“Mummy, why do you keep yawning?”
”Eh?” I say, shaking my head to dispel the stuffiness.
“Why are you always yawning?”
“Not enough coffee, I suppose,” I tell Violet apologetically, and disappear into another mighty yawn.
“I’m tired, too,” Molly says from the other side of the breakfast table, her fatigue evidenced by a full-body wilting over her toast.
“Darling, please,” I remind her, rising from my torpor long enough to lift one hand to the crown of my head, as if placing a tiara on it. This is our agreed-upon nag substitute but alas it still feels like a nag to Molly. She sighs and sits up a little straighter. I manage not to mention my playmate in sixth grade who had to wear a metal cage on her torso to keep her spine from growing crookedly, but this is not cause for genuine congratulation because I feel sure I have mentioned this girl half a dozen times before. One wants one’s cautionary tales to keep at least a little freshness.
My husband puts down the paper and checks his watch. “We should call England,” he says.
“Shall we tell them?” I ask. My husband nods, reluctantly.
“Children,” I begin carefully, and mention the name of a dear relative overseas. “You know that she has not been feeling well for some time….” Molly and Paris immediately look at each other, eyes wide.
“No, no–” I say hastily, “–she’s okay for now, but she does have–”
“Stomach trouble,” my husband supplies.
“Is she in the hospital?” Molly asks astutely “Is it something that is going to get worse or can it be cured?”
“Well–” My husband and I look at each other again.
“Is there something there that should not be?” Paris asks, unconsciously borrowing a line from the Curious George story where George swallows a piece of a jigsaw puzzle.
“Yes,” I say. “It’s that sort of thing.”
There is a pause around the table, and then Violet asks: “Is it a frog?”
“In her stomach?”
“Is it a buffalo?” Phoebe wonders.
“People,” I say, grinning, “usually don’t have buffaloes in their stomachs. Nor frogs.”
“Unless they’re French,” Paris says archly. “And snails. Yuck. I’m glad I’m not French.”
“But they cook them first,” Molly puts in.
Violet looks worried. “They cook frogs?”
Molly stands up. “I’ll get you the phone, Daddy.”
“And snails and they eat them!” Paris says with relish.
“Thanks, darling–”
“Here, Phoebs, want some snails?” Leering, Paris holds out a bit of bagel and cream cheese towards his little sister, who of course lets out a shriek. My husband gets up with the phone to his ear and stalks downstairs. Suddenly, I find I cannot finish my orange juice. “Okay, children,” I say as soon as I can speak, “clear your places and scram. Please.”
With a clatter of plates and glasses, the disapora is achieved with remarkable speed. Molly and Paris go into the sitting room shoulder-to-shoulder, already deep in conspiracy, and Violet and Phoebe creep under the piano. I am alone with my breakfast and the paper and my everlasting yawnitude.
From downstairs comes one half of a deeply concerned trans-Atlantic phone call. From beneath the piano, comes this:
Phoebe: You’re the darling and I’m the father.
Violet (tragically): I do have a mother, I do, I do!
Phoebe: Really?
Violet (coolly narrating): But the rest of the children died.
Violet pokes her head out from beneath the piano. “Mummy, don’t tell the captain of the ship that we ran away because we don’t want to be his servants!” I nod seriously at her, and she nips back underneath. I am just turning to the op-eds when Molly calls across the room.
“We’re playing a great game, Mummy, you should come play, too.” She holds up a tennis ball and waves it at me.
“Aw, yeah!” Paris seconds, looking respectfully at the ball.
“This is the Hitler,” Molly says loudly, indicating the ball. It’s a gigantic eyeball in space that fixes people with its terrible gaze–”
“–and vaporizes them!”
“Wow. Maybe I’ll join you after I look at the–”
My husband comes back into the room. “She’s coming home from the hospital this weekend for a few days, but she has to go in for treatment again next week.” We look at each other for a long while, both aware of the painful disjunction between the lonely scene in England and the young life erupting around us at home.
The poignancy is broken by another under-piano dialogue:
“You said, “Oh! A ghost! Whoa!”
“Woe, there’s a ghost,” says Phoebe.
“No, you said “Whoa” to me.”
“Woe to me.”
“No, don’t say “to me,” just say it to me.”
“And Violet?” Phoebe has already moved on. “You didn’t know I turned into a puppy,” she says, panting realistically.
“Stop,” Violet says irritably.
“No, I want to be a doggie!” says Phoebe.
Violet’s narration has already moved on. Without missing a beat, she murmurs, “And then I woke up.”