Seven Days in June(5)

“Reparations,” said Jackie from the couch.

Eva jumped, forgetting that the babysitter was still there. Sensing her dismissal, Jackie scurried out the door while Audre murdered her with her eyeballs.

She whipped her head around to her mother and said, “I’m too old for a babysitter! And Jackie is the entire worst, with her judgmental eyes and Crocs with socks.”

“Audre,” started Eva, rubbing a temple. “What do I always say?”

“Resist, persist, insist,” she recited.

“What else?”

“I’ve never been sleepier than I am at this moment.”

“WHAT ELSE?”

Audre sighed, defeated. “I trust you, you trust me.”

“Right. When you break my rules, I can’t trust you. You’re grounded. No devices for two weeks.”

Audre shrieked. The noise reverberated in Eva’s head for thirty seconds.

“NO PHONE? What am I gonna do?”

“Who knows? Read Goosebumps and write poems to Usher, like I did at your age.”

Eva stormed down the hall and entered Audre’s room. Twenty girls were crammed on the bunk beds and floor, a blur of spring-break-tanned skin and crop tops.

“Hi, girls! You know you’re always welcome here if Audre asks my permission. But she didn’t, so…time to go.” Eva beamed, careful not to disrupt her standing as “cool mom,” which wasn’t supposed to matter but did.

“We’ll host a sleepover soon,” promised Eva. “It’ll be lit!”

“Tell me you didn’t just say ‘lit,’” wailed Audre from the living room.

One by one, the girls filed out of the bedroom. Audre stood slumped next to the front door, a droopy weeping willow of misery. She pulled a wad of cash out of her back pocket, and as the girls left, Audre handed each one her rightful twenty dollars. A few of the girls hugged her. It was like a funeral procession.

“Whoa!” Eva noticed a blond boy attempting to sneak out with the crowd. He rose to his full height—a full three heads taller than Eva.

“Who are you?”

“Omigod, Mom. That’s Coco-Jean’s stepbrother.”

“You’re Coco-Jean’s stepbrother? Why are you so tall?”

“I’m sixteen.”

“You’re in high school?” Eva glared at Audre, who sprinted down the hall and flung herself on her bottom bunk.

“Yeah, but I’m chill. I’m in the honors program at Dalton.”

“Oh, I’m bathed in relief. Why are you hanging out with twelve-year-olds?”

“Audre’s, like, a really gifted mental health specialist. She’s helping me manage the anxiety I feel due to my gluten allergy.”

“Quick question. Did my daughter diagnose this gluten allergy?”

“He breaks out whenever he eats focaccia or crostini!” Audre yelled from her bedroom. “What would you call that?”

“Listen, you seem like a nice”—gullible—“kid, but you being here in my home without my knowledge is a hard no.”

“I can’t believe I missed my hip-hop violin lesson for this,” he grumbled, storming out.

Eva leaned against the door for a moment, trying to decide how deeply she was going to freak out. In these moments, she wished she had the kind of mom she could call for advice.

She had an ex-husband, but she couldn’t call him for advice, either. Troy Moore, a Pixar animator, had two settings: cheerful and really cheerful. Complicated emotions upset his worldview. It was why Eva had fallen for him. He’d been a ray of light, back when everything in Eva’s world had been dark.

She had literally tripped over him in the lobby of Mount Sinai Hospital. Troy had been a volunteer, sketching portraits for patients. She’d realized she liked him when she scrambled to hide the IV bruises on her arms (as a result of her weeklong stay upstairs). After six weeks of rom-com-cute dates, they wed in city hall. Audre was born seven months later. But by then, they’d unraveled. The girl Troy had fallen for, the one who could sustain bubbly spontaneity on dates and lusty sleepovers, was different at home. Dazed from pain and pills. And soon her illness overwhelmed Troy’s life—killing patience, choking love.

Troy belonged to the Church of Just Think Good Thoughts. Despite watching Eva suffer—the nights she’d repeatedly smash her forehead against the headboard in her sleep, or the time she fainted into a 2 Fast, 2 Furious display at Blockbuster—he believed the real issue was her outlook. Couldn’t she meditate it away? Send positive energy into the universe? (This always baffled Eva. The universe where? Could he provide cross streets? Would someone greet the positive energy when it landed, and would the greeter be Lena Horne’s Glinda in The Wiz like she imagined?) Once, after a late night at Pixar, Troy climbed into bed next to his fetal-positioned wife. She’d just given herself a Toradol injection in the thigh, and a little blood had leaked through her Band-Aid onto their dove-gray sheets. Moving was excruciating, so Eva just lay in it. Through slitted eyes, she saw revulsion, and just beneath it, martyrdom.

She was gross. Cute girls weren’t supposed to be gross. Quietly, Troy snuck out and slept on the couch—and never returned to their bed. In their one couples’-counseling session, he admitted the truth.

“I wanted a wife,” he wept. “Not a patient.”