“Mmm,” he said, too, slightly louder than Griffin had.
Hazel was grateful that something had finally interrupted the awkward silence at the table.
Hazel served herself a spoonful of pasta and looked over at Cam.
“So-o-o, how was everyone’s day?” Cam said transparently as he tried to start some kind of conversation. His eyebrows were raised like two exclamation marks on his forehead.
Hazel considered rolling her eyes but instead turned her gaze down toward her plate and listlessly stirred her food with her fork. She was more nauseous than she was hungry now.
“Great, darling,” Jane responded after just a bit too long. “Just great.” She shoved a forkful of pasta into her mouth and began chewing as if that were the thing stopping her from extending her response.
Still, Cam smiled broadly as if someone had just told him something significant. Hazel rolled her eyes as discreetly as she could. She didn’t trust people that were so easily charmed.
Hazel looked toward her mother and wondered if she, too, had been charmed by absolutely nothing. And it appeared she was. She had her eyes locked on her husband and both her feet resting casually on his chair. What could she possibly be so impressed by?
Hazel rested her fork down on the table and continued to stare her mother’s way, wondering if she would look back. Willing her to look back.
And finally her mother did, as if snapping out of a trance.
“And how was your day, Hazel?” her mother asked sweetly.
Hazel was about to utter her usual response, “Terrible,” but then the twins started their nightly performance.
Griffin dropped a piece of pasta from his high chair and watched intently as it fell to the floor. He stared down at the falling thing, first quietly, curiously, at its failure to return. And then his legs began to squirm as he became increasingly agitated that the pasta remained on the floor. Ignoring the remaining dozen bits of pasta on the table, Griffin began to cry. At this point, Trevor had become enraptured by the scene. Cam sprang into motion and restored the single piece of pasta to its position among the other pieces of pasta. The crying stopped, and Cam assumed his position back in his chair.
Hazel rolled her eyes at how easy it was for Griffin to get even the tiniest attention he wanted. And then she rolled her eyes again as Griffin and Trevor each began to curl his tiny, still-glitchy fingers around another piece of pasta and threw it down to the floor with a gummy smile. The excitement of throwing the pasta was as delightful to them as the consequences were alarming. The crying began again. This time doubled. First Griffin and then Trevor wailed in his high chair.
No matter how many times Hazel had observed this scene, it always surprised her that the response to this chain of events was to start it up once again. As soon as the object—this time a piece of pasta, other times a pacifier or a toy—was returned to their hands, they would drop it once more. They would fill with joy as they watched the object fall and then become devastated when it stayed there. With each repetition, neither delight of the thing falling nor the distress of the thing remaining on the floor ever lessened. Surely they would have realized by now that their heartbreak could be avoided. But they never seemed to. As Cam bent over and picked up the pasta, returned it to the table for the second time, and both boys became elated once more, it occurred to Hazel that she had been misinterpreting the scene the whole time.
Their distress, suffering, their tears, created magic for them. It caused the chaos that then allowed order to be restored. It enabled the delight in dropping those things to become possible again. It proved their father to be a healing force in this world.
This was something she wished she understood, and felt, about Cam, too.
Suddenly, the whole idea of being at the dinner table seemed too pathetic to participate in; the act of raising a fork to your mouth and saying “mmm” even before the taste hit your lips. Or passing a pitcher filled with cold water extravagantly decorated with sliced lemons. Or placing a small bit of each part of the meal in front of the twins, only to have them slap their palms into it or throw it onto the floor. It was all so elaborate, so superficially charming, but ultimately meaningless. A ceremony with no purpose. It was as if they were following the script written about the meal of the loveliest, happiest family. But Hazel felt a gurgling refusal to participate in the show of it all.
“I have some homework to finish,” Hazel lied. “Is it okay if I go back to my room?”
Hazel’s mom reached her arms across the table and opened her palms. And Hazel put her hands in her mother’s, leaving her fingers and wrists limp. Her mother gave them a tight, tight squeeze and then brought Hazel’s hands to her lips and kissed them loudly.
Trevor and Griffin pressed their own tiny palms, messy from dinner, to their lips and smacked their lips clumsily together in a kissing motion.
“Mwa, mwa,” they said.
“You’ve trained them well, Mom,” Hazel said, smirking and rolling her eyes.
Jane relinquished Hazel’s hands.
“My children will never be able to give me too many kisses.”
Hazel slid her chair out from under the table and walked back to her room. She shut her bedroom door behind her and pressed her back up against it as if she had been chased in there. Her chest was rising and falling and she noticed that her hands had curled up into tight fists.
She slid her back down the door, the grooves in it providing a comforting massage, until she was seated on the carpet. She closed her eyes and tried to escape to somewhere else. Somewhere she felt part of something again. And just as she began to dream, her mother’s voice rang through the air.
“Hazel, honey. Give the twins a bath, won’t you?”
Hazel dropped her chin into her chest and left a brief moment of silence hanging in the air. Just long enough to let the slightest tension build.
“Of course, Mother,” Hazel shouted back, too emphatically through clenched teeth, and then dragged her legs along the same hallway she had just walked down and turned into the living room.
Hazel continued to the kitchen and scooped each twin up into her arms.
“Okay, you two, bath time.”
Hazel rested Griffin and then Trevor down onto the bath mat and turned the faucet to the right. Water poured out, first cold and soon just the right amount of warm. The twins chattered in near unison at the sound of rushing water.
Hazel picked up Griffin to undress him. First his little pants, and then his little shirt. His legs kicked and body squirmed in anticipation. A drool-laden smile spread across his face. The diaper always looked so big on that tiny body. Hazel smiled and then pressed her face into his soft, protruding belly. Griffin giggled, which made Trevor giggle, too.
She carefully removed their diapers and placed Griffin, and then Trevor, into the water and scooped water over their fine whorls of hair as they wobbled in place. She plunged the duck-shaped sponge into the bath and watched it expand with warm soapy water before pulling it out from under the water. Griffin and Trevor smiled in anticipation of the dripping sponge meeting their bodies. Hazel supported Trevor’s chest with one hand and then pressed the saturated sponge into his back and rubbed it around. He giggled some more and waved his arms jerkily into the water. Griffin played along, slapping his palms onto the water’s surface. Hazel applied the soapy sponge to each fold in their soft, drooping skin. The creases of their wrists were her favorite—where arms met hands in a formless puff of delicate flesh.