Little Stacy Campbell was banging on a metal pot with a clothes pin. She sat on the floor while her mother sat on the sofa, painting her toe nails.
Although five years of age, Stacy wore diapers as no one bothered to toilet train her.
Her mother’s cell phone rang, but Stacy didn’t stop banging. Marcy, rose, grabbed her daughter’s arm, dragged her across the room, flung her into the corridor, shut the door and answered the call.
The caller was Nell, asking Marcy if she was meeting them at Playground tonight.
“Of course..." Marcy replied, as if there could be no question.
“I’ve got to show you the photo I took. It’s of that fat little pig your ex-brother-in-law married. She was pushing a baby carriage.”
“I have got to see that one, oh, did you get one of her fat tit in the baby’s mouth as she nursed in the center of a crowded park?”
They laughed at Paul, who’d actually married his whore.
Stacy was pounding on the door. Marcy opened it quickly, putting Stacy off balance, gave her a good slap, which sent her across the corridor, shut the door, and kept talking to Nell.
In Marcy’s world, friends were important, only exceeded by her mother.
When the conversation was finished, after Marcy had decided what she would wear, she opened the door. She went to where her daughter cowered in the corner, crying.
Marcy jerked Stacy to her feet, and in a cloying voice said, “Didn’t Mommy tell you to be quiet when she is on the phone?”
Stacy stood trembling. Her mother, losing interest, walked away.
Marcy hated weekends. During the week she could dump Stacy at play school. Dump Stacy, then go to work. Often she could get the baby sitter to pick the brat up, take her home, make dinner so that Marcy could stay out until ten. It cost her a goodly sum, but was worth it.
Marcy loved the house, but hated being there alone with the brat.
What annoyed her was that she’d used the pregnancy to get Vin to marry her. She thought, in time, Mike, Stacy’s biological father, would escape his ‘owner’, and they would be together.
Marcy had divorced Vin, had the house auctioned and bought by a company owned by her mother. Marcy’s portion of the sale price, the emptying of the joint account, and with a bit of her mother’s help, had the house transfered to Marcy’s name. Alone.
Marcy had felt so triumphant when it happened. She had assumed Mike, who had completed his degree, finished his internship, and become a resident at a hospital, would not need Andrea, his owner, to foot the bills and could divorce her and come here.
At some point they could marry and be a family.
But Mike had chosen to fly off to Hawaii, leaving Andrea and leaving her. Leaving her with his brat who wore Vin’s last name.
She really missed Vin.
As she pondered, Stacy waddled in; Marcy rang up the baby sitter, staring at the child as if goading her to make noise. Stacy sat in the corner rocking herself. Silent.
The stink of her unchanged diaper filled the room, and after the call, Marcy dragged her to the bathroom, tossed the diaper, put another on. She could not be bothered to clean the mess on Stacy’s behind.
Oh why did she divorce Vin?
She should have listened to her mother.