In a perfectly restored Victorian home, a family was decaying. The erosion from newly uncovered secrets could not be repaired. From the outside, the family was one to rival the Brady’s, only inside Marla O’Conner’s heart that the damage was being done.

Marla O’Conner was a woman in her mid-forties, successful as both retail manager at Nordstrom’s and as a mother. A pleasant looking woman with long, straight brown hair that hung to her mid-back. Her eyebrows, kept neatly plucked, arched over her churning hazel eyes. Her nose was a little large, in the stereotypical Italian “beak” style, but did not offend the other features. Her best feature, her full lips, were almost always curved in a smile, showing off her perfect off-white teeth. She prided herself with her exercise routine, keeping the same slim figure she had when she was eighteen and always clothed herself to the highest fashion, most coming from Nordstrom’s. In spite of the image of perfection she strived to keep of herself, her inner-self was slowly tearing apart. A week ago, while doing the laundry, she found some lipstick and the smell of freesia lotion on her husband’s shirt. Trembling and confused she threw it in with the rest of the wash and set off to find some answers. Her husband was outside mowing their half-acre lawn; it was the perfect time to snoop around. In the back of his sock drawer she found a few letters and a picture from a particular woman who seemed to be in her early twenties. Crying in pain, Marla opened the letters and read them one by one. It took several hours to process all the information in the letters and to come to the realization -- her husband was having an affair.

The next few days Marla dealt with mood swings and depression, her employees at the department store expressed concern about her short temper with all of them. Her son even avoided her more than usual the last few days. The only one that didn’t seem to notice was her husband. Every morning was the same routine. He would get dressed in his business suit, sit at the breakfast table and drink coffee and read the Seattle Times and Wall Street Journal; his “relaxing time,” he called it. He never bothered to help out when Marla was running late or the children had last minute crises.

Five days after the discovery of her husband’s other relationship, her son came to her at ten in the evening, long after his bedtime, to inform her that he had a science project due two days later. Marla looked at her husband, absorbed in some show about Hitler’s henchmen on the History channel, and realized he didn’t even notice his son had come into the room. Marla assured her son that she would help him out and they went to the kitchen to brainstorm ideas for the project. It came down to a model of the planetary system or a volcano that would actually explode baking soda lava. Her son decided on the volcano. Marla sent her son to bed and picked up her keys to take a quick trip to Wal-Mart for any necessary parts.

The volcano project became a huge affair. It overtook the entire kitchen and disrupted her husband’s morning routine -- the table being headquarters for the paper mache creation. Marla made a frame out of chicken wire for the volcano and secured it on a large piece of cardboard. Mother and son went up to the elbows in paper mache, plastering pieces of her husband’s newspapers to the wire frame. Early to rise and late to leave, Marla whisked her son off to school, barely in time for the final morning bell. She herself was a half hour late to work and was glad that she was the boss and could work a half hour later to make up for it.

That night the volcano was completed. The paper mache had dried while they were away for the day and the brown paint on the volcano was trying to cling to the floury sides. Her husband had come home five hours late, without explanation. He didn’t say hello or even good night, he just went straight to the bedroom to take a shower and go to bed. Marla seethed with anger and began hot-gun-gluing the peatmoss and Lego civilians to the cardboard with a vengeance. Still angry with her husband, her son asked if she could finish it so that he could go to bed. Now alone and left with a two-foot tall volcano in her kitchen, Marla cried tears of loneliness.

Marla walked across the room frustrated. Opening to the door to the refrigerator, she took out the box of baking soda and tossed it in the direction of the counter, bouncing it onto the peatmoss forest surrounding the paper mache volcano. Her husband sat at the breakfast table as always, serenely sipping his coffee, totally oblivious tot he woman huffing and puffing across the kitchen. She dragged her son’s Batman lunchbox out of the cupboard and jockeyed a place for it on the remaining counter space. The huge volcano, mysteriously moved to the kitchen counter from the breakfast table in the night, filled the kitchen. Glaring at her husband and calling to her son, Marla slapped together lunch: peanut butter sandwich, pudding pack, carrots and a few cents for a carton of milk. Her son came down and asked his Mom if she could drive him to school so that he wouldn’t have to take the huge volcano on the bus. She was late, again, to work and looked to her husband for help. He was sipping his coffee and reading the business section of the Seattle Times, clearly ignoring the situation. Grudgingly she agrees to take her son, knowing she would hear from the main office about her tardiness to work.

She quickly finishes her make-up and cleans the kitchen before she grabs a Diet Coke for her break at work and rushes her son out the door. Her son reminds her of the missing volcano, the huge monstrosity that seemed to take up her life the last two days. Marla bustles back in the door, acquires the necessary ingredients to make the volcano “erupt” and maneuvers the thing out the door, almost tripping on the front step.

As she puts the key into the ignition, her husband wanders out the door, locking up the house for the day. And as she pulls away from the perfect home with tears in her eyes, her husband whistles a little tune to himself.