Page 15 of Counting the Days

“Do you think you should be drawing on Mommy’s shoes?”

“That spider is not food.”

“Peeing there hurts the rug.”

But the absolute craziest, in Rhea’s opinion, was when Ada would swap “no” for “yes” but add a qualifier: “Yes,you can have gummy bearsafteryou brush your teeth and go to sleep.” But these interactions ultimately did leave the children too confused to have a meltdown, so Rhea could not completely argue with Ada’s madness.

Rhea offered to take over the cooking to relieve her friend, but Ada said Marcus was on his way downstairs to do just that.

“Besides, you’re hanging out with Chichi, and that is ahugehelp,” Ada added, smiling through the pain of getting scalped by her son.

Rhea suppressed the desire to talk about the Edible Gardener. She wanted to hear Ada say she was not a crazy stalker in the slightest, and Danny sat next to her at Zoe’s baby shower because he was attracted to her, and scheduling Patricia to come over and give her a quote on a garden bed was a completely sane thing to do, and it would eventually lead to Danny and Rhea’s whirlwind romance.

But over the years, she had become embarrassed when opening up to her friends about her dating life. She thought it all sounded so trivial compared to their mature, adult domesticity. She preferred to save it for Topanga General Store, whereLouisca would eagerly listen to all the juicy details, perfectly able to relate since he, too, was single. It did bother her that a twenty-five-year-old was the sole person in her life who could relate to her, but it was what it was. Rhea did not know how to tell married-mother-of-two Ada that she had a crush on a boy without feeling like she was Ada’s teenage daughter.

Also, she would have had to shout all the Danny details over Ekele’s screams. Rhea was beginning to wonder if Ekele screamed more when she stopped by. She suspected one of the reasons Ekele was not warming up to “Aunt Rhea” was her uncanny ability to absorb his mother’s precious attention, yet another reason she remained silent.

“Look, Ahree!” Chichi said.

Chichi proudly held up her drawing; her teacher was now spraying diarrhea on a small, unidentifiable brown animal. Chichi’s mother scowled at Chichi’s best friend.

“See what you did?”

“Hey, I didn’t make poop funny. Poop has been funny since the birth of humankind,” Rhea said, and Ada laughed.

“Don’t laugh,” Marcus said, entering the kitchen and taking in the chaos. “We’re trying really hard not to encourage potty humor. Andyouare sabotaging us.”

He playfully pointed at Rhea, who did her bestI’m innocentface.

“That’s the timer, beans are done,” Ada said.

“I got it,” Marcus said.

Since Ekele refused to let Daddy near him, Ada had to hold him while shouting over his screams to Marcus, who was taking over the casserole. Rhea wondered if Ekele would maybe be a little easier to deal with if he heard the word “no” every once in a while.

“You gotta add more water or the rice will be undercooked—” Ada shouted.

“But the recipe says two cups—” Marcus protested.

“No, it’s always a little off—”

“I don’t want rice!” Ekele screamed.

“I doo-doo rice outta my own butt!” Chichi squealed gleefully, and threw her crayon across the room for some reason. The crayon might have left a brown smudge on the wall, but there were so many other smudges that it was difficult to be certain.

As Rhea retrieved the brown crayon, she took in the scene: the family manager juggling her son’s rage and daughter’s defecation deification while overseeing what looked like an unnecessarily complicated Mediterranean casserole. Ada looked exhausted and at least five years older than thirty-eight. Every one of her limbs was swollen from pregnancy.

Her husband, who had not carried any of the children inside his womb, somehow looked even worse. With his black hair turning silver, it seemed as if the darkness of his hair was fleeing and setting up camp under his eyes. Not to mention his new shaky self-esteem from constantly taking the hit of his children preferring his other half.

Their formerly gorgeous house was a disaster. Their dishwasher had been leaking for months, and instead of embarking on the odyssey of scheduling a plumber, they’d just stacked a pile of beach towels on the kitchen floor. Their living room had been taken over by toys. They’d even gone as far as getting rid of their coffee table to make more room for miniature kitchens and fake workbenches. Their life was about to get even more impossible with the looming arrival of another untamed human, and yet…Rhea wanted all of it.

It did not make logical sense to long for such a disorganizedexistence, and yet there she was. And with each passing year, she had to confront the idea that she might never get what she wanted.

She might never have sleepy little voices in her kitchen in the morning, or shiny bellies covered with bubbles in her bathtub in the evening. She might never pet her child’s soft head on the couch in front of a Christmas tree like her mother used to. She felt tears hit the back of her eyes and stood up, announcing she had to head home.

“Oh God, yes. Good for you, get outta here, save yourself,” Marcus joked, looking at carefree, single Rhea with envy in his eyes.

“You’re not staying for dinner?” Ada asked.