Page 54 of The Devil You Know
“MOMMY, WHAT’S A GAG?”
Ben whips his head around to look at Leah, his eyes flashing. “Leah, will you be quiet forone goddamn minute?”
Leah stares at him, astonished. Ben never yells at Leah. Ever. He’s usually happy to let me be the bad guy. There was a tiny chance that this might have actually shut Leah up for the duration of the drive, but I know my daughter, and I was pretty sure this wasn’t going to be the case. Instead, Leah’s face crumbles and she starts wailing hysterically.
“Maybe some music,” Ben mumbles as he turns Mozart back on.
Leah cries for the entire rest of the drive. By the end, I’m starting to get worried that Ben might crash the car on purpose and kill us all. But somehow we make it to his mother’s house in Reading, Massachusetts (pronounced “Redding”) with our lives intact. I’m not sure if I can say the same for Ben’s sanity.
Ben’s mother Nancy lives all alone in a four-bedroom house that’s so gigantic, it feels like a constant hint that we should visit more. He does have two brothers with kids who visit with some frequency, so that takes a little of the pressure off us. Nancy keeps her house spotless and the bedrooms look like they’re out of a hotel, always perfectly made up when we arrive. She even puts, I swear to God, a mint on our pillows. I sometimes call her house Chateau Ross.
“How are you both?” Nancy asks as we struggle with our bags in her foyer.
“Good,” I lie.
“Fine,” Ben mutters.
Nancy brushes us both away and grabs Ben’s luggage to haul it upstairs herself. She’s thin and small, but wiry. I’ve seen her carrying two huge sacks of laundry down to her basement without breaking a sweat.
“Mom, you don’t have to do that for us,” he protests, although to be honest, I think he likes being babied by his mother.
Leah tugs on my jacket. “Mommy, where’s my present?”
Oh yeah. At some point during the drive, I told Leah that her grandmother would have a present waiting for her, and if she kept crying and complaining, she wouldn’t get the present. It helped. For about five minutes.
“I got you something very special, Leah!” Nancy chirps. She takes Leah by the hand and leads her to her expansive living room, where she’s got three carefully wrapped presents on her coffee table.
Leah’s eyes light up like it’s Christmas all over again. “Presents!” she shrieks as she hurls herself at the packages.
“That was so nice of you, Nancy!” I exclaim.
A minute later, Leah has stripped the first package of its wrapping paper. She pulls out the contents and her little face falls when she holds up a sweater. “It’s clothes!” she cries, crestfallen.
“But it’s so pretty!” Nancy says.
Ben and I exchange looks. “Mom, why would you get a three-year-old girl clothing as a present?” he asks.
“I’m just trying to buy some beautiful clothing for my granddaughter!” Nancy says, looking just as crestfallen as Leah. I’m not sure which of them to comfort first.
You know what? I don’t even care. At this point, I’m just relieved we’re not in the car anymore.
_____
I’ve got definite misgivings as Ben, Leah, and I walk into the Museum of Science.
Boston also has a large Children’s Museum, where I suggested we take Leah today. That was an hour-long argument. Ben didn’t want to go to the Children’s Museum because it wouldn’t be interesting forus. I pointed out that if we go to a place that isn’t interesting to Leah, we’re definitely not going to have any fun. He shot back that the Museum of Science would have plenty of exhibits that would be interesting to Leah.
So anyway, you can guess who won that argument.
The entrance to the Museum of Science has two lifelike models of dinosaurs. Ben nudges me, “Isn’t that cool?”
I shrug. “Not that cool. TheT. rexdoesn’t even seem all that big.”
“What are you talking about?” He waves his hands expansively at the dinosaurs. “It’sreallybig!”
“It’s big,” I admit. “But it’s not so big that it could just step on you and kill you. I mean, it looks like you might be able to fight with it a little. In any case, it wouldn’t be a total blow out.”
Ben looks skeptical. “Youwould be able to fight with aT rex? Jane, you can’t even open a jar of spaghetti sauce.”
