“The Doom Statues” — Chapter 5

Sometimes Kay resents the relationship Emily has with her parents. Well, not resent, exactly, more like it fills her with profound sadness, and leads to bouts of fantasy when contemplating the situation over here. She often wonders how different her experiencing having a child might be, for example, if switching households with Emily. It’s kind of hard not to, considering that Denise actually endured a similar ordeal herself. Meanwhile Kay’s own family, not to put too fine a point on it, has ranged from ever so slightly, queasily supportive of her single mother status, to occasionally downright hostile.

Depending upon these climate changes, she has ranged from either holding down a job — housekeeping, dollar store cashier, you name it — while various relatives babysat Noah, to stuck at the house doing so herself, for months at a time, when they suddenly began hassling her about the arrangement. She could understand some of the arguments, that they’re all attempting to maintain normal lives themselves, and bring home paychecks, and that Kay’s not even compensating them for their services. Yet at the same time, this household isn’t exactly swimming in cash — that was the entire thrust behind many of these blowups — so if they could somehow juggle things to where Kay might contribute a paycheck, too, then wouldn’t this be better?

It is never explicitly stated as shaming about her teenaged, unwed pregnancy, but Kay knows that this what much of the friction amounts to. Instead, however, her parents, with an occasional assist on unnecessary opinions from nosy grandparents and a wiseass aunt or uncle, typically focus on the scheduling hassles and telling her she needs to figure something else out. Only roughly half the time, that is, for the other half, everyone’s quite cooperative.

References are often made to her finding and securing a “nice guy” too, somehow, amid this mayhem. However, while not exactly easy to pull off in her current state, anyway, not in a small town of steadily declining prospects and almost no free time to speak of, she’s mostly in whatever spare moments she has still devoting a great deal of energy to battling her ex, Steve, for child support. This is not a calm sea to navigate even during the best of times. On one end you’ve got the bureaucracy and red tape, and on the other Steve’s own constantly moving target. Just when she thinks they’ve got him pinned down with a job and garnished with a payment or two, he quits and relocates somewhere else.

So the steady downhill drift of her family’s fortunes is behind a great deal of this stress, she knows. But isn’t quite sure what to do about it. Kay’s Hutchison clan were never anywhere nearly as well off as the Garvericks, though were solidly lower middle class for most of her years growing up here. At this point, though, they are clearly much less so.

She and Emily bonded at an early age, not exactly over art, just from being lumped near one another in the same first grade classroom. As a result of hanging out, however, Kay did sort of drift into vague projects somewhere between an old lady’s craftwork, and genuine art. Mostly things involving yarn or fabric, though trending more toward the demented and weird than anything quaint or grandmotherly. Of course it’s been years since she even thought about any of that.

Kay knows Emily is pumped up about this artist’s retreat, following their fluke visit there, and has been attempting to hatch convoluted plans around it ever since. But all Kay can say is that maybe she will be able to visit a couple of times, if this opportunity even comes to pass. Apparently that guy they met who runs the place is charging a pretty penny for residencies of either six weeks or three months, nothing else. While it sounds like a luxurious dream to sit around and zone out thinking about, this is not a feasible strategy. She can already hear them now, her family going absolutely apeshit if she so much as suggested such a thing.

For the past couple of months now, Kay has been going through one of her housebound stretches. Her parents were already on the brink of foreclosure on their two story, vaguely Victorian house out here on the southeastern fringe of town, forcing them to double down on their own work schedules. Both her dad, Phil, and her mom, Janice, are fortunately more or less self-employed or at least independent contractors, a carpenter and a house cleaner, respectively, and have simply gotten more industrious in landing clients of late. They’ve discussed downshifting into a smaller place, because this one is maybe slightly more than they need, but this too is a major project nobody has found the time for.

Amid this constant bickering, the high wire act of tiptoeing around frayed nerves, Noah’s behavior has turned increasingly erratic of late, too. He will go through days long stretches of being alternately irritable, argumentative, or at the other end of the spectrum so quiet he’s nearly listless. Often no interest in doing anything else but sitting indoors glaring with a dazed expression pointed at the TV or computer screen, which she sometimes battles by forcing him outside, though also admittedly is sometimes too exhausted herself and secretly relieved to fight it. But then just as capable of remaining in his room for a solid week, leaving only for potty or meals, or days where she has to physically drag him back indoors from playing with the neighbor kids. It’s difficult to say where a basic personality begins, and what is just a phase all kids go through, or a cause for legitimate concern. She’s frequently too wiped out to devote much thought to this as well.

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