I took a bottle of pills out from the medicine cabinet and swallowed one or two, I had certainly, only just a moment ago felt a headache, or the shadow of a headache gathering, I almost certainly had. It was good to take care of these things as soon as possible. I cleaned my teeth then opened the bathroom door to screaming and ran off forgetting the braids and the headache to make breakfast, then lunch, and snacks and dinner. Tonight would be different, M would be home. Today I could cook dinner and clean the apartment and love the children and be just the thing that would make everything right. Like a wonderful vase that sets a room off in just the right way. I could be the vase and also the person who cleaned it. If I worked hard and loved the children and M came home to us, everything would be right.

I was tired that afternoon beside the pump and almost asleep on the blanket with B when Nell came to the park. She looked tired too and different than she normally did. Her hair wasn’t brushed to its usual gloss. The strap of her dress was slipping off one shoulder in a way she didn’t seem to want it to. She was patient still with the children. She passed them the toys from her pockets when they asked but she sat listlessly on the side of the blanket and picked at the frayed edges of it when they weren’t looking.

I could answer questions now in French, simple ones, but I couldn’t ask them. The formulations were too hard. I was too liable to get lost inside the sentences. She had new shoes on her tiny feet, yellow ones with a pattern pricked into the leather that I would have had to be quite close beside her to really see well. She had dark shadows under her eyes that rested there like moth wings. What I mean to say is that they were delicate, the shadows, all done up in various soft greys. I expected to see bruises, honestly I was looking for them, but there wasn’t anything to see. Nothing besides those delicate shadows. I wanted things to make sense but I couldn’t piece them out.

I left the pump before she did. I was busy, I had dinner to make, a table that was hungry for it. The other mothers sensed it too, and we all began gathering our things, our ears twitching like deer, moving as a herd, all of us feeling the ropes and strings and pulleys connecting us to our pots and pans and washing machines grow taut around our wrists. But Nell only played with the baby’s hair, handed things to the boy, as I hurried off with the other mothers.

I made pasta for dinner, a sauce with fresh tomatoes and basil, M’s favourite. The apartment smelled like a hot hill in Tuscany. I opened a bottle of red wine and let it breathe. E fed her animals sesame seeds one by one, dripping them carefully into their plastic mouths as if they were tiny drops of milk. They spilled on the floor and I saw this but didn’t chastise her like a hateful stingy mother would but smiled at her and loved everyone.