Molly stretched out on a lawn chair and surrendered to the agreeable violet haze between being awake and being asleep. The shrieks of the ketchup-smeared children jumping through the sprinkler faded into a streaky din. A whisper of breeze snaked its way through the trees. Faint relief from the sun hanging heavy in the sky like a rotting apple.
Mommy?
Her eyes fluttered open behind the plastic of her Teashades. Kevin was standing over her, dripping and pink from the sun. She shooed him away from the glass ashtray she had brought outside to flick her Marlboros into. He shook like a mutt and soaked her magazine in sunscreen-scented beads of water.
Mommy, I want another hot dog. He twisted his tiny twig legs and bent down to scratch a mosquito bite.
Molly’s life was a blur of Mommys and hot dogs. Bath times and Bactine. No — “blur” implied quickness. Molly’s days seemed stuck in a taffy puller. Distortion in the measured repetition. She gazed across the yard at Bessie who was gingerly washing her doll’s hair in the scattered rainbow of the sprinkler, blissfully and theatrically engrossed in the grim, mind-numbing task.
Molly took the boy’s hand, sticky with God knows what, and pulled her shorts down over stretch-marked thighs. It was a short walk to the kitchen but it would, of course, feel endless.