Dirty Laundry, page 7
“And they wouldn’t have had help from their husbands either.”
Mishti flushed. She didn’t see much of a difference between Parth and her own father. Maya was just as anxious around him as Mishti had been around her own.
“And now we have all this information at our fingertips. We can choose to do with it what we like. Really, there’s no excuse for making bad parenting decisions anymore.”
“Do you and Gerry agree on everything?” Mishti asked.
“He trusts me. I’ve done my research.”
As they approached Mishti’s house, they saw Parth in the driveway, stepping out of his car.
“There he is!” Ciara remarked, when they were in his earshot.
Parth turned to them with a half grin. “Ciara, how are you?”
“I’m not sure. We’ve just spent the past two hours with a bunch of kids and their mothers. We were all hopped up on sugar and caffeine.”
“You have my sympathies.”
Mishti stood back, starkly aware of not being a part of this conversation.
Their bodies were close together, and there was an ease about the way Ciara and Parth stood in each other’s personal spaces. All she could see was Ciara’s wide-lipped smirk, Parth’s eyes lingering on her hips. He looked away when a car passed them, lifting his hand to wave at a neighbor Mishti had never seen him interact with before.
“It was nice seeing you, Ciara,” he said, smiling at her before he headed toward the front door.
Ciara was beaming, flushed, as she turned to Mishti. “Let’s have dinner sometime. The two families. It’ll be fun.”
Mishti nodded, smiling, trying not to blame Ciara for how she must have been feeling. It was all Parth.
If he had looked at Mishti that way, she would have been blushing too.
September 3
Ciara didn’t feel guilty about letting her thoughts wander to Parth Guha as she set the table for dinner. She was free to imagine what she wanted, about whomever she wanted.
Bella was glued to the TV again, while Finn was on the rug in the sitting room, surrounded by toys he rarely played with.
Parth made for the picture-perfect immigrant story. Educated, charming, successful, a fitting embellishment to their community. From the day the Guha family moved into the house next door, Ciara decided she was going to take them under her wing.
She knew their marriage was arranged, even though Mishti rarely spoke about her husband. The impression she got was that things were strained between them, that Parth was difficult to live with, but weren’t they all? If she had him at her disposal, she would have straightened him right up.
It wasn’t very often that Ciara even saw the two of them together, so it was difficult to picture them as a couple. Mishti was her friend, her most trusted confidante. Parth was an attractive neighbor. In her mind, the two existed independent of each other.
She bit her bottom lip while slicing a lemon into wedges. She enjoyed these stolen moments of private thought.
Once she was satisfied, she pulled out her phone to photograph the food. She had to go on tiptoes to position the camera directly above the dishes, and it took several attempts before she was satisfied with the angle and lighting. Her followers loved this sort of thing, a peek into her daily life. She was just like them, the photograph said. A healthier, glowing, more aspirational version of them. Just a little out of reach.
“Mummy, I want some sweets. I’m very hungry.” Bella came into the kitchen with her nostrils flared. She didn’t seem to notice her mother all but suspended in the air above the dining table.
“You’re going to have to wait to eat your dinner if you’re hungry.” Ciara clicked a few more photographs. She moved the cutlery around for the different shots.
“But I’m hungry.”
“Go see if your brother’s okay.” She stood back and scrolled through the photographs.
“Can I have some Haribos?”
“No, Bella. It’s nearly dinnertime.”
“But I’m hungry now.”
“Go check on Finn.”
She posted one of the photos to her Instagram stories, captioning it with a few happy, heart-eyed emojis. There were responses and reactions before she’d even had a chance to put the phone away.
Bella stomped her feet violently. The front door opened just as she was about to explode, and she heard her father.
“Daddy!” She ran to him.
Gerry basked in his daughter’s adoration, reaching for Bella and lifting her high overhead, then spinning her around. They dissolved in sugary giggles. Ciara thought about photographing the moment so she could post it online, but she turned away from them. She didn’t want Gerry to think she was encouraging this sudden birth of a bond between them.
They sat down at the dinner table shortly after. Bella was narrating the plot of Frozen. This wasn’t new to them, but they had no choice but to listen. Finn was in the high chair and disinterested in his food. He picked out each square piece of grilled chicken and promptly flung it to the ground. Ciara had snapped a photo of him as soon as she’d put the food down on his tray, so she couldn’t care less about the mess now.
“I can take him out of the high chair and hold him while we eat,” Gerry said.
“You’re not here for most of their meals; this is what he’s always like. If you hold him once, he’ll want to be held all the time. I can’t allow it to turn into a habit.”
“Daddy, you’re not listening to me!”
“I am, baby.”
“He just has to learn to be independent. If he doesn’t want his dinner in the high chair, he’s not getting it any other way.”
Gerry glanced at his son apologetically, infuriating Ciara even more.
“Hold him if you want to.”
“I don’t want to turn this into a thing.”
“You already have.”
“Daddy!”
“Yes, baby, okay, tell me your story. I’m listening.”
Bella told the Frozen story like it was something she had personally lived through. It gave Ciara a chance to sink back into the warm glow of remembering Parth’s eyes on her, lingering a moment too long. She shifted in her chair.
“Daddy, can I have dessert?”
Ciara heard Bella, and she glared at Gerry from across the table.
“I don’t know if we have any,” he replied. He was buying time, hoping his wife would step in. She could see him cracking under the pressure, and she held back.
“Mummy, can I have dessert?”
“May I have some dessert,” Ciara corrected her. “And no, there isn’t any.”
Bella put down her fork and pushed her plate away.
“I didn’t get any sweets today. I want chocolate.”
“You’re not having any at this time of the night, Bella.”
“Why don’t we discuss the possibility of a treat after you’ve finished dinner?” Gerry said, fully disintegrating to pieces now.
Ciara and Bella were glaring at each other, and then Bella got out of her chair. “I’m going to watch TV.”
“No, you’re going to leave the TV alone. There are lots of other things for you to do around the house. You have a box full of jigsaws, for instance.”
Bella pretended to not have heard her mother and left the kitchen.
Ciara put down her cutlery, and Gerry took a sip of water in preparation for what was to come.
“You have to stop encouraging her,” she snapped at him.
“Encouraging her how?”
“Giving her the idea that dessert is even an option.”
“I didn’t bring it up, Ciara.”
“She’s obsessed with sugar.”
“Ciara…”
“You’re not here the rest of the day. You don’t know what she’s like, and I’m the villain for putting my foot down.”
Once again, Gerry fell silent. She wasn’t even curious to know what was on his mind. Not these days.
“And it’s starting to show,” she added.
“Show?”
“Her obsession with sweets.”
“What are you trying to say, Ciara?”
“All right, you want me to say the words? I will. I’m not going to be politically correct here, Gerry. Bella is putting on weight. When she’s not eating sweets, she’s sitting in front of the TV. A lot of the times, she’s doing both.” She left out the part about how she worried what the other mothers would say if her daughter ended up with childhood obesity.
Gerry glanced at his son, and for a moment Ciara thought he was going to curse, save for Finn’s presence.
“Bella is a growing child. She is not fat.”
“I didn’t say she is. I’m pointing out that she’s developing unhealthy eating habits.”
“Okay, so we’ll talk to her.”
“And tell her what exactly?”
Gerry pressed his thumbs into his temples and shut his eyes. “I don’t know, Ciara, I don’t know what we’ll say. All I know is we need to talk to her instead of fighting her on this.”
Ciara stood up with a jerk. Her chair scraped the floor noisily and nearly tipped over.
“You sit here and think about it while I go drag her away from the TV. Once again, I’ll be the one actually doing something around here.”
As she left the room, she heard Gerry unbuckling Finn from the high chair.
“Bella, you were told you can’t watch TV anymore tonight.”
Her daughter’s face screwed up as she forced the tears to come. Ciara braced herself for what she knew was going to be a long night.
* * *
—
She had the baby monitor clipped to her hip while she loaded the dishwasher later. Bella had eventually gone to sleep, screaming and thrashing. Ciara could still hear phantom echoes of her daughter’s cries ringing through the house.
She looked over her shoulder when she heard Gerry uncorking a bottle of wine.
“Would you like some of this?”
“Yes.”
They didn’t drink together very often, not while they were alone anyway. She was mildly curious about him being home early enough for dinner with the kids, but she decided she didn’t want to hear about his day or the effort he’d suddenly decided to make to spend more time with his family.
“It sounded like Bella had a hard time falling asleep,” he said. He approached her with the wineglass in an extended hand. The dishwasher was fully stacked, and there was nothing else to attend to in the kitchen. There was an awkwardness between them, now that the children weren’t around and their hands were free.
“She doesn’t like being told what to do.”
“I’m sorry I wasn’t much help tonight. I’m sorry if I made things worse.”
“She was testing my authority because you were around.”
“Okay, yes, but I wasn’t trying to take sides.”
“You have to be able to fight her.”
“Does it have to be a fight?”
“With Bella, it does.”
They both sipped their wine, standing on opposite sides of the white marble kitchen island. Her phone was lying on the counter, directly in her line of vision. She could see notifications popping up. Reactions from strangers to her photos of their scrumptious home-cooked meal and the adorable photo of Finn in his high chair.
“I want to be able to help you, Ciara,” Gerry continued, raking a hand through his brushed-up hair.
“Well, this is a fairly recent development.”
“I’ve always wanted to help.”
“So it’s my fault you’re never around?”
“You don’t want my help; neither do you want me around.”
“This again.”
He came to stand beside her, and she held her glass to her chest. It was an attempt to discourage him from coming any closer. She couldn’t remember the exact date or month or year when she stopped wanting him to touch her. It may have been before Finn was even born.
When he did reach for her shoulder now, Ciara felt herself seize up.
When they first met, they couldn’t keep their hands off each other. Even then, in her mid-twenties, Ciara knew they were living on borrowed time. She believed what’s said about sexual chemistry running out, that the honeymoon period doesn’t last forever. She had been pleasantly surprised she had a sexual appetite for him at all. This was a man who was good enough to marry. She wasn’t expecting to be attracted to him too.
Gerry’s fingers traveled up her shoulder and lingered on her neck, and she smiled smugly at him. It wasn’t going to work, especially not on a night she’d been imagining Parth’s fingers right there on that spot.
“I want us to try a little harder, Ciara. Do you think we can do that?”
“Try harder with the kids?”
“And with us. We don’t see each other very often anymore. Maybe it’s my fault. Maybe I’ve been working too hard.”
She stepped away from him, allowing his hand to fall from her.
“And what do you plan to do about it? Retire? At this age?”
“I could slow down a little.”
She went to pour more wine in her glass. He’d barely touched his.
“You’re free to do what you want, Gerry. It’s your career.”
“Do you want to go back to work? Is that what you’re saying?”
Finally, he had said something that stung.
“You’ll be surprised to know how much work goes into what I do.”
“You know I’m not talking about the kids. I know how much work you put into them.”
“I’m not talking about the kids either.”
Gerry’s eyes widened, like he hadn’t given it a serious thought before. “Oh. Right. You mean your Instagram thing.”
Ciara’s nostrils flared and she poured more wine. Her “Instagram thing” had generated more income in the past two years than her desk job at Horizon had in five. The only joy she derived from that job, where she processed insurance applications, was by fabricating intricate details of an applicant’s life based on what they filled out on their forms. Sometimes she lost hours poring over the bank statements of someone with a sizable spending account: studying their transactions, piecing together a pattern of where they bought their coffees on weekdays, their shopping sprees on the weekends, a big splurge at the toy shop on Sunday evenings.
Her inbox was currently packed with emails from cosmetics and lifestyle brands, offering her her very own sizable chunks of money for collaborations. Then she remembered that Gerry didn’t have a clue about the money, not about any of it. He’d seen the products the companies sent her, and he assumed they were samples and gifts. He didn’t know they were often accompanied by PayPal invoices.
“It doesn’t matter,” she snapped. He looked almost relieved, like he didn’t want to have to listen to her, once again, explain that her social media had relevance. “I’ve been at home with the kids for five years. I can’t just go back and pick up where I left off.”
“You don’t have to return to Horizon; you can look elsewhere. I can help with that,” he said.
“Start afresh?”
“Yeah, start afresh.”
She smiled at her husband, then poured the remaining wine down her throat. “Wouldn’t that be the dream? Starting afresh with a clean slate, with nothing and nobody weighing me down.”
September 5
Lauren had walked to the village through the woods again but took the regular route home, because she didn’t want to have to explain the ring of broken beer bottles to Willow one more time. There had been some showers that morning, and now it was bright and wet. The triangular patches of green at the corners of the footpaths were waterlogged. Willow, who was tied to Lauren’s back, pointed enthusiastically at each of them. She’d recently developed a fascination with puddles and jumping in them. Lauren wished she’d never introduced Peppa Pig to the household.
“You don’t have your wellies on, Willow, you can’t jump in puddles today,” she repeated, when Willow pleaded to be let down again.
When they turned the corner, Lauren saw Mishti walking ahead on the footpath.
She was in running clothes: black leggings, fluorescent runners, and an oversized hoodie. Like some women who are self-conscious of their bodies, Mishti seemed to share the proclivity to bury herself in clothing a few sizes too large. She was hunched over, with her arms ramrod straight by her sides, trying to create a protective barrier against the cold. Lauren saw a woman with the delicate features of a toddler, a soft round face, cheeks and chin and neck all mushed together.
Rainbows appeared and disappeared amidst the hills that surrounded the village, their edges smudged by mist. A combine harvester droned not too far away, slowly shaving off a field and leaving a golden stubble in its wake.
When Lauren quickened her pace and caught up to her, Mishti startled.
“Hello there. Is Maya at preschool?”
“Huh. Yes, she is. Hi, Willow.”
Willow mumbled a response and then went back to eating dehydrated pieces of mango.
“Did you just go for a run?”
“No, it was more of a jog in the park, but I’m not very good at it. I haven’t been doing it very long.”
“You’ll get there, I’m sure. At least you’re making an effort. I can’t remember when I last took the time out to exercise.”
“You have three children—you have your hands full,” Mishti replied kindly.
She was kind, Lauren thought. When she wasn’t under Ciara’s watchful eyes, Mishti was more chatty too. “Some mothers seem to have it all together. They have all the answers and the time. I don’t seem to have either,” Lauren said.
