Chapter 4 - The Screen Under the Dish Towel
The text message preview illuminated the dark kitchen with an eerie, cold blue light.
From Mom: “Don't worry about them, sweetie. Once Arthur realizes how useless she really is without me managing the household, he’ll come crawling back begging for help. Just stay at your sister’s and let him deal with the fallout.”
I stared at the screen for three seconds, reading the words twice to make sure my sleep-deprived brain wasn't inventing them. The message wasn't addressed to me. It wasn't addressed to Nina. It had been sent to someone else entirely—or drafted as a follow-up for a proxy who was supposed to keep Clara isolated while Mom ran the show.
“She was texting someone else while we were in the hospital,” Nina whispered, looking over my shoulder at the illuminated display. Her face had gone completely pale, the righteous anger she’d walked in with now replaced by a cold, sickening horror. “Arthur… who is she sending that to?”
Before I could answer, the front door rattled violently.
Mom hadn't gone to her car. She was standing right outside the frosted glass of the front door, pounding on the wood with the flat of her hand.
“Open this door right this instant!” Mom’s voice muffled through the panels, rising in pitch and fury. “Nina! Arthur! Have you both completely lost your minds? Letting this little manipulative outsider turn you against your own blood! I gave up my entire evening to make sure you people had a hot meal, and this is the thanks I get? A locked door and my luggage in the gutter?”
Nina walked over to the front door, threw the deadbolt, and pulled it open just enough to look out at our mother, who was standing on the porch with her arms wrapped tightly around herself against the biting wind.
“The Uber is five minutes away, Mom,” Nina said, her voice entirely flat, stripped of all warmth and filial obligation. “I paid for it on my account. It’s taking you to the Marriott downtown for two nights until you can catch your return flight back to Florida.”
Mom recoiled as if she’d been physically struck. Her mouth opened and closed twice before any sound came out.
“You… you booked me a hotel? You’re treating your own mother like a paying guest?” She let out a choked, hysterical laugh, her eyes darting between Nina and me. “You’ll regret this. Both of you. When Arthur’s wife runs this family into the ground and leaves him drowning in debt and dirty diapers, don't come crying to me!”
“Go home, Mom,” I said from the hallway, stepping up behind Nina so the light hit my face directly. “The locks are getting re-keyed tomorrow morning. Don't bother calling, don't bother texting, and don't ever walk into this house uninvited again.”
With that, I reached out, pulled the heavy wooden door shut right in her face, and threw the deadbolt home with a final, echoing snap.
Outside, Mom’s muffled shrieks of indignation faded into the sound of her heavy footsteps retreating down the concrete path toward the street.
The kitchen fell silent again. The refrigerator clicked on, the heater hissed softly through the floor vents, and the distant, imagined sound of a crying baby still seemed to linger in the corners of the ceiling.
Nina sank slowly onto one of the barstools by the kitchen island, burying her face in her hands. Her shoulders shook once, twice, before she let out a long, ragged sigh.
“I didn't know,” Nina murmured into her palms. “God, Arthur… I swear to you, I didn't know she was like this with Clara. She always acted so sweet on the phone whenever we talked about the baby.”
“She’s not sweet, Nina,” I said, walking over to the stove and staring down at the empty baby bottles lined up on the drying mat. “She’s an architect. She doesn't participate in a household; she colonizes it. She did it to our dad for thirty years until he had a stroke and died in a nursing home all by himself, and she’s been trying to do it to my marriage since the day Clara and I got engaged.”
Nina looked up, her eyes red-rimmed and hollow. “What are you going to do about Clara?”
“I’m going to go pick her up from your place tomorrow morning,” I said, picking up one of the clean, empty baby bottles and turning it over in my hand. “I’m going to hire a night nurse for the next month using my own savings, I’m going to block Mom’s number on all our devices, and I’m going to spend the next twenty years making sure my son never hears my mother’s voice.”
Nina nodded slowly, standing up and grabbing her winter coat from the back of the chair. “If you need anything—money for the nurse, legal help if Mom tries to pull any crazy stunt with the estate or anything—let me know. I’m on your side, Arthur. Both of you.”
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After Nina left, locking the front door behind her, I didn't go upstairs to bed.
I stayed down in the quiet kitchen until the sky outside the window turned from pitch black to a cold, bruised shade of slate-grey, watching the empty bottles dry on the counter, waiting for the sun to come up so I could go get my wife back.
