Mrs Covet

About a week after I saw the first ladybug, I noticed there were five of them in the boys’ bathroom. Two in the sink, one in the bathtub, two crawling around on the mirror. Days after that, I was reading Tyler a story in his bed when one of them dropped on to my cheek. It panicked me, I shrieked. I never knew they could fly. They land clumsily, stupidly, and when it’s time to take off, they push a little secret pair of wings out from under their shells. Within a month I had counted thirty-five ladybugs in the boys’ bathroom alone. Then I started finding them in the bedrooms, our bathroom, the closets. They were flying more and more, and one day one of them was zooming around in crazy circles, and it bit me in the back of the leg. It was an invasion. I started to think they were evil.

But you can’t kill a ladybug. It’s terrible luck to kill a ladybug.

I started spending more and more time out of the house. Once I dropped the boys at school, I stayed out, got a cup of decaf, went food shopping, even went to a matinee a couple of times. Then I would pick up Tyler from nursery school and we’d go out to an early lunch. The house was becoming a mess. Orange peels under the beds, grime in the toilet bowl. Craig tried to be nice about it. He knows how I get when I’m pregnant. It’s hard to describe what happens — it’s as though all the walls in my mind slide down like car windows, and the thoughts just float freely around my brain. I find socks in the freezer, notebooks in the linen closet. I once showed up two days late to the dentist. At least I got the time right. But the ladybugs were threatening to be a real problem. I couldn’t sleep, I didn’t want to be in the house, and I wouldn’t let Craig get an exterminator. One night, we were sitting at the kitchen table after dinner. Craig watched as one of the creatures crawled along the edge of a bowl filled with coagulating breakfast cereal. Then he said, ‘If you need help with the house, I’ll get you someone. I’ll ask my mother.’ I burst into tears. I’m not sure if it was relief, or a premonition.

The very next day, at nine a.m., my mother-in-law, Carroll Rice, drove up in her Ford Impala. She was in baby blue: ironed slacks, matching blue sweater with shoulder pads in it. Her white-blonde hair had even taken on a bluish cast. Still in Craig’s pyjamas, I watched her through the window, my belly pressing against the glass, as she got out of the car, primly brushing imaginary crumbs from her bust, and walked around to the other side. The passenger door opened with ominous slowness; I saw one hand grip the side of the doorframe. A dark head appeared, then swung out of view. A moment passed. Suddenly, an enormous woman heaved herself out of the low car and unfolded herself with difficulty. She must have been six feet tall. Short, dark hair, athletic build. Breasts the size of watermelons. Carroll came up to her shoulder. The two of them strode up to the house. Carroll opened the door with a perfunctory knock, calling out ‘Daphne!’ in her high, sing-song voice.

‘Hi, Carroll,’ I said. My underarms were sweating, my teeth were unbrushed, my hair snarled. Carroll looked me up and down and sighed. She’d had six kids and I doubt she’d let herself look like this for one single morning.

‘Honey, this is Nat. She is going to get your life in order.’

The Enormous Woman towered over me. Her eyes were light, piercing green; her massive chin seemed clamped on to the rest of her face by a fierce underbite. She was wearing a vast, pink terry-cloth sweatsuit. ‘I hear you need a little help with the house,’ she said.

‘Well,’ I said. ‘I, I...think I do. We just thought we’d try...’

‘You sit tight, honey,’ Nat said. ‘You don't look too good. I’m a trained nurse, so calm down.’ I sat.

Carroll looked at me smugly. ‘I am so glad you finally let me help you,’ she whispered. Nat made us both tea, then set about cleaning the kitchen, whistling loudly, with vibrato. After a while, she thundered upstairs and turned the radio on. I never even showed her around the house. She figured it all out for herself.

Later, drying myself off from my shower, I could hear the sermon she was listening to on the radio. A man’s voice was saying, ‘But the question is not what you need. The question is: What does Jesus need? And the answer is easy — because the answer is always the same: Jesus needs your love.’ By the time I emerged from my room, Nat had found a place for everything in the house. Anything that could fit inside another thing got crammed in there. It didn’t matter if it made no sense. She put hair elastics inside egg cups. Magic markers in the salad bowl. The place looked immaculate, but a lot of things went missing.

After a day or two, I began to suspect that Nat was killing the ladybugs. There were fewer and fewer of them around. Once I found twenty dead bodies on a window sill. I sniffed, but I couldn’t smell chemicals. Why were they dying? ‘It’s the end of their season,’ said Nat. But still I suspected her. So many ladybugs ought to have brought something hugely lucky to our lives. Killing them could bring calamity. I started to fret and whenever I hadn’t felt the baby move for more than an hour, I poked it till it squirmed.

Nat cooked, too. The fare was plain, fairly tasteless, but the kids loved it: lasagna, spaghetti with meatballs, fried fish, baked beans. After she was done with the cleaning on that first day, at around one, I expected her to leave, but all she did was put on an apron and start chopping. When the kids were home, she had them doing chores. Tyler walked around with a cleaning rag hanging from his belt, a sponge in one hand. Both boys loved working for Nat. She combed their tousled hair, tamed the curls I loved and slicked them back with water. She started talking about buzz cuts. With the house cleaned, the kids occupied, dinner in the oven, all I had to do was read and wait for Craig to come home. I spent more and more time in my room. Nat fussed over me. In bed for ten minutes, I’d hear a knock on the door, see her giant silhouette framed by the doorway. ‘You hungry?’ I ate three meals a day, plus egg sandwiches at eleven, a bowl of beans at four. I gained fifteen pounds in a month. My doctor was astounded and relieved that I was up to a normal weight. I didn’t tell him that I barely ever walked, ate all day, rarely saw my children. Nat was turning me into an invalid. And I was beginning to realize that Carroll thought I’d been one all along. Hiding in the hall one night, I heard her talking to Craig in her rough whisper. ‘I tell you, Nat has saved you. Saved you all.’

‘It wasn’t that bad, Ma,’ said Craig in a cracked voice — always conciliatory, always making less of things, always talking women down.

‘Wasn't that bad? You’re like one of those frogs. If you put a frog in cold water and heat it slowly it won't notice, and before you know it — ’

‘You have a boiled frog. I get it.’

‘Admit the house is running better.’

‘Absolutely. And I thank you.’

‘She needed this, Craig.’

‘I know.’

‘She’s fragile.’

‘She’s been under stress, she’s fine.’

They moved away at that point and I couldn’t hear, but two days later, Craig started talking about therapy. God, forgive the mother of my husband.