The Mothers

I read in People magazine

People?
It might have been something else

It might have been Glamour

Glamour?
Okay, not Glamour, but—

Was it—

Can I finish the story?
Sorry

It’s fine, I just—Cody, please put your sister down.  If she gets sick and throws up on you, we’re going to have to go home early.  Is that what you want?
Vincent is always picking up his little brother and throwing him into things.  I don’t know what to do.

Do you know the Patience exercise with him?
I do, but as soon as we’re done with it—

Same with Markie.  They know all the tricks.

Yup.

As soon as we learn a new trick, they learn how it works, and then they undermine it.

Exactly.

Cody, I don’t want you near that slide.  Peter got sick on that slide.  Do you want to get sick?
They washed it.

I know they washed it, but I didn’t wash it.

What?
I didn’t wash it so how do I know it’s been washed properly?  Do you think they used bleach?
I’m sure they used bleach.

But you don’t know.  That’s the whole point.  Nobody knows.

So you’re just never going to let him play on the—

Cody, play on the swings, okay?  Good boy.  And put your sister down.

What were you saying before?
God, who remembers?
About you reading—

Oh right, I was reading about this little boy who got vaccinated and then died.

Oh my god!

I know, isn’t it terrible?  There were pictures.

Of his body?
No!  Jesus.

Well, I didn’t—

Of him, you know, alive—and happy.  With his mother.

She must be devastated.

She was.  I mean, I don’t know her, but they interviewed one of her co-workers—

Just put me in the ground.  If anything ever happens to Markie—

Don’t even say it.

I know, but I’m saying—

Don’t even say it—

Just put me in the ground right along with him.

You know, the media doesn’t tell you everything about those vaccinations.  They just want us to shoot up our kids with whatever they tell us is safe.  They don’t actually investigate this stuff to—

I mean, they do investigate.

What?

They have statistics.

What statistics?
Statistics about them being—

I’m just saying—I’m not sticking every kind of needle in Cody’s arm and trusting that it’s all going to be fine.  That little boy was going to be a baseball player.  A professional baseball player.

How old was he?

Six.

So how do they know he was going to—

He loved baseball.  And now he’s dead.  All so he wouldn’t catch the mumps.  Like that’s the worst thing in the world.

I had the mumps.

So did I.  And I’m alive.  And I wasn’t vaccinated and I’m alive.  And that little boy was vaccinated and where is he now?  Dead.

Maybe something else happened.

Like what?
I don’t know, something?

What could have happened?
All kinds of things can happen.

Look, he got vaccinated and then he died.  It’s cause and effect.

He could have had an undiagnosed heart problem or something.

Are you a detective now?
No.

So why are you just making up—

I’m not making anything up.

She just believes whatever they tell her.

Who’s ‘they?’

The news or—whatever.

Who else am I supposed to listen to if not the news?
You have to think for yourself.

I do, but I read things and then I make up my own mind.  The same way you read that article and—

This article was very well-written.

That doesn’t make it true.

And the news being the news doesn’t make the news true.

Okay, fine, but—

You’re so defensive.

You brought the whole thing up.

I thought you’d want to know if something was out there that could potentially—

Vincent’s already had his shots.  He’s fine.

So he’s one of the lucky ones.  That’s all that means.

Look, nothing is a hundred percent.  Any one of our kids could eat a peanut tomorrow and die from a new developed allergy or something.

That’s why I don’t let Cody eat peanuts.

Markie either.  I won’t let him near them.

Or peanut butter.

Peanut butter?  Ha.  I’d rather let him near a live shark.

You can’t shelter them from everything.

So you’d rather play fast and loose with your child’s life?
I’d rather let him have a—

You would never forgive yourself if you were that lenient with him and then something happened.

But my point is—

You should protect them against whatever you can protect them from.

What about protecting them against illnesses that can actually kill them?

What are we talking about here?  Measles?  Chicken pox?
That stuff can be deadly.  It’s not—

But I know what that stuff is.  I don’t know what’s in those needles they stick into—

You don’t need to know what’s in it.

You would just let them put something in your and not even know what—

Do you know what’s in all the food your kid eats?
Of course I do.  He only eats organic.

Markie eats three things.  And he won’t sit at the table.  And he stabbed my husband with a fork last week.

Jesus.

Did you try Reflecting?
We did, but then he started waving a knife around so we locked him in his room for the rest of the night.

Well, that’s—You did what?

I guess I should just be happy with the fact that Vincent can’t catch anything from Cody or Markie.

Why would he catch anything from them?
Well, if they’re not vaccinated—

Markie’s vaccinated.

You vaccinated Markie?
My husband made me.  His father is a pediatrician and he says we have to get him all his shots.

Well his father probably knows what he’s—

So you turned over the well-being of a child to a stranger?
He’s not a stranger.  He’s his grandfather.

But he’s not his mother.

But he’s his grandfather.

But he’s not his mother.

Look, I don’t like it anymore than you do, but I got to choose his religion, so my husband gets to make the medical decisions.

I would have let him have religion.  Religion won’t kill you if you choose wrong.

We’re all going to die of something.

I choose not to believe that.  I choose to believe that I’m going to die one day and then they’ll discover the cure for death and my children will live on forever.

But realistically you know that’s—

Realistically?  Are you kidding?  We shelter a life inside ourselves for nine months and then push it out and watch it become a person.  It’s science fiction.  There’s nothing realistic about it.

It’s nature.  It’s how things work.

I think it’s weird that you’re fixated on your kid dying.

I’m not fixated on it.  It scares the hell out of me.  I don’t think about it.  You’re the ones who—

You have to think about it, and you have to not think about it.  That’s the trick.

Oh, that’s the trick, huh?
Yes—and it probably doesn’t work.

Nothing does.

Nothing.

Not a damn thing.