Clara By Abigail McFee
I can’t even make the sandwiches anymore. You’d think I could do it the same as every other mother in the world, or in America anyway. Places where mothers make PB and J sandwiches. I mean, I’m sure we all do it exactly the same. Just take out the bread and cut off the edges—the kids have gotten so picky about that. With how picky they are, you’d think they’d be complaining to me about how bad the sandwiches look. Gosh, they’re gruesome. Just sloppy, you know. It looks like a kindergartner made them, not the mom of a kindergartener. But when I wake up in the morning, and I’m rushing to get everything done, and Kenneth is standing behind me, waiting for me to move out of the way so that he can get his V8 out of the refrigerator—there’s just no time. It might not seem like much, but the laundry piles up, too, and then there’s the house. Everything’s a mess. Twenty-four seven. Kenneth says if it bothers me, why don’t I pick it up? But I don’t want to be the mother who stands with her back to her kids, doing dishes while they try to show her the Play Dough people they’ve made. And on top of all of that, I’ve let myself go. I guess that’s what they call it. The crazy thing is that I used to see those mothers on the street who were in their sweat pants and their ketchup-stained shirts, and God only knows why I believed that I would be different. It wasn’t like this at first. I think it started last summer, for some reason. I guess that’s when I met Clara, and I remember that I was caught up in all of it when I met her. Because that summer was just a juggling act all the way. We had little Mike in swim lessons, and Ty Guy was in his terrible twos, just constant screaming, constantly wanting attention from me. I think I cried every night that summer. Kenneth didn’t understand. He was working, so he was away most of the day. I mean, he was really involved in the kids’ lives. But he wasn’t the one who put them down for their naps, you know? He wasn’t the one who ate the kids’ leftovers for lunch. The cold pizza, the mixed veggies that they had poured apple juice in. While I was having that tasty lunch, Kenneth was sitting on the patio of the Italian café in town, splitting pasta dishes with his co-workers. So of course he didn’t know what it was like for me. That summer, we had our routine all set up, where the kids woke up around seven and ate their breakfast and watched a little TV, and then we walked over to the park while it was still morning. The park was only a few blocks away, but sometimes it would take a half hour to get there. Mikey would stop to inspect every stick or stone, pretending they were treasures. If I said, “Not today, Mikey,” then he would insist on pushing his brother in the wagon. He did it in big jolts where he sprinted, pushing the back side of it, you know. And even 34