Maid - Stephanie Land Page 0,45
lack of desire to wander, or wonder, or learn. We’d reached the point of resentment, blaming each other for our differences.
Because of Mia, I tried to cling to the dream. The farm. The horses. The tire swing in the front yard, the endless fields to run through. I had been secretly apologizing to her, whispering it since I’d watched her hold up fistfuls of carrots that she yanked from our tended soil last summer, wearing only underwear and little cowboy boots. I’m so sorry this isn’t enough for me.
When I finished Henry’s house, he helped me carry my supplies out to my car. I hugged the bag of lobsters to my chest, but I wanted to hug Henry for being so kind, for treating me less like a maid and more like a person deserving of love and laughter and the occasional lobster dinner. When I thanked him, Henry smiled broadly and puffed out his chest. “Get on home,” he said to me, though I was beginning to realize that “home” was something fleeting, a ticking time bomb, an explosion waiting to happen.
At the stop sign at the end of the street, I pulled over to the curb. I leaned forward, pressing my forehead against the steering wheel. The interaction with Henry made me miss my dad.
This had happened often in the last year. Whenever I felt the pain of the loss—my chest caving in right at the hollow spot in the center—I found it was best to stop and wait, to give the feeling a moment to pass. The pain didn’t like to be ignored. It needed to be loved, just as I needed to be loved. As I sat in my car, the bag of lobster next to me in the passenger seat, I breathed in and out, counting to five each time. I love you, I whispered to myself. I’m here for you.
Reassurance of self-love was all I had.
Mia was asleep when I picked her up from day care to drive her to Jamie’s. It was getting close to two o’clock, and the traffic would get bad if we left any later. She protested as I scooped her up, put on her coat, and strapped her into her car seat. We stopped at home, and I left the car idling in the driveway while I ran inside to drop off the lobsters and pick up Mia’s special backpack for her weekends away. I threw in some clothes, a blanket, the photo album we’d made, and her Curious George. Mia drifted off while we drove, giving me a chance to listen to a CD I’d made a while ago. This ridiculous country song about being a hay farmer came on. Travis had always played the beginning of it loud whenever Mia was in his truck because it started with a revving engine noise that rumbled your chest from the low bass. I smiled, remembering Mia asking for him to do it again, her pink boots with the brown horses kicking up and down as she laughed. When the ocean came into view, I reached back to wiggle her leg and wake her up.
It was six o’clock before I returned home. Alone in the kitchen, I salted a pot of water and set it on the stove. As it bubbled and spat, I used my body to block the lobsters’ view of it while I read the instructions for the fifth or sixth time. Travis chose to stay out on the porch with the grill, probably burning the steaks. Dropping the lobsters in the pot to their death was up to me.
My pot wouldn’t fit them both. I had to cook them one by one. My dad used to make his huge batches of chili with this pot, and for some reason I had inherited it after my parents’ divorce. It was enamel with a liner that was a strainer. In my early twenties, I lived with my then-boyfriend in a cabin in Alaska. The cabin did not have running water, and it sat on five acres of permafrost. When my dad came to stay with us for a visit, he brought a handwritten recipe for the chili. He even wrote “Dad’s Chili” on the top. I slipped the paper into a clear pocket, clipping it into a binder of recipes I’d collected.
It wasn’t a fancy recipe—hamburger, onions, pinto beans, some cumin. I’m pretty sure he copied it out of a Betty Crocker cookbook. But as a kid, I