Page 57

Weekdays have structure. Alarms. Shoes. Pre K drop off. Emails. Pick up. Dinner. Bath. Bedtime. A fragile but functional scaffold onto which I can throw my entire failing personality and hope it holds.

Weekends have nothing.

Nothing is dangerous.

Nothing gives a five year old too much room to ask questions I cannot answer.

Lucy sits at the kitchen table in her unicorn pajamas, staring at a piece of toast like she hates it.

I stand by the counter, holding the butter knife and trying not to take the toast’s failure as a reflection of mine as an aunt.

“You liked toast yesterday,” I point out.

Lucy doesn’t look up. “Not this toast.”

“It’s the same bread.”

“No.”

“It came from the same bag.”

She traces one finger through the crumbs on her plate. “Mommy cuts it.”

I set the knife down with surgical care. “How does Mommy cut it?”

Lucy shrugs again, offering exactly zero useful clarification.

“Triangles?” I ask. “Squares? Strips? Emotionally supportive trapezoids?”

Lucy blinks at me blankly, my sophisticated adult sarcasm lost on her.

I pick up the toast, set it on a cutting board, and cut it diagonally. Two triangles. Classic. Respectable. Architecturally sound.

Lucy looks at them for one second. “No.”

I turn the plate. “This direction?”

“No.”

“Lucy.”

Her mouth wobbles.

My entire body goes rigid because tears are coming, and I’ve discovered I'm bad at many things, but I'm spectacularly bad at handling a child’s tears. Adult tears are manageable. You offer tissues, water, a realistic action plan, and perhaps a legal referral.

Her tears dissolve any smidgeon of coping ability I possess like ice in a heatwave.

“I want Mommy,” she whispers.

My stomach clenches, and there’s a pain in my chest.

Why can’t I say something comforting, something warm and natural that a woman with maternal instincts and fewer emotional defects would say?

Instead, my mind offers: Your request has been received and is currently under review.

I hate my mind.

“I know,” I say, because, apparently, it’s all I have. “I know you do.”