She could tell by the vacant crackle of the baby monitor that the twins were asleep now. She heard her mother rummaging around the kitchen. She heard the strained whoosh of the freezer opening. Then, the slight clanking of silverware rustling as a drawer opened, and then the click of it shutting.
Hazel knew it was ice cream time. Hazel’s mom said Hazel couldn’t call it a tradition, because she never knew when it would come.
“A sweet surprise for my sweet,” she would say as she revealed two bowls of ice cream from behind her back and then sat down on the bed.
Each bowl would contain two scoops of vanilla and nothing else. “I’m a vanilla purist,” her mother would say as she scooped spoonful after spoonful into her mouth. “None of that chocolate chip, cookie dough, brownie bite, peanut butter swirl, caramel, nut nonsense.”
They would tuck themselves under the sheets and eat until their bellies were full. And then they would put the empty bowls on the bedside table and lie there quietly, usually until they fell asleep.
Hazel heard the click of one spoon, and then another, hit the edge of the bowl. Yes, she knew it. Hazel’s spine uncurled itself from its hunched position over the puzzle and zipped straight up, ready for her sweet surprise. She heard the weightless sweep of her mother’s feet moving across the floor of the kitchen, and then onto the carpet of the hallway. Hazel could already feel the coldness in her cheeks and the sweetness on her tongue.
Out of the crack in her door, she saw her mother appear one moment, and then move swiftly out of sight the next moment. The sounds of her mother’s feet continued to move gingerly down the hallway.
Hazel tiptoed toward her door and peeked her head out into the hallway. Her mother stood in front of her own bedroom at the end of the hall, two bowls of ice cream behind her back. The top of a scoop of ice cream poked out over the edge of the bowl. She could see the brown globs of cookie dough mixed into the creamy white vanilla. And then she felt the familiar tingle in her fingertips and toes. She accepted that this was her life now. That this would always be her life.
She scooted back across the carpet. The tingling had now spread up through her cheeks and to the top of her head. She closed her eyes and pressed her palms into the carpet, reminding herself that gravity was still available to her. But then she let her palms float right back up. If this was what her life would be like here, perhaps she could go somewhere else. Anywhere else. Anywhere else out of Verona, New York, out of this house, with these people. She was invigorated anew at the idea of floating away to that anywhere place.
It wasn’t that Hazel was longing for a more magnificent, more spectacular life. It wasn’t that she needed ice cream in bed or to fall asleep next to her mother. It was just that she wanted to feel a connection. To anything. Anywhere.
Hazel looked over at the photo of her and her mother tacked up on the wall. She yanked it off and held it up close, looking into the eyes of her younger self and then her mother’s younger self. She remembered this day well. It was the first chilly day of the year and they had bundled up in big puffy jackets and scarves. In the photo, both of their noses were pink from a day at the carnival. They’d played games and eaten cotton candy and fried dough and laughed and shouted on the rides until their bellies ached. Hazel looked down at the corner of the photo and observed how her mother’s hand was wrapped tightly around her waist, squeezing the down jacket tight. Her eyes welled up a little bit. It was a different time. A time they would never get back.
Hazel threw the picture on the floor. It fell facedown on her carpet, revealing an inscription on the back of the photo that she never knew was there, and read it to herself.
Sleep little baby, clean as a nut,
Your fingers uncurl and your eyes are shut.
Your life was ours, which is with you.
Go on your journey. We go too.
The bat is flying round the house
Like an umbrella turned into a mouse.
The moon is astonished and so are the sheep:
Their bells have come to send you to sleep.
Oh be our rest, our hopeful start.
Turn your head to my beating heart.
Sleep little baby, clean as a nut,
Your fingers uncurl and your eyes are shut.
It was the poem her mother used to read to her before bed each night. “Lullaby” by John Fuller. Hazel could nearly recite the words from memory as she read them. She liked that it wasn’t a simple nursery rhyme. She had never thought to contemplate the meaning before, but for some reason it seemed important now.
Hazel had the paradoxical sense that she was in the center of her story and yet entirely left out of it.
She was lonely. There was no other word for it. And she remembered the moment when that feeling had become a permanent fixture in her gut. The shift in feeling itself was sharp and harsh and solidified her position as an outsider in her own home. An outsider in her own family.
She couldn’t help but replay the moment in her mind.
It was about a month before the twins were born and Hazel was coming back from school. She had just stepped off the pavement of the walkway into the front door and opened her mouth to shout “Hello,” as she always had. But before she could get the word out, she heard her mother say something. She couldn’t quite make out the words of what she had said, but she could clearly make out Cam’s hearty laughter in response. Thinking the exchange was finished, Hazel closed the door behind her, and shouted, “Hello.” There was no response.
She walked into the kitchen, thirsting to be noticed, but her mother and Cam were keeled over in laughter. She felt truly alone in their presence. Hazel understood that her mother now belonged to Cam and he belonged to her. When her mother was getting to know Cam, the three of them had spent time together and it had felt back then like that was how things would always be. But Hazel now knew that it had been an act. The twins were just another thing binding them together and leaving her out. This loneliness was her life now, until she could find a way out. She was sure of it. And the sight of her mother’s large, extended belly bouncing up and down only reinforced her deep, incisive sadness. She knew her mother would soon belong to those boys growing inside of her, too. That she would be outnumbered by others. That the size of their family would be much greater than the size of her and her mother. That she had lost the battle. That she was nearly no longer a member of the family.
A sense of dislocation came over her and Hazel brought her hand to the doorframe to brace herself. The feeling of dizziness passed, but the loneliness did not. The next morning, and the next morning after that, and the next morning after that, it was still there. It only deepened and twisted even tighter when the twins came into the picture.
And now she was left with the feeling that she was watching her life, her family, her home from the outside, instead of participating in it. Some days, there seemed to be a promise of a resolution, but it never came. Some days she wanted desperately to get back on the inside of things. To join, really join, the dinners and conversations and happiness, but she couldn’t. She just couldn’t.