I wake up the next morning feeling energetic, you might even say hale, so I decide to leave the car at home and pick up the kids on foot.
“We’re walking home?” Martin asks in total disbelief, like the house was in Perth.
“Yes.”
He stares at me. “Why didn’t you come in the car?”
“I thought it would be fun to be outside on a nice day. I brought money to buy juices.” I hold out a fiver.
“We’re walking all the way to the market?” We’re not even off school property yet.
“Come on, Martin, it’s fun!” Milly says, aggravating him with her smarmy encouragement.
“No. It. Is. Not!” Martin says, stomping his feet in time to his protest.
“Don’t be a baby!” she shoots back.
“I’ve got this, Milly,” I say, eager to eliminate compounding elements. It’s a minefield, this kid stuff.
“Why for, Keely?” Martin whines.
Thanks to my dumb idea about strolling home in the fresh air and sunshine, I am suddenly face-to-face with a deeply unsympathetic side of my only fan.
“Because it’s good for you.”
“Not for me it isn’t good,” he says to the sidewalk.
I could give him a piggyback, he’s easy to carry—Milly’s too big for anyone except John—but I should be firm, let him hate me for a few more minutes, show him who’s steering this ship. That’s what a real mother would do. That’s what my mother would do.
“I like walking!” Milly says, practically skipping. She likes walking when her brother doesn’t, that’s what she likes. She likes being the Easy One for once. Even though her motive is obvious, I feel a surge of affection for her, along with an irrational hope that, from here on out, she will take my coaching, say thank you, allow me to console her. It’s easy to love kids who make you feel competent. God help the ones who lock themselves in their rooms, who let go first, who make you pine for some sign of validation and then hate yourself for chasing the affections of a child.
Twenty-eight minutes into a walk that took me ten, we still have a hundred yards until we get to 3 Lewiston Street and I’m mad—mad that my good idea isn’t working, mad that Martin has turned against me, madder still that I didn’t understand this was inevitable. Of course he was going to turn on me, and over any little thing. I’m only as good as my last shark throw or grilled PB&J.
Finally, we reach the porch. Martin climbs the steps like a dying Bedouin. “Why did you do that?” he asks.
“All right already, God, Martin! We’re home, okay?” I snap.
“Hey,” Evan calls from the driveway. “Everybody okay?”
“Ev!” Martin runs to Evan. Runs.
“Yeah, it’s just— It was a long walk home,” I explain.
Evan loops an arm around Martin. “Come on, mate, help me clean out my tent.”
“And do roly-poly bugs!” he squeals, invigorated. Martin is back.
“Yeah, we’ll find a few in there.”
“Roly-poly, roly-poly!” Martin chirps, instantly made whole by someone shiny and new. It’s easy to make a kid love you if you give him whatever he wants. What was I supposed to do? Let Martin whine his way out of a short walk on a nice day? Hail a taxi?
Something about this strikes me as a key to the story of my mother and me. She often said that I was a different person for my father, that I’d do anything for him, without an ounce of backtalk, as upbeat as a Miss America contestant, and that by the time he got home at night all the fighting was over, so he never knew what it took to get me to turn off the TV or take out the trash.
She also said, Lemme tell you something, Kelly, you changed me a lot more than I changed you. I didn’t know adults could be changed. I thought they were finished pieces, baked through and kilndried. I never understood that when we fought my mother was having actual emotional reactions. I assumed her behavior was a front—a calculated show—designed to yield the best and safest possible kid.
After a couple of months’ suffering at Milly’s mercy, still smarting from today’s rejection by Martin, I see that, sturdy though my mother was, she must have been gutted by the sound and sight and sheer vibration of her rabid daughter roaring, I HATE YOU! I HATE YOUR GUTS! I HATE YOU FOREVER! I had thought a good mother would not elicit such comments, but now I see that a good mother is required to somehow absorb all this ugliness and find a way to fall back in love with her child the next day.