Emma, who’s not nearly as discriminating with alcohol as she is with food—I suspect two of the three or four bottles of wine ended up in her glass—has finally let loose and is telling a story about one of her friends’ Botox disaster. Scott is talking to Emma’s husband about work. I’m getting lulled into it all when a discreet notification chimes on the screen of my phone.
“Sorry,” I say, and I really am sorry to have to get up. “I have to put Taryn to bed.”
“Wow,” says Emma, interrupting her story, “I hardly even noticed you had a kid!” Her face is flushed from the wine, and nobody, least of all her, seems to notice the tactlessness of her little slip. “It’s the robot nanny?”
“Entertainment center,” Scott corrects.
“One hell of an entertainment center. We should get one for Jason,” Mia chimes in, howling with laughter. “Oh, he’s just hell on wheels. Taryn is cute now—wait till she’s five!”
I excuse myself, letting them continue that train of thought. Upstairs, the credits of the latest educational cartoon episode are rolling on the tablet screen as my daughter blinks sleepily at it.
At once, I’m overcome with tenderness. Maybe it’s the wine amplifying my emotions but I just want to pick her up and cuddle with her on top of her tiny bed. All this, I think to myself as I reach out and switch the screen off with a tap, all this is for her. So she’ll grow up with every possible comfort and every possible opportunity. So that she’s safe at all times, sheltered from the scary parts of life—at least for now. I’m not dumb. I know it can’t go on like this forever, with her hidden inside this cozy digital cocoon. Kids grow up and venture out into the world, and she will too. In time.
For now, I’ll do everything I can do.
As soon as the screen goes dark, Taryn lets out a high-pitched squeal of protest that splits the silence and makes me wince in spite of myself. Shredding my peaceful little mind-image.
“It’s sleepy time, Taryn,” I coo automatically as I reach to pick her up. She swats violently at my hands, trying to bat them away. Her face is quickly turning red—a sign that a tantrum is coming.
“Taryn,” I say, with a soft but present note of warning.
“No!” she shrieks. “No sleep!”
Her eyes are red and shiny, and her upper lip is already glistening with snot. She wiggles with all her might when I finally pick her up. Her small but pointy little foot connects with just the right spot under my ribs, making me hiss and stifle a bad word.
A headache throbs in the back of my head. Maybe I had enough wine after all. When did she become this bad? She was such a sweet baby. She slept through the night at a mere three or four months and was always smiling, eager to be picked up.
Shame floods my face with heat, followed quickly by anger. Anger I have no outlet for because there’s no one left to be angry at, except myself. That’s what the child psychologist said. I thought Taryn was too young to understand but he said she could still pick up on subconscious cues. Detect my distress and fear, sense my lingering trauma for weeks and months afterward. Is that why she’s acting out? Because I, her mother, the person responsible for taking care of her and making her happy and safe, had failed?
At least her screen is consistently there, present, unrelentingly cheerful and entertaining, not sneaking away into corners to cry ten times a day. And Scott was absent then and he’s absent now—his solution was to throw money at the problem, and this house is just the culmination of it. No wonder she prefers the screen.
By the time I get Taryn to sleep—it feels like it’s been hours, although it can’t have been more than thirty minutes or so—the headache has evolved into a migraine, and all I want to do is follow her example and hit the hay. The room is dimly lit by Taryn’s moon-shaped night-light, and the only sound is her soft, little snore, which I used to find so adorable. Of course, once she was in bed and tucked under the ethereally soft blankets, she passed out almost instantly without further argument.
I come to the window and lean my forehead on the cool glass pane, closing my eyes. When I open them, I see what I first think is a reflection in the glass, a glimmer of light. I blink but it’s still there, and I realize it’s not reflected in the window but outside of it.
I take a tiny step back and look across the dark expanse of our backyard. Right now it’s an empty space. We had big plans, if we decided to stay on board and buy the place, to build a gazebo or a swing set for Taryn or plant a lush garden. For the time being, I planned to at least bring in some flower boxes, to plant lilies and other low-maintenance plants to dress up the acid-green expanse of empty lawn. But I’ve put it off and put it off, and now it’s nearing fall and it’s too late.
The lawn eventually ends with a fence, and behind it looms the neighboring house. It’s not like ours—the designers have no doubt decided to avoid the trap of having rows of identical buildings, which the target clientele would consider tacky and suburban. So instead, each street is an assorted set of houses that nonetheless complement each other, with variety to suit tastes and price ranges.
The house out back is bigger and starkly square and modern in contrast to our more traditional-looking abode with its slanted roof. The wall facing us is made up of floor-to-ceiling windows, all of them one-way glass, of course. But in that moment, it had let something through. Just the glimmer of our terrace light when it caught on the round shape of a lens.
CHAPTER FOUR
I come back downstairs, unnerved and stone-cold sober. Even my headache has somewhat faded into the background. I linger in the door, observing the scene. My husband is topping off Mia’s glass, while Mia’s husband, Eric, is telling something to Emma in a hushed voice, which makes her giggle drunkenly. They don’t notice me at first.
Scott is the first one to look up. “Taryn is sleeping?”
“Yeah,” I say.
He nods at my glass, which he—or someone else—has refilled, pretty much to the brim. Since those giant glasses fit half a bottle each, you’re only supposed to splash wine into the bottom, to let it breathe. But right now it’s welcome.
“Thanks,” I say, and take a generous sip. He looks at me expectantly, and I sit down, hovering on the edge of the chair. I look over the faces around the table—wine-warmed, content faces—and realize there’s no good way to blurt, By the way, honey, someone is taking pictures of our daughter’s bedroom window from the house next door.
“We have to go home,” Eric is saying, slurring his words. Mia groans theatrically, stretching her arms over her head.
“No,” she pouts.
“You know I have to get up tomorrow. We all do.”
“Except Cecelia,” Emma chimes in.
“Yeah,” Mia picks up with a giggle. “Except Cecelia.”
Scott and I exchange a glance.
“You’re tipsy,” Scott says to Mia’s husband, to break up the tension and shift the subject. “You’re not going to drive like that, are you?”
“Well, I’m not going to walk like that, am I?” the man says, which elicits another burst of laughter from Emma. “Weren’t you supposed to be the designated driver, honey?”