Happy and You Know It

by Laura Hankin

“We’re all so obsessed with protecting our children, aren’t we?” Amara said. “That’s how we got into this mess in the first place. We want to paint a lovely picture that we hang over their window to block out how the world really works, to give them these perfect lives. And to do that, we think we need to keep ourselves perfect too. But no mother in the history of the world has been able to protect her child forever. The world barges in through the front door eventually. Or sometimes,” she said, glaring at Gwen, “you invite it in, because it knows exactly what lies you want to hear.” Gwen coughed again, drawing back farther into the closet as if she didn’t want them to see what she had become, bracing herself on another shoebox. Amara shook her head. “I wish so badly that I could be the perfect mother for Charlie. But since I’m not, I think I’d rather he know that, when I fucked up big-time, I tried to do the right thing, instead of lying to him that everything is all puppies and rainbows. I have to believe that the people who matter to me will understand that.”

“Well,” Amara said, out of breath. Improbably, that hint of mischief that Claire loved came into her expression. “I suppose we should really give them something to talk about.” And then Amara threw back her head and howled, her voice crackling with frustration and rage but also with a kind of liberation, a gigantic wordless “fuck you” to the expectations she’d worked so hard to meet. When Amara stopped for a moment to take a breath, Claire let her own yell fill the silence, her throat arcing up and back. The other playgroup women paused to look at them. Then, one by one, they joined in too, one woman’s voice picking up where another’s left off to gasp for air so that the sound seemed endless, a pack of wolves tearing down the city pavement, ravenous and wild and not at all inspirational to anyone but one another.