by Nikky Kaye
“People fall off of those, too, you know.” I caught sight of Jack in Aaron’s arms, and shoved my hands out. Gimme! I ached to hold my baby.
“Yeah, here she is, little buddy. Calm the eff down.”
I frowned at Aaron. Apparently the “little pitchers have big ears” concept was too much for him, as well my husband. Finally, I took Jack in my arms with a satisfied hum.
Yes! I felt like an addict shooting up, only I fiended for the smell of my child’s skin and hair. There was a fine line between being a helicopter mom and a pathologically obsessed one, and I feared I brushed up against the line too often. Maybe Gage was right about the nanny thing. If just the idea of it threatened me, then we had a problem.
When I got home, Gage was sulking on the couch.
“This fucking sucks,” he said to me as I took off Jack’s coat and boots, then mine. I sighed.
“Jesus fucking Christ on a stick, does nobody know how to temper their goddamn language around a baby?”
His mouth fell open.
Oh.
Suddenly I felt bone-tired.
We’d spent pretty much the entire previous night in a small mountain town emergency room and then still had to drive five hours to get home. It could have gone quicker, but Mister Whiny Pants winced in pain whenever the car hit a pebble. As it was, the splint from his groin to his ankle forced him to push the passenger seat back as far as possible and put his foot against the glove compartment.
The doctor had said that without an MRI, there was no way to know how bad the damage to his knee was. And no matter how much my industrious husband complained his money couldn’t just make a machine materialize in the clinic. I had a feeling I’d be driving him to a private sports medicine clinic tomorrow morning.
The irony is that we’d never actually managed to ski.
Brian Gage, wunderkind app developer and technology titan, had wrenched his knee while trying to hold me up and fuck me in a slippery shower.
They never talk about those hazards in sex education classes.
“Dinner?” he asked from his position on the couch.
“Yeah, I’ll make some pasta or something.”
I plopped Jack down on Gage’s lap. Hell, he was just sitting there—he might as well parent or something. Then headed for the kitchen.
Behind me, Gage called out, “A temporary nanny is arriving tomorrow morning at eight, Madeline. No more fucking around!”
“Yeah,” I yelled back, “in more ways than one!”
Two weeks later, I was ashamed to admit that it was kind of nice to have someone helping me out. Doing the laundry, cleaning the house, ironing Gage’s shirts. I felt guilty taking a nap, but Jeannie insisted that I get some rest.
She’d already figured out that dealing with my husband could be a challenge. Dealing with him when he was a bruised bear was even worse.
So up to bed I went at eleven in the morning for no particularly good reason, and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep. I woke up as Jack was finishing lunch, feeling refreshed for the first time in months.
Jeannie placed a terrific-smelling grilled cheese sandwich and a bowl of soup before me on the kitchen table. I smiled and dug in.
“Thanks. I’m going to take him to my Mommy and Me group, Jeannie. Can you pack up the diaper bag for me?”
“Of course, Missus Maddie.”
Twenty minutes later I was out the door with Jack and a designer purse that could rival MacGyver’s backpack. I had everything, and planned for every contingency—almost obsessively so, since the one day I forgot to restock the diapers in the “diaper bag.” Believe me, that never. Happened. Again.
The Mommy and Me group was halfway through singing and using sign language for “Wheels on the Bus” when Jack’s grizzling turned into a full-fledged teething attack. One hand still on the “bus,” I used the other to dig through the bag. When my phone started vibrating with a call from Gage, I had to make a split-second decision which child to put off.
I made the wrong decision.
Fully abandoning the song, I answered the phone with one hand and kept searching for the teething ring with the other.
“Hello?” I whispered. I got some dirty looks from other mothers, but what was I going to do? I had a whimpering baby in the cradle of my legs as I sat criss-cross applesauce, and a demanding spouse in my ear.
“Can you take me to the office later?” Gage asked.
“What?”
With his meniscus officially torn, Gage was on crutches and unable to drive. Despite the fact that he could easily afford and arrange a car and driver on standby, there were times when he used me as his personal Uber.
“I need to go over some stuff in person. There’s a limit to telecommuting, Madeline.”
“So I’ll go for you.” Wipes, diaper cream, sweet potato puffs, but no teething ring. My fingers stretched out, searching through all the pockets. The group had moved on to a new song, but Jack was on the verge of a nuclear meltdown.
“No, I need to do it.”
“You don’t trust me?”
“Of course I do,” my husband slash boss said. “But wouldn’t you rather be home to put Jack to bed?”
Oh, he was playing dirty, now. Finally! I found a teething ring! I shoved it in Jack’s face and let him bite and drool to his heart’s content.
“Come on, I miss being at the office,” I said.
“So do I.” He sounded morose.
At least maybe he had some sympathy for how I was feeling, then. The pointed looks from other moms were making me nervous, so I quickly told him when I’d be home and hung up on him.
The group had given up on patty cake or baby massages or whatever the hell we were supposed to be doing to focus their attention on me.
Every single person was staring at me.
I flushed with embarrassment. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Husbands…” I trailed off, lifting my hands in apology and bewilderment.
Still, they stared.
One woman’s face was bright red. Another woman couldn’t decide what was more distracting—myself or Jack. Her gaze kept going from my face to the mollified baby in my lap. The group leader wore a strangled expression.
“What?”
There was total silence, except for one person trying to stifle a giggle. And a strange buzzing sound. Three people were focused with laser intensity on Jack, which is where the noise was emanating from.
I looked down to my son, who was happily chewing away—on a vibrating, rainbow-colored cock ring.
From what I could tell at a horrified glance, he particularly enjoyed gnawing on the sparkly unicorn horn enhancement for clitoral stimulation.
I just about died. As I frantically tried to figure out how I’d found myself in this situation, I wondered if a person could literally burst into flames. Was this how spontaneous human combustion happened?
The only thing I could think of was that apparently our middle-aged nanny had trouble telling the difference between a teething ring and a clean sex toy that was air-drying on our master bathroom vanity.
“Fuck me,” I muttered.
“Looks like someone already did,” said a lady on my left.
Where was a hole to open up and swallow you when you needed one?
CHAPTER SIX
GAGE
“Which one?”
Madeline glared at me over the massive steel and glass desk in my office. “That’s your first question? Which cock ring did our son gum like a toothless old man at Mommy and Me?”
I shrugged, trying not to laugh at her. “The butterfly one, the plain one, the one that lights up, the musical—”
“Unicorn.” She slumped further into the visitor chair that sat in front of my desk. “And it just occurred to me that we have too many sex toys, that you would even have to ask that question.”
Gasp. “There’s no such thing as too many sex toys, Madeline.”
I sat back in my executive chair, splinted leg stretched out, and looked
over the papers on my desk. For a techie, I was an unusual fan of hard copies. I preferred to have important stuff printed out for me, since I always missed information when I read reports on my laptop screen. Yes, I was responsible for the death of many, many innocent trees, but at least I knew where all the money was.
It made telecommuting awkward at times, though. Note to self: develop application to improve paperless office.
My wife’s long sigh was swallowed up by the dark surrounding the desk, where only a lamp shone on the reports spread out in front of me. The twinkling lights of the city at night hovered beyond the windows. March was all slush, mud and tantalizing light. It wasn’t quite winter, but not yet spring. It was this limbo month, and I felt like I’d been living in purgatory with this goddamn knee injury.
Maddie was trying so hard to keep it all together, and I didn’t tell her often enough how much I appreciated everything she was doing. I knew it was hard for her to delegate tasks, even ones for the nanny—who was soon to be banned from our master suite.
I had no problem with shocking women, but I preferred it to be with my wild intellect and scintillating charm, not wayward marital aids.
Not that our sex life needed assistance. But hey, it was fun. And things like cock rings made me feel like a fucking god.
Maddie reached for the first page of the sales report and began reading silently. A couple of years ago it would have been gibberish to her. Then again, not long before that she was graduating from college—right around the time that my company went public with a billion dollar IPO. The differences between us were stark, sometimes.
But I didn’t know what I would do without her. I needed her, even before I fell in love with her.
And she’d loved it. Madeline had come into her own while working for Apptitude, and she missed it. That’s what she was trying to tell me before, and I wasn’t listening hard enough.
She looked up to see me staring at her across the desk. Squinted, as though she couldn't see my expression in the dark—and she probably couldn’t.
“What? What is it? Are you hurting?” she asked.
“No, I’m just…” I tilted my head. “Do you want to go to the Austin meeting for me?”
Her eyes widened. “Seriously?”
“Seriously. It would really help me out.”
That was a bold-faced lie. I could go myself, but I had an employee who needed a boost in confidence and a wife who was trying to let go of being a mom all the time. It just so happened that they were they same person.
“The doctor told me I shouldn’t fly with my knee like this,” I reminded her grimly. “They’re talking about surgery to fix it.” That part was true, at least.
She put the report she’d been reading back on the desk. “Oh, god. How long will that you put out of commission?”
“Six to eight weeks.”
Her head tilted back in the shadows and she looked up at the ceiling. “Eight weeks,” she muttered. “Damn.”
“Go to Austin for me.”
Her chin came down as she looked at me again. This time I could see a glint of excitement in her eyes. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Are you asking me as your wife or as your Head of Marketing?” She held up a hand. “Sorry, former Head of Marketing.”
“You’re still the Head of Marketing. You’re just on family leave. You’re lucky to work for a company with such extended health benefits.”
“So this is business, not pity?”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “Madeline, you must not think very much of my CEO skills if you think I would send someone to an important meeting on my behalf out of pity.”
She smiled. “Sorry. When do I leave?”
I practically had to arm-wrestle her into the cab to take her to the airport. If she’d kissed Jack goodbye one more time the boy was going to have a complex.
“Object permanence,” I reminded her.
She rolled her eyes. “Okay, okay. I’ll just miss you both.”
“Naturally. We’ll miss you, too.”
“You’ll be fine with Jeannie there.” She looked over my shoulder at the nanny going back in the house with Jack. There was tightness around her eyes, and the cabbie was getting antsy.
I opened the cab door for her, in case she didn’t get the hint that she was supposed to leave. “She can’t replace you, you know.”
“I know.” But her chin still wobbled.
I didn’t think she really did, but that was part of why she was going.
I cupped her cheek, bringing her attention fully to me. “Madeline, you are indispensable in every way—as a wife, as a mother, as a friend, and as an employee. We will all be lost without you, but we will manage. Now please get the hell out of my sight.”
“I love you, too.”
After she left, I felt like the best husband and the best boss in the world. Damn, I was good.
I was also in trouble.
Jeannie had received a phone call from the hospital that her eldest son had been in a motorcycle crash. I shooed her off, reassuring her that Jack and I would be just fine on our own.
Unfortunately, I was kidding myself. I’d just taken a pain pill, and I noticed I had three crutches and at least two babies on the floor in front of me. My phone beeped. It was a selfie from Madeline in the airline lounge, looking professional and happy, and captioned “Thanks, boss!” Then one of the Jacks started crying.
Shit.
“Suck it up, kiddo. She’ll be back soon.” He kept crying, and I sighed as I realized it meant more than missing Madeline. “What’s the matter, my friend?”
I hobbled over to where he was exploring under the coffee table. With one hand for support on the couch’s armrest, I managed to scoop him up in the other arm. Go me.
Not done being impressed with myself, I balanced on one foot to try to keep weight off my injured knee. Then I held my son up and chanted gibberish to mimic the beginning of The Lion King.
The young prince squealed and squirmed in my hands and I heard a wet, flatulent sound, soon accompanied by a horrific smell that hovered above my head like a cartoon cloud.
“Ugh. We gotta change you, Simba.”
From my vantage point in the living room, I was able to see to the stairs leading up to his room and all the diaper supplies. I was also able to see my population of crutches, which had thankfully diminished to only two.
Something was wrong with this equation.
How the fuck was I supposed to get upstairs with a baby on crutches? I mean, on crutches, with a baby? My realistic choices were to abandon the baby, leave the crutches, or let my son sit in a shitty diaper. It was like the old riddle of taking a fox, a goose and a bag of beans across a river—either way, I was sunk.
I could let the kid go free range in the living room while I yanked myself up the stairs to get the changing supplies. But with my luck, something would go terribly, terribly wrong.
If anything happened to Jack, I could kiss goodbye any chance of having a second child. If I wanted to have a girl to call Rosalina (because naming a baby Peach is just stupid), then I had to put my son first.
I was still pondering the problem when I noticed the diaper bag sitting in the front foyer. Yes! Free range it would have to be for a moment. I put Jack down on the floor, plucked up my crutches and hobbled to retrieve the bag.
Of course, after that it was a piece of cake. I knew how to change a diaper. Poorly, yes—but I could do it. I even knew what I could feed him. How I planned to do all that while high on codeine and moving around like a one-legged pirate was a different riddle for the ages.
In the end, we camped on the main floor for the next eighteen hours. That was how I discovered that I was older than I thought. As I was getting closer to forty than thirty, sleeping on the floor was not good for my aging body.
Then I called my mother. I could have called my sister, but chances were that she would just tattle to Madeline, and I didn’t want that.
/> Finally, there was a knock on the door.
“Ah, fuck.”
“Nice to see you too, Brain.” Bobbie stuck out her tongue at me.
“Mom called you, didn’t she?”
“Duh.” She swept past me, her gaze scanning the pallet of cushions and throw blankets on the floor and the up-ended diaper bag. “God, it’s hot in here.”
I’d cranked the heat up and let the baby go mostly naked, since I couldn’t make it upstairs easily to get more clothes for him. I’d stripped to an undershirt and my boxer briefs. We must have looked ridiculous.
Jack sat in the middle of the living room, chewing on a silicone pasta server. He was a little disheveled and under-dressed, but otherwise fine.
“Hey buddy!” Bobbie hung her coat on the banister post at the bottom of the stairs and made her way to him. “When’s Maddie back?” she asked over her shoulder.
“Tonight.”
She stifled a laugh. “You barely made it twenty-four hours?”
“It’s not as easy as you and Maddie make it seem.”
“Thank you. I hate to say I told you so…”
“You just did,” I muttered. But she was right, and I was wrong. We should mark this day on the freaking calendar. “I could have just hired somebody temporarily, you know.”
She rose, with Jack in her arms and her gaze lifting to the ceiling. “But you didn’t, because you wanted to prove that parenting an infant isn’t that all that hard. And you want to have another one soon?” She snorted.
“Maddie told you about that.”
“Yup.”
I needed to talk to my wife about keeping marital confidences… well, confidential.
“Let’s get you all cleaned up, here.” Bobbie disappeared into the kitchen while I hobbled around looking pathetic and feeling useless and grumpy. Okay, so maybe I’d underestimated how much time, energy, and work taking care of our son took. I owed my wife an apology for that.
By the time Madeline’s taxi arrived, the place was spotless, Jack had been bathed and dressed in a nice outfit, and I was slipping into a deep sulk in the couch.
She came in the door with a tired smile on her face—the kind I hadn’t seen in a long time—and dropped her carry-on bag at the bottom of the stairs.