‘But I’m tired!’ Jackson echoed.
‘Can we be done already?’ Elise again.
I had lost count of her complaints. She didn’t want to move to a new house. She didn’t want to pack. She didn’t like Candace – and refused to call her Aunt Candace. I couldn’t blame her. I’d dragged them out of the only home they knew; told them to pack up their lives, and gave them no choice in the matter. After six hours of being in our Hendricks Way house, with memories encroaching on us in every room, even I was ready to leave.
Only two boxes to go and the kitchen would be done. The counter was littered with the contents of the junk drawer, along with silverware and dishes that I needed to find another box for. How had we accumulated so much crap? Upstairs, I heard the bang of toys hitting the floor as the kids – as far as I knew – organized their possessions into three piles: Keep, Throw Away, and Not Sure. I was pretty sure Elise only had one pile: Keep. The girl had inherited Ben’s mom’s hoarding tendencies, God rest her soul.
‘Why are you so weird?’ Elise screamed at Jackson from the second-story landing, then plodded down the stairs. ‘Mom, make Jackson answer me!’
It was time to intervene. ‘Elise, don’t talk to your brother that way. His quiet is just grief. Be a little kinder to him.’ I had lost my cool two hours ago when they were fighting about a stupid toy, the details of which I had drowned out with silent tears as I sealed all our family pictures in boxes.
‘But Mom, he drew all over my Barbie’s face in permanent marker. I can’t wipe it off.’
‘You don’t even play with Barbies anymore, Lise,’ Jackson pleaded his case from halfway up the staircase.
‘That doesn’t mean I want them ruined.’
I couldn’t take it anymore. Constant bickering, endless whining. ‘I’ll get you a new Barbie. Just please, no more fighting.’
‘He keeps destroying my stuff, then saying he didn’t do it. What am I supposed to do?’
Turning to yell up the stairs at my son, I found him at my hip and startled back a step. ‘Hey, buddy, you scared me. You’ve got to stop doing that – sneaking up on people.’
‘I’m not sneaking. You just don’t see me. No one does.’
Oh boy. I couldn’t add therapy to today’s to-do list. I leaned down, nose to nose. ‘Jackson, sweetie, I am trying my best. We’ve all been through a lot, though. How about you go outside and play.’ Then I pointed to Elise. ‘You, keep packing up your room. If you can behave for one more hour I’ll take you both out for ice cream after this.’
‘But ice cream makes me sick,’ Jackson whined as Elise stormed up the stairs.
‘It doesn’t make you sick,’ I growled. It was always something with him. Ice cream made him sick. Pizza made him sick. Food that most kids loved made Jackson sick. And anything he simply didn’t want to eat made him sick. I’d lost count of how many times I had watched him force himself to throw up from something that made him sick one day, but he was fine eating another day. My mother said it was probably to get attention, but it was irritating navigating his food maze of eats and won’t eats when I had more pressing matters to deal with, like how we were going to pay our mortgage.
‘It does so make me sick.’
‘Then what would you rather have?’ I huffed.
‘A soft pretzel. With cinnamon.’
‘A soft pretzel. For real, Jackson? They don’t sell those except for at the mall. Please don’t ask me to take you to the mall after this. I just want to grab something quick on the road and go home.’
‘But we are home.’
Oh, my sweet boy. If only he understood that Daddy was never coming back to us, that we were never coming back to this house … When I looked at their sweet faces, it brought back memories of little arms wrapped around my neck, kissing boo-boos away, nightly giggles during tickle-fights. I wanted to capture the past in a snow globe and live in that moment forever.
Wasn’t I changing diapers just yesterday? Or laughing at their gummy smiles as I dangled a toy above them? Now I was taking them to therapists and bribing them with ice cream to leave their home. Part of me wanted them to need me forever, but my hugs and kisses no longer solved their problems. Their problems were just too big. They would never love me in the all-consuming way they did when they were small children. But the scarier truth was that I wasn’t sure I could ever love them the way I used to either – with every breath, every heartbeat, a bigness vaster than space. Life had stolen that part of me, the heart of me, when it sent death after me.
‘Jackson, we can’t stay here anymore. Mommy needs a fresh start. We all do. So for a little while we’re going to stay with Uncle Lane and rent this house out to a family who needs it.’
‘No one needs it more than us.’ Jackson had inherited his father’s persistence. ‘And I don’t want to live at Uncle Lane’s. I don’t like his girlfriend.’
‘Wife, honey,’ I corrected. ‘And I don’t like her either, but sometimes we have to put up with people we don’t like.’
‘But I don’t want to sleep in bed with Lise,’ he whined. ‘She steals all the covers and kicks me all night.’
‘I do not,’ Elise grumbled as she descended the stairs and jabbed him with her elbow in passing.
‘Ouch!’ Jackson yelped. ‘Lise hit me!’
‘It was an accident.’
‘No it wasn’t.’
‘Guys, knock it off!’ I screamed, nearly cracking my voice. I couldn’t take another minute of the fighting, the whining, the snide comments, the demands … I was trying
