my other car is a shelf

Online Natalie started each morning by giving thanks for all the Lord had given her. She greeted her children lovingly each morning. She had sex with her husband every night. She was tired all the time, but it never made her ugly or angry or bitter. It only ever made her more beautiful. And she was right there, wasn't she? Standing, smiling, beckoning. Any day now, I would wrap my fingers around her neck and pull her forward. Let her topple into me.

She's quiet for a moment. Then she says quietly, "Has anyone ever lied to you?" I consider the question, which feels structurally like a thin sheet of ice over a deep body of water. Any movement, and we could both fall through. I think of my mother, sitting at the edge of the hospital bed when I was twenty years old. Soon you'll feel like yourself again. Young. I was so young then. Young enough to think my mother was telling me the truth. But she was pretending, wasn't she? Always pretending. Though I don't blame her for it, or for waiting until just the right moment to let me in on the secret. It's all some vital game, isn't it? No—more than a game. It's the long, golden string of insincerity that threads together the entire human race: a shared agreement between women to insist back and forth in endless conversation that this thing we spend our whole lives preparing for—this thing we were born for—is anywhere close to what we thought it would be. And do you know the truth beneath that secret? The water beneath the ice? It never stops. You never age out of it. Your mother lies to you, and then you lie to your children, and then your children lie to their children, and then you are an old woman, looking back at your own life, lying to yourself. A lifetime of drowning, and then you are dead. "Everyone lies," I say.

Clementine was almost three years old by this point, and still an only child. No longer a baby at all but a toddler. I'd never been around just one child before. There was an intensity to our time together that I found exhausting and unnerving even when it was going well. I was desperate for more children, not just because of my agreement with Doug but also because I was certain the arrival of another child would have an alleviating effect on my relationship with the one I already had. Both of us, I think, were frequently exhausted from being the recipient of so much focus from the other.

Other things happened during that time period, too. I finished weaning Clementine from breastmilk, and she started eating solid foods. She took her first steps and said her first word. Mama. Then she said it again, more insistently, and then soon it was not so much a word as a chant, a royal demand that rang in my ears even when she was rooms away, fast asleep at naptime. Mamamamamamamamamamama—

"What's all this about?" my mother said lovingly while I cried into her lap. Like I was a family dog coming home from some neighborhood walkabout with a coat full of burs. "I can't do it, Mama," I sobbed. "I can't do this." It was hard to breathe through the sheer panic coursing through my veins. "Oh, Nattie." My mother rubbed my back in great, sweeping circles. "Of course you can." "How do you know?" I wailed. "I know you can," she said softly, "because you have to." She kept rubbing my back, whistling a cheery hymn about His love and glory while I shuddered and sobbed in her lap. When that song was over, she sang another. She moved through a whole church service's worth of music while my body slowly went still. Right as I was about to drift into unsettled sleep, Clementine began to cry. My mother leaned over and whispered into my ear, "Get up."