Not today

Noah eyes his fifth creation.

He traces the two bunny ears drooping down the sides of his fishing boots, staring at how they inappropriately spill out from the neatly crisscrossed belly of the shoe. 

No. 

No it isn’t right.

Again, again. 

"Bunny ears, bunny ears, playing by a tree. Criss-crossed the tree, trying to catch me. Bunny ears, Bunny ears, jumped into the hole, popped out the other side beautiful and bold.” 

Noah unhands the laces and blinks once, eyes still glued to his brown boots and hands hovering slightly above the now supposedly beautiful and bold bunny ears. His fingers twitch slightly, but not a single muscle in this body follows suit. In fact, Marie watches as his spine visibly stiffens in its current curled position and her motionless Noah remains hunched over his shoes.

“Okay buddy, that’s six times now!” she yells through the kitchen window. “And it looks really good sweetheart, your laces look very nice and neat! So, why don’t you go and grab your backpack? Daddy’s going to be ready soon, okay sweet pea?” 

Noah’s spine folds deeper into itself as he crouches even further towards his shoes, his nose only a head-jerking sneeze away from kissing his shoes.

The socks. 

The socks feel all wrong, all squishy and slimy and slippery.

And the shoes, the laces, the shoes aren’t tight enough.

The shoes are loose and the socks feel funny. 



Noah moves to untie his shoelaces, this time with a little more urgency than the last.

Pale green suds of mostly clean dish washing water funnel through Marie’s clenched fingers and snake their way down her left arm. The travelling, cool sensation startles her and pulls her eyes away from the sight of Noah, and onto the now disfigured sponge in her hand which she has been squeezing for the last couple of minutes. 

Feeling a little like the sponge, completely wrung out of all imaginative intent, she releases it from her strangle-hold and lowers it into the dishwashing water, deciding she has had enough of pretending to wash the dishes.

It was hardly working anyway. 

Hands rinsed and heart newly determined, Marie pads out of the kitchen and heads for the front door. 

She clears her throat a few times, the throaty vibrations cutting off the low tremble rising up her chest each time, holding her in. 

She tries not to feel mocked and ridiculed by the photographs lacing the corridor walls, a proud happiness plastered on her husband’s face in each one, accompanied by his other wives and their children. A happiness she and Noah haven’t been able to stir out of him since Noah’s fifth birthday… when the doctor first gave them the news. 

She clasps her hands in front of her, just below her belly and intertwines her trembling fingers, holding her in. 

Holding her in. 

Holding her in. 

Holding her in. 

“Hey bud,” Marie says as she softly shuts the front door behind her and joins her Noah by the cottage steps. 

Noah’s head jerks slightly in mild reaction to the disturbance. 

Marie loosens her grip around her hands and opens her mouth—not to say something, but to simply bring air and space into herself. To communicate to herself and every ounce of strength within her, that she trusts herself to hold on and hold in for just this moment. 

“I know dad wants to head to the lake soon, but these boots are just really, really herd to break in. They feel all wrong Mama, they feel so wrong I just.. I need them to feel right,” Noah finally says, moving to untie his shoelaces for an eighth time. 

Marie nods her head pensively, consciously trying to arrange every muscle in her face to appear attentive and understanding, just in case Noah looks up at her for momentary validation. 

Thankfully, he does not. 

He doesn’t look up to face the pale and hollow eyed woman looking down at him through pools of regret and helplessness. He doesn’t see the regret spill out of her eyes and onto her cheeks. He doesn’t notice as she lifts a trembling hand to swipe the spillage away from her now shocked and appalled face. 

I am supposed to be holding myself in for my son. 

Marie feels herself unclogging and anticipates a release. She tries to look anywhere else but at Noah and clenches her fists as the tears recollect in the corners of her eyes, as her right leg begins to twitch lightly and her fingers tremble of their own volition. 

“Well sweetie, I understand, I do. The shoes need to feel right, yeah? But, uh honey you know Daddy brings all the other sons and their mothers to this cottage for a fishing weekend only once each year and, well if we waste this turn, daddy might not give us another chance,” Marie finally manages to say once the tremble in her chest shifts to an easily concealed tightness. 

Noah doesn’t move. But he understands. And she knows he does too. 

“I’m sorry ma, I’m really sorry. I know you’ve waited all year for this but I just…” 

“Not today?” Marie croaks. 

“No, not today.” 

Noah listens as his mother clears her throat thrice beside him. Her bedroom slippers scrape against the ground, as she lifts herself from the stony steps and shuffles back into the house. 

Nothing spills out of him. But he feels it beating at his head. The failure, the disappointment. 

Then he feels the laces.

The damn laces are too loose. 

They need to be tighter. Tighter. 

* * *

Marie, seated at the edge of her and her husband’s bed, watches as her fingers tremble out of control and slips them into the thin pockets of her pants. The sound of the splattering shower-water choir coming from the bathroom fills the room, as the space around her begins to rematerialize. She glances over at the three suitcases lined up against the wall adjacent to the bedroom door, one of them twice the size of its counterparts and filled with fishing gear she knows she packed in vain. 

The shower noise stops and is followed by the sound of wet feet slapping against the cold floor, which birth the toweled image of her husband leaning on the bathroom doorframe a few seconds later. One of his thick hands grabs a chunk of his wet hair and squeezes it gently, droplets of water dripping onto his bare chest and arms. 

“Oh, you’re here. That means Noah is ready then? All strapped and booted?” he asks, eyes resting on his wife’s dejected form. 

Marie stares at her husband’s naked feet and wonders what it would be like to be young and eighteen again, lying in bed with the man of her joy and playfully kicking at those feet to earn her a hearty laugh from this exciting man. She wonders if the other wives get to revisit their youth in this very bed she’s sitting on, when they get their turn to come to the cottage. She wonders if these feet, his feet, almost stumble over themselves in a frantic hurry to get out of his business suit and into his fishing boots, so he can take his young boys out for the time of their lives. 

She wonders if Noah will ever get to see this frantic excitement in his father. 

Probably not, and such is the luck of the fifth wife. 

The least exciting wife. 

The youngest and least fertile wife. 

Marie glances at her husband momentarily, then turns back to her fingers and shakes her head. 

“Uh, no. Not today.” 

 Her husband doesn’t react to this news at all. He simply registers it, like an innocuous fact.

“Well I knew this would be a waste of time. Noah can’t be normal, he’s not normal. And I’m tired of you talking me into giving him more chances to simply prove me right. I’m bringing Beatrice and her boys for your slot next year. What use is having a fifth wife if she can’t even give me a real son?” he says as he grabs a smaller towel and wrestles with his dripping hair. 

Marie opens her mouth to say something, but all that escapes is a soft release of air. Slowly, she dissolves before her husband’s eyes, her cries unsteady and erratic, as if the emotion—astonished to be freed—is making a teetering entrance. 

“All these years, I thought something was wrong with me, with my son. That it was my fault he was so different. But he likes puzzles. Why can’t you just make a puzzle with him instead of forcing him to fish every year? Why can’t you just.. just take him as he is! Why can’t you love us like you love all the others?” Marie finally bursts and cups her face with both her shaking hands. 

Her husband’s naked feet make splattering noises as they carry him across the room towards the suitcases. 

A zipping noise tears softly into the air and Marie looks up from her hands to meet the blurry image of her husband packing all his clothes back into one of the smaller suitcases. 

* * *

Noah bites at his thumbnail—head pressed against his parents’ bedroom door—and adjusts his already packed backpack on his right shoulder.

He finally has his regular sneakers on. Comfortable and with years of wear on them.

Ready to go back home.

No dad, not today.