Page 110 of Here We Go Again
Joe responds with a few guttural sounds that vaguely resemblefuck you.
Logan gags. “It’s like when an infant has a blowout, and you just burn the onesie and move on.”
“We will have to burn the Gay Mobile.”
“My dignity,” Joe wheezes.
“You’ve got none left. Rosie, I’ll lift, and you remove the diaper.”
“Youremove the diaper!” Rosemary shouts back.
“You’re not strong enough to lift him!”
“I just got poop on my foot!”
“Odie, no! Don’t eat that!”
“If you don’t want Odie to eat the poop, don’t put the dirty diaper on the floor of the van!”
“Where else should I put it?”
“Outside!”
“In a Dunkin parking lot?”
“Better thanin the van!”
“God, how is he so heavy? He’s already a corpse.”
“I can’t see to wipe him. Can you shift your phone?”
“You missed a spot. There, on his upper back.”
Cough. “Please.” Joe coughs again. “Kill me now.”
“Is there a bag to put his poopy T-shirt in?”
“Absolutely not. Throw it into the parking lot.”
Cough. Cough. “Kill me. Just kill me, girls.”
As Rosemary runs across the Dunkin’ Donuts parking lot toward an orange garbage can holding a dirty adult diaper and some poop-stained clothes, she thinksI went to Yale and Columbia.
I was Valedictorian, class of 2010.
Perfect SAT scores. Scholarships. Washington State Teacher of the Year. Finalist, but whatever.
None of it matters. Every accolade is inconsequential now. Every day that she got to work in the dark and went home in the dark amounts to nothing. The weekends she worked, wearing her busyness like a badge of honor. All the essays she got back to her students faster than the other teachers, all the extra professional development seminars, the conferences, the tireless attempts to be bulletproof. Test scores and gold stars and every little thing that she tries tocontrol, and none of it can protect her from having human diarrhea between her toes at a Dunkin’ Donuts. Because ultimately, she doesn’t have control over anything.
The puppet strings were never attached. Life was always going to be beautiful and painful in equal measure.
“Why are you muttering to yourself about puppet strings?” Logan asks when she’s back at the van.
“I have no control over anything,” Rosemary laughs.
She feels drunk.
She feels weirdly and gloriously free.
