The Good Mother by Lizzie Fry

Author:Lizzie Fry [Fry, Lizzie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-02-03T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Before I lose my impetus, I march out of the kitchen into the hallway. I open that skinny door under the stairs, pulling the cord to the bare bulb dangling from the concrete ceiling. The steep, stone stairs down to the cellar come into view under its harsh glare.

A musty smell wafts up from the subterranean room: damp mostly, but also something else. Decay? No, I must be imagining it. There’s no way I can detect the smell of poor Steve’s corpse rotting under the floor.

I put one foot on the steps and hesitate. I’ve never liked the basement; it’s creepy. Since we interned my boyfriend down here, I want to go down here even less.

But needs must.

For Jack.

Careful, I pick my way down the steps one at a time like an elderly person or a child. I don’t want to pitch straight down them headfirst, onto the hard floor below.

As I reach the bottom, I let my sights take in what’s in there: the broken chest freezer; broken cables and half-empty tins of paint; Dad’s old fishing gear; an old bike of Jack’s that’s missing a wheel; several spools of garden hose; box after box of random crap. It’s a right state.

For my plan to work, it all needs to go.

Girding myself, I take trip after trip up those lethal stairs, dumping everything in the back of my car. There’s an acrid stench to some of the boxes, like cat pee but different. I can’t work out what it is until I find a box of papers and photo albums. I dither over them for all five seconds until I detect movement inside it.

A nest of baby rats.

Shrieking, I pick it up and move it at arm’s length as fast as I can out of there, into the garden. I dump it on the grass and retreat just as fast. As I go, I hear the sound of cats from other houses jumping up onto our side of the fence. I lock the back door behind me. Safe in the kitchen again, I imagine the felines descending onto the box and peering into the box and their tiny, helpless prey inside.

Back in the now-empty basement, I feel like one of those baby rats. I freeze where I am, as if I can avoid the threat of my own thoughts and the plan that’s forming in my mind. I stay close to the steps, like I am expecting a monster to appear in front of me. But I know that’s not true. I’m going to put one in here.

Jack.

Sometimes being a mother means unpalatable choices that hurt you as well as the child. I’ve had to do horrible things to Jack since he was an infant. The day he was born, the doctor on her hospital rounds manipulated my boy’s hips to make sure they were in their sockets, making him scream. Only after that was I permitted to take him home.

Days later, the health visitor was drawing blood from Jack’s tiny ankle to check for disease and genetic conditions.

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