit of good. It became a part of their game—it was just part of the story of the day. You scream, you run around, Mom spanks you and you cry and rub your behind, and then you run around screaming even more than before. Joey’s eyes would get all puffy from crying, and his face bright red. I swear sometimes he’d be laughing and crying at the same time, like some kind of crazy person. I’d still spank him—I didn’t know what else to do. And when they pulled that crap in public—which they often did—I just couldn’t take it. I’d just lose it, and spank them as hard as I could. Paul would usually just laugh, but the others would bawl. I never wanted them to be afraid of me, but they have to be a little afraid of me, don’t they, if they’re going to obey? One time one woman even called the cops on me. Made me furious, but later, I couldn’t really blame her.”
She stopped then and he looked around. The sun was going down. The distant ruined city glowed red. Most of the residents had gone back down inside the building. It would be feeding time soon, and that was the last thing you wanted to miss. But Daniel didn’t believe she was thinking about eating. A few roaches still wandered the edges of the roof, gazing at the residents, gazing at the uneven tear of the horizon.