“Oh, sweetie, everything you’re learning in school right now is leading up to reading,” she said reassuringly. “I’m sure you’ll learn soon.” Despite her reassurance, Hanna was privately worried that Lucy hadn’t started learning the basics yet. What if she actually didn’t learn anything at all? The school was so crowded each classroom had over thirty kids. At the start of the year, they hadn’t even had enough desks for everyone.
She looked back over at Evangeline Oaks. It was ranked in the top ten in the state. She wished she could send her kids there, but tuition cost fifteen thousand dollars a year—per child. She didn’t know who had that kind of money, but they sure didn’t. Her salary at the nursing home was pretty pathetic, and Tom’s construction work was sporadic at best.
When they pulled up to the house, the kids ran inside ahead of her. Maybe it was the fact that it was her first chance to relax all day, or maybe she didn’t want to go inside and have to play mom for the rest of the night, but something kept her in the car for a few moments longer.
She stared back at the house her husband had inherited from his grandparents, who had basically raised him. His mom skipped town when he was just a kid and never returned—word was that she struggled with addiction. And his dad died in an accident when Tom was in middle school. Hanna knew him from church, but they didn’t start dating until after they graduated from high school. He needed time to mourn.
But despite his tragic childhood, Tom was one of the most optimistic people she’d ever met. She loved looking at the world through his eyes: Everything had potential. And he saw something in the old crumbling three-story Victorian home his grandparents left him right before he and Hanna got married.
It was the perfect fixer-upper. And with Tom’s experience in construction and her addiction to home makeover shows, they figured they could do all the repairs and renovations themselves. They had to rip out all the musty carpet and repaint the walls, but it had been so much fun working on it together. They gutted the spare bathroom and demo’d the walls on the third floor to make their dream master suite, but before they were able to finish those spaces, they got the biggest surprise of them all: a positive pregnancy test. It wasn’t planned—they had wanted to wait until the house was complete to grow their family. But instead, the curveball halted that idea.
All of the money and energy they had saved for the house ended up going to Drake… and then Lucy. Eight years later, they were still walking on unfinished hardwood floors, sharing a bathroom with their kids, and telling themselves they’d fix up that third floor one of these days. The paint was fading, the molding crumbling, and the once spacious house was getting cramped and crowded. Hanna couldn’t help but feel like it was a metaphor for their marriage. With each new problem that came up—appliances breaking, shingles falling from the roof, leaks from the questionable plumbing—the tension between her and Tom grew.
Home with the kids. What time are you coming back tonight? she texted Tom while still sitting in her car.
A message appeared a few seconds later: On my way.
Does meatloaf sound good? It was his favorite, and might cheer him up after his nine-hour day at the construction site.
Yep
She sighed at the fact there was no exclamation mark. A little enthusiasm wouldn’t hurt.
Hanna grabbed her bag and made her way into the house, where her kids were already plopped on the couch watching cartoons. Her dad, a carpenter by trade, had made them a rustic wood sign that read, “Home is where the heart is.” Tom had insisted on putting it above the television because he said home is also where the TV is. It seemed to be becoming more and more true for her family.
All of a sudden, Lucy shrieked from across the room. “Mama!”
Hanna ran toward the couch and immediately saw the source of her distress: Lucy’s favorite pastel pink sundress was now splattered in grape juice.
Drake sat next to her, holding said grape juice, with a look of guilt on his face.
“He did it!” Lucy yelled, pointing an accusatory finger at her brother.
“Why would you do that?” Hanna yelled at him.
He shrugged and pouted his lips in an “I’m sorry” way.
She took Lucy’s dress off and threw it on top of an overflowing basket of dirty laundry. “What I wouldn’t do for a maid,” she muttered as she poured laundry detergent into the washer, closed her eyes, and breathed in the aloe and floral scent—in a weird way it brought a sense of calm into her chaotic world.
When she was little, her mom used to wrap her and her sisters up in warm, clean laundry fresh from the dryer. She used to stay under the sheets until they cooled. Now, as an adult, she still sometimes found herself wanting to crawl under a big pile of clean clothes and pretend her problems didn’t exist. Some women fantasized about running away to a tropical island; she just fantasized about clean laundry. She shook her head. Even her dreams were a little pathetic.
In the kitchen, Hanna turned on the radio to the public broadcasting station, and a jazz song began playing. It reminded her of the music her dad played when they’d clean fish after a long day on the lake. She wished she could go back to that simpler time, even just for a visit.
After she set the oven to preheat, she pulled out the spices from the sticky wooden cabinets. She began mixing the cold ground beef with the other ingredients, giving it a few angry, yet cathartic punches with her fists before shaping it into a loaf. A few minutes later, she went to put the loaf in and noticed the oven temperature hadn’t gotten a degree warmer since she set it.
The drums on the song came to a crash as if the composer knew this was the part where Hanna would officially crack.
“Noooooooo!” she cried out just low enough so her kids wouldn’t hear her from the other room. This issue with the oven had happened before, and Tom was able to fix it, but it took a while. There was no way they’d be able to use it tonight. She slammed her hand on the stupid old stove. The fact was, they needed a new one, but they cost hundreds of dollars, which she and Tom just didn’t have right now. She stared at her little loaf of meat on the counter and couldn’t hold back the tears.
She grabbed her phone and called the one person she knew would answer and let her whine. “My oven’s broken again, I can’t make dinner for my family, and I’m having a terrible day,” she moaned as soon as her mom picked up.
“Oh, sweetie,” Lynn said. “Do y’all want to come over here for dinner? Your dad’s making a big ol’ pot of jambalaya. I’m sure there’s enough for the whole gang.”
As good as her dad’s jambalaya sounded, Hanna declined. “I want to get the kids to bed as soon as possible tonight and move past this hellish day.” She transferred her meatloaf to the fridge. “Tom still isn’t home yet anyway. I’m just gonna get takeout.” She paused, her eyes filling with tears. “Mom?”
“Yeah, baby?”
“It gets easier, right?” She felt weak asking that, but needed reassurance from someone who had survived juggling kids, a husband, and a demanding job—her mom had been a waitress at the local diner for the past thirty years.
“There will always be hard days, but the good ones will make up for it,” she said gently into the phone.