Ninety-One Bags

I had gone upstairs for a hair tie.

That is the whole reason I was out of the kitchen. Not a shower, not a nap, not one of the long selfish absences she described later to anyone who would sit still for it. A hair tie, from the dish on the dresser, ninety seconds.

I heard the freezer drawer before I got to the bottom of the stairs. It has a sound, that drawer, a sort of soft complaint on the runners, and I knew it the way you know the sound of your own front gate.

Diane was standing at the sink with the tray held out in front of her at chest height.

"Diane," I said. "What are you doing?"

She looked at me the way you look at someone who has come to fix the boiler.

"Three months of this," she said. "In my freezer."

Then she tipped the tray.

They came out all at once, ninety-one flat frozen bags sliding over each other into the stainless steel basin, and the noise they made was not a noise I had a name for.

"Stop — those are labelled, every one of those is dated —"

She reached across and twisted the hot tap all the way open.

I put both my hands into the water.

I want to be accurate about this part because later it became a thing people had opinions about. The water was as hot as our boiler goes. I put my hands in it and I scooped and I pressed the bags against my chest and my sweater went transparent with milk and hot water and I did not stop until there was nothing left to lift.

Noah was screaming in the bouncer behind us the entire time.

"That was his food," I said. "That was two weeks of his food."

"There is formula in the pantry," she said. "I bought it myself."