anything, much less a meal. She doesn’t explain herself, though. She and Ryan have never talked to the kids about the way Mari grew up. Ryan, she thinks, is happy not to be reminded, and Mari is certain she wouldn’t be able to package her life into a shape her children could possibly understand.
“What do you want me to talk to him about?”
“He’s just... Gah!” Kendra throws her arms wide, infuriated in the way only teen girls can manage. “He’s all over me about my room. And being on the phone! He said I had to get off my computer, too. That I had to find something to do. Well, Mom, being on my computer is doing something.”
Mari looks to the ceiling. Silence from upstairs. “Your dad’s under some stress right now, Kiki.”
Kendra bites her lower lip. “His job.”
“Yeah. His job. So let’s try to give your dad a break, huh?”
“What happened?”
Ryan is experienced at parental white lies; Mari doesn’t know how. “He’s been put on probation.”
“What did he do?” Kendra says flatly.
“There was some trouble with a patient.”
The girl sags, head drooping. “Sammy says she heard that Dad got in trouble. She heard her mom talking about it.”
Sammy’s father is also a doctor. Family medicine, not psychiatry, but Mari supposes the medical community, even in Philadelphia, might be small enough that rumors spread. From what she knows of doctors, they like to talk. So do doctors’ wives. And daughters, apparently.
Ryan is in trouble, and with something more than a frivolous malpractice suit. Mari isn’t sure just how much, or what kind, or what for, though she knows it has something to do with a patient who died. Suicide comes along with the job, Ryan told her long ago, the first time one of his patients killed himself. Doctors have to be prepared for it. He’d cried back then, horrified and ashamed of what he must’ve felt to be a huge personal failure. He hadn’t wept this time.
“Sammy says her dad said one of dad’s patients is the woman who jumped in front of the SEPTA train.”
“You heard about that?” Mari is startled and shouldn’t be. Kendra’s plugged in to things Mari’s always hearing long after the fact.
“Yeah. Everyone at school was talking about it. Logan—” Kendra’s voice cracks for a second before she clears her throat and continues “—said his older sister was on the train when it happened. They made everyone stay on until they could get her out. She was squished.”
Mari wrinkles her nose. “Kiki.”
“That’s what Logan said.” Kendra doesn’t seem to take any glee in this morbid news, but she’s not terribly disturbed, either.
The parenting magazines would say Mari should be concerned at her daughter’s lack of compassion, but since she’s well acquainted with how easy it is to find distance from tragedy, she can’t be. “So you and Logan are talking again?”
Kendra skips that question. “Squished right between the train and the platform. She made everyone late.”
Mari shakes her head, at last finding reproach. “She died. Be kind.”
“Sorry. But was she? Dad’s patient?”
“Daddy’s patient got squished by a train?” Ethan has appeared from the basement where he’s been playing video games with the sound turned low and the lights off to escape Ryan’s attention. The strategy had worked so well Mari had forgotten he was there. “What?”
“It’s going to be okay,” Mari says. “We’re going to be all right.”
Both of her children turn to look at her with nearly identical expressions. She might expect a hint of doubt from Kendra, who’s growing up too fast and has naturally begun doubting all adults, but not from Ethan. Still, both of them have turned to stare with half-open mouths and raised brows.
“What?” Mari says.
“You...” Ethan starts to tear up. At eight he thinks he’s too old to cry but hasn’t yet mastered the ability to hold back tears.
“Lame,” Kendra mutters and crosses her arms again. “Really lame, Mom.”
Mari repeats herself. “What?”
She tries to think of what reason they have for such shock. Her voice echoes back at her. What she said moments ago. The tone of her voice. Then, she understands.
Ryan’s always been the one to tell the kids about the Tooth Fairy, Santa, the Easter Bunny. Myths of childhood Mari never learned from experience and therefore couldn’t share. This is the first time she’s ever consoled them with a statement she’s not sure is true.
“Oh, God!” Kendra bursts into sobs. “It’s bad! It’s really bad, isn’t it? Is he going to jail? Did he do something that bad?”
Mari wasn’t terribly put off by Kendra’s bland description of the dead woman’s demise, but she is disturbed by how easily her daughter assumes her father could be guilty of something worthy of jail time. “Kiki. No. Daddy’s not going to jail.”
“But it’s bad, isn’t it?” Kendra’s sobs taper off, and she swipes at her eyes, smearing her mascara.
Ethan’s crying silently, silver tears slipping down his cheeks. Mari gestures and he moves close enough for her to hug. She reaches to snag Kendra’s wrist, even though the girl’s not much for hugs anymore, and pulls her close, too. The three of them hug tight. Mari’s arms are still long enough to go around them both. She holds them as hard as she can.
Her children have never really known anything terrible, and she will do whatever’s necessary to make sure they never do. “It’s going to be fine. I promise.”
They both sniffle against her. They both pull away before she’s ready to let them go. Ethan rubs his nose with a sleeve while Kendra has the sense to use a tissue. Mari looks again at the ceiling. Somewhere above is her husband, the father of her children.
“I’ll be back,” she says. “You two take some change from the jar near the phone and walk down to the Wawa for some slushies.”
She doesn’t need to tell them twice. It’s a privilege their dad would squawk about; even though he wants them to “get out of the house and do something,” walking a few blocks to the convenience store isn’t one of them. The world’s a dangerous place, Ryan says. Mari knows he has no real idea of what that means.
He’s locked himself in his office, where she hears the shuffle and thump of him pulling open drawers. When she peeks inside she sees he’s pulled out half a dozen file boxes from his closet. The papers are spread out all around him and he’s bent over them, studying them so fiercely, he doesn’t even notice she’s opened the door until she raps lightly with her knuckles.
“Ryan?”
“Yeah, babe.” He pushes his hair back from his forehead.
The sight of him
