Sleeper

by Loring, Kayley

  * * *

  We do not continue that after Consuelo leaves, because she was still at the house when we had to leave to pick the kids up at school to take them to the dojo. Shane drives the Land Rover and his hand is on my thigh for most of the ride. “If their art teacher asked for something blue from home for them to paint today, I’d give them my balls,” he mumbles as we park at the curb.

  I pat his hand. “I’ll be sure to mention that at your Father of the Year ceremony.”

  He mutters something about “dad dick” as he gets out of the car.

  Summer and Lucky are already exiting the building as we walk down the sidewalk. When they see us, they are both so happy and start running toward us, each of them holding a big sheet of art paper in one hand. Summer hops in front of me, her face all lit up.

  “I made this for you!” She presents me with a painting. “We had to paint someone we like to be with, and I did you!”

  Through watery eyes, I’m staring down at a colorful portrait of a woman with a huge head, enormous brown eyes, giant smile, big long dark hair, massive boobs—thank you Summer!—and a yellow heart on her neck.

  “Summer. This is so beautiful.” I bend down to hug her. I don’t know why I’m so surprised that she’d pick me, but I am. “I love you,” I whisper in her ear. I’ve never said it to her before, and it immediately feels like I just crossed a boundary, but I don’t regret it.

  She says, “Okay,” gives me an extra squeeze before letting go, and looks at me like we have a shared secret now. “Heyyyy,” she says. “You got another heart on your neck.”

  “Yes. I got it today. Isn’t it pretty?”

  She nods and takes my hand.

  Shane is admiring Lucky’s painting of him. He mostly painted a bunch of hair that’s standing up and big blue eyes inside an upside-down triangle face, but it’s unmistakably Shane.

  “You guys are so talented,” he says. “I love it. You ready to go kick some ass at the dojo?”

  “Yaaaahhhh!!! What’s a dojo?” Lucky asks, as Summer asks, “Are you going to stay and watch us?”

  “We both are,” I tell her.

  “A dojo is where you’re going to go once a week to kick some ass.”

  “But why’s it called that?”

  “It’s a Japanese word,” Shane says, winking at me, like “I got this.” “For a room or hall where karate or other kind of martial arts is practiced.”

  “What’s martial arts?”

  “It’s what you’ll be learning. It’s a kind of self-defense fighting that just uses hands and feet. No weapons.”

  “We get to fight each other?” Summer claps her hands. “And we won’t get in trouble?”

  “Well, not by me or Willa, but you’ll have to do what the karate teacher tells you to do.”

  “Why is it called karate?”

  Fifteen minutes, four cookies, a baggie of baby carrots, and twenty-seven questions later, we make it to the dojo in the Palisades, help the kids change into their karate uniforms, chat with the instructor and some of the other parents, and then take a seat in the folding chairs at the edge of the room to watch the half-hour-long class.

  It is so stinking cute, watching Summer and Lucky and eight other three-and-a-half to five-year-old kids line up, shout out “yes, sensei!” and imitate the instructor when he tells them to. Honestly, I could watch this all day. But Shane appears to be a bit restless. In my peripheral vision, I see him surreptitiously typing something out on his phone. When I feel my phone vibrate in my pocket, I casually look around to see if anyone will notice me pull it out. I look down and almost laugh out loud when I see the message.

  SHANE: I cannot fucking wait to get back up in your dojo later.

  ME: Does this mean you’ll be using your hands AND feet to defend yourself against me?

  SHANE: It means get ready for some full-contact sparring with my Sammo Hung.

  ME: Is that a martial artist joke?

  SHANE: I would never joke about hiding my dragon in your crouching tiger.

  ME: Are you drunk?

  SHANE: I wish. Are you still wearing those lacey panties?

  ME: Watch your children.

  SHANE:

  I stifle a giggle as I look over at him. We both slide our phones back into our pockets, but it’s too late. Summer is watching us from the blue mats, attacking us from across the dojo with the most devastating frown I have ever seen.

  If it’s bad parenting to let five-year-olds watch The Karate Kid during dinner on a school night, then Shane Miller is perfectly content to be a bad parent. He feels so guilty for letting his blue balls get the best of him during the class, I wouldn’t be surprised if he never makes Summer brush her teeth again. Lucky was so focused on the instructor that I don’t think he noticed when we weren’t paying attention.

  I’m so focused on how cool Elisabeth Shue is in this movie that I don’t even realize how long Summer has been gone after saying she had to go to the bathroom. When she returns, she is silent and doesn’t make eye contact with anyone, but I notice her sneaking peeks at me out of the corner of her eyes. When I try to meet her gaze, she snaps her head back to the TV, frowning.

  I get a sinking feeling in my gut.

  After taking the dishes to the kitchen sink, I go to my room to have a look.

  The top of my desk is completely empty, except for my perfumer’s organ, which is upright and closed.

  That wouldn’t be a problem if it hadn’t been half-covered with twenty bottles of the roll-on perfume oil that I’d spent the past few days mixing and bottling and labeling.

  I check the wastebasket beneath the desk—empty.

  I check the wastebasket in my bathroom—no perfume bottles.

  I check my closet, because maybe just maybe Summer decided to line them up in an orderly fashion on one of the shelves. Nope.

  I check all of the drawers in the desk and dresser.

  “What’s going on?” Shane asks from the doorway.

  “Nothing. I need to talk to Summer.”

  “Shit. What did she do?”

  “It’s fine.” I go into the family room and find Summer sitting at the edge of the sofa, arms crossed, lower lip quivering, staring at the floor. I kneel on the floor in front of her. “Summer. Where did you put my perfume bottles?”

  She shakes her head.

  “Summer. I made those. Do you understand? I’m going to sell those in a store. That’s my job.”

  “Your job is our nanny!”

  “Yes, it is. But my other job is making perfume.”

  “Oh, shit!” I hear Shane say from the kitchen.

  I watch a solitary tear fall from Summer’s eye and then go to the kitchen. Shane is looking in the wastebin from under the sink. “They’re empty,” he says, holding one of the cylindrical bottles up. The label has a tomato sauce stain on it. “I think all the labels are messed up. I’m so sorry.”

  I shake my head and calmly march over to the bathroom in the hallway. As soon as I open the door, I can smell my perfume oil in the sink.

  I can hear Shane telling Summer that she’s grounded. I can hear him tell her that she doesn’t get any dessert tonight, that she doesn’t get to go to her friend’s party this weekend. I can hear Summer saying there were too many bottles on my desk and clutter is bad. And my first instinct is to go in there and defend Summer.

  I put my hand on Shane’s arm. “Shane, it’s not her fault. I should have locked my stuff away or put a lock on the door like you said.”

  “Summer, go to your room.” His voice can be so commanding when he’s talking to his daughter.

  “But clutter in the room makes clutter in your head!”

  “Go brush your teeth and get ready for bed. Now.”

  “Shane.”

  “I will pay to replace everything, obviously,” he tells me as Summer skulks out of the room.

  “It’s really not that big of a deal. I can mix th
e oils again, I can order more labels and bottles. It’ll just delay my store opening for a week or so.”

  We both look over to see that Lucky is on the verge of tears, watching us. “Can I finish watching the movie?”

  “Yes, buddy. You’re not in trouble. You can finish watching the movie with Willa. I’ll go talk to Summer.”

  “Let me go. Let me talk to her. Okay?”

  He studies my face, his forehead and jaw relaxing. “Okay.” He kisses the top of my head.

  I go up to Summer’s room, knocking on the closed door before entering. She is lying flat, facedown on her bed. I go to the side of her bed and sit down.

  “I’m sorry,” she says, the words completely muffled because they’re spoken into a blanket.

  “I know. The thing is, Summer, I think one of the things you’re supposed to ask yourself when you’re decluttering is ‘does this thing bring me joy?’ Right?”

  She nods.

  “Sit up.”

  She slowly pushes herself up and sits next to me at the head of her bed.

  “Making perfume brings me joy. And I make it to sell to other people because I hope it will bring them joy too. So it’s not clutter. And besides, it’s mine. You can’t throw out or put away things that aren’t yours without the other person’s permission. Do you understand that?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I know.”

  We both sigh.

  “Are you mad at me?”

  “Kind of. But I’ll get over it. Are you mad at me? Because we weren’t paying attention to you during karate class?”

  She nods.

  “Think you’ll get over it?”

  She nods. “He doesn’t pay as much attention to us now when you’re here.”

  Oh shit. Dagger to the heart. “That’s not true. That can’t be true. Your daddy pays so much attention to you. He loves you so much, just as much as he always has.”

  Her lower lip sticks out.

  “Do you wish I wasn’t here?”

  “No.”

  “You want me to stay?”

  “Yes.”

  “You just want your dad to pay more attention to you?”

  She nods.

  “Okay. I’ll send him up. Do you promise to stop throwing things out and hiding them?”

  She nods. When I stand up, she says, without looking at me, “You know that thing you said today?”

  “When you gave me the painting?”

  She nods. “Do you still?”

  “Yes, Summer. I still do. People don’t stop loving someone just because they’re mad.”

  “Okay.”

  When the twins are asleep, Shane pours us both a glass of wine in the kitchen. Instead of letting Shane enter my dojo again, I tell him that we should probably try not to get each other all sexed-up for a while. Maybe wait until spring break, when the kids are with Margo, before doing filthy things to each other again. “It’s not that I don’t want to go all Cobra Kai on your Sammo Hung, but…I like it here. I don’t want to mess things up.”

  I am so not the psycho nanny from that movie.

  “I like you here too,” he says, clinking glasses with me. When we’ve both taken a sip of wine, he leans over to kiss me on the cheek. “I cannot fucking wait for spring break.”

  21

  Shane

  It’s spring break.

  I didn’t go to college. I was homeschooled by on-set tutors from the age of fifteen. I’ve played horny teenage guys who go nuts trying to get laid in March or April, but I never really understood what the big deal was. I could have gotten laid whenever I wanted to when I was eighteen—I was the star of two different cable TV shows that year. You know who finally gets why spring break is such a big deal? My dad dick.

  The sun is shining. The twins are in the back seat, and their little suitcases are in the trunk. Willa is in the passenger seat next to me, and our bags are packed too—for a two-night stay at a beautiful luxury ranch resort in Santa Barbara. And my dick is going to party like it’s 2009 because it hasn’t been inside Willa for almost three weeks.

  She was right, though. It was a good idea to hit the brakes and fool around a lot less so we could focus on the kids. I got by on a well-timed handy or two, as per doctor’s advice, and returned the favor with a practical, level-headed cunnilingus session in the laundry room or three. She had more time to work on her fragrances. and I got a lot of reading done. Now we can head into the next five days without any guilt whatsoever and about a gallon of baby batter.

  “Why can’t you and Willa stay at Mommy’s house too?” Lucky asks.

  “Because we aren’t masochists,” I mutter to Willa.

  “Your mom has been missing you so much, she wants you all to herself,” Willa says.

  “But who’s going to be our nanny while we’re there?”

  “Nobody,” I say. “Your mom’s going to be with you the whole time. She came back just so she can see you.”

  “But is she going to have to go to bed in the afternoon?”

  “That’s actually a really good question.” Willa turns to look at him. “Your mom will probably have something that’s called ‘jet lag,’ which means that even though it’s the same time for her here as it is for you, her body clock will think she’s still in Poland.”

  “What’s a body clock?”

  “Why can’t she just bloomin’ fix it so it works right, eh? Wouldn’t it be loverly?” Summer asks in a Cockney accent.

  “You know what—I bet your mom would be better at answering that than we would,” Willa says, grinning at me.

  Well, well. Sounds like Little Miss Post-Graduate Degree has learned a thing or two from the undereducated actor for a change.

  “Oy say, cap’n—is Landon ’ere too? Oym a good gurl, I am!” Summer asks, again in her weird English accent. She looks out the window, at the mansions in the exclusive Riviera neighborhood that Margo and Landon live in. It’s only a ten-minute drive from my house, but the properties are twice as expensive and the streets have names like Amalfi and San Remo, and the residents have last names like Spielberg, Hanks, and Schwarzenegger.

  Whatever. I’ll watch their movies, but I wouldn’t trade neighborhoods with these people if they paid me.

  “Landon had to stay on set in Poland. They’re still shooting the movie. Your mom will have to go back to work on the weekend. Willa and I will pick you up Saturday morning.”

  I turn onto the long slate-paved driveway and watch Willa’s face as I park. She looks as unimpressed by this estate as I am, bless her heart. She helps Summer out of her car seat while I get Lucky, but as soon as the front door opens and they see Margo, they go running to her. Willa looks a little surprised by how happy they are to see their mom, and maybe a tiny bit jealous too. I feel that way every time I drop them off. But I’ll get over it faster than I usually do, because—spring break.

  Willa gets her purse from the front seat and waits for me to get Summer and Lucky’s bags and walk with her up the path to the house. I touch the small of her back because I know what it does to her. Her breath catches and I feel her shiver every time. We don’t hold hands in front of the kids because we haven’t had a talk with them yet, but I told Margo that I’m taking Willa up the coast. She doesn’t like surprises, and I trust that she isn’t going to create some sort of emergency to fuck up our plans, because she hasn’t seen the twins in so long.

  “Go to the kitchen, my darlings—there are snacks waiting for you,” Margo says to the kids. “Wash your hands first! With soap!” Her hair is blonder than it was before she left, and she’s wearing one of her $250 tank tops with a pair of wide-leg pants that have a ridiculously large bow at the waist. Perhaps she was expecting us to come with a camera crew. Or maybe she’s trying to look more glamorous than my gorgeous nanny. Either way, her toothy smile seems genuine as she holds her arms out to welcome Willa with a hug. “So good to finally meet you in person! You’re even prettier than you were on Skype.”

  “Oh
, thank you,” Willa says. “So are you.”

  “Oh my God, no. I’m exhausted and dehydrated from the flight. Hey, you,” she says as she gives me a friendly hug and pat on the back. “Do you have time to come in?”

  “We should get on the road,” I insist.

  “I brought the perfume sample,” Willa says, pulling a small box out of her purse and handing it to Margo. “You can try it out for a few days, let me know what you think.”

  “Oh, look at this pretty box. How cute!”

  Willa gives her a folded-up piece of fancy letter paper. “Here’s a list of the ingredients.”

  “Thank you.” Margo holds the paper up to her nose. “Oh my God—did you put my fragrance on the paper? Is this it?”

  I notice Willa wincing when Margo says the words “my fragrance.” “Yes, I did. It is.”

  “Willa, I love it!”

  “I want to smell that.” Margo holds the paper out for me to get a whiff, and gosh darnit, it somehow smells like some idealized version of Margo. I don’t know how Willa did that without actually spending time with her. “That’s amazing.”

  “Willa—I’m so excited. We’ll talk more later—you’ll come by to pick up the kids, and I’ll have my lawyers draw up the paperwork by then.”

  “Sure.”

  “Would you mind if I talk to Shane about the kids for just one second? Have so much fun at the Ranch.”

  “Thanks. Bye, kids!” she yells out through the open doors.

  “The Ranch, huh?” Margo says to me in a low voice, eyes sparkling. “Pretty special.”

  “Yes, she is.”

  Once Willa is inside the Land Rover, she gets a stern look on her face and says, “I hope you know what you’re doing, Shane. Word has gotten out. I keep in touch with Jill, you know.”

  “Who?”

  She rolls her eyes. “Abby’s mom. She told me about the zoo.”

  “So?”

  “So—she’s the nanny. You know how those moms gossip. I’m not mad. It just better not affect the kids.”

  “You mean the way you snuck around with Landon while you were married to me didn’t affect the kids? Thanks for the tip, Marg. I’ll try real hard to meet your high standards. Make sure they practice their karate stance and punches. Oh, and Willa’s been teaching Summer songs from My Fair Lady, so she talks like Eliza Doolittle now. Have a great visit.” I call out through the open doors too. “See you on Saturday, kids!”