Family History by Dani Shapiro

Author:Dani Shapiro
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780307425850
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2007-12-17T16:00:00+00:00

8

THE PARKING LOT OF THE LITTLE ACORN IS JAMMED WITH SUVs and minivans. The moms of Hawthorne are performing their morning ritual, buckling and unbuckling car seats, pulling strollers and diaper bags from trunks, checking lunch boxes, blowing kisses. They’re a good-looking bunch, the Hawthorne moms: in shape from their twice-weekly soccer games, their hair cut into no-nonsense bobs, their fingers and toes polished regularly at a salon downtown. Several of them wave as I pull up in my Volvo with Josh. I flick on the hazards, then let Josh out of his car seat.

“Hey, Rachel!” Maggie Conover jogs up to me. Her daughter Zoë is in Josh’s preschool class. “We were just talking about putting together something special for graduation. Do you want to come to Starbucks after and talk about it?”

“Um—” I brush my hair out of my eyes. “Sure, okay.”

I’m dumbfounded that she’s asking me.

“Great. See you soon.” Maggie dashes back to her Ford Explorer and pulls out of the parking lot. I scoop up Josh along with the lunch I’ve packed him, and carry him inside, past the paper cutouts of acorns that adorn the halls of the school, no matter what the season. As I bounce him on my hip, I steal glances at the chubby folds of his neck, the soft curve of his cheek, his moist little mouth so perfect that it’s all I can do, sometimes, to stop myself from kissing him square on the lips.

“You’re delicious,” I murmur to him, a singsong. “You’re delightful, delectable.”

He giggles, liking the sound of the words.

“You’re yummy,” I whisper in his ear.

“Yummy, yummy,” he repeats, smacking his lips.

I deposit him at the door of his classroom, and he dashes inside.

“ ’Bye, Joshie!” I call.

He ignores me and runs toward the train set. He never says, “bye-bye” like other kids his age. I keep telling myself it’s just his personality—that he doesn’t like hello or goodbye—but it never fails to frighten me. Please-be-okay, please-be-okay, please-be-okay. I turn quickly so he doesn’t see the tears stinging my eyes. Each time I leave him, I feel wrenched. As I drive away, I have to push past a sick empty feeling inside of me—an invisible secret wall. How is he doing in the classroom without me? He’s not as far along as the other toddlers, he’s just not. The teachers say not to worry, but when I’m with him, I do nothing but worry. His eyes look too cloudy, too dreamy to me. And he repeats things—echoing phrases instead of speaking in sentences like the other kids. I have to get away from him, just so I can forget for hours at a time that I’m a mother, until suddenly I’ll glance at my watch or hear a child shouting and remember. But I know it’s what keeps me sane, the forgetting. If I lived inside of my love for Josh and Kate all the time, I would be trapped. I would burn up from the intensity of my own feelings, and nothing would be left of me but a little pile of ash.

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