24

24

I t's nearing Iris's bedtime, and she has been crying for twenty minutes. Flora's best guess is that the baby is overtired. There is a cruel irony to this, in that if she misses the ideal window, Iris will be so tired that she screams her lungs ragged rather than fall asleep.

Flora stands with the baby near her crib as Jodi watches the storm outside. Here in the nursery, the rain echoes ominously, falling crooked from the sky so that it beats directly against the window. A nearby tree's branches tap on the glass, as if waiting patiently to be let inside.

"You know, just once, when you were little, I put some whiskey on your pacifier," Jodi says.

"Just once?" Flora asks dubiously. Jodi shrugs.

Flora rocks Iris back and forth until she finally has to admit defeat.

"Think we have to leave her in here to figure this out herself," Flora says.

Jodi continues to stare out the window and doesn't reply. A flash of lightning briefly illuminates the room before it plunges back into darkness.

Flora lays Iris on her back. Her face is bright red and wet with tears. Flora hates to leave her daughter like this, but there's nothing to be done. Holding her isn't helping and, in fact, may be making things worse. Plus, Flora's back and legs are killing her from standing and rocking for so long.

As Flora and her mother exit the room, another flash of lightning is followed by a loud crack of thunder. Iris wails harder, despite the sound machine blasting white noise beside the crib. Flora takes the stairs slowly, as if they, too, might be wet with rain, and fiddles with the birth tusk, which she slipped into her pocket earlier today.

"Are you hungry?" Jodi asks.

"Always," Flora replies. "I think it's all the pumping. I'm perpetually starved."

In the kitchen, Jodi assesses ingredients in the fridge while Flora cleans pump parts.

"I don't know how you have the patience to do that," Jodi says, nodding toward the growing pile of washed connectors and valves and bottles.

"I wouldn't call it patience. More like I don't have a choice." She pours more vinegar into the large bowl and swirls it with hot water. "It sucks, to be honest. And look. My hands are all dry and cracked."

"A real labor of love," Jodi says.

labor of love

phrase

1. a task undertaken or performed voluntarily without consideration of any reward

2. a guilt-fueled endeavor that not only feels mandatory but is also a ginormous pain in the ass

A bit later, Jodi holds a lemon in one hand and rifles through the silverware drawer with the other. "Where are the knives?" she asks.

"Where they always are," Flora says.

Jodi shakes her head. "Nope. Not here. Actually, most of the silverware is gone."

"What do you mean it's gone?"

Flora joins her mother at the drawer, which she now sees is sparsely filled: only a few forks and spoons rest where there would normally be piles of each.

"That's weird," Flora says.

"You emptied the dishwasher this morning," Jodi reminds her.

"I did?" Flora asks. "Oh, yeah, I did…"

"Do you know where you put them?"

"I definitely put the silverware back here."

Jodi raises an eyebrow. Flora is at a loss for words. Confused, she begins walking the length of the countertop and opening each drawer. It isn't until she reaches the far end of the counter that she finds the utensils. They're in a drawer typically reserved for food storage items like chip clips, rubber bands, and silicone bags. Jodi approaches and looks down where Flora is staring.

"Huh," she says, "why do you suppose you put them there?"

"I absolutely did not put them there," Flora says, then turns to her mother. "Are you messing with me?"

Jodi snorts. Her bad eye twitches. When Flora doesn't laugh, Jodi raises her eyebrows and parts her lips in disbelief. "Wow. Just. Wow."

"Well, it wasn't me!"

"And so the next logical explanation is that I'm deliberately toying with you? Yeah, you caught me, Flora. You don't talk to me for years, then I take the high road and show up here to help you but—surprise! I'm really here to rearrange your silverware !" Jodi shakes her head and walks away.

Flora thinks fast, trying to replay the morning's events in her mind but coming up blank. "I mean, Mom, I didn't…" But what can she say? The truth is, she barely remembers emptying the dishwasher at all. So much of how she operates these days relies on autopilot. "Sorry, I know you're not—I don't even know what I'm saying. I must have had a massive brain fart."

"Those seem to be happening a lot lately," Jodi retorts.

Flora sits at the kitchen table as her mother returns the silverware to its proper drawer. It clatters loudly in Flora's brain, hitting the sensitive spot in her left temple where migraines occasionally sprout. She rubs it with her fingers and takes a deep breath.

She doesn't hear Iris wailing upstairs anymore, which could mean the baby finally fell asleep or—more likely—the freight-train-loud rain is muffling her cries. The water pelting the house also pelts her skull and fans the flames of a headache. It's not so much the sound of the rain but what it means: she needs to place towels under the lip of the back door, set up a bucket in the garage where the ceiling leaks, and set the faucets to dripping so the pipes don't freeze overnight. But she doesn't even have the energy to get up from the kitchen table and pee, let alone prep the house for a massive storm—something she has never done on her own. Google would be a helpful tool in this moment. Fuck that stalker guy haunting her baby monitor. She briefly imagines jamming a fork in his eye, the utensil meeting no resistance as it slides through the center of his white jelly ball.

"With all these ‘brain farts,' as you call them, should I be worried?" Jodi asks.

Flora snorts.

Her mother turns to her. "Is something funny?"

"I didn't know thunderstorms could happen in the cold," Flora says.

Jodi scrunches her eyebrows. "What?"

"Thunderstorms. I thought they were a warm-weather thing."

"Flora," Jodi says, joining her daughter at the table. "Did you hear me? Do I—do we need to be worried? You seem off."

"Maybe I'm just dehydrated, " Flora says, then starts laughing. Her own laugh makes her left temple throb, but it really was a clever retort.

"I'll get you some water," Jodi says, standing again.

Flora sighs loudly. "No, don't you get it? Remember when you went to the hospital because you were"—here she makes large, exaggerated air quotes with her fingers—" dehydrated ??"

Jodi freezes in place.

"Secret's out! I know you were in the psych ward," Flora says.

Jodi shakes her head disapprovingly. "I knew you told your father I'm here."

"I did not! I did not tell Dad you're here! And who cares if I did? That's not the point. The point is that you were in a mental institution and you never told me!"

"Why should I tell you?" Jodi asks.

"Because it's a huge deal! And it's relevant to my medical history."

Flora winces. She shouldn't have made this about her.

But Jodi doesn't react. She grabs a glass from the cabinet and fills it with water before carrying it back to Flora and placing it in front of her. "That was not a happy time in my life. I was very alone. Your father—I know he's this perfect man in your eyes, but he wasn't there for me the way he has been there for you. He was never…" Jodi swallows. "Anyway, why should I sit around and think about the unhappy times? Why should I dwell on them?"

Flora's anger is trumped by the emptiness in Jodi's eyes, which fills Flora with regret that she ever felt entitled to her mother's story. Perhaps it really never was Flora's for the taking. Perhaps it would have simply been a privilege for her mother to share. Instead, she has stolen it from Jodi without permission and wielded it as a weapon against her.

"I'm sorry," Flora says. "I'm so sorry."

Jodi's eyes fill with tears—or, at least, the good one does. The twitching eye remains dry. "Is your arm bleeding again?" she asks, pointing to the spot that was impaled by the activity cube.

The bandage is soaked from underneath. Flora peels it off slowly to reveal that the deep cut is infected. Thick yellow pus pools at the surface of her skin and pulls off in long, sticky strings as she removes the bandage.

"Something's gotta give," Jodi says as she cleans Flora's wound.

"What do you mean?" Flora could fall asleep right here, mid-conversation.

"You're not taking care of yourself. Who knows how long this has been infected. You barely leave the house. You were hysterical over a small plastic pig—"

"You don't get it, that was weird, it was—"

"—and now with the silverware. You don't even remember emptying the dishwasher. It's concerning, Flora. What if something happens to you? What if this forgetfulness affects the baby?"

Her mother's words hurt far worse than the inflamed divot in her arm. Especially because she knows Jodi is right. Her mother is seeing all the things Flora wants to ignore.

"And I still don't even know how you got this injury," Jodi says, wiping the cut with a cotton swab.

"It was…" Flora starts.

Her mother looks up at her with the same expression she has had since Flora was a child. An expression of expectation and subtle disappointment. And suddenly, Flora is seven years old again, caught sneaking Halloween candy from the stash a few days before the holiday.

"One of Iris's toys wouldn't turn off," she says. "Even after I took out the battery. So I smashed it with a hammer."

Jodi doesn't say anything. She doesn't have to. Flora can feel the shame emanating from her mother's core, traveling like radio waves toward her, seeping into and poisoning her body.