by Gail Sattler
Her eyes widened, and her voice came out quieter than usual. “Sure. We’ve been doing this for a few weeks. I think we can start to cut back.”
Her quick agreement gave him little consolation. He had wanted her to argue with him, and when she hadn’t, he felt disappointed.
Josh shook his head. Part of him wanted to keep seeing her four days a week, because he had to count Sunday morning as well as Bible study meeting along with their scheduled date nights. The sensible part of him knew it was too much—he couldn’t keep it up. Still, he wanted her to protest.
Since she hadn’t, and it was for the best anyway, as soon as Josh finished eating the carrot, he headed for home.
Instead of silence, which he should have heard when he opened the door since it was after bedtime on a school night, Josh opened the front door to a myriad of screaming.
“What’s going on in here?” he bellowed as he closed the door behind him and pushed Cleo aside, hoping the volume of his voice would carry over the rest of them, and they’d suddenly become quiet.
They didn’t. He stood in the hall, trying to figure out where in the house they were while he tried to stop Cleo from jumping on him. “Where are you guys?” he called.
“Ryan won’t give me my Proton Battlezoid!”
“Your Battlezoid is stupid!”
“No, you’re stupid!”
The screaming turned to wailing at the sound of a resounding smack.
Josh ran into the den and pulled Ryan and Kyle apart. “What are you two doing? You’re supposed to be in bed! Quit this fighting!”
The second he released them, before Josh could do anything about it, Kyle rushed forward and punched his brother in the stomach. Ryan kicked Kyle in the shin before Josh could intervene.
He pulled them apart, keeping the struggling, screaming children at full arm’s lengths on both sides until they stopped moving, at which point Josh released them, this time being better prepared if they went at it again.
“That does it, you two. I don’t know what started this, but it’s over. For your punishments, you’re both going to do dishes for three days, and you’re going to go straight to your room after school tomorrow and clean everything up perfect. No friends, no TV, and no video games or computer until I say it’s good enough.”
The tears streamed faster down Ryan’s cheeks, and he didn’t say a word, but Kyle turned to Josh, his face beet red, and stomped one foot.
“You can’t make me do that!” he screamed. “You’re not my dad, and I don’t have to do what you say. Soon Mom and Dad will be back, and they’ll show you! Come on, Ryan. Let’s go!”
Both boys ran off side by side, leaving Josh standing in the den with his mouth hanging open, feeling poleaxed like a cop in a domestic dispute.
Before he could piece together what had just happened and figure out what he should do about such an act of defiance, Tyler sauntered in, eating a cup of instant noodles.
Josh turned to Tyler. “Where were you while this was going on? Didn’t you hear them fighting?”
Tyler stuffed a forkful of noodles into his mouth. “Sorry,” he mumbled around his mouthful. “The kettle was boiling, and I had my head in the fridge. I guess I didn’t hear.”
Josh wanted to take Tyler to task for not adequately supervising, but held off. He didn’t know if he should have been expecting Tyler to be able to ward off such squabbles when he’d been leaving them alone so much. In doing what he could to help Bradley deal with the separation from his parents, he didn’t want to blow it with Tyler. He didn’t know exactly how Ryan felt, but he knew he’d lost a lot of ground with Kyle today.
Josh sucked in a deep breath to compose himself. He needed time to think, but first he had to see that all the younger ones were in bed. “Where are Bradley and Andrew?”
“Bradley’s in bed,” mumbled Tyler around another huge forkful of noodles. “Andrew’s on the computer.”
“It’s nearly nine thirty. Why weren’t Ryan and Kyle in bed? Andrew should be getting to bed too.”
“Sorry. I was on the phone with Allyson until just a couple of minutes ago. I guess I didn’t notice the time. How was the movie?”
“We didn’t go to the movie. We spent a quiet evening at her place.”
Tyler’s eyes widened. “Really? Wow. . .”
“Trust me, Tyler, we did nothing. Absolutely nothing. It was a very quiet evening.”
“Is this thing with Bradley’s teacher, like, you know, serious?”
Josh tried not to cringe or show any sign of nervousness. “Why do you ask?”
“I dunno. I think she’s really nice. I like her a lot better than Theresa. You two seem, like, okay. I just don’t know what to call her. Should I call her Miss Klassen or Melissa?”
The funny thing was, he knew exactly what Tyler meant. Josh smiled. “Sometimes I don’t know what to call her either, Tyler.”
“I guess it depends if Bradley or the little kids are around.”
“Exactly.”
Tyler shrugged his shoulders. “Want me to tell Andrew to get ready for bed?”
“Yes. I’m going to have to deal with Ryan and Kyle. And then you get to bed too, okay?”
Tyler grunted, so Josh assumed the response was affirmative. He gathered up his courage and walked into Ryan and Kyle’s bedroom. The light was already out. The boys weren’t quiet, but the second he walked in, all shuffling stopped.
“Do you guys have something to say to each other?”
“Sorry,” they both muttered, not at all sounding like either of them meant it.
Both Ryan and Kyle had regular single beds, allowing Josh to sit down on the side of Kyle’s bed and talk to them both on a level playing field.
“Kyle, I want to talk to you about what you said earlier.”
“I’m sorry, Uncle Josh. I didn’t mean it. I know you’re in charge of us while Mom and Dad are gone. Are you still going to punish us?”
“Yes, Kyle, I still have to punish you because you still said it, and you still hit your brother. And Ryan, you were equally to blame. I don’t want to know who started it. A fight is only a fight if two people are in it. One person can’t fight alone.”
He took their silence as agreement, although he doubted this would be the last time they held this same conversation. It certainly wasn’t the first.
“I also want to talk to you about your mom and dad. Kyle, your mom and dad told you that it would be a long time until they came back. The soonest they will be back will be at Easter time, not this Easter, but next Easter. When you’re in grade seven.”
“I know. They really are coming back, aren’t they, Uncle Josh?”
“Yes, Kyle, they really are coming back.”
“What will you do when Mom and Dad come back? Are you still gonna live with us?”
“No, I won’t. I’ll go live by myself again.”
“What about Miss Klassen?”
“She’ll still live by herself, just like she does now.”
A silence hung in the air. He thought he probably should have said something more about Melissa, but he didn’t know what Kyle was really asking, or what he needed to hear.
“Okay, it’s bedtime. Would you like to say bedtime prayers now? I think it’s Ryan’s turn first tonight.”
He listened to their prayers, and it soothed his worries to some degree when they both asked to be forgiven for all the sins they did that day, although Josh doubted they really understood the broad definition of being a sinner.
“Amen,” he said when Kyle was done. He stood and gave them both a short hug, tucked them in, and left them to sleep.
His next stop was Andrew and Bradley’s room, where Andrew had the top bunk, and Bradley slept below. Bradley’s deep, even breathing told Josh that he had been asleep for a long time. Andrew had just scaled the ladder and was settling the blankets around himself.
“Hey, Andrew. Wanna say prayers?”
“Okay.”
He watched Andrew close
his eyes, fold his hands on his stomach, take a deep breath, and then relax. Being thirteen, he liked Josh to be there when he said his prayers. He just didn’t want anyone to listen to his private thoughts and wishes, and Josh had to respect that.
“Amen,” Andrew said when he was done.
“Amen,” Josh echoed.
Josh reached over the side rail and patted Andrew on the shoulder. Andrew thought he was too big for hugging, but he still appreciated a gentle touch at bedtime. Josh could remember being thirteen. It was when he realized that he hadn’t been exactly planned, giving him a few personal struggles worrying his parents didn’t really want him. He’d also started attending youth group with a friend, a time in his life he would never forget. Even at such a young age, he understood the love of God in his life and reached for it almost desperately. But being thirteen, he also didn’t want anyone to see his anxieties. The experience made him very sensitive to Andrew’s moods and taught him not to brush off Andrew’s sometimes veiled questions, as a deeper meaning often lurked below.
“Good night, Andrew,” he whispered loudly as he headed toward the door.
“Uncle Josh?”
“Yes, Andrew?”
“Did you have fun tonight?”
He wouldn’t have exactly called it fun, but he hadn’t had a bad time. Again, he suspected there was more to Andrew’s question than the obvious response, but he couldn’t think of anything profound to say. “Yes, I had fun.”
He waited for either a response or a clarification to the real meaning of Andrew’s question, but there was none forthcoming.
“Okay. Good night, Uncle Josh.”
“Good night, Andrew,” he repeated, and slipped out the door.
The last stop was Tyler’s room. Being the oldest, Tyler didn’t have to share, which was not necessarily a bad thing. From the amount of junk and paraphernalia constantly littering the furniture, then spilling onto the carpet, Josh doubted there would have been room to put a second person with Tyler.
“You sleeping yet?” he asked as he poked his head in the door.
“Almost. Good night, Uncle Josh.”
Josh closed the door, then leaned his back against the wall. Josh couldn’t intrude into Tyler’s private time when he crawled into bed. He didn’t know if Tyler said prayers at night, or anytime. He couldn’t supervise or guide him in the process of learning how to talk to God but had to rely on youth group meetings and by being a good example and hoping it would rub off.
Josh didn’t like doing it that way, but he didn’t have a choice. If he could have started with Tyler younger, he would have had more opportunity to guide him. Now, he could only do the best he could by example.
Josh wasn’t sure how good an example he could be. He didn’t know enough about kids to be able to read them properly.
One thing he had noticed tonight was that all of them except for Bradley had asked about his relationship with Melissa rather than asking specifically about her personally. He couldn’t tell if it was curiosity, or they were all seeking a permanent relationship to relate to in the absence of the steadying nearness of their mother and father, like he knew Bradley was.
The thought of being put in such a position terrified him.
He’d recently had a talk with Melissa about her principal, in other words, her boss. Principal Swain had a reasonable concern to request that teachers not date parents, or guardians, in his case, as part of their code of conduct, but in real life, things weren’t so black and white.
While Josh didn’t fully agree, he understood the risk she was taking to continue to see him and appreciated it. She had no worries about him cheating on a wife or significant other, but he did understand the possibility of children seeing favoritism, even when there was none. So far nothing had been said, but Melissa told him she’d noticed gossip about her keeping company with Bradley McMillian’s uncle starting to rear its ugly head.
He didn’t know what to do. He didn’t want her to get in trouble, nor did he want to be the case of dissension in her classroom, where she had to be perceived as the ultimate authority to the children, but he didn’t want to stop seeing her, either.
It left him no choice but to tell her that when the time came to make a decision on what to do, the decision would be completely up to her. If that decision came down to not seeing him again, he would have to accept that.
Josh’s stomach started to feel a little strange, so he headed into the kitchen to make himself a snack. As he constructed a sandwich to die for, the thought occurred to him that ever since he’d met Melissa, he’d been eating more. For a second he rested one hand on his stomach, just to make sure that he hadn’t been putting on any weight, then carried his sandwich into the living room. Instead of flipping on the television, Josh dug out his guide to reading the Bible in a year, and prepared to catch up on a couple of days, exactly what he needed for tonight.
Tomorrow was another day.
❧
Josh wasn’t surprised that none of the kids were in bed when he got home. He always gave them plenty of leeway for bedtime on Saturday night, partly as a bribe to convince them to go to church Sunday morning with no argument, and partly because at the end of the week, he simply didn’t have the energy to fight with them anymore.
What he hadn’t expected was to see them all waiting for him the second he stepped inside the door.
“Why are you home so early, Uncle Josh?”
“Did you have fun, Uncle Josh?”
“Is Miss Klassen going to be at church tomorrow, Uncle Josh?”
“Where did you go, Uncle Josh? Did you have pizza again?”
“When are you going to see Miss Klassen next time, Uncle Josh?”
Josh raised his hands in the air to silence them, but all that happened was that Cleo jumped up and nearly knocked the breath out of him with her paws in his stomach. “Hold on, you guys! Why all the questions?”
Bradley stepped forward. “You didn’t go out with Miss Klassen last week. Don’t you like her anymore? Was today okay?”
Josh’s stomach did a strange flip. This time he knew he wasn’t hungry because he and Melissa had just eaten not long ago.
Last weekend they’d had “the talk.” Nothing had been said to her directly, but her principal had called her into his office and warned her about a minor infraction. The offense was so minor that it should have been ignored, but in a way she had not been surprised.
It had started. Principal Swain didn’t have the grounds to reprimand her for anything she did in her personal life, but this had been his way of showing her that he had learned she was going against his mandate by seeing Josh. They’d discussed taking it to her union as harassment, but since they’d been “dating” for a number of months, they had already been on the verge of their decision to cut back to weekends only and seeing if the boys noticed.
Apparently they noticed.
“Of course I still like her. We just thought we wouldn’t see each other so often. Now get to bed.”
The room became so quiet all he could hear was Cleo’s panting. Then, in the blink of an eye, they all were gone.
Josh smiled. It didn’t happen often, but sometimes he won.
Thirteen
Melissa pulled over to the side of the road, then fumbled in her purse for her ringing cell phone.
“Hello?”
“Miss Klassen? Is that you? You sound funny.”
Melissa had never received a call from a child on her cell phone before, but she had a good idea who it was.
“Bradley? Is that you?”
“No. It’s me, Ryan. Bradley’s not home.”
Melissa’s heart pounded. She didn’t know how Ryan got her number, but there could only be one reason for Ryan to be calling her on the cell phone. Another disaster had befallen the McMillian family, and they couldn’t find Josh.
Suddenly she became very glad she had pulled to the side of the road to answer the phone, because her hands were shaking so much she could bare
ly hold the phone, never mind drive without running into something. She tried to keep her voice steady. “What’s wrong, Ryan? Where’s your uncle Josh?”
“He went to the store with Bradley to get something, but I gotta do my homework, and I’m stuck.”
She highly doubted anything he could have been assigned for grade three was that difficult or that any of his brothers wouldn’t be able to assist him. “Where is everybody else? Isn’t Tyler home? Can’t anyone else help you?”
“But you used to be my teacher when I was in grade one, so you know this better than them.”
She also doubted that Josh and Bradley would be gone long on a school night, which made her wonder about the real reason for Ryan’s call.
There was only one way to find out. She checked her watch. “I can be there in about ten minutes.”
“That’s great, Miss Klassen. Thanks. Bye.”
Rather than go home, she turned and headed for the McMillian house.
She raised her fist to knock, but the door opened before she made contact. Before she did anything, she bent to pat Cleo before Cleo jumped on her.
“Why did you bring food, Miss Klassen? I only asked for help with my homework. Uncle Josh already bought lots of food yesterday.”
“I was on my way home from grocery shopping, so I need to put a few things in your freezer while I’m here.”
“Oh.”
Tyler appeared beside Ryan with the cordless phone attached to his ear. “I’ll put that away for you.”
Before she could protest, Tyler removed the bag from her hands and hustled away.
“Okay, Ryan, let me see this homework problem.”
After eight minutes the problem was solved. “Is there anything else, Ryan?”
Ryan frantically turned the pages in his notebook. “I don’t know. I think so. But I can’t find it. Math is really hard. Just a minute. I know I can find it.”