Big Feelings
The Last Domino
Nora has been building the domino run since right after lunch. Around the coffee table leg. Along the rug. Up a ramp taped to the sofa arm. Into a shoebox garage for the orange car. Twelve dominoes to go before the big drop. Twelve!
Milo keeps circling closer, one sock sliding on the wood floor. Can he put one down? “Not yet,” says Nora, without looking up. Two minutes later he’s back, holding a domino out like a present. “Not yet, Milo.”
Milo takes one more step. Not into the game. Just toward her. And his foot catches the curve by the table leg. Clack-clack-clack-clack-clack! Down they go, one stretch, then the next, until nearly a third of the whole run is lying flat on the rug.
Nora doesn’t say a word. Her hands are fists at her sides before she has decided to make them. Her jaw goes tight. Somewhere behind her ribs, her breath stops halfway in.
Milo looks up at her, a domino still in his hand, and smiles. A small, wobbly smile, like he isn’t sure if this is still the game. He doesn’t know yet what his foot did.
Her hands are already lifting. Half a second before they reach anything at all.
What does Nora do?
Every choice costs something. Let’s see what.
Shove Milo away, hard
Nora shoves him with both hands, hard. He stumbles back against the table leg and sits down fast on the rug. Bump. For half a second, nothing. Then Milo’s face crumples, and the crying starts. The real, loud kind. Not a game one.
Mom is through the door before the second wail is over. She scoops Milo onto her hip and checks his elbow with two fingers. “Time-out on the stairs,” she says to Nora, fast, already turned back to Milo.
It’s a long while before Nora goes back in. She doesn’t say sorry out loud. She picks up one fallen domino, walks over, and holds it out to Milo. No words.
Milo takes the domino and stands it up himself. A bit crooked. Nora straightens it and says nothing about the crooked part. Then they start on the fallen third together. One domino at a time.
By the time the ramp is standing again, Milo is right beside her on the rug. But now, before he reaches for the next domino, he takes a quick look at her face. “My turn?” he says, and waits. Nora nods. Milo puts his domino down, a bit crooked, and this time she leaves it just where it is.
Kick the rest of it down herself
Nora doesn’t touch Milo. She sweeps her arm along the rug and kicks the ramp. CRASH. The whole afternoon goes down in one long, clattering sweep: the ramp, the shoebox garage, the last standing dominoes. All of it.
Mom runs in at the crash, not at crying, because there hasn’t been any yet. She finds a bare stretch of rug, cardboard skidded up against the baseboard, and Milo, crying now too, startled, both hands over his ears.
There is nothing left standing. Not a third. Nothing. Nora sits down in the empty spot where the ramp used to be. She doesn’t pick anything up.
Milo stays on Mom’s hip for a long, long time. Later, when the silverware drawer goes clatter, he jumps and grabs a fistful of Mom’s sweater. Nora sees him do it. After dinner she finds the shoebox garage behind the sofa, squashed flat on one side. She pushes the dent out with her thumb and puts it on the rug, right where Milo can see it.
Walk out of the room without a word
Nora is up and gone before she says anything at all. Out the door, down the hall. The door swings almost shut behind her, whump. Not quite a slam. Nearly.
Milo is left by the half-wrecked curve, calling her name into the empty hall. Twice. Nobody answers. He picks up a fallen domino and turns it over and over in his hands, not sure what to do with it.
It’s Nora who comes back first, a good while later. Nobody sends her. She doesn’t say where she went. She just sits down on the rug, across from Milo.
She starts picking up the dominoes nearest his hand, not looking at him. After a moment, Milo starts picking some up too. He stands them in a crooked line that goes nowhere in particular.
She doesn’t say where she went, and Milo doesn’t ask. He’s too busy: his crooked line now goes all the way around the table leg. The ramp doesn’t get finished that day. They run out of afternoon before they run out of dominoes. Nora puts the last twelve in the box, ready for tomorrow.