“Oh, no. We need to get in there before any more damage is done.”
Damage. She didn’t like the sound of that. “Okay. How long does it take? I mean, when can I expect to get out of here?”
“My, my, are you always in such a hurry?” he asked. He chuckled again, but this time there was the slap to it, as if the underlying message was I see how you got yourself here.
But at this very moment twelve four-year-olds were rampaging around her apartment. Someone was going to have to clean up after them, to find the Goldfish crackers that Mo always stashed away in the closet, or the soiled diapers that Tashi always left in the kitchen garbage (because Ellery still would only crap in Pampers). Someone was going to have to make sure the pantry was stocked with all the ingredients for Saturday-morning chocolate chip pancakes.
And that was just tonight. In the coming days, someone had to get the kids to their ballet classes, their soccer clinics, their speech therapy sessions, their playdates, their birthday parties. To take them shopping for their Halloween costumes, to the pediatrician for their flu shots, to the dentist for their cleanings. Someone had to plan the meals, pay the bills, balance the checkbook. Someone had to get it all done, while still getting all the work-work done.
Maribeth sighed. “It’s just I have a house full of four-year-olds and a very busy weekend.”
He stared at her for a long moment, frowning. Maribeth looked back, disliking him already, and that was before he said, “You do realize you’ve had a heart attack?”
USING THE PHONE at the nurse’s station, she called Jason and got the voicemail again. As calmly as possible, she told him what was happening: the tests, her being admitted overnight, probably for the weekend. She never said the words heart attack. She couldn’t make herself do it. Nor did she say that she was scared. “Please get here as soon as you can,” she told his voicemail.
AS SHE WAITED, she filled out the admission paperwork. It was calming in its way, perhaps because it was familiar. She’d done this before her C-section, before Oscar’s ear-tubes surgery. Name, address, insurance number, social security. Repeat. There was something Zen about it. Until she got to the family history.
She never knew how to fill these out. She’d learned that she was adopted when she was eight, but back then, it had just been another piece of identifying information: She lived on Maple Street. She rode a blue Schwinn. She was the best speller in third grade. She was adopted. It had never occupied much mental real estate until she’d tried to get pregnant herself, and then there were so many unanswerable questions: Was anyone in her family Portuguese? Jewish? Cajun? Was there a history of Down syndrome? Cleft palate? Huntington’s disease? A family history of infertility? Well, that last one she could reliably answer, at least with regard to her birth mother, but everything else was a mystery.
And then her children were born and the mystery only increased. Oscar was a carbon copy of his father, the same hazel eyes, the same weak chin, but by sixteen months Liv had long blond hair, almond-shaped green eyes, and a fierce, sometimes dictatorial manner that Jason joked heralded a future leader, a Sheryl Sandberg, or a Hillary Clinton even. “You sure you didn’t get inseminated with the wrong egg,” more than one person had quipped.
The joke was stinging. Because Maribeth didn’t know where Liv got that princess hair from, or those apple eyes, let alone their intense gaze. Looking at the little genetic puzzle that was her daughter had opened up if not quite sadness in Maribeth, then a sonar ping of sorrow. But she didn’t have time to dwell on it. Because, twins.
She left the forms blank.
JASON BURST IN just before ten. “Oh, Lois,” he said, reviving an old nickname he hadn’t used in years, which was Maribeth’s first clue that he was scared, too. They had known each other half their lives, and even with the ten-year break in there, they could find each other’s tender spots in the dark. Besides, Maribeth knew that Jason became unhinged when she was hospitalized. He’d been that way before her C-section, too, though he’d later admitted to her it was less the surgery than the nightmares he’d been having in which she died during the delivery.
“Hey Jase,” she said softly. She wanted to say I love you, or Thank you for coming, but if she did, she thought she might cry. So she asked where the kids were.
“With Earl.”
In the rock, paper, scissors of emotions, irritation killed sentimentality. “Jablonski? Are you kidding me?”
“It was late.”
“So you left them with our misanthropic, possibly alcoholic, downstairs neighbor? Did you attach signs that read, ‘Molest Me’?”
“Come on. Earl’s grumpy, but he’s not a bad guy.”
“Jesus, Jason. Why didn’t you send them home with the Wilsons?” The Wilsons were one of the families in the parenting group who lived in the neighborhood.
“It didn’t occur to me,” he said. “They were tired so I asked Earl to come up. I can try the Wilsons now but they’re probably asleep.”
“Forget it.”
He sat down on the edge of her bed. “How you feeling?”
“Fine. I just want to get this over with.” She paused. “Maybe you should ask the Wilsons to take them tomorrow. Liv and Tess have ballet together.”
“Right. Ballet.”
“And Oscar has soccer.”
“We’ll figure it out.”
“How? We can’t tag team it. You’ll need someone to step in.”
“Okay, I’ll call the Wilsons.” He reached for his phone.