The Fourth Child Jessica Winter (i love reading .txt) 📖

Lauren and PJ and Sean’s school pictures that climbed the wall opposite the staircase—all gone, too, each frame leaving behind a faint rectangular footprint. A lingering vinegary odor, the result of Mom’s iffy attempts to cook sarmale, thick glutinous rolls stuffed with beef and bacon and salty cabbage. A Romanian dish to remind Mirela of home—not the truehome she was taken from, but a pretend home she might have had under different circumstances, one filled with the smell ofhot, wet garbage.

It occurred to Lauren that Abby and Mirela had something that she did not: a first country, a first language, the other lifethat provided the first strand of the double helix of a real person. Lauren’s was a half life. She imagined that if she triedto describe this insight to Abby, she would twist her mouth to one side and look away.

Midnight slinked down the hallway and rubbed herself against Lauren’s ankles. She was thinner, her tail bigger in proportion to her body. Lauren had chosenher from the shelter, but Mom had given naming privileges to Sean, then aged five; he chose Midnight for her black fur. Laurenhad been mean to Sean about the name, called it “tacky,” and she felt bad about it now—it was a good showing for a five-year-old,she had come to realize, and Midnight always loved Sean best. These days, Midnight and Sean spent a lot of time together inthe basement, because Mirela could only reach the basement with great hollering effort. Creeping down, down, with slow noise.

Lauren sat cross-legged in the hallway and rubbed between Midnight’s ears. The cat’s eyes rolled back in her head as she leanedinto the rub, overwhelmed by Lauren’s touch, baring her teeth. Lauren let her nibble roughly at her knuckles and bite downinto her palm.

“We’ve been through a lot,” Lauren whispered to Midnight, wincing as she tried to ease her hand out from between Midnight’s jaws. “Let’s just let off some steam.”

 

“Sean is regressing,” Mom said, the following weekend. She was driving Lauren to sleep over at Paula’s house, Mirela strappedinto the car seat in the back.

Sean had moved more of his things into the basement that week after Mirela destroyed the planetarium he constructed with paintin primary colors, foam and string and Christmas lights. Sean cried so hard he fell into a fit of dry heaves and refused togo to school.

“It’s annoying you went to all that trouble of baby-proofing the house when it didn’t even work,” Lauren told Mom. There werezip ties on the pantry door and cutlery drawers. Chunks of adhesive rubber stuck to table corners. A padlock on Mirela’s door,which was still decorated with construction-paper cutout letters, with shoelace stitching in pigskin brown, spelling S-E-A-N.

“Annoying to who?” Mom asked.

“To you, I guess,” Lauren said.

“Dad helped, too,” Mom said.

“Sure he did,” Lauren said. Dad was always at work lately, even at night. He said he had paperwork, but he could just as easilydo the paperwork at home.

“Parents always have to take precautions,” Mom said. “It honestly wasn’t much different when you and your brothers were babies.”

“But Mirela isn’t a baby,” Lauren said.

“But if you count from the day she joined our family,” Mom replied, “it’s like she’s still a newborn.”

“Babby,” Mirela said, pensive. She could sit happily for hours strapped into her car seat, looking out the window and babblingto herself, kicking the back of the front passenger seat.

They were learning Mirela. One thing they had learned was that she was best in the car and worst at home. “That’s because home is where she feels safest, ” Mom said. “She can test boundaries. You and your brothers were the same. So often perfect angels out in the world until we got back to the house and all heck broke loose.”

“Mirela is never a perfect angel out in the world,” Lauren said.

“Anyhow, Sean feels displaced,” Mom said. “It’s probably just a phase. You had a minor regression phase, too, right afterPJ was born, when you weren’t the baby any longer.”

“I did?” Lauren asked. “I don’t remember that.”

“Of course you don’t. You were only about the age Mirela is now.”

Do you even know how old Mirela is? Lauren thought.

“That’s one of the funny parts of all this,” Mom said. “Mirela probably won’t even remember it.”

“Everybody else will,” Lauren said glumly.

“You know what Sean asked me the other day?” Mom asked. “He said, ‘Mom, when will Mirela be normal?’” She laughed.

“And what did you say?” Lauren asked, trying to sound uninterested in the answer.

“Well, I told him that Mirela has a very unique way of experiencing the world—”

“There’s no such thing as very unique,” Lauren said. “You’re either unique or you’re not.”

“—and her unique way of experiencing the world is one of the many gifts she has to share with us,” Mom said, looking up into the rearviewmirror. “Isn’t that true, Mirela?” Mirela kept humming out the window.

“So Mirela destroying Sean’s solar system was a gift?” Lauren asked.

“That’s pretty much what Sean asked, too. No, it wasn’t a gift. But it was her own way of showing enthusiasm—I know that’shard to understand, but it’s true. Or—think about the play.”

“I never want to think about the play ever again,” said Lauren, who thought about the play frequently.

“Okay, well, however you feel about it now, there’s something wonderful about being able to create a moment like that. Themoment that you and Mirela had together. That’s a gift. No one who was there will ever forget that night.”

“And I’m sure Sean will never forget Mirela destroying his solar system.”

Mom sighed. “The gift that we can give her is patience. Love and patience is all she needs.” Mom was turning onto the circular drive that bisected the lawnin front of Saint Benedict’s.

“All she needs to become normal?” Lauren asked.

“All she needs to become herself.” Mom glided into a spot across from the rectory in the near-empty parking lot.

“What are we doing?” Lauren asked. “You go to mass tomorrow morning. Aren’t you doing the dead baby mass?”

“Lauren. I expect that sort of talk from