a moment she thought he was going to pretend he didn’t hear her, but then he turned. “What?”
“Be back before it gets dark.” That didn’t give him much time, but the thought of him running alongside the rural roads or even the highway in the dark twisted her stomach. “I mean it!”
He gave her a wave that might as well have been a flip of the bird, and took off down the driveway. She watched him until he disappeared past the trees, then went back inside. She stabbed again at her salad before dumping it in the trash and clearing away the table. She took her time with the cleaning spray and dish cloth, making sure to get all the smudges. She moved to the stainless-steel fridge, then the fronts of the microwave and oven, the stovetop. The cabinets.
Nothing was really dirty, but she cleaned it anyway.
In the days when Jeff had lived in this house, there’d always been too much clutter, too much mess, for Stella to keep up with. It had been like living with a hurricane. Kids, dog, cat, spouse—every other creature in the house had seemed to create a swath of destruction while she ran behind with the vacuum and mop, her laundry basket overflowing. Now, with Tristan spending half the time with his dad, sometimes the only mess in this house was one she made herself.
Sometimes she left her laundry on the empty side of the bed for the whole week without putting it away. She left the cap off the toothpaste tube, didn’t put the lid down on the toilet before flushing. She bought the brand of coffee she preferred and played the music she liked best as loud as she wanted. Basically, she did everything she wanted, how she wanted it.
And she did it alone.
In the middle of the worst time, when the concept of divorce had changed from feeling like a failure to salvation, Stella had turned the idea of being alone over and over until her mind had spun with it. Would she really like it, if that’s all she had? In the end it had been Jeff who’d left her, not that she could’ve blamed him. She’d grown sick of herself by then. But in the end, she’d also decided that being alone was better than wishing she was.
The day Jeff had moved out, Tristan had been away at summer camp, and Stella had opened every window in the house even though a storm was on the way. She’d danced in the backyard, in the rain, risking being struck by lightning. She’d thrown her face up to the sky and let the rain wash everything away and make her clean.
The feeling hadn’t lasted long, but it had been long enough. Eight years later, she was still alone and Jeff had remarried. She assumed he was happy in his much bigger house and much younger wife. She didn’t really care.
The kitchen was clean. She’d run a few loads of laundry and folded most of it. She took Tristan’s, piled high in his basket, down the hall. Passed the closed door between her room and his without pausing. She set the basket just inside his bedroom door with a wince at the sour smell of teenage boy. He wasn’t allowed to eat in there anymore, not since she’d had to call the exterminator to deal with an infestation of both mice and ants. And he had strict orders to put his dirty clothes out in the hall every Monday to be washed, or suffer wearing dirty clothes all week. Or do his own laundry. Beyond that, Stella kept out of her son’s room. She relished her privacy and figured he did too.
She lingered for a minute or two now, though. It was dangerous to dwell on things the way she had done in the shower this morning. Melancholy wasn’t productive. Yet something pulled her in a step or two. He’d long outgrown his twin bed, so one of the first things Stella had done after the divorce was give Tristan her old headboard and mattress and buy herself a new bedroom set. He’d adorned the spindles with stickers and ribbons from science fairs and competitions. A few baseball caps. At the foot of the mattress, he still kept a pile of stuffed animals, shoved mostly between the mattress and the wall.
Mr. Bear. Tigger. Tristan had always preferred the soft plushies to harder toys like action figures or miniature cars. He’d spent hours with them as his backyard companions, wearing them into filth even the hottest setting in the washer couldn’t clean. Other mothers had spoken with sighs about kids attached to blankies and teddy bears, some even buying more than one identical lovey toy so their kid wouldn’t be traumatized by even a momentary loss. Tristan hadn’t ever been like that. He’d loved all his toys equally and also as noncommittally. When limbs were lost or a stuffy simply too ruined to play with, he willingly gave it up in favor of another.
That’s why it amused and touched her to see them all now. She’d have thought he’d dumped them ages ago, along with his outgrown footie pj’s and the cowboy sheets. Stella nudged the laundry basket inside the room a little farther and reached for Mr. Bear. Her mom had bought him for Tristan when he was a toddler. Mr. Bear had been stuck against the wall next to some unnamed carnival prize snake, green with blue polka dots, incongruously wearing a top hat. When Stella pulled Mr. Bear’s arm, the snake came free. So did a few of the other toys.
So did the baby.
It was one of the smallest toys, a soft sculpture baby about the size of her hand. A round, fat body, two stumpy arms and matching legs and a round head without a neck. Dimples and colored thread made the face, two wee eyes and a red kiss-print mouth. Three or four strands of orange hair. It had no gender, really, but the outfit was blue so it was meant to be a boy.
She’d grabbed it up without knowing what it was, but at the sight of that yarn hair, the stubby, floppy arms, she dropped it back onto the bed. It fell facedown, limbs akimbo.
* * *
“Where’s your baby? Where’s your baby?”
He toddles to her, two teeth proudly showing in his bottom gums, the baby clutched in his chubby fists. Blue blanket sleeper. Fluff of reddish hair. Drool in a silver thread she doesn’t even mind wiping away as she scoops him up, burying her face in the sweet scent of little boy. Her boy.
“Show Mama your baby.”
He holds up the toy, and she enfolds him into her arms, kissing him until he squirms to be put down. And she does, she puts him down, and he stumbles away from her on unsteady feet. Her boy.
Oh, her boy.
* * *
Stella left it there and went out, closing the door and locking the memories behind her.
Hours had passed since dinner. No sign of Tristan. No message, no text. Night had fully fallen, not even a hint of setting sun left for her to forgive him by. Her jaw set as she pulled out her phone to tap the screen.
WHERE ARE YOU?
Since she’d personally witnessed her son texting multiple people in different conversations while he played Xbox and watched TV and ate snacks, all at the same time, she knew the only reason he didn’t reply to her within a minute or two was because he was ignoring her. Or something had happened to him.
Stella’s mother had made a habit of saying, “Be careful” every time Stella left the house. Stella, smart-ass that she’d been, had usually answered, “Nope, I’m gonna take a lot of risks and do dangerous things.” Her mom hadn’t found that funny.
“You’ll understand,” she’d say, “when you’re a mother.”
Stella’s mother still told her to be careful every time they parted, and now a mother herself, Stella did understand. She knew all too well how easily horrible things could happen.
She paced in the dining room, looking out the front windows
