6.

The next morning, for the first time in a long while, Vivian didn’t get out of bed and follow Derrick through his morning routine. She didn’t walk him to the door and then watch him from the window. Instead, she slept in and was barely roused even when he brought her some coffee and kissed her good bye. She had slept well and deeply and by the time she finally rolled out of bed, her coffee was cold and had missed her spin class.

Vivian got out of bed and went downstairs to make herself some breakfast. As was her habit, she brought her laptop with her and as she waited for a new pot of coffee to brew she returned to browsing the web. She’d forgotten until she looked at her history bar, about the online parenting group she’d discovered the night before. As she made her way through a bowl of granola topped with fresh blueberries, she clicked on the link and went to the homepage of Parent 2 Parent 4 Support.com. She was immediately assaulted by a collage of images of happy families, smiling, laughing children and parents of all ages, races and sexual preferences.

“If everyone’s so fucking happy why do you need 100 message boards of support and chat rooms for…whatever it is one does in a chat room not devoted to fucking,” she asked her monitor.

Vivian started scrolling down the homepage, exploring the different offerings of Parent 2 Parent while outside her kitchen window a small team of Mexican laborers sent by her landscaping company at Derrick’s request, slapped each other on the back and pointed at the trees she’d planted, while they laughed hysterically. One man, who wore overalls and a Boston Red Sox cap and who couldn’t have been more than five feet four inches tall and 150 pounds, stood beside one of the trees and with just one hand and no real exhibited effort pulled the tree from the earthen hole that Vivian had so lovingly carved for it with a too heavy shovel and then filled with soil she packed down with her own LL Bean garden gloved hands, barely flinching at the occasional piece of worm that writhed in the dirt. The suddenly uprooted tree sent the gathered men into new fits of laughter before they left it propped against its sibling saplings and returned to their trucks.

Inside and still oblivious to the activity taking place in her back yard, Vivian had entered a general chat room with an assigned guest name and observed the friendly but pointless banter exchanged among the people present. A woman named Joanne was conducting an opinion poll—not about ear infection medication or the value of Montessori school, but rather posing the question, “McDreamy or McSteamy—which one do you want in your bed?” in reference to the popular television show, Grey’s Anatomy. The mothers in the chat room overwhelmingly preferred the sensitive McDreamy, while the fathers declared both of the men gay.

“Well, already I don’t fit in with parent types,” Vivian said as took a sip of her coffee. “I’d take them both to bed.”

Dropping out of the general chat room, she moved her cursor to a link for a divorced parents chat room and sat back waiting for the fun to begin, but was disappointed when she found just two men—both lawyers—talking shop. Vivian quickly dropped out again and was about to give up on the parenting website, when she saw a message board for Mommies-To-Be. This topic made her cringe a bit. When she’d discovered the sight the night before she’d imagined it populated by overbearing yuppies of overscheduled kids fretting about parenting theories and education models, courted by upscale advertisers of children’s clothes and study aids. The sort of people she could make fun of until she eventually fell in line and became one of them. But she didn’t expect to see a an area for pregnant women on Parent 2 Parent 4 Support.

“Can’t escape the pregos, even if you try,” she said and clicked on “Join Mommies-To-Be.”

Outside the wind picked up and the unplanted tree fell on its side and the wind gusts rolled it over and over, very slowly pushing it across the yard. The Troys’ home was built on a corner lot, and the Weeping Cherry was headed toward the street that ran along the side of Vivian’s and Derrick’s home. The landscapers huddled in the back of their truck among tools and sitting on bags of soils, drinking thermoses of coffee, sharing a dozen donuts packed inside a wax coated bag.

Vivian watched the conversation of the pregnant women, which, unlike the other chat rooms she’d visited that dad, was on topic. References to strange cravings and morning sickness were tossed out and fetal measurements were tracked, but the main topic of conversation for the women in the Mommies-To-Be chat room that morning was how to best prepare their existing children to welcome the new baby into the family. As they talked, Vivian realized that all the women had children and were online discussing not their first pregnancy, but second or third. Or, as was the case for a woman named Tiffanee who was typing on and on about her home birth plan and the ease with which she’d had all of her children—her fifth pregnancy.

“Jesus Christ, TiffaNEE, do you do anything but breed? Are you a woman or a rabbit?” Vivian said reaching for the lid of her laptop in disgust, figuring it was time to leave this foreign world of parents and take a shower. But then she stopped and smiled wickedly.

She began typing in the chat room’s text box.

Visitor342489: Wow Tiffanee, that’s quite a little family you’ve got.

Tiffanee: *Giggles* Thanks.

Visitor342489: Do you do anything but breed?

Tiffanee: J Sometimes.

Visitor342489: Are you a woman or a fucking rabbit?

Tiffanee: L Go somewhere else if you’re going to be rude.

Visitor342489: Just messing around.

Tiffanee: It’s okay! I forgive you. Hugs!!

Visitor342489: *Smirking* Gee Thanks.

Visitor342489: So, you must be able to drive a truck up that thing, eh?

Tiffanee: You’re going to get banned, Visitor. This is a warning.

Visitor342489: Sex for your “dear hubby” must be like throwing a hot dog down a hallway, though. Am I right?

And just like that the window Vivian had been typing in had closed and a message appeared informing her that Visitor342489 had been banned from Mommies-To-Be at Parent 2 Parent 4 Support.com. Vivian started laughing hysterically as exited her internet browser and closed her lap top. When she’d calmed down she took a sip of her coffee, but ending up running to the sink to spit out as another wave of laughter overtook her. When the contents of her mouth were sprayed safely in the porcelain sink, she wiped her lips on the back of her hand, straightened up and looked out the window above the kitchen sink.

“What the fuck?” she said as her eyes settled on the two Weeping Cherry trees and the single empty dirt hole where her third baby tree had been. “Someone stole my fucking tree!”