Page 55 of The Devil You Know
That’s an exaggeration.SometimesI can’t open spaghetti sauce. In my defense, sometimes when I hand the jar over to him, he can’t open it either. Why do they make it so hard to get at spaghetti sauce? “They’re entirely different skills.”
“Leah,” Ben says, “youthink it’s cool, right?”
Leah shrugs. “It’s not that big. I like the bones ones better.”
She’s talking about the skeletons in the Natural History Museum. At the time, she actually didn’t seem overly impressed with them, but right now, I’ll take it as a win.
We make our rounds through the museum. Ben tries to interest Leah in an exhibit called “Mathematica.” I’ll give you three guesses how that turns out. The optical illusions exhibit doesn’t seem to catch her fancy either. Then they have an exhibit involving live butterflies, which Leah usually loves, but suddenly she announces that she’s “’fraid of butterf’ies.”
“How can you be afraid of butterflies?” Ben demands to know. “They’rebutterflies! They’re the least scary animal in existence!”
Leah won’t budge.
Finally, after an exasperating forty minutes of dragging her around the museum, Leah discovers an exhibit called “Science in the Park.”
“See-saw!” she shrieks as she runs excitedly toward a see-saw that’s probably supposed to teach my four-year-old about levers or something else she doesn’t care about.
I feel some of the tension leave my shoulders now that Leah finally seems placated. Unfortunately, Ben is now unhappy.
“We’re not going to spend the whole time here, are we?” he says.
I shrug. “Why not? She’s happy.”
He looks around at the swings and see-saw. “Why did we spend a hundred bucks to take her to a museum then? We could have just taken her to the park by my mother’s house for free.”
“Well, she didn’t like anything else here,” I point out.
“We didn’t even try to show her everything.”
“Actually, wedidtry.”
“Barely.”
Ben and I glare at each other. Honestly, what’s the problem? Leah is finally happy. Why drag her away from the one thing in this stupid museum that she actually likes?
“Look,” he says, “I’m not spending the entire time I’m here in a playground exhibit. I want to see the rest of the museum.”
“So fine,” I say. “Just… go.”
He folds his arms across his chest. “I’d rather you come with me.”
I gesture at Leah, who is playing happily. “I’m not dragging her away from here.”
“Okay…” He glances behind him. “I guess you can text me when you’re ready to leave then.”
“Okay.” I bite my lip, hoping maybe he’ll decide to stick around. Maybe he’ll decide spending the afternoon with his family is more important than a science museum. But he already left me at a party in Ronkonkoma. It apparently gets easier each time.
Chapter 20
When I got married, I’d always imagined that my mother-in-law would be like Mom Number Two. I’d be able to call her up to chat any time I wanted, we’d share books and recipes, and she’d babysit every weekend.
It isn’t really like that with me and Nancy. Don’t get me wrong—I like Nancy. And I think she likes me. But there’s always been a distance between us for reasons I don’t entirely understand. Maybe she’s just overprotective of her son. Maybe she thinks I don’t coddle him enough.
Tonight I convinced Nancy to let me help her with dinner, which was honestly like pulling teeth. Not that she’s given me any real responsibility. Right now, I’m cutting the stems off green beans. And she keeps watching me to make sure I’m not screwing them up. Like there’s some restaurant critic who’s coming to dinner tonight and will give us a bad review if a single green bean is cut improperly. Honestly, Leah will probably throw most of hers on the floor.
“Don’t cut them too short,” Nancy advises me.
I smile, thinking about something Ryan once told me. In surgery, the main job of medical students is often to cut the ends off of knots tied during surgery. It’s the absolute most menial of tasks, yet med students are constantly being criticized for cutting the knot either too long or too short—two years of grueling education and they can’t even getthatright. Ryan told me that when he had a medical student he didn’t like, he’d always tell them their knot was the wrong length, regardless of whether it was or it wasn’t. And he didn’t like most of his medical students.
