my case. “You’ve got three little kids, and Christmas is a week away.”
“Don’t get so emotional, Rubes. I’ll be back the day before Christmas Eve.” He kept his eyes down as he packed, as if to avoid facing my wrath.
“But you’re missing the season. Christmas isn’t just a day, it’s the whole buildup of expectation, the excitement of the kids. Honey, it’s such a short window that they believe in Santa. Dylan’s almost two and he doesn’t really get it yet, and I suspect Becca’s got it figured out at seven. Don’t miss Christmas because of some trumped-up emergency.”
“Calm down, would ya? I won’t miss Christmas, I promise. And I couldn’t say no. Apparently Bob asked for me by name.”
“Summoned by the pope. I guess you should be flattered.” I sat on the bed, refolding his undershirts.
“Yeah, well, flattery can be a pain in the ass.” He hung a clean suit inside the bag, still not making eye contact.
“Honey, I know you’re under a lot of pressure. We both are.” Must write book… I would miss him at night, freeing me up from baths and bedtime stories. But I was getting close to finishing, Christmas was bearing down on us, Jack had been handpicked for a task by the company’s CEO—events slammed toward us like a runaway train, and I had learned that sometimes it’s easier to go with the momentum than to stop the train.
“I’m sorry.” He looked up from his travel kit, his silver eyes flashing with concern. “This really isn’t fair to you.”
I grabbed a ball of socks and launched it toward him. “Just promise me you’ll work fast so you can get your butt home.”
“I’ll do my best,” he promised, handily catching the socks.
Having Jack out of the house did have its advantages. I didn’t have to pick up the trail of clothes he left on the way into the shower or rinse and load dishes and mugs left in the sink, half-full of water and floating crumbs. Jack didn’t mind doing housework, but his cleaning sprees came in spurts in clear opposition to my drive to clean up immediately, at least in the kitchen. Also with Jack gone I wouldn’t feel obliged to take time off from working to have an abbreviated adult dinner with him; once the kids were fed I could get them set up in front of the television or at the kitchen table for homework and cruise through another page or two of the manuscript while scarfing down wheat toast.
One of the downsides of being a single parent was the dreaded homework. Becca managed her own work but worried about making mistakes, so she insisted that I check everything over. Scout had been placed in an advanced reading group, and although she could handle the reading on her own, she needed help composing written answers to the comprehension questions.
One evening, when I was hot into a love scene, my fingers flying over the keyboard, she appeared in my doorway with a book in hand. “Mom, can you help me with this?”
“Read the story, honey, and I’ll help you answer the questions.”
“But I can’t read the story. It’s filled with something very inappropriate for kids.”
Must write book…
I tore myself away from the computer and motioned her closer. “What’s this?” The book she was reading was called Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, an anecdotal account of a woman who helps parents get their children to behave. “Sort of a Nanny 911 from old times,” Scout had said last week when she started the book.
“This chapter…” Scout handed me the book, squirming. “The boy’s name, I can’t say it. I can’t even say it to myself in my head.”
I took the book from her. The boy’s name in this chapter was Dick.
I hid a smirk. “I see.” Scout and Becca had encountered only a handful of forbidden words, most of them spotted in graffiti on the back of the school. This was one of those words.
“You know, it’s short for Richard,” I said. “Why don’t you change it in your head when you see it? Call him Rick. How about that?”
My six-year-old daughter scowled at me. “Are you kidding me? I don’t have a computer brain.”
“Okay, then.” With a sigh I pushed the laptop closed, settled back into the old chintz chair and made room for Scout. “I’m going to read this to you with a new name,” I said.
She settled in beside me, and I read the story, editing as I went along. When I was finished, she thanked me and headed back downstairs, calling to Becca: “Guess what? The kid in this story is named Penis!”
Must write book…
By turning off the world, writing at night and paying the sitter to work extra hours, I managed to get within striking range of the end of Chocolate three days before Christmas. I had been e-mailing the manuscript to Morgan in five-chapter installments, and we planned to meet today for a working lunch to go over her notes and revisions so that I could smooth and polish the entire manuscript and have it ready for her to messenger to editors January second when they returned from vacation, fresh and fat and still feeling generous with holiday spirit. I felt flattered that Morgan was giving me so much time and attention, grateful that she’d pushed her flight to Detroit back by one day so that she could meet with me today and pull it all together.
As luck would have it, Dylan had chosen the previous night to wake up in crying fits, moaning of pain in his teeth. By the time I flopped down the stairs in my fluffy robe and started making peanut butter sandwiches while I held for the pediatrician, a dull pain twisted at my forehead and my mouth felt dry and sour. I felt hungover without any of the glory of the night before, hit by the Stress-monster. I popped two Tylenol capsules and washed them down with black coffee as Scout scampered down the stairs and clicked on the TV.
“Good morning, sweetie,” I called over SpongeBob’s cackle.
“I’m not going to school today,” she warned me.
“Oh, yes you are. Today is your last day before Christmas vacation.” And my last chance to grab a few free hours to kibbitz with Morgan.
“Some kids are already on vacation, from a hundred days ago. It’s not fair.”
“You’ll get your share of vacation,” I promised her as Becca came down and gave me a kiss, then gave out a little whimper that she was sick of taking peanut butter sandwiches for her lunch. Which launched us into the lunch discussion of how the girls always demanded one lunch item, like peanut butter sandwiches, for two months straight—until they were sick to death of it.
“This is the last school lunch for two weeks,” I said smoothly, trying to avert a major disaster on this day of days; I was so close to the finish of my book I could taste the happy ending, and nothing would deter me. “Tomorrow you can have Easy Mac, or fish sticks or a yogurt parfait.”
“Yuck.” Scout’s nose wrinkled, her face puckered. “Yogurt parkways are gross.”
But I just smiled at her as I dashed up the stairs to wake Dylan with kisses and the promise of a trip to the doctor to help him feel better. I managed to coax them all through breakfast, get them dressed and shepherd them past the frost on the ground and into the car, where I strapped Dylan and Scout into car seats. Unfortunately, the frost was thicker than I’d realized, and I had to scurry around the car, scraping windows and windshields, much to Dylan’s delight. Then the girls bellowed that they’d be late for school, but I didn’t care. I knew the wicked witch of a principal had to let them in the door, and so they were dropped off in the nick of time so that I could work my way through stoplights and past double-parked cars to the pediatrician on the other side of Bayside.
Thirty minutes in a stuffy waiting room of howling tykes revealed Dylan needed an antibiotic for his ears, and so I headed to the pharmacy, wishing they had a drive-thru window. Wonder of wonders, there was a spot right in front, though I had no quarters for the meter. I decided to chance it, bundled my son in my arms and raced down the aisles of the pharmacy, scraping tissue boxes and toilet paper displays