by M. E. Carter
I look at the clock. “We’ve still got twenty minutes.”
She strains as she makes one last effort to lug Christopher to the mat and drops him on the floor. “We doing lunch when we’re done?”
“I assumed. Don’t we always do lunch?”
“Yes, but this one is extra-hyper today. I’m not sure… Christopher!” she calls out as he starts running back towards the bar. “Good god, will this child ever listen to me?”
“Christopher, stop!” Greg yells after him. And whatdoyouknow… the little shit stops and turns around. “Your mother said stop. Come back here please.”
Callie and I watch with our mouths wide open in disbelief, as Christopher walks right over to Greg who squats down in front of the tot. “Your mother said you can’t go on that high bar. Do you understand?” Christopher nods. “Good. Now you can walk over and swing on the low bar. But if you try to climb to the top, you will sit against the wall until your mom says you can get up. Do you understand me?” Christopher nods again. This time Greg smiles at him. “Good job, bud. Give me five, right here.” Christopher slaps his hand, a smile on his face. “Remember what I said…walk to that low bar.”
“Holy. Shit,” Callie whispers, as we watch Christopher calmly walk exactly where Greg told him to go. “Are you some kind of magician? No, you’re a witch, right? Or warlock. Isn’t that what they call a guy witch?”
Greg bends down and picks up Peyton, who pops her thumb in her mouth and lays her head on his shoulder. “Nah. Sometimes little boys just respond better to men.”
“He doesn’t listen to my husband.”
“Your husband doesn’t talk to him unless he’s disciplining him,” I remind her.
“I don’t know why he doesn’t respond to your husband, but there’s a lot of different research on the topic.” Greg absentmindedly rubs Peyton’s back, and I can’t help another twinge of jealousy. Not because I want my back rubbed, but because I know James doesn’t do that with my kids. “Some people think it has something to do with testosterone responding to testosterone. But there’s also some research that shows a lot of boys hear lower toned voices better, which typically is a man’s voice versus a woman’s voice.”
“Well, whatever the reason, if you can get my kid to respond and obey, you and I are going to become great friends,” Callie says with a wink and a smile. “Would you like to join us for lunch again today?”
I swear Greg looks over at me when he answers. “Count me in.”
~ ~ ~
Forty-five minutes later, we’re at our favorite post-gym restaurant… McDonalds. The kids are, once again, taking over the playscape. And we are, once again, munching on their forgotten Happy Meals.
“Have you put together your birthday list for your mom yet?” Callie knows my mom refuses to buy birthday or Christmas presents anymore if she doesn’t have a list of exact colors, sizes and brands. I suspect it’s from hearing my brother bitch one too many times about not getting the right thing, so she gave up. I guess it’s nice that we always get what we want. But I like surprises, too.
“Your birthday is coming up?” Greg asks as he licks ketchup off his thumb. I have no idea why I noticed that, but it was actually kind of sexy.
Oh boy. I’ve hit a new low.
“It’s not for a couple of weeks.”
“Oh. Do you have big plans?” he asks.
“Not really. I guess birthdays were never really that big of a deal in our house. Now Christmas, we do up Christmas like you’ve never seen. But birthdays mean celebrating that my parents had sex.”
Apparently, he wasn’t expecting that response, because he chokes on his drink.
Callie begins banging on his back. “You ok there? Didn’t expect our girl to be so blunt?”
He shakes his head back and forth. “Nope,” he coughs out.
I shrug with a smile. “Sorry.” No, I’m not. “I guess once you hit thirty, no one really pays attention to your birthday anymore,” I say once he’s pulled himself back together.
Callie points at me with a fry. “No, you don’t pay attention to your birthday anymore because you don’t like drawing that much attention to yourself.” The fry flops around as she keeps talking. “Some of us, on the other hand, want to do it up big every year. Cakes and streamers and a giant sign that reads ‘Happy Birthday, Calixta’ in twinkly lights.” She throws her arms out wide in exaggeration and half the fry flies off. It lands on the floor right in front of Max who promptly snags it up and eats it before running to the colorful stairs again.
We’re such a classy bunch.
“Calixta, huh?” Greg says, still whacking his chest. “You ever read The Storm?”
Callie’s eyes widen and her jaw drops open in delight. “By Kate Chopin?”
He nods and smiles.
“Ohmygod, my mother did a paper on it in college. She was fascinated by it. Said it was a revolutionary book for a woman to write in 1898.” She smacks him on his arm. “I can’t believe you knew that!”
“My mother was a college professor. Taught all kinds of literature classes so the bookshelves were stocked.”
A squeal rings out and we all turn simultaneously to stare at the playscape. When no one starts wailing, it’s an unspoken determination that no one is bleeding or dead and we return to our conversation.
“Anyway,” Greg continues, “when I was nine or ten, my mom wouldn’t let me go to a friend’s house or ride my bike or something until I finished reading a book. It was this ongoing argument she and I used to have.” He pops another fry in his mouth and takes a quick sip of his drink. Seriously. How does a man make a beard look sexy?
“I was determined that I would show her,” he says with mock indignation. “So, I grabbed the shortest book I could find.” He nods again with an ornery smile. “My mom was pissed when she realized what I had read.”
Callie howls with laughter and Greg keeps munching, with an ornery smile on his face.
I look back and forth between them, trying to ignore the weird jealous feelings that have popped up now that they have an inside joke.
“Um, hi,” I blurt out. “Anyone want to explain why that’s funny?”
Callie wipes a tear from her eye. “The entire book, actually, I wouldn’t even call it a book. It’s more like an essay. But it’s about a woman who is married with children and has an affair.”
“Very, very torrid,” Greg says.
“Not torrid at all,” Callie disputes.
“Torrid to a nine-year-old boy.”
Callie looks at me and changes her answer. “Very, very torrid.”
“How many times are you guys gonna say torrid?” I jest.
“Until it confuses our brains and loses all meaning.” Callie doesn’t miss a beat. She can go on like this for hours.
“Pretty sure I’m already there.” I wipe my hands on a napkin and lean my elbows on the table. “But what I want to know, Greg, is how many times you read the book for the name to have stuck with you.”
A slight blush covers the apples of his cheeks and he ducks his head, still snacking. “A few.”
“A few?”
He wipes his own hands and throws the napkin on the table. “Let’s just say when I moved away to college, Mom found it under my bed. Dog-eared to a certain page.”
Callie and I both laugh this time.
“That’s such a guy thing,” Callie giggles.
“Get ready,” Greg says as he turns to look at the kids again, Max and Christopher rolling down the slide. I can’t tell which limbs belong to which kids. “I can tell you right now, you’re going to find a lot of porn on that kid’s devices when he’s in high school.”
Callie grimaces. “He better not. The minute I find out he’s been looking at nudie pics, I refuse to do his laundry anymore.”
“What do those two things have to do with each other?” I ask.
She points another floppy fry at me. “I have a brother. I know what crusty socks mean they’ve been doing.”
/>
Greg chokes on his drink again and Callie reaches over to hit him on the back again. “You really need to get used to the things we sometimes say.”
“No kidding,” he chokes out the words, as he bangs a fist on his chest, face turning bright red from all the pounding going on. “You two are determined to kill me.”
I smirk. He really has no idea how crazy we can get. But I have a feeling he’s going to find out.
Chapter Six
It’s shocking how much a single mom can get done on the weekends her kids aren’t home. We’re so good at multi-tasking on a daily basis, having no children under foot means remarkable focus. Not to mention, you only have to pick up toys once. Wipe down the bathroom sink once. Do the dishes once. Most of us forget how easy cleaning house really can be when you’re not cleaning the same things eighteen times a day.
Now my house is practically spotless. The laundry is folded and put away. There are even a half dozen pre-made meals in the freezer. To say I’ve been productive over the last two days would be an understatement.
I don’t normally plan these things. I am far from June Cleaver. I don’t even have a Pinterest account. The last thing I need is another internet vortex to suck me in.
No, the reality is, I tried very hard to keep busy so my mind didn’t wander.
I’ve never been away from Max this long, and more importantly, she’s never been away from me. Don’t get me wrong, it’s been hard having Fiona and Maura gone as well. But they’re so much older that it doesn’t feel quite the same. They can fend for themselves. Max is just little.
When the divorce was being mediated, James wanted her for weekend visits immediately, but I nixed that idea. She wasn’t even two and I had been a stay-at-home mom. It was rare that James made it home before she went to bed when we were living in the same house, so by the time we’d been separated for a few months, they didn’t know each other hardly at all. Not because I kept the kids from him, but because James kept being James. Nothing is more important to him than, well, him. At the time of mediation, it hardly seemed fair to traumatize a child. It seems everyone else involved agreed.
I negotiated that James have her for a two-hour dinner every Tuesday and Thursday and part of the day Saturday. Of course, he stopped showing up for dinners right after Christmas, so any chance to build a relationship with her before weekend visits started disappeared quickly.
But now she’s old enough to stay with him. Turns out, three years old seemed much older during mediation than it does in this moment.
That leads me back to my excessive Betty Crocker weekend. Instead of worrying for two days about if Max was tired or scared or hungry, I focused on getting as much done as possible. That way, when they get home, I will be completely available to them to do whatever damage control is needed.
Now that they’ll be here any minute, though, I have nothing left to do, and the worrying is out of control. I’ve been pacing for the last ten minutes, expecting the worst.
A quiet knock makes me jump, then race over to the door and swing it open.
James has his finger to his lips. “Shhh. She fell asleep in the car.” Sure enough, Max has her head on his shoulder, her light brown hair covering her face like she rubbed her head back and forth in her sleep. “I’m gonna….” he whispers and gestures to the stairs. I nod and move out of his way, understanding he’s taking her to lay her down.
And then I look down to see the older two. My entire face widens in shock.
What. The. Hell. Happened to my kids?
Maura skips right over to me and hugs my legs tight. “Hi, Mama.”
“Hi baby.” I hug her back, trying to maintain control of my emotions. But when I try to run my fingers through her hair, there’s so much hair spray and goop in it, my nails get stuck.
“I’m gonna go show my Barbies my new dress.” She skips away, leaving a smear of lipstick on my pants. My five-year-old daughter is wearing LIPSTICK!
Glancing up in the doorway, there is Fiona, staring at me. She has a full face of make-up, an updo, and a huge scowl on her face. “I look like a Barbie doll.”
I nod in agreement, too shocked to even respond, as she stomps over to the couch and plops down, crossing her arms. Before I pull my thoughts together, James saunters back down the stairs, cool as a cucumber. If that cucumber was a jackass that let his five-year-old channel Tammy Faye Baker.
“Max should be down for a while,” he says, completely missing the look of horror I’m sure is still on my face. “She had a really busy day and this is the first nap she’s had—”
“James—” I interrupt with a blink and wave of my hand. “What the hell did you do?”
“What?” He looks legitimately confused as to what I’m talking about.
“You seriously don’t know?” He stares blankly at me. “Why do the girls look like they stepped out of an episode of Toddlers and Tiaras?”
“Oh that. Don’t they look pretty?” He smiles over at Fiona who narrows her eyes back.
“They look like they should be on the pageant circuit,” I practically shout.
He rolls his eyes like I’m the one who over does things. Me. Not his little twat wife who turned my daughters into mini-hookers. I’m the one over-exaggerating. “That’s not very nice,” he reprimands. “The girls in pageants work very hard and win a lot of college scholarships.”
I blink rapidly, making sure I heard him correctly.
Yep. I did. He seems to see no problem with his daughters being dressed up like they’re trolling for dates in the toy aisle.
“I’m sure pageant contestants do work hard. But to compete requires A,” I tick off my arguments on my fingers, “their mother being involved, and B, an actual pageant!”
“Oh calm down, Elena. They look pretty.”
“Pretty? They look like two-bit whores!”
“There’s no reason to be judgmental,” he argues. “You of all people have no room to talk about someone else’s looks.”
I reel back like I’ve been slapped. His words shouldn’t surprise me. It’s not like I haven’t heard variations of this from him before. That I’m not pretty enough, and I’m not skinny enough, and I’m not good enough. That doesn’t mean it stings any less.
But just like the other week with the scale in the bathroom, I have a lightbulb moment—I’m not married to him anymore. I don’t have to put up with this shit.
The realization is freeing. I take a breath and walk to the door, pulling it open. “Ok. Well, on that note, thanks for dropping them off. We’ll see you in a couple of weeks.”
“Don’t be like that, Elena,” he whines. “This isn’t a big deal.”
I cut him off with a raise of my hand. “There is a difference between helping the girls do their hair and making them pedophile bait. If the new missus is looking for someone to play Dress Up Barbie with, give her her own baby.”
“You’re making a mountain—”
“Bye, James.”
He sighs and walks out the door, me slamming it behind him.
“Mom.” I look over at Fiona who hasn’t said a single word since she walked in. “I don’t want to go over there anymore.”
“I know, baby. But you don’t really have a choice right now.”
“No, Mom. You don’t understand.” I take a seat next to her on the couch and she turns her entire foundation-and-goop-covered body towards me. Is this even my daughter? I can’t tell. Her skin has an unnatural orange hue to it. “Keri hates me,” Fiona says. “I told her I didn’t want to play dress up, and she told me little girls need to look their best to be successful. And I told her that when I do gymnastics, I’m gonna have a ponytail and I won’t need hairspray. But she said girls who do gymnastics don’t develop so they never get a man. Whatever that means.”
“She said that to you?” I gape at her. Turns out, the term step-monster wasn’t just a snide remark after all.
“Mom, I don’t want a man. I have Daddy. I wanna do gymnastics.”
Sighing, I pull her to me and rest my cheek on her head. “I know baby. I promise I’ll call about getting you signed up tomorrow, ok?”
I feel her nod against my chest.
“Besides being forced to be a life-sized dress-up doll, did you have fun this weekend?” I stroke her hair, but stop when I realize the strands aren’t moving and my hand feels waxy. Gross.
“Yeah.” She grabs my hand and starts playing with my fingers. It’s a habit she picked up as a baby and never stopped. It seems to comfort her, so I don’t mind. “We had movie night and made a picnic in the living room. Keri got mad because Max spilled juice on the carpet.”
“She didn’t give Max a sippy cup?”
She shakes her head. “Daddy doesn’t have any.”
Somehow, I’m not surprised.
We stay snuggled together on the couch talking about the movie they watched and Keri’s dog, who apparently has bladder issues. I’m both disgusted and wildly amused by that information. Before too long, Maura has joined us and after a few minutes of hugs and snuggles, I look like I’ve been in a paintball fight. Except with make-up balls.
Our conversation must get too loud because Max wakes up way earlier than normal.
“Ok girls.” I move Maura off my lap and set her down on the couch next to me so I can get up. “Let me go get your sister and then we’ll sit down for a snack, ok? I made something special.”
They cheer and clap their hands, not knowing the “something special” is the same old peanut butter and jelly sandwiches they always have, just triangle shaped with the crusts cut off.
I trudge up the stairs and down the hall to Max’s room. I’m glad she felt comfortable enough with her dad to fall asleep in the car and not wake up when he carried her in. I think. The vindictive part of me wishes she would hate him and love me more. But for the mom part of me, it’s a load off my mind that she wasn’t too afraid to sleep.
I’m still a little concerned about how she’s going to react to being home. You never know if a three-year-old will be happy to see her mother after a weekend away, or make a point of giving her the cold shoulder. I guess I’ll find out.