Same As It Ever Was

by Claire Lombardo

the dog, like a cat, like her daughter, has a specific set of boundaries, desires constant attention but on very rigid terms.

She feels, too, unbelievably tired, stymied by gravity; so much of motherhood has, for her, been this particular feeling, abject disbelief that she’s not only expected but obligated to do one more thing.

She’d begun to notice that when she wasn’t waiting for something to happen—something pedestrian, like Ben waking up from a nap, or sometimes something implausibly awful, like an asteroid falling from the sky—she felt entirely unmoored, brooding, usually while staring pensively into the middle distance like a disenfranchised Victorian nursemaid.

She was so lonely it had started to feel like a corporeal affliction.

It was a cliché to be this person; she got bored just thinking about it, the sadness over nothing, the fact that she was resentful of the easiest life in the world. And yet she couldn’t help herself.

She wasn’t exactly sure how any of it worked, but she was fairly certain that you were not allowed to dislike your husband because he was a good dad. You were supposed to want that; she knew this. You were supposed to want everything for your kid and the dregs for yourself.

there was something about the moneyed, fine-tuned firing squad of preschool moms that set her particularly on edge. Around them she instantly felt three inches shorter, thirty pounds heavier; they limpened her hair and delegitimized her actuality.

She finds herself unconsciously rationing her own syllables in Alma’s presence, aware that each time she adds one she increases the margin of error that she’s going to say something inadvertently offensive to her daughter’s hair-trigger sensibilities.

“Are you settling? With me. Are you settling by being with me.”

“You looked happy,” he said, and it broke her heart, because she hadn’t been, and he was the person in the room who was supposed to know that.

how you’d do anything for your kids to make sure they never feel alone.”