Page 112 of Woman on the Verge

“Grace, I think you’re just procrastinating,” I say in my calm voice, though I can feel my blood pressure rising and my body getting hot.

“I am not!” She hates when I tell her she’s procrastinating, though I’m not even sure she knows what it means.

Liv starts crying upon hearing her sister upset—dramatic sobbing that is characteristic of her being overtired.

“Liv, shut up!” Grace says.

“Grace!” I yell.

Liv is now hysterical. I pull her from bed, bounce her in my arms.

“Liv is a baby! Liv is a baby!” Grace says.

“Grace, stop,” I tell her, giving her my don’t-fuck-with-me eyes. The expected sweat has now come out of every pore in my body, and I feel like I could fry an egg on my forehead.

“Ihateyou,” Grace says.

She’s recently into the wordhate. She wields it like a weapon.

Liv starts to settle, and I place her back in her bed. Grace, however, is a demon.

“I’m not going to bed,” she says, sitting up, arms folded across her chest.

I hate you,I think. I want to be allowed to be as childish as her, to wield my own verbal weapons. Instead, I take my rage and impulsively crouch down and pound my fist into the floor, forgetting that just beneath the carpet is a cement foundation.

“Fuck,” I say, too startled by my pain to control my language.

That—thefuckand my obvious pain—transforms Grace back into an empathic future health-care professional.

“Are you okay, Mommy?” she asks in her sweetest voice.

Liv is now wide eyed and full-on sucking her thumb, which is not something she has done in months. I have traumatized her.

I clutch my hand against my chest, slowly moving the fingers. Nothing is broken. There will likely be a bruise along the pinky side of my fist, a weeklong reminder of when I momentarily lost my mind.

“I’m okay,” I say, my teeth chattering from stress or shock or the rapid cooling of the sweat coating my body. “Now can we please go to bed?”

There is zero protest. I cover them each with their blankets and wish them sweet dreams. They do not call for me after I close their door. There is not a single peep. Perhaps I need to nearly break my hand every night. I have scared them into submission, much like I did with the primal-screaming incident. I should write a book about my parenting techniques.

Kyle is sitting in bed, legs outstretched, one ankle crossed over the other.

“Rough one, huh?” he says, eyes on the TV. He loves watchingDateline, which makes me wonder sometimes if he’s planning on killing me. I mean, if things gotreallybad.

“Rough one.” I shake out my hand, grimacing at the return of sensation. Kyle does not comment on this.

I inhale as deeply as I can, feeling my heart rate escalate as I catapult myself into this next life-changing moment.

“Why don’t you ever help?” I ask.

“Huh?” he says, taking his eyes off the TV.

“You can hear us in there, right? Why don’t you ever help?”

“Babe, I know you’ve got it handled.”

I am supposed to take this as a compliment. I am supposed to be charmed.

“I don’t have it handled,” I say. “Like, ever.”

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