Rather, I stand idly by while some other woman saves my child.
“No, no, no, no, no,” says Maisie as she is returned to me, tears streaming from her eyes. She’s sweaty, her hair glued to the hairline. She kicks in Emily’s arms, wanting to be free. But Maisie doesn’t look at either of us, not Emily nor me, but rather at that black car, now parked two and a half rows behind us so that it’s near impossible to see. But I follow the route of Maisie’s terrified eyes to where the car should be and am absolutely certain that’s where she looks because she’s told me already, or rather implied it, that it was a black car that took Nick’s life, puzzle pieces I’ve gathered from Maisie’s cagey innuendos and placed together with care.
“Stop this, Maisie,” I say about her outburst, though I cling to her, my heart still pounding, knowing I was one distracted driver away from losing a child. How easy it would have been for a car to hit her, just one driver checking an incoming text message in the parking lot or peering over a shoulder to reprimand a child. That’s all it would have taken, one split second of distraction as Maisie tore across the parking lot and into their path. “Do you know what could have happened to you? You have to be more careful, Maisie. You have to hold an adult’s hand in the parking lot. Always,” I say, and then again, more forcefully, “always.”
“Thank you, Emily,” I say to the woman who stands before me, watching but not judging. “Thank you, thank you. I don’t know what would have happened if...” But I don’t finish the sentence; I can’t bear to say the words out loud. My hair, too, clings to my sweaty face; the sweat pools beneath my arms and in the crooks of my knees. Everywhere there is sweat.
“It’s all right,” she says, and, “No bother,” though her eyes inquire about Maisie’s outburst, and I palliate the truth by saying, “She doesn’t want to go grocery shopping. She’d rather stay home and play,” though I make no mention of the black car, which has her instantly terrorized, or the fact that my four-year-old has some latent belief that my husband was killed.
“Grocery shopping is so hard with the children,” Emily bemoans with a dramatic eye roll, though her little Teddy stands obediently beside her, carrying the plastic shopping bag. “Would you like to come home with Teddy and me?” asks Emily then, as she squats at the knees and leans in close to Maisie, her voice subdued in a way meant for kids’ ears. “Give Mommy a break for a while?” And as Maisie nods her slow approval, Emily rises up and says to me, “If it’s okay with you, Clara. Maisie can play with Teddy for a while. Let Felix and you shop. It would give me a break, too—they can entertain each other,” she says, assuaging my immediate concern with, “Theo is gone this week. An auto show in Massachusetts. He won’t be home for a few days,” and at this I nod my head numbly. I say okay, though still I have reservations about sending Maisie off with someone else, and yet there are other things on my mind, which trump these reservations.
“She’s had an accident,” I say apologetically, and Emily tells me it’s no bother. She can borrow something of Teddy’s while the clothes dry. “If you’re sure,” I say, and Emily says she’s sure. “Just let me move her car seat,” I say, but Emily says not to bother. She has an extra booster seat Maisie can use, and so instead I press my lips to Maisie’s forehead in a simple adieu.
I have only two things on my mind.
Infant formula.
Black car.
BEFORE
Connor is laid out in the dental chair when I come into the exam room. He’s flat on his back, staring up at The View on the ceiling-mounted TV, feet crossed at the ankles, hands folded across his abdomen. It isn’t just his predilection for being lazy that’s lured him to the TV, or the fact that some supermodel is the featured guest. Not today anyway. We both had patients scheduled for 11:00 a.m., both of whom failed to show. Two more flew the coop, is the way Nancy told us about it, while sipping from her mug. They were siblings, which made it better somehow, just one mother or father deciding to take their children’s dental work elsewhere, rather than two separate individuals beating a hasty retreat. There were any number of things working against us, but two in particular stood out: a surfeit of bad online reviews of late, which I was certain were all one Melinda Grey with countless aliases, and a new dentist in town, Dr. Jeremy Shepherd.
Dr. Shepherd was the kind of practitioner with top-of-the-line everything, lavish prizes for referrals, direct mail flyers that promised free new-client exams complete with X-rays, forcing my clients to jump ship. I couldn’t blame them. Word on the street is that he’s an upstanding guy, handsome, a philanthropist—he’s apparently done charity work in Africa with the Global Dental Relief, providing free dental work for hundreds of impoverished people, which is something I’ve always wanted to do, but never found the time. He has an orthodontist and an oral surgeon on staff so that they can serve everyone’s individual needs. There is no need to see a specialist elsewhere. And if a patient refers a friend, they’re entered into a raffle to win a Weber grill, black porcelain, sixty inches tall by sixty inches wide, with three stainless-steel burners and cast-iron cooking grates, along with all the fancy cooking utensils and an apron that reads BBQ Master to boot. I’ve been on their website, staring covetously at the grill. It was almost enough to make me jump ship, too.
Clara caught me one night staring at the grill online, coming up from behind, warm hands reclining on my shoulder blades as I quickly minimized the screen. It was months ago, when Clara was still comfortable and trim, and the baby inside her belly was only as big as a brussels sprout and not yet a honeydew.
“What’s that?” she asked, but I said nothing because by then it was gone.
“No, really,” she spurred, reaching over my shoulder for the wireless mouse, so that she could maximize the screen. Clara is many things—warm, kind, breathtaking—but she’s not dumb.
And so there it was again, staring me in the eye. That grill.
“You’re looking for a new grill?” Clara asked, sitting beside me at the table, hand now resting on my knee. “What’s wrong with the grill we have?” she asked, and I claimed that one of the burners didn’t work, and the flame took forever to ignite. It wasn’t true, of course—our run-of-the-mill grill worked just fine—but Clara bought it for the time being. And so there that night, with Clara by my side, I checked the price of a similar grill online, wondering if I could host a grill giveaway, too, and try to reclaim the patients I’d lost to other dentists around town. Maybe if I had my own grill giveaway for patient referrals, they’d return, like migrating birds returning to a nest year after year. But that was only a pipe dream, of course.
“Maisie in bed already?” I asked, hoping to derail or at least defer this conversation for the time being. I didn’t like lying to Clara.
“Yes,” she said, because I hadn’t yet raised my eyes from the computer screen to see that she wasn’t being trailed by a tired child. “She’s out cold,” said Clara, and then she returned her attention to the grill, hand on my knee, spinning tiny circles on the fabric, moving higher up my thigh. “Do we have the money for a new grill?” Clara asked, seeing the way my eyes scoured the website for a grill—those exorbitant price ranges filling me with inexplicable hatred toward Dr. Shepherd, who, like me, was only a man with a dream, and a better business sense it seemed. My body didn’t pay attention to the pursuits of Clara’s puttering hand, didn’t even notice. Any other day I would have noticed. But in that moment I was intent on only one thing: getting that grill.
What Clara didn’t understand
