That Kind of Mother by Rumaan Alam

Author:Rumaan Alam
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2018-03-09T05:00:00+00:00

22

CHRISTINE, EVER DUTIFUL, KEPT CALLING. REBECCA RELENTED. There was a Halloween to-do on Christine and Tim’s block in Silver Spring. Rebecca dressed Jacob as a cowboy and put the baby in a onesie decorated to look like a tuxedo. Christine dressed Michelle as a princess and didn’t even bother with Michael. Of course, it hardly mattered, the two babies asleep in their strollers, the two toddlers looking mostly their usual selves in their warm jackets.

Conversation was almost impossible, the older children darting ahead and dangerously near the road, but fortunately they lost interest after ringing six doorbells and the entire company retreated. Tim had grilled hamburgers, even though it was then quite cold and unnervingly dark at only five thirty.

“Who wants salad?”

“Oh, give him some, Tim. Jacob, Uncle Tim has carrots and tomatoes.” Rebecca cradled Andrew, held a bottle steady, sipped her wine, ate her salad, all at the same time.

“Anyway, this team—they presented the most startling study. Trauma, and g-u-n-s.” Christine had taken to spelling even though Michelle was too young to pay attention to most of the adult conversation. “It’s chilling.”

“Is it?” Hearing her sister talk about work was a bit like hearing about a journey to a country she’d never even considered visiting, like Bhutan or Chad. But it was interesting, Christine’s work, because it was about the world. “What specifically?”

“They need to expand the study. That’s where we come in. The money. But essentially they’re looking at incidences of anxiety and depression and hypertension and SIDS—a whole range of disease—and correlating it to g-u-n v-i-o-l-e-n-c-e. It’s insane. People are d-y-i-n-g from being s-h-o-t but also from other things.”

“The inner city?” It was a phrase you heard. They lived in the city! It was perfectly lovely.

“The long and the short of it is that the threat of g-u-n-f-i-r-e can actually make people crazy, eventually. Michelle, no more juice. Take a bite of your hamburger, please.”

Rebecca watched her sister, a distorted reflection of herself, a cream-colored breast emerging from her sweater, an apricot-colored baby at her chest. “That’s terrible.”

Christine looked back, wide-eyed, intent, though anyone who studied epidemics for a living would be forgiven a tendency toward alarmism. “I just don’t know what the world is coming to.”

The world did not matter; there were two children and several pieces of candy. There were yells and spills and a general sense of mayhem. Even the babies seemed manic. Rebecca showed her sister the trick—that television was an opiate—and they left the elder cousins in its charge. Tim cleared the dishes and Christine spread a blanket on the dining room floor and let the baby flail about on his tummy while Andrew sat unsteady sentry, surrounded by plastic toys, the two companionable in their immobility.

“How are you doing?” Christine herself sprawled on her stomach with the two infants.

Her sister’s edge of panic made Rebecca more resolute. “I’m fine.” She said it like she didn’t understand the question.

Christine exhaled, like she was psyching herself up. “Rebecca. Did you ever think that you might, possibly, be depressed?”

Rebecca laughed.

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