Page 43 of The Foul Out

Mama: I voted just like you asked. And walked Ryan and Bill through voting too.

Me: You’re the best Mom. Did you ask your friends from the club?

Mama: Of course, darling. I always ask the girls to vote. Now what do you think of black granite?

Mama: Pic of sample of granite sitting on half-finished cabinets

Mama: Or soapstone?

Mama: Pic of sample of soapstone

Me: Are you remodeling your kitchen?

Mama: Bill and I got inspired when Joan did hers.

Me: You didn’t tell me?

Mama: You talk as if you tell me everything you do.

Me: I will.

Mama: No thank you. Some things are better for mothers to never know.

“You’rethe worst mom in the world,” Piper shouted as she clutched the headrest of my driver’s seat and held on for dear life. From my position outside her door, I couldn’t easily get her out.

My heart pounded and my stomach burned. That was exactly what I was tryingnotto be—the worst parent in the world. Keeping a tight hold on my patience was getting harder by the second. After almost ten minutes of this, I wanted to yank my daughter out of the car and tell her to suck it up.

But I couldn’t. She wasn’t trying to be difficult. Her anxiety was just so high that her body was experiencing real fear. From my perspective, we were sitting safely in the drop-off line. But Piper might as well have been fleeing from a bear for the amount of adrenaline and fear flowing through her system. So the only option was to work through this.

At least I’d gotten my car back from the repair shop last night. If we had been having this fight in an Uber or a cab, I might have cried.

But I wasn’t crying. It would all be okay. I had already let Little Fingers know Sam would be late, and I’d texted Carolyn, asking her to push my morning meeting back to ten. See? I had my life under control.

“It’s Thursday, Piper. It’s a school day.” I kept my tone calm, reassuring. Although she’d been off on Monday, she’d gone to school without a fight on Tuesday and Wednesday. “So we are going to school today.”

“I. Am. Not.”

She threw a leg out, and I dodged her sneaker-clad foot. Barely.

“You are mean. I need a break.”

You and me both, kid. What I’d give to sayyou know what, Pipe? I need a break too. Let’s stay home. Especially since she’d been up four times throughout the night. Neither of us was at our best after that. Staying home meant we wouldn’t have had to fight about the dirty purple shirt she’d wanted to wear. Not going to school would have meant not having to braid her hair, which would have kept my arm free of teeth marks. Staying home would have been easy, but I had a job, and she had school. We didn’t have the luxury of staying home.

“Piper.” I swallowed. Then, with a deep breath in, I forced the next words out of my mouth. It was a challenge, because more than anything, I wanted to sayyes baby, we can have a break. “It’s a school day and I have work.”

“I don’t care,” she screeched. When she kicked again, I did my best to dodge it, but a woman appeared at my side, startling me, and Piper’s sneaker caught my hip.

I winced at the instant throb. This was exhausting. Most days, I could pretend I wasn’t alone. Like I didn’t feel like I wastreading water in the middle of a lake while strangers and even people I knew stood at the shoreline and threw rocks at me. But as I dodged her foot again, I couldn’t get the metaphor out of my brain.

“Ma’am. I’m telling you again,” this stranger said, “you can’t park here. This is a drop-off area.”

If she knew what was good for her, she’d walk away and leave us to our chaos. But this was the third time she’d asked me to move, and she didn’t understand that if I climbed back in and moved this car even a foot, Piper would see it as a win, and she’d only double down when I tried to coax her out again.

I hadn’t planned on participating in World War III when I pulled up this morning. Most of the time, Piper got out of the car without a problem and walked inside. To encourage that, I pulled up this way every day, even on the bad ones, acting as if I was certain she’d get out. And sometimes it was all she needed to snap out of it and feel ready to face the day. That semblance of normalcy, of routine.

“I know,” I replied to the woman I’d never seen before, though I was still looking at my daughter.

The woman huffed. “You need to move.”

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