Parents always complain about everything going by too fast, of childhood being so fleeting and so pure that it was impossible to hold on to, to capture properly. For Odilie, however, Penelope’s childhood, her babyhood rather, was a slow slog in the mud. Odilie yearned for the day when she would have to enact some actual parenting skills, would have to teach her daughter life lessons rather than basic words. She yearned to have a little girl, not a toddler, to shape into someone far different from herself. Because the truth was, even at nearly three years old, Penelope was already too sweet, too docile. The other mothers would ooh and aah at how easy she was to manage. But Odilie craved defiance; she wanted somehow, in some way, to feel more seen, to be forced to lead, to be given control. To not live such a placid existence, to not be taken for granted by Tom, who made her feel like she could disappear at any moment.

She hoped her second child would wail all night long for her.

She had been feeling stuck, ignored by Tom, a wallflower once more, a mere inconvenience whom he had to greet when he wasn’t in his tomb of an office. And now more recently, a punching bag, whom he liked to taunt, to psychologically pummel, whenever he noticed its presence.

When they had first gotten together, she relished him, the way he noticed her and included her, how worldly he’d seemed. A bit later, after she’d moved to New York with him, she’d even delighted in the way she was his paper doll, allowing him to dress her, trim her, shape her into the woman he wanted to overpower. She trusted him, loved how he perceived her and wanted her to be better.

Somewhere down the line, though, she’d grown tired of it; she wanted autonomy. She wanted to make her own choices. She had forgotten her obsession with gumption, with emulating Peri’s self-possession. Now, now a decade later, she yearned for it again. At this juncture in their marriage, Tom either ignored her or harbored disdain. Yet, she did nothing, said nothing.

But then the incident happened with Penelope and the bathtub and her rage, it burst to the surface, became boiling hot. Because it was one thing to be disinterested in her, his wife, but it was a whole other problem to be indifferent to their child. Especially because after that wake-up call any husband with a soul would have stopped working so much, would have loved and appreciated his family a little more.

Not Tom.