by Annie Jones
“Meg?”
“Part-timer. Nurse. Comes in for shot clinics and…whatever.”
“Whatever? Okay. So if Dottie’s the warhorse and Kaye’s the big dog, what’s Meg?”
“Cash cow.”
“Payt!”
“She knows that’s her function here. And she’s too young and too cute to be offended by it.” He shrugged. “Her husband runs a clearinghouse of services for children in need—he sends us a ton of referrals.”
“Okay, so far I can see why you’re not ordering anyone here to empty trash. But what about the receptionist?”
“Heather?” He twisted his head to stare in the direction of the closed-off area in the waiting room and sighed. “The scapegoat.”
“What are you running here, a pediatric office or a petting zoo?”
“Sometimes I wonder myself.” He laughed a careworn laugh and shook his head. “It all boils down to Dr. Briggs decreeing that no one but Heather should have to clean up.”
“Let me take it from there.” She held her hand up. “When Heather does clean up, the other women blame her for everything they can’t find, or find in the wrong place or just plain don’t like around the office.”
“The scapegoat.” He nodded. “How’d you know?”
“Did you forget that I worked in doctors’ offices for years?”
“I didn’t forget. That’s why I called you to pitch in and take the heat off Heather. It’s hard enough trying to establish myself in a practice that has spit out two other doctors in the past five years. So I decided to play peacemaker.”
Peacemaker at the office. But what about in the home? He’d taken into account every woman’s reactions to the job at hand except Hannah’s.
If he’d only asked her opinion on all this. If he’d only asked her anything instead of just telling her to meet him and getting her hopes up.
“You didn’t mention a word of this when you called me today.”
“Didn’t I?” He scratched his jaw with the back of his hand, the stubble making a quiet scraping sound in the still hallway. “Hmm. Sorry about that.”
“You didn’t even tell me that you wanted me to come in to do housekeeping chores.”
“Well, again, sorry.” He leaned over and kissed her temple.
He lingered there a moment, probably dead tired on his feet.
She closed her eyes and savored his closeness just the same. She loved this man. She loved the way he stood just enough taller than her to make her feel secure but not overpowered. That at the end of the day he smelled of antibacterial soap and lollipops. That he felt warm and soft and rugged and strong all at once, and that she could feel all those things standing here next to him.
For all the things she loved about this man, she still wished…
“Sorry to call you in like this.” He moved back, waved the papers and turned toward his office again. “But I knew you wouldn’t mind.”
“But…” she whispered as she watched her darling husband disappear into his cubbyhole of an office. She brushed her fingertips over her pearls and fought to keep her lip from quivering. “I do mind.”
She did.
And she was well within her rights to mind.
She blinked at that realization. Her hand closed around the necklace and she waited for a lightning bolt to strike her for even thinking about her feelings and not just snapping to, glad for something more to do to show her husband how much he could rely on her.
No lightning.
No overwhelming wave of anxiety.
Just a sense of calm. Of resolution.
Sure, she’d clean the office up this time. But not again. If this ever happened again, she’d give her husband a piece of her mind. And she knew exactly what she’d say.
“You told me I don’t listen to myself, and that’s the root of my problems. Well, I’ve started listening to myself—a lot. And if I listen to myself too much, it might just be because no one else in my life seems ready to hear a single thing I have to say. And that has got to stop.”
10
Subject: Nacho Mama’s House column
To: [email protected]
Tessa speaks!
Oh, all right, she belched.
And hiccuped.
The combined effect did sound like a primitive attempt at communication. I have it on very high authority—Sam’s—that what my darling baby daughter bellowed out was her first-ever opinion of the state of things at our house: “Yuck!”
I have a hard time arguing about it. It sounded just like that. “Yuck!”
And her expression backed it up.
And Sam, standing right beside her as he modeled new clothes for his great-aunt, concurred. “Yuck!”
You don’t think the impending first day of school has colored Sam’s judgment any, do you?
Sam has dreaded the start of school. I know this because he can’t stop telling me all about it. And by “telling,” I mean whining.
He whines while I do the shopping.
He whines while I bathe the baby.
He even whines while I try to talk to Payt about how much the boy is wearing me down with all his whining.
It would drive me crazy (crazier?) if not for the picture he makes.
There he stands, socks drooping, eyes darting, brow furrowed, hugging his soccer ball and setting forth his case. He wishes he didn’t have to go to school. He wishes he could just go on having soccer practice and playing games with the guys. No amount of telling him that going to school would not mean an end to soccer satisfies him. By the way, I checked this whole end of soccer season matter out thoroughly. Not only is there no rest for the wicked, there is no back-to-school reprieve for Snack Mom. Kids’ soccer, it seems, knows no season.
“We want you to want to go to school. You’re going to like it” has become the steady refrain around here. Payt and I try to work it into every conversation.
Sam pouts.
Tessa belches and hiccups.
Her discontent I can handle with a dietary change.
Sam’s? I’m afraid all the cooking lessons in the world won’t help me make going to a new school palatable to an apprehensive little boy.
NOTE TO SELF: FINISH COLUMN BEFORE SENDING.
“Where did you go to school, Hannah?”
“In my sisters’ wake,” she muttered.
Payt laughed.
She shot a warning look across his profile.
He cleared his throat and adjusted his grip on the steering wheel.
“I don’t get it,” Sam said. He swung his foot, and the heel of his brand-new shoe landed on his blue backpack with a dull thud.
“Just making a joke.” She shook her head, but that didn’t quite jar loose the memories of her own school days.
“Why aren’t you more studious like your sister April?”
“Why aren’t you more social like your sister Sadie?”
Why aren’t you less like you and more like…someone lovable? That’s how the constant comparisons had echoed in her child mind.
“Hannah?” He poked the backpack again, and the lifeless lump of a thing slouched forward, bumping the back of Hannah’s seat.
Startled back to the present, she gyrated her shoulder to keep her seat belt from choking her when she looked at Sam and asked, “What, hon?”
“Did you go to the same school the whole time?” He kept his gaze focused out the window, his hand on Tessa’s car seat strapped in beside him.
“Well, technically I changed schools when I went to middle school and high school, but they were all Wileyville schools.”
“That must have been great.”
“Great?” Hannah followed Sam’s hollow-eyed line of vision to watch the sun-brightened streets of Loveland go rolling slowly past. It was such a pretty part of town, old enough to be quaint, kept-up enough to be pricey. It reminded her of Wileyville, the way it appeared in chamber of commerce brochures, not the way it really looked. “I guess it was great, in a lot o
f ways.”
“Payt? How about you?”
“Yeah. I went to the same school for a while. Then my dad sent me to military school.”
“Military school?” The boy blinked. “Did you learn to be a soldier?”
“A good little soldier,” Payt murmured under his breath.
Hannah touched her husband’s wrist.
“Be a good little soldier” was what Payt’s mother had told him when they loaded him on the bus that took him away from his home for the first of many times. It probably wasn’t the first time he’d gotten the message that his parents’ love was conditional, something earned, but it was the one that stuck with him.
“Yeah, they tried to teach me how to act and think and carry myself like a soldier. Couldn’t seem to get the knack of it.”
“Then, after that, you went to the same school for a long time, right?”
Payt laughed, but only out of the corner of his mouth, as though he couldn’t give his whole self over to the humor. “You know, sport, I never went to the same school for very long. Even after I stopped flunking out of school and failing at jobs I’d taken to learn a trade, I didn’t get to stay in one place too long. College, then med school, then to a hospital for my internship. After that the clinic in Wileyville, and now here.”
“Wow. You’ve started over even more than me! You must have got real good at it by now.”
“No matter how many times you do it, starting over is always hard, kiddo.” He squinted at the line of cars stopping at a red light in front of them. “But having people who believe in you makes it easier.”
Hannah gave him a look that, if Sam had seen it, he’d have called all girly and gooey.
Her husband reached over, took her hand and brought it to his lips lightly.
“Good job,” she mouthed.
He caressed her fingers before letting go and muttered back, “Thanks but it was pretty clichéd, don’t you think?”
She snuck a look over her shoulder, then whispered, “Hey, when you’re Sam’s age, you haven’t heard any of this stuff. Nothing’s clichéd. Besides, it’s true and it’s the right message to give him.”
Payt’s simplified answer had seemed to mollify the boy for the time being.
They rolled up to the light as it turned red again.
“Is that clock right?” Payt reached over to tap on the face of the digital clock built into the dashboard, as if he could jar it loose and suddenly give them more time. “We should have allowed for traffic.”
“No rush.” Hannah stretched her legs.
“You said school started at eight.”
“School starts at 8:35. I said we should try to get there around eight.”
“Why?”
“To provide for unforeseen circumstances.”
“Like roadwork.” He frowned at the brief snarl of traffic ahead.
Hannah lowered her head and peeked around the side of her seat at the young boy fidgeting with his safety belt in the back of the van.
“Like life circumstances,” she said softly.
Sam let go of the shoulder harness, and it slapped against his chest. He didn’t flinch or even seem to notice, just sat there staring out the window.
“All these cars can’t be headed to the same place we are. Why can’t we make any headway?” Payt made it through the intersection only to come to a dead stop again.
A million hopes and fears did their own version of gridlock in Hannah’s being.
“No rush,” she whispered again.
Payt gave her arm a squeeze, then raised his head to speak to Sam in the rearview mirror. “You’re going to do fantastic in this new school, pal.”
“Okay, I’ll try. I just…” The child folded his arms over his belly and bent forward.
Payt shot Hannah a laughing look.
Tessa threw a colorful cloth teething toy at Sam.
He batted it away and hunched his shoulders. “I just hope I’m well enough to make it through the day.”
“Hmm. Well, maybe we should cruise on past the school and head straight for Payt’s office to get you checked out?”
Sam stayed all scrunched over for a moment, then slowly straightened. “That’s okay. I kind of feel better now.”
“Do you?” Hannah asked.
“Huh?”
“Feel better? Really?”
“No. Not really.”
“Want to tell us about it?” Hannah asked.
Sam shook his head.
They drove the last few blocks to the school in silence.
Payt pulled the van into the small parking lot and found a space.
This was it. Big moment.
First day of school.
Hannah held her breath.
She and Payt had toured the long-established nondenominational school twice before deciding on it for Sam. They had gone through new student orientation and met with the school administrators, Sam’s teacher and her aide. They’d even seen the class hamster.
Sam had reacted to it all with resignation.
Hannah had wanted to give the child every reason to look forward to the experience, but Payt had asked her to hold some details back. He did not want them to build up Sam’s expectations only to have them dashed by a last-minute change of plans.
That’s what Payt had said, “change of plans.” What he’d meant was that he feared Sam’s father might have a change of heart and want the boy to go someplace else to live and attend school.
Hannah pushed the possibility aside and had gone about trying to prepare Sam to take the fourth grade by storm. All the coolest school supplies. Crisp, clean spanking-new uniform. She had done all she could to make sure Sam was ready.
But nothing she had done or could do would have gotten Hannah ready for this moment. All summer long it had been her and Sam and Tessa. Payt and Aunt Phiz and the soccer kids, too, but mostly the three of them. Together each and every day, learning from each other. Now Sam had to go off and learn from someone else.
“You know, all of a sudden my tummy doesn’t feel so good.” She laid her hand over her abdomen.
“C’mon, don’t lose it now. Everything will be all right.” Payt got out of the van.
The sliding back door rumbled as he pulled it open for Sam.
Tessa waved her fist in the air.
Sam watched the baby for a second, then bent to pick up her toy and handed it back to her.
“C’mon, kiddo,” Payt urged.
The boy kicked his backpack one more time, then heaved it up onto his shoulder and hopped out onto the blacktopped parking lot.
Hannah got out and scanned the lot. Here and there families stood beside cars, adjusting uniforms, making little speeches. Moms dabbed their eyes. Dads cleared their throats.
Corny as it sounded, the whole thing eased Hannah’s worries just a little. She’d done such a checkered job as Snack Mom, she’d hate to have failed at being school mom by being the only who didn’t handle the first day’s parting with absolute cool.
A gust of wind blew up from behind and tossed her red hair over her face. She started to slip her sunglasses on and poked herself in the eye.
Cool. Like that ever was an option for her.
Shading her watering eyes against the sting of the morning sun, she tossed her sunglasses into the van and slammed the door.
The instructions sent home for parents clearly stated they should not accompany the children inside the building. Volunteers stood waiting at the curb to shepherd the students to their rooms.
Hannah leaned one hip against the side of the van, staying near the open side door to monitor Tessa. “I should have signed up as a room escort.”
“Oh, yeah, you have time for that.” Payt patted her back. “Let it go, Hannah. Let him go. God’s got this covered, you know.”
She knew. But sometimes didn’t God deserve a little help?
“Okay, pal. Here you go.” Payt rested his large hand on the boy’s thin shoulder. “Any questions, concerns or true
confessions before you head off?”
Sam pulled on the neck of his uniform shirt.
A few feet away two little girls squealed at the sight of one another and ran headlong into each other’s arms.
Sam frowned at them and placed his open hand on the van door. “Did you have friends in school, Payt?”
“Sure. I guess.” He shrugged.
“Did you have friends, Hannah?”
“I had sisters—does that count?” She worked up a meager smile.
Sam nodded. He took one bold step away from them then twisted around, his face pale. “What if…”
Hannah’s heartbeat swelled in her chest. She swallowed hard and bent at the knees to make better eye contact. “What, honey?”
“What if I don’t make any friends?”
Friends!
“Oh, no.” She winced. In her anxiety, Hannah had forgotten to tell him the news about the school, the news Payt had wanted her to hold back until they knew for sure he’d attend.
“What if nobody likes me here?” Sam pressed on before she could get a word out. “What if I don’t get asked to any birthday parties? At the last school I didn’t get asked to any parties at all.”
“Oh, Sam.” She held her arms open to the boy.
For a second or two she thought he wouldn’t come to her.
Then he inched closer.
And closer.
She held her breath.
He ducked his head. He rubbed his knuckles over his nose.
She didn’t try to force things between them, just waited and watched.
His lips twitched.
He wasn’t going to come to her.
Her jaw tightened. She didn’t dare blink for fear she’d tear up.
“Sam,” she whispered so softly, she doubted he even heard her. She brushed his back with her fingertips, then started to stand.
In a flash, the small boy rushed forward and flung himself at her, wrapping his arms around her so tightly that she almost fell over backward.
“Sam.” She laughed against his coarse straight hair. “You don’t ever have to worry about being alone again. You have me now.”
“And me,” Payt chimed in.
“And Payt.” Hannah hugged the boy hard enough for the both of them.