Hugo & Rose Read Online Free PDF Page B

salt replaced by the yeasty sweetness of her children.
    â€œAnd then I heard a little boy who needed me.”
    She kissed them each on her way out. “Good night, little boy. Good night, littler boy.”
    *   *   *
    Josh was sitting on the bed pulling on his clothes when she got back to their room. Rose groaned and fell onto the rumpled covers.
    â€œIs it four already?”
    â€œQuarter till.”
    The sound of the boys’ whispers crackled over the monitor. Talking about Hugo.
    â€œYou know, they really are too old for that thing.”
    â€œI like knowing I’ll hear them if they need me.”
    The boys giggled in their room. Conspiratorial.
    â€œI have to admit, I’m a little jealous of Hugo.”
    Rose pulled at the duvet pinned under her husband’s rump. “You should be. He doesn’t work twenty-four-hour shifts. No mortgage. No student loans.”
    She managed to free the blanket, pulling it up over her shoulder. Josh leaned over her, a wolfish smile curling his mouth. “You know, I’ve got fifteen minutes.”
    Rose turned her face to the pillow. “Seriously? I don’t remember when I showered last.”
    â€œI think you smell amazing.”
    She felt his hands brush the dough of her hips. He shifted the blanket, letting in a rush of cold air. Pulling at her shirt, planting kisses on her shoulder, her neck. Hungry.
    â€œJosh, please. I just want to go to sleep.”
    He paused, chin resting on her arm. Looked up at his wife. Her face was quiet, eyes shut. Already on her way out.
    â€œRight.”
    He sat up. If he left now, he could look over that new study before rounds.
    â€œLove you, Rose.”
    *   *   *
    Penny had taken to pooping behind the couch. Every morning after breakfast, Penny would climb down from her booster seat and pretend to play with some toys, all the while checking out her favored corner of the family room: a little blind spot of privacy behind the arm of the sectional and the wall.
    â€œDo you need to poop, Penny?” Rose would ask.
    Penny would shake her head.
    â€œYou look like you need to poop.”
    â€œNo poop,” she insisted.
    â€œAre you sure you wouldn’t like to try?”
    Penny shook her head again.
    They had this conversation every morning for weeks. And every morning for weeks, Penny would wait until Rose was distracted, attending to some need of Adam’s or Isaac’s, before ducking behind the couch.
    Rose was getting tired of rinsing out “big girl” panties.
    But since the books all insisted that backsliding into diapers would prolong the problem, Rose persisted. She told the boys to warn her if they saw Penny heading over there (they never did) and blocked Penny’s access with a large empty box (Penny just pooped next to it).
    Finally Rose began moving the potty seat to the kitchen in the morning and making Penny sit on it for ten minutes after breakfast.
    This was something the books also advised against, but once again, Rose had had it with washing shit off of the smug, smiling faces of Rapunzel and Belle.
    And so Penny and the family became accustomed to her chubby body hunched on a little toilet in the middle of their routine morning chaos. From this vantage, Pen would watch her big brothers searching for lost shoes and swinging on their backpacks. Adam and Isaac would play “Hugo” in the five minutes before the bus came, wielding their foam swords over her head. Penny could see her mother assembling their lunches, asking about permission slips, and scraping uneaten breakfasts into the trash.
    It was so much nicer than being banished to the cold loneliness of the powder room, left alone to “make a b.m.,” as Mommy would say. Not wanting to miss anything was why she had started pooping in the family room in the first place.
    Rose, for her part, worried what people would think if they knew she was sanctioning