When I Ran Away by Ilona Bannister (best books to read now .TXT) 📗

while they’re talking, sweat beading up on my upper lip—“Will you be signing up to the rota to read to the class? It seems that you’re the only one who hasn’t yet.”

I see everyone’s pity, disdain, relief that they aren’t me and their absolute certainty that if they were me they would be doing everything differently. Better. I know no one looks at me and my kids and thinks, Now there’s a good mother.

I look down at the phone again. Cursor still blinking. I type:

Johnny needs BigDog. Check the dryer because I washed it yesterday. If it’s not there then he probably pushed it down to the bottom of the pillowcase again and forgot. Check his back for that patch of eczema. He gets itchy when he’s upset. The Diprobase is in the medicine cabinet by the thermometer. Put that on him if he’s scratching.

I press send.

No one sees this, though. How I’m barely breathing. How my skin is wrapped too tightly around me, my old self so far gone that I swear even my fingerprints have worn off my hands. And still, still I remember the Diprobase. The stuffed dog in the pillowcase. Still they are at the top of every thought, still they are first, even when the rest of me has gone to dust.

Harry, do you see it? If no one else sees it do you, at least, even a little? What will you say if we sit down and have the conversation where I tell you that I’m crazy and that today is not just a day off? Will you remember that in the middle of it I thought about his eczema? Will you take into account—before you decide to leave and take them with you, before you decide to put me away somewhere—that when his skin burns and peels I feel it too, and that on the lowest day of my life I still didn’t forget my children? That the whole reason I’m here is that I can’t forget, they’re so embedded in my heart, their lives entwined to make a noose around who I was—I’m lost in the pain of loving them.

Tears again. God, I’m so tired of crying.

So stop crying.

Stop crying.

I feel a sudden rush of energy, a dam unleashed. I get up, put on my flip-flops, wash my face, gather my things, walk to the door. Johnny needs me. He’s upset. I will open this door and leave this place and go to him. I walk unsteadily through the room, put my hand on the doorknob—

And that’s where I stand still.

London, March 2016; Baby, 3 months old 7 a.m.

When I threw Johnny’s truck against the window it cracked the glass. The front bumper split and the doors fell off. One headlight kept blinking. On, off, on, off. A tire popped off in the crash and sailed into the kitchen, under our status fridge: stainless steel, double door, “American.”

Johnny loved that truck even though he’s getting a little old for trucks now, but it was heavy die-cast metal, realistic, with a flatbed for carrying a helicopter. And I know that he loves it. But I picked it up and threw it anyway. Over the breakfast table, over Johnny’s Cheerios, over Johnny’s head, right at the window. Straight at the gray, gray, gray London morning.

I threw the truck because it was just the last thing in the long line of all the things. The shit-covered onesie in the corner on the kitchen floor. Harry’s shoes left by the door. The garbage overflowing out of the can that Harry can’t take out because he’s a very important finance executive. The laundry basket reeking of urine and moldy towels. The dried food on my shirt. The letter on the table from Johnny’s teacher. My hairy legs. The voicemail from my boss about my start date. The hole in the crotch of the only pair of jeans that fits.

Rocky was screaming for breakfast. There were no clean bottles and I couldn’t wash the dirty bottle in my hand because the pile of dishes was too high in the sink. And I couldn’t move the dirty dishes to the dishwasher because that was full of clean dishes that I hadn’t unloaded from yesterday. I couldn’t unload the clean dishes because there was no more counter space because of the dirty pots and pans from dinner two days ago and the sterilizer and some rocket made out of tin foil and a cardboard box that Johnny brought home from school that I’m not allowed to throw away. So on my way to the bathroom to wash out the dirty bottle I tripped. On the truck. Johnny left it in the doorway. Baby still screaming. Through the kitchen window just gray and more gray.

The truck was the last thing of all the things so I picked it up and threw it. Now the window has a nick in it, the bull’s-eye of a dartboard, cracks in the glass radiating like lightning bolts. And Johnny watched me do it.

“Jeej?” His hand is still holding his spoon mid-Cheerio, his dark eyes getting glassy. His brown, curly hair is matted on one side, sticking up on the other, tangled by sleep. He looks like he’s outgrown his pajamas, not because he’s getting bigger but because of what I’ve put him through.

“Jeej?” His voice is small and scared.

“Eat your breakfast.”

“Jeej?”

“Be quiet, Johnny.” I’m scared too.

There’s a flicker in my brain. A silent home movie half a second long of “What if?” What if the baby had been the last thing of all the things this morning? A broken baby on the floor covered in glass.

I sit down across from Johnny. I drink a half-cup of coffee that I left on the table yesterday. I wonder how I’ll explain this to Harry, what lie I’ll tell, how I’ll get Johnny to cover for me.

Because it’s not an ordinary window. It’s a pane in the wall of glass of the double-story extension that looks out onto