“I can only imagine,” she said, intending to sound sympathetic, but it came out dreamy, even wishful. He cocked his head, confused, and she gave his arm an affectionate squeeze to end the conversation.

  Later, Laurel watched as he opened the Friday compartment of his weekly pill organizer, which she dutifully filled every weekend, depositing his medications and vitamins into each tiny chamber. She noticed he paid no attention to what he was swallowing. He merely dumped the contents into his chubby palm, and tossed them into his mouth before swigging back an enormous gulp of water. His eyes were back on the newspaper before the slurry finished traveling down his gullet.

  Laurel thought about his blood pressure medication, remembering the doctor’s warning that it had to be taken every day. A few missed doses could be deadly. For a terrible moment, she thought about what would happen if she somehow forgot to include them. He wouldn’t notice they were missing, wouldn’t even notice any change in his health—at least, not until it was too late. High blood pressure, the doctor had said, was the silent killer. No warnings, no sickness. Just a sudden stroke. He won’t even suffer, she mused, and the tingle in her spine returned. But she pushed it away. Such a terrible thought. Urging Doug to take responsibility for his own health was one thing—sabotaging him was something else entirely. It was... Laurel shook her head before the word materialized. She didn’t want to think about it.

  Picking up her phone, she gazed again at the ultrasound picture her daughter-in-law had sent—a hazy gray Rorschach of shadows she stared at until she was certain she saw the image of her first grandbaby. Her face felt wet, and Laurel realized she was crying. She glanced over at Doug to see if he noticed, but he had his head down, concentrating on the newspaper.

  “What’s on your agenda today?” she asked, hoping she could prompt him out of his self-pity and into thinking about job hunting. If he started pulling in some money—even at a lower level salary in retail like she had—it could mean the difference between affording the trip to California and missing that precious, once-in-a-lifetime chance to be there for the birth of her first grandchild. But Doug always insisted he couldn’t take a job like hers, as his back was too weak to be on his feet all day. He wanted a job in retail management. It was, he had insisted, what he was qualified for. But almost every brick-and-mortar store was struggling, and there weren’t many positions like that.

  “I’m making a few calls,” he said, without looking up.

  “Did you ever hear back from Steve Schneider?” she pressed. He was an old friend of theirs who was a marketing VP at Home Fair, and had promised to keep his eyes open for Doug.

  “Not yet.” His voice was flat, as if he couldn’t be torn away from what he was reading.

  “Maybe you should nudge him today,” she suggested.

  “Maybe,” he echoed, and gave a sharp shake at a crease in the newspaper, indicating the end of the conversation.

  When Sunday morning arrived, Laurel pulled the tray of medications from the cabinet and opened all the little doors on the weekly dispenser. She lined up the prescription bottles and supplements, and began her weekend ritual. Plink, plink, plink. An assembly line of dropping the pills into their daily compartments. As she twisted open the cap on the Lopressor—his blood pressure medication—Doug shuffled into the kitchen, dragging his slippers across the floor, a sound that made the muscles in the back of her neck go taut. He said nothing, just grabbed the carafe from the coffee maker and poured himself a cup, using the mug she had set out on the counter for him. He turned and looked at the kitchen table, where she had placed a box of Joe’s O’s and a bowl for him.

  “Where are the newspapers?” he asked.

  “In the driveway,” she said, annoyed. She was trying to be at peace with this marriage. Why did he always have to make it so hard?

  “You didn’t get them?” he asked.

  She put the bottle of Lopressor on the counter so hard the pills jumped and landed right back inside. “Does it look like I got them?”

  “You don’t have to get snippy,” he said, and hovered by the kitchen table. It seemed like he was deciding whether to take the few steps toward the front door, and Laurel held her breath, her hand on the bottle of pills. Finally, he lowered himself into a seat at the table, and took a long sip of his coffee, too hurt by her sharp words to make eye contact. But after a moment, he looked back at her, concerned. “Sweetie, are you okay?”

  And there it was. That decency. Her agitation evaporated. “Sorry I snapped at you,” she said. “I just woke up.”

  “It’s okay, babe,” he said. “Take your time.” He picked up the box of imitation Cheerios and poured it into his bowl. “Milk?”

  Laurel put down the pill bottle, retrieved the low-fat milk from the refrigerator, and handed it to him. He gave her a grateful look. It seemed to say, My darling, I will tolerate your minor failures because I love you that much. And Laurel felt her heart go soft at his tender largesse. She was his whole world.

  She went back to the counter, picked up the bottle of Lopressor, poured seven pills in her palm, and dropped them one by one into her husband’s weekly organizer. Plink, plink, plink.

  * * *

  Later that afternoon, Laurel arrived at her mother’s split-level house in Smithtown, a thirty-minute drive from her own split-level in Plainview. It was where Laurel had spent her childhood, and it had remained largely unchanged. Meanwhile, the middle-class neighborhood—which had been developed in the early sixties for young families who couldn’t afford the leafier, closer-to-Manhattan real estate of Nassau County, Long Island—had been expanding and maturing.

  Laurel took two bags of groceries from her trunk and walked up the steps, where a package sat. It was a rectangular box, about two feet long, and she had a pretty good idea what was inside—another doll. Her mother’s collection had never stopped growing.

  She used her key to unlock the door, then picked up the box and managed to carry it in along with the groceries.

  “Mom?” she called, making her way up the half staircase toward the kitchen landing. “It’s me!”

  “Down here!” her mother called, and Laurel understood she was in the family room on the lower level, where her doll collection now occupied most of the space. Laurel quickly unpacked the groceries, cleaned a dingy glass her mother had left in the sink, and made her way downstairs with the UPS delivery.

  It was a wood-paneled room where Laurel had spent most of her childhood evenings, fighting with her older brother over the TV remote, a new gadget that had kept them at odds. Usually, their mother was in the kitchen, ignoring their screaming fights as she cooked dinner or escaped to her bedroom to rearrange the doll collection, which hadn’t yet expanded beyond a single bookcase. One day, her father was home during a particularly vicious fight between Laurel and Bruce, and instituted a half-hour rule, dictated by a sand timer he placed atop the television. When the sand ran out, the timer got turned over, and the remote passed from one sibling to another. It was an ingenious solution—at least for Laurel, who learned an important discipline. Delayed gratification.

  Now, the old TV was gone, and the wood paneling was barely visible behind the oversize shelving units filled with collectible dolls—some on display, others protected inside cardboard boxes. When Laurel was a child, her mother’s collection was limited to antique dolls, with faces of bisque or porcelain. But sometime in the eighties—when Joan’s marriage began to crumble—her hobby turned into an obsession, and she started collecting vintage midcentury dolls of molded plastic. That manic preoccupation slowly morphed into agoraphobia. More and more, the only place she felt safe was at home with her dolls.

  Joan didn’t look up when Laurel entered the room. She was bent over the old sofa—now moved several feet from the back wall to accommodate the broad industrial shelves that served as the warehouse section of the room. The catty-corner walls were the showcases for the collection, which never failed to make an impression. Even now, Laurel could appreciate the dense accumulation of dresses and faces and hairstyles and sizes. It was like a giant party frozen just as the celebration was about to begin.

  A line of dolls was laid out on a sheet atop the sofa. Joan was bent over them with a feather duster flying in quick left-right motions. When she finished, she turned to Laurel and her expression changed from serious to delighted.

  “Sweet Sue!” Joan cried with a gasp when she saw the box in Laurel’s hand. “She’s here!”

  Laurel passed her the package. “Looks like you’ve been busy.”

  “You have no idea,” Joan said, in a voice that implied it was all simply too much. She brought the box to her workstation—an old folding table in the center of the room. Then she picked up the Swiss Army knife resting in the corner and struggled to open the blade tucked tightly inside.

  “I’ll do it, Mom,” Laurel said.

  “What would I do without you?” Joan gushed, as she handed over the knife.

  Laurel pulled out the blade and carefully sliced through the tape on the box, then she stood back to afford her mother the joy of opening it.

  Joan—dainty and small, with a head that seemed too large for her narrow body—hovered over the box for a breathless moment. She was all bones and sharp angles beneath the blush-colored Juicy Couture tracksuit she’d had for over a decade. Her blond curls—overbleached and straw-like—had thinned over the years, and Laurel could see her pink scalp peeking through.

  “Have you eaten anything today, Mom?” Laurel asked.

  Joan ignored her question and extracted the doll from the box, holding it up for Laurel. It was a redheaded girl, with bow lips and a starchy party dress in pale peach with a dull ecru collar. She fluffed out the bottom of the skirt.

  “Isn’t she beautiful?” Joan sighed, as she adjusted the puffy sleeves.

  “Very special,” Laurel said, though in truth she thought the doll looked just like at least a dozen others in the collection.

  Joan walked over to the shelf and made room between two other dolls. She stood back and assessed the display, then did some rearranging so that the new addition stood between a blonde in a green shift and a brunette in a chocolate polka-dot ensemble.

  “Perfect!” Joan clapped.

  “Why don’t I make us lunch?” Laurel asked. “I’m starving.”

  Her mother dismissed the suggestion with a wave. “Oh, I’m not hungry. I had one of those Ensures.”

  “Come on,” Laurel said, assuming her mother was humoring her with a white lie. “I bought bagels. And a nice tomato. I’ll open a can of tuna.”

  Joan’s doctor wanted her to gain weight, and Laurel spent a lot of energy trying to make that happen. But Joan was resistant. She mostly ignored the calorie-rich nutritional shakes Laurel left in her refrigerator, and could never seem to find the time to eat. Laurel was determined to tempt her with her favorite lunch.

  “Go get everything ready,” her mother said. “I’ll be up in a few.”

  “Keep me company,” Laurel implored.

  “I have a lot to do.” Joan swept her arm toward the sofa, where a line of dolls lay waiting for her attention.

  “Let’s have lunch and then I’ll help you.”

  “You will not.”

  “I will,” Laurel insisted.

  “You don’t care about my dolls.”

  It was true—she didn’t. At least, not in the way her mother cared about them. Still, Laurel was grateful for the collection, glad her mother had something to keep her happy and fulfilled. The problem was that she still battled feelings of jealousy over these pieces of plastic and fabric. And sure, she knew that was a little pathetic. After all, her mother loved her fiercely—certainly more than she loved the dolls—but it was hard to compete with these tiny models of perfection.

  “I care about you,” Laurel said.

  “You always pretend you want to spend time with me.”

  “I do want to spend time with you,” she insisted. It was true, but there was always so much else to do. Guilt gnawed at her.

  “But only on your schedule.”

  “I have work,” Laurel said. “I have Doug.”

  “You know what would be lovely?” Joan said. “If we could go out to lunch together like other mothers and daughters.”

  It wasn’t the first time this had come up. But for the past several years, Joan would only leave the house when it was imperative. And even that was getting harder. When she had a doctor’s appointment, Laurel had to budget an extra hour or two into the day so she could get her mother out the door.

  “I’d love that,” Laurel said. “But, Mom, you never—”

  “I know, I know,” Joan interrupted. “But I think I could do it, if you would just be more patient with me. Maybe if you took time off from that silly job.”

  At that, Laurel felt a pang, recalling that moment in the car when she thought all her problems had been solved with a big pile of insurance money that would allow her to quit her job and have the leisure time she had always wanted.

  “Mom,” she said carefully, “if I didn’t have... If I didn’t have to work so much, would you really let me take you out?”

  Joan picked up one of the dolls from the sofa, held it to her chest, and looked at Laurel, her eyes wet. “Oh, my baby,” she said, squeezing the doll tighter, “it would complete me.”

  Laurel bit back her own tears, feeling like a lifetime of aching for her mother’s approval was within reach. She approached and wrapped her in a hug, breathing in the familiar scent of hair spray and Chanel No. 5, registering only the minor discomfort of a Patti Playpal pressed between them.

  5

  Driving back from her mother’s house, Laurel thought about her overburdened schedule. Though she visited every Sunday, it wasn’t enough. Her mother craved more time and attention than Laurel could provide. Now, she thought about all the others she was also shortchanging. Her son and daughter-in-law. Her future grandchild. Even some anonymous pup currently trembling in an animal shelter. They all needed her, but she was forced to hold back because her husband sucked up all her free time. Laurel squeezed the steering wheel and wondered if ministering to Doug’s myriad health needs was really the moral choice.

  And of course, it wasn’t just other people Laurel was neglecting, but herself. When Doug’s store went bust, she’d been so quick to give up the manicures, the hair salon, the exercise classes, the dinners out with her friends. At the time, she felt almost noble in her sacrifices. A martyr. But now she felt a deep, gaping ache, as if the best part of her had been excised. And all that was left was Laurel the caretaker.

  But what was the alternative when Doug refused to take responsibility for himself? She was simply stuck.

  Laurel thought about that weekly pill dispenser and remembered the day she had forgotten to include Doug’s vitamin D capsules. She revisited her speculation about his blood pressure medication, wondering what would happen if he went a full week without it. Certainly, he would have a dangerous spike. And possibly, a fatal stroke.

  As she envisioned it, Laurel felt her pulse pounding at the sheer power she held, and wondered if this temptation might one day be too much for her to resist. The thought made her so nervous she almost didn’t see the brake lights in front of her. She slammed her foot down, screeching to a stop with just inches to spare. Sweating and shaking, Laurel searched for a phrase to focus on so she could calm herself. She remembered her mother’s words. Complete Me. CM. Chuck Mangione. Chrissy Metz.

  Charles Manson.

  At that, Laurel’s skin went cold, and she understood she had to resist this...this depravity. She was no murderer. She was just a doting wife who was tired from three decades of service to her husband.

  Then, on Tuesday morning, as Laurel was getting ready for work, her phone pinged with a calendar notification about Doug’s checkup with his endocrinologist that afternoon. It was yet another way in which she managed his care. Doug couldn’t be counted on to remember his own appointments, or write them down in a place he would see them. A few times, she had tried to show him how to use the calendar on his own phone, but he’d been so obtuse. “Everything looks so tiny,” he had complained, squinting.

  “Tap on it,” she’d said.

  “Hey, buddy,” Doug said to his phone, tapping at it like it was someone’s shoulder, “when’s my doctor’s appointment?”

  She gave a small laugh, but inside, she was disappointed. He wasn’t even trying. It was just easier to pretend he didn’t understand and let her carry the burden.

  Well, not this time. Doug could remember his own damned appointment. This was exactly what Charlie had meant by letting him take responsibility for himself. And if Doug missed his doctor visit and his health suffered as a result, that was his fault, not hers.

  This, Laurel felt, was perfectly justified. It wasn’t anything like omitting one of his life-saving medications. It was simply pushing him harder to be a normal, independent adult.

  And so Laurel made the coffee, set out Doug’s breakfast and his pill dispenser, retrieved the newspapers, and then kissed the top of his head as he read the letters to the editor in Newsday.

  “I’m leaving,” she said. “Do you need anything?”

  “Could you bring home some Greek yogurt? And those mini croissants?”

  The yogurt he liked was full-fat, and the croissants were made with just enough flour to hold the butter together. It was a cholesterol orgy. But instead of trying to cajole him into better choices, Laurel released the responsibility to him.

  “Sure, sweetie,” she said, “if that’s what you want.”

  Laurel hesitated waiting to see if he had anything else to say. She wasn’t even sure what she wanted from him. She only knew her heart felt porous, like it could absorb any little kindness it came in contact with. But he had made his request, and had nothing more to say. She had already disappeared from his consciousness, which was now filled with an editorial on local politics. She let out one soft breath, and slipped out the door.

 

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