Dear Hearts Read Online Free PDF Page B

Let's go to the park.
    ~
    I
don't hate having a kid as much as I hate that other people have kids.  Other women, really.   Besides Ronnie, I don't hob knob
with the local vaginas who all seem to congregate at
the holy church of Target.  Instead, when we go to the park, I sit on the
bench while Wren swings on her belly like Superman, and I pretend to read a
tattered copy of Great Expectations.  I've stop-started this book roughly
forty-five times in my life and a lot of it I blame on conversations like the
one happening right next to me.
    "Oh
right, yes, totally.  I practically shit a brick when Trenton told me
that.  I mean, who does that little brat Henry think he is telling Trenton not to touch his stuff.  Free
country."  I side eye the talker and she's thin, with a long shiny
pony tail and a face that screams late thirties although, I'm sure she's closer
to my age.  Sun damage.   I apply SPF so
often that I sometimes sweat it.
    "It's
the mother, always the mother.  Abby, Gabby, whatever the heck. 
She's always talking about boundaries so the kid thinks he has license to be a
jerk."  The woman next to McSkinny is bigger boned and her drawl is
more noticeable.  She's wearing a Razorbacks sweatshirt and yoga pants,
but the diamond in her engagement ring is about the size of my knuckle.  I
hate that.  I hate the "I'm a bum for a day” look and I hate it even
more when I glance down at last year's wedges.  The red leather tops are
scuffed and there's a chunk of cork missing on the inside heel.  "You
look nice," Mitch said last weekend before we went out to Red Lobster with
Jimmy and his heinous wife, Pam.  He was wearing that stupid Polo of his,
the green one the color of a Christmas tree with his black belt and brown
shoes.  And I was wearing these busted up wedges and a white blouse that
has a light ketchup stain near my belly because Wren hugged me right after meatloaf
a few nights before.   It kept digging at me, the Christmas tree
polo, the stained up blouse, so when we finally got to the restaurant, I washed
my hands so hard in the bathroom that the side of my thumb began to bleed.
    "Sometimes
I wish I could teach a course on how to be a good mother," McSkinny
says.  And I think she glances at me when she says it, but I can't be
sure.  Oh I get it, I'm supposed to be pushing my child on the swing or at
least looking lovingly on from afar or gabbing it up with a big boned
sweatshirt wearing best friend to be a "real" mother.  My mind
breaks a little and the pieces scatter at the base of my skull.  And I
feel like I'm inhaling the pieces, choking on them.  I have to get out of
here.
    "Wren,"
I say and she looks up, but I don't wait for her.  I beeline it to our
GrandAm and ignore the stupidly shocked faces of Big Bones and McSkinny. 
I can only breathe again when I'm inside the car and hours old French fry smell
replaces the pieces stacked high in my lungs.
    "I
thought we were going to play," Wren says when she gets inside and buckles
herself into her booster seat.
    "You
thought wrong."  I back out of my sandwiched spot between their cars,
an SUV on steroids and a brand new Prius, and I try to fragment together what
Big Bones and McSkinny must be saying now.
    Some
people just shouldn't have kids.     
    ~
    At
home Wren plays with her Barbie who she’s made the Dad.  I can hear her
telling it to take out the trash while she makes the spaghetti, and I remember
to grab the camera that’s always shoved in a mystery drawer whenever I’m
looking for it.  But when I get to her door, she’s given up her game and
is curled up on her comforter, her breath heavy.  She does that sometimes,
just runs out of battery and her body goes still with sleep.  I sit on her
bed and lightly scratch her back, and I start crying until it hurts even
farther into my brain than where the finger in my temple is.
    Sometimes
when I call my brother Gary, and I talk to his wife Belinda, I use the same
voice I use