Work Text:
She'll have to adapt, because she's too selfish to be anything but mother-adjacent.
The scream that continually echoes across her life-"I'm pregnant!"-hadn't been for her unborn child.
He'd only been a gambling chip then, a bet that he could save Love's life, could keep Joe from killing her.
And while she loves Henry now-fiercely, unblinkingly-she daydreams about what it might like if he wasn't hers. If he had another mother-one of her friends. She could slide into the role of honorary aunt and beloved baker, could melt into it as easy as room temperature butter spreads across the artisanal everything bagels Joe buys on his way home from working at the bookstore (he always finds them, somehow). The one who can come over to the mother's house, who doesn't need some sanitized meeting at a Panera because "who cares if it looks like a bomb went off here, Cassie, I've seen worse" (a little spit-up's nothing compared to glass walls streaked with blood and a closet full of your dead husband's dress shirts). The one who can get down on her knees and play and informally babysit and let the bedraggled, ever put-upon mother glean whatever crumbs of relaxation she can dig out from beneath the cushions of a well-worn couch. Since despite, or perhaps because of, her own family's laissez faire approach to parenting, Love understands that truly letting one's guard down as a mother is a laughably abstract concept.
"Another injustice. Bet Joe isn't behind on twelve work emails at any given moment."
Henry coos at her, reaching out his arms from his spot on the kitchen floor, and she snatches him up, makes goofy faces at him, bounces him on her hip just after she hip-checks the oven door closed-tonight's taco casserole for her and Joe, plus an indiscriminate, mish-mashed slurry of pureed peas, carrots, and apple slices for Henry.
The act cuts to the crux of her fantasy, or, more accurately, the climax of it: the part where she leaves her friend's house, relinquishing responsibility, exiting the riptide with no repercussions, and goes home to slow-roast a pork shoulder, maybe arrange a kale salad with slivers of parmesan cheese and a squeeze of lemon over top. Cooking for herself-cooking like herself-has become an impossibility, and she loathes the too-cheery paragraphs on websites with kitchy names like The Cozy Cook and Dinner at the Zoo. Joe wants them to make things together, which she should appreciate, but he still needs to follow recipes, and she gets testy at his clumsy presence. Bites down the urge to order, "Get out of the kitchen." Tries to silence the dark, forbidden accusation: "Aren't you miserable, too?"
She's not sure if it's meant for Joe or the hordes of Internet moms she sees on her phone when she hides in the bathroom before she actually gets in the shower.
Resentment boils in her like the pasta water she hadn't been able to properly watch yesterday.
She wishes she could have two sets of eyes and limbs, one for Henry and one for everything else. Two minds, maybe, too, because her own is turning mushier than Henry's meals, attuned only to baby talk while Joe charms bookstore patrons with just enough approximate knowledge to come off as an intellectual.
Their dinner routine's automatic-Joe arrives home, smooch, water glasses, napkins, plates, etc. Love's read the books. Knows what she's supposed to do, that she's supposed to play a balancing act with no stable axis. Be a good wife, but not at the expense of your kid, but also, be attentive to your husband's needs or he might stray. Oh, and don't worry, the brain fog will make you forget that you're consumed and subsumed by these two identities. That you don't get one for yourself anymore.
Joe frowns at her mistake.
"We don't need this out, Love, not with Henry around. We're only having taco casserole, right?"
"Oh-yep, of course." She infuses the brightness, the cheeriness, he craves, into her voice as she grabs up the steak knife she'd set at her spot. Presents the perfect apple pie picture of late 20th century American suburbia, wife in an apron. It's outdated, but she's too tired to care.
"And don't worry, Joe," she adds. Her grin twitches more than it should. "I'm always careful with knives."