Page 6 of Everyone Is Lying to You

Give birth to her children in a tub on the floor of her restored barn.

Extol the virtues of the rhythm method of birth control even as she seems to be pregnant every couple of years.

Churn butter.

Commit to a thirty-day “intimacy challenge” to have sex with her husband every day for an entire month.

Give all of her children haircuts that look amazing.

Deliver a baby lamb.

Every picture that Bex posts has the same captions and hashtags. Things like #DreamsDoComeTrue, #RomanticizeYourLife, and #SomeonePinchMe. If you don’t think too hard about it, those captions can work for anything.

Did your toddler poop in the pool? #SomeonePinchMe.

Did you not tear your perineum while giving birth in that tub? #DreamsDoComeTrue.

I’m thinking about this before I even pick up my phone while lying in bed in the morning when I feel a sharp pain on my toe like I’ve been bitten by a rat.

“Jesus Christ,” I yelp, waking Peter as I snatch my leg away from the offender’s fangs.

My first thought is that our geriatric basset hound, Bethany (don’t ask), is curled up at the foot of the bed and got hungry but didn’t know where she was. It’s happened before. But no. The wound was inflicted by our toddler, who has inexplicably taken to biting people’s toes like a rabies-infected raccoon. Ollie laughs in glee as I yank up the blanket and do the only thing I can possibly do as I grit my teeth through the pain and check to see if I’m bleeding. I grab him, tickle him, and cover him in kisses while asking him to “please stop biting people, especially Mommy,” and inquire about when exactly he ended up curled at our feet.

“Darktime,” he replies simply. “Nora snore.”

“Fair,” I say. “But wake Mommy up next time and maybe sleep at the top of the bed. And also do not bite toes. It’s not polite.”

“And terribly unsanitary,” Peter says as he grabs Ollie around the waist and hoists him over his head to tromp down the stairs to wake up Nora to start the day. Peter can get away with sayingthings like “terribly unsanitary” and not sounding like a douche because he is well-accented and everything his people say sounds charming and smart.

With both of the men in my life occupied for a hot second, I lean over and grab my phone from where I shoved it beneath the bed.

I figure I won’t hear from Bex again. She was probably tipsy or something when she texted me, even though I don’t think she drinks much anymore. They don’t exactly seem like party people. Maybe she’d taken an Ambien. I do weird shit when I take them. Peter said I once stood up on the bed in the middle of the night and rapped “Funky Cold Medina” after taking a whole pill during Nora’s sleep training.

No messages. I get up and pee, relishing the quiet in the bathroom, and go through the motions of making sure the kids are dressed in clean clothes and presentable for camp. I lose the argument with Nora about whether she can wear the purple princess dress she’s worn for the past ten days. It smells like a rest-stop bathroom and the sequins are falling off. I know that the Montessori counselors will silently judge me in their smug Montessori way, but I’ve learned to pick my battles. I eat half a waffle left on Ollie’s plate and get to my desk in the corner of our bedroom just in time to start Slacking with the rest of my team for eight hours. I miss the newsroom. I miss being around actual people and bitching about crazy bosses while getting our coffee in the morning. Talking to someone on Slack feels like talking to a robot that’s always a little pissed off at you.

And then to my surprise, Bex messages me bright and early West Coast time, ninea.m.my time.

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