by Sean Boling
Chapter Seven
“I was pleasantly surprised,” I heard Mom say.
“Anyone can be charming for a day,” Dad answered.
I had not even been to my room yet, merely hesitating on my end of the hallway after saying good night to them, and then sneaking back to their door with the stride of an enormous rooster in slow motion.
“I’m not talking about them,” Mom clarified. “Though they weren’t as bad as I thought they’d be. I mean the lake, the drive, going somewhere besides work.”
“Yeah,” Dad chuckled, “You know you need to get out more if a reservoir full of drunk people on jet skis starts looking good.”
They were quiet for a while, though I could hear dresser drawers opening and closing, closet doors sliding back and forth, and water running in the bathroom, so I held my ground, figuring they may still have something to say after they were done getting ready for bed.
“So I was thinking,” Mom said as her voice bounced in time to her lowering herself onto the mattress, “Maybe we should enjoy ourselves before they pull the plug on us.”
“How so?” Dad asked before grunting in relief at finally crawling under the sheets.
“We’re not making any payments on the house anymore, and we’ve got months’ worth of vacation time built up from working our asses off trying to get into this time bomb. So what the hell? Might as well have something good come from it.”
Dad did not respond quickly enough for Mom’s comfort, so she pressed on. “You said yourself we’ve been losing touch with Nick, and now I see what you mean. We hardly spoke the whole day.”
“It was one of those parents-in-one-group, kids-in-the-other kind of days,” he said. “Teenaged kids, no less. So what do you expect?”
“Wait, so you’ve flip-flopped on the Nick issue?”
“No, I still think we need to spend more time together…” he hesitated. “I just, well, have you asked anyone at work about this?”
“I just thought of it today, on the way home.”
Dad paused again. Finally he said, “Do you want to look into it tomorrow or should I?”
Mom let out a small squeal that would have been louder if she had not thought I was in bed. “I’ll do it,” she gushed. “I hang out with the people in payroll all the time, anyway.”
“The people in payroll,” Dad said, amused by the sound of it.
“Maybe we could get some of the others to follow our lead,” Mom speculated. “Get a summer-long block party going on.”
She started snapping her fingers, and I imagine sprung into some kind of middle-aged woman dance move that made Dad laugh.
I chicken-walked back to my room, glad they had an idea that made them happy, and hoping the idea would not become reality, that I could spend my remaining days on Ranch Ranch as I had spent them the last couple of years: amongst friends, roaming, wild, doing whatever we wanted so long as we could get away with it.