Life After Coffee

by Virginia Franken

  On the way out I try to thank Thelma, but she’s typing furiously away on the computer and gestures to her headset when I try to say something. I mouth, “Good-bye,” she gives me a half smile, and that’s the end of that.

  It takes about four minutes in the car before the true reason behind my early ejection emerges: Violet.

  “I didn’t like those guys, Mommy.”

  “Why not, honey? Didn’t he give you some crayons to do a drawing?”

  “We never got to the crayons. We were too busy talking.”

  “About what?” My recently evolved mommy senses are turning the back of my neck icy cold. What did Violet say to Jay and Bob?

  “I asked them if they were going to give you a job. They said that’s what we were all there to talk about, and I told them why it was a bad idea.”

  “You what?” What was I thinking? This is all my fault. Of course she was going to sabotage the whole endeavor. She’s been waiting for this opportunity since she’s had conscious thought.

  “I said life was awful with you being away all the time. I told him about how you missed my daisy cupcake tea party I had for my birthday this year. I cried for two whole days and nothing Daddy did could make it better. Not even Strawberry Shortcake ice cream. They said that sounded terrible and then I told them all the other things too, and after that they didn’t say much at all. They just waited for you to come back.”

  “What other things?” I may as well know the worst of it. Pandora’s box is well and truly opened now.

  “That time Billy had the flu, and he had a temperature of one hundred and three point five. We thought because he was so sick, you’d be able to call your boss and say you had to stay home, and you did, but in the end you still had to get on the plane and go anyway.” How can she remember that? Isn’t everything that happens in the past supposed to be a blur when you’re three years old? Trust me to get the kid with the superpowered retentive memory that she uses solely for the purposes of shaming me in job interviews. Ask her what her favorite thing to eat for dinner is or where she put her only pair of shoes that still fit and she’s all, “I can’t remember.”

  “I told them about the time Daddy was sad and didn’t get out of bed for two days and all we ate that week was Lunchables.” What? My God. Is Peter actually depressed as well as crazed? No wonder they called time on the interview. A sad Daddy who can’t get out of bed and Lunchables for a week? I wouldn’t have felt all roasty toasty inside about employing me either. Well, that’s the end of that opportunity. And what am I supposed to do about Violet? Tell her off? It’s not like she’s done anything wrong. It would be like reprimanding the nine o’clock news for going on about the bad stuff in the Middle East all the time.

  “We’ll have another tea party for you tomorrow, honey.”

  “Really?” she asks, all remnants of sulky—brought on by her own reminders of her “tragic” past—instantly dissipated.

  “A daisy cupcake tea party?”

  “For sure.”

  “Thank you, Mommy!”

  “You are welcome.”

  You’d better live up those cupcakes, sweetheart, as they’ll be the last item of “fun” food you’ll be getting for a while. I don’t think they let you buy cupcakes with food stamps.

  We pull into the driveway. Maybe this is all for the best. Maybe Peter just sold Draker’s Dark for tons of money, I’ll never need to work again, and I can focus the next decade on making up for everything I’ve ever missed. Peter has friends who make bundles of money from selling screenplays all the time. Okay, there was that one guy, that one time. Not too long ago, one of his old writing buddies sold a brand-new script for exactly one million dollars! Worst, or perhaps best, of all—the screenplay was from an idea that Peter had given him. If Peter has supplied million-dollar ideas to people who don’t even have half his talent, surely it’s not completely illogical to think that he could sell a script for at least the going rate of fifty grand? I’m not crazy to think that. In fact it’s very possible that this could have just happened. I’ve almost convinced myself that this is what has come to pass by the time I open the door, that the last few months have all just been part of the universe’s funny dance.

  “What happened with the script?” I ask breathlessly as we pile through the door.

  “Nothing much.” Ambiguous. Maybe he’s about to do one of those Hollywood reversals where he fakes disappointment in order to make the victory allegedly so much sweeter. For example: “Nothing much . . . apart from this check for one million dollars in my back pocket!” It’s about the only thing that’s not going to land him in an elephant shit-ton of trouble right now.

  “Nothing much?”

  “The guys hadn’t gotten their funding together yet.”

  “Funding? Which studio was it?”

  “It wasn’t. It was independent. Turned out they were looking to crowdsource to get the money if you can believe it.”

  “Crowdsource? Where did you find out about these people?”

  “Craigslist.”

  “What the fuck!”

  Everyone looks at me, shocked. I normally swear only in my head and generally not in front of the children; it’s all been confirmed long ago that Peter’s the one with the temper. Not today.

  “I basically just got kicked out of a job interview I should have nailed because Violet told them I missed her cupcake tea party this year, and they suddenly got all paranoid and patriarchal about employing a woman who would have to leave her children alone for weeks on end in order to get the job done.”

  “I’m sorry. I just . . . Snippet, I know that’s not what you really want, to leave the kids. I know you don’t want that.”

  “What I want is for us to be able to eat.”

  “Look, I just needed to put my career in first place this time.”

  “You career doesn’t get to go in a place on a list because it doesn’t exist!”

  There’s a silence. I’ve kind of crossed a line here. But can you blame me? This has been brewing for a while.

  “It does exist. You have no patience.”

  “You’re completely right. I’m all out of patience.”

  “Look,” he says, standing up and pulling his ancient leather laptop case onto his shoulder. Oh, I used to think that laptop case was so cool. It was one of the things that first drew me to him. Younger me really needed to work on what makes a man a good catch. “I know you’re upset. But I’m telling you this is all going to work out for the best. I picked up a few really great notes from the meeting. This thing’s going to be razor-sharp before I send it out again.”

  Oh, I know what this smells like. He’s already inching toward the door. He’s heading off to write.

  “Not so fast.”

  “What?”

  “I haven’t had a mother-beeping second to myself since I didn’t get on that plane to Addis Ababa. You’re going to watch the kids right now. I need a moment.”

  “We know when you say ‘beeping’ that you really mean ‘fucking,’” says Billy.

  “Okay, thanks, Billy.” I pick up my purse. I already have my shoes on. “I’m going out, alone. And I probably won’t be back in time for dinner.”

  And with that, I leave. No one is more shocked than I am.

  Half an hour later I’m at The Solid Cup, my very favorite coffee shop. Not that you’d have any reason to think it was my favorite as I haven’t been here in about a year. I’m three sips into a heaven-sent and also heaven-scented cup of exquisite Ljulu Lipati prepared by Ana, my favorite barista, who incidentally won the US Barista Championship last year. Girl knows how to make a brew. I open up my iBooks again and turn to where I left off. I pull a notepad out of my purse and rip off all the messy pages on the top. There’s no room for scribble in here. I’m devoting this notebook to holding information on one subject only: how to be a mother.

  CHAPTER 19

  So after two weeks of silence from FMC Trading, I finally broke down and called them a
bout coming in for another interview. After leaving a couple of messages that weren’t returned, I managed to call just as Bob was walking into the office. Lexi forgot to mute her end of the conversation and it became pretty clear, pretty quickly that Bob did not want to speak to me then, or ever again. When she came back to the phone, she lied and told me I’d just missed him, and a few days after that I received a formal rejection letter.

  This does not leave us in a good situation. At all. We’re finally out of savings, and this month I’m going to have to skip the mortgage payment in order to buy food and keep the lights on. Billy’s preschool tuition hasn’t been paid since I lost my job. They’ve been pretty understanding about it up until this week, when I got a slightly salty reminder notice asking for payment. I intend to push their bohemian generosity to the limit, but at some point it’s inevitable that I’m going to have to withdraw him.

  Right now, Peter’s sitting at the kitchen table wearing nothing but a towel, his wet dark curls stuck against his forehead. It must be said he looks quite appealing, and if my children weren’t running the entirety of the house playing Viking warriors, I might be tempted to snatch that towel off him. And why is he not wearing any clothes? Because no one has done any laundry in recent memory, and once he’d peeled off his pajamas in order to have a shower this morning, he didn’t have anything clean to change into. And why has the laundry not been done? Because I’m on strike. There are two unemployed adults living in this house now, and I don’t see why I should always have to be the one to do the laundry when I actually fill way less than my allotted quarter of the hamper. Peter used to be quite the whiz at laundry before I lost my job, so I’m sure the empty drawers that were once filled with clean clothing will, at some point, cause him to remember how it’s done. However, right now Peter seems completely uninterested in getting dressed anytime soon and is busy typing on his laptop.

  “I thought you’d finished the rewrite?” I ask.

  “I have,” he says. “But the whole thing’s shit, so I’m starting again.”

  Billy roars into the kitchen.

  “Mom! Water!”

  “Say please, Billy.”

  “Please Billy.”

  “Smarty-pants. Sit at the table.” Billy sits at the table and gulps his water as fast as he can.

  “This thing needs a major overhaul, and then I’m thinking of sending it to Nico.”

  “Is it really necessary to start all over again? Can’t you just send it to him as it is and ask for some feedback?”

  “No way. It’s a complete mess. If someone sees it as it is, that’ll be the end of my career. Forever.”

  “Don’t be so dramatic,” I snap as Billy helter-skelters out of the kitchen again.

  Aside from the brief flicker of approval a moment ago upon seeing my husband in nothing more than a towel, I’m actually completely mad at him. I just got off the phone with Matt, who told me he’s been leaving messages for Peter, basically offering him his job back. Has Peter returned his call? No. Has Peter said a word to me about it? No. All he has to do is this weeklong anger-detox course that Matt’s found for him and then he’s back in. Employed once more. Money going into the bank instead of out of it. It’s the answer to all our problems. What on earth is he playing at?

  “So Matt called me just now.” Peter continues to tip-tap into his laptop. “I said Matt called. We talked.” Still no response from Peter. I know he can hear me. And I know he knows he’s in trouble.

  “Called to catch up on old times, did he?”

  “No!” I respond a little too quickly. “We talked about you. Will you stop typing into that thing for a minute?”

  He slams down the lid of his laptop. I don’t care if he throws a fit right now; we are going to have this out. If he does explode, it will only underline the point that he definitely should do an anger-management course.

  “I heard his messages.”

  “So why haven’t you called him back? Do you not realize how badly we need someone in this household to be employed right now?”

  “He and I have a personality clash. A weeklong course isn’t going to fix that.”

  “It might. And anyway, it doesn’t matter if it doesn’t cure you. He said if you do the course, he’ll take you back.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know why. Does it matter?”

  “There are hundreds of excellent writers out there looking for work. Why’s he wasting his time running in circles setting up fancy courses for me to do?”

  “He said HR told him he had to do it.”

  “HR? Colburn Entertainment doesn’t have an HR department, Amy.” Well, that is a little weird. “He’s probably just trying to get me off the scene for a week so he can get his hands on you.”

  “What?” I say, a bit shrilly. I squash down the quick thrill of pleasure that this might be true.

  “You know this course is an inpatient program, in Malibu?”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “It’s basically like rehab. You’d be on your own here with the kids for a week.”

  “That’s no problem. I don’t know why you’re not jumping at the chance. I’d love to go and spend a week in Malibu. It’d be like a vacation!”

  “I’d be locked up in a facility with a bunch of nutjobs, not surfing with Matthew McConaughey every morning. I’m not doing it.”

  “It’s a week of therapy, which someone else is paying for, and after you’ve done that, you get your job back. You need the therapy. We need the money. There’s no way you’re not doing this.”

  “There’s no way I am doing it.”

  “If you don’t do it, I’ll leave you.” This is, of course, a completely idle threat that I’ve no intention of going through with. But still I’m surprised when I hear myself say it.

  “Oh, please. And go where exactly?”

  A nanosecond later Peter and I both jump to parental alert as an awful sound comes from the living room. It’s a scream, and not one of Violet’s high-pitched attention grabbers. It’s Billy. And it’s the scream that comes after that long opened-mouth silent scream and the ragged inhale of breath that comes after it. It’s a heart-stopper.

  Peter and I race into the living room. It’s probably the pinnacling moment of my career as a bad mother that I notice Peter’s lost his towel before I notice the bleeding gash at the corner of Billy’s right eye.

  “Look, I’m Tinkerbell!” says Violet, making the perilous leap from the ottoman to the recliner, trying to give everyone the instant replay of what just happened.

  “Off the chair, Violet!” I yell, as Peter dives forward to scoop Billy up. He’s the one who handles medical emergencies in our household.

  “No, I want Mommy,” says Billy through his tears.

  Everyone freezes on the spot. Even Billy stops crying for half a second. This is unprecedented. However, this is my moment; I don’t need to be asked twice. I’ve been waiting for him to show even a vague preference for me over his father—or over anyone at all, really—for five long years, and I’m not about to bow out just because we’re suddenly going against the normal order of things.

  I pick him up and almost buckle under his weight. What happened to the little toddler I used to be able to hold under one arm when he was throwing a tantrum? Staggering, I manage to somehow make it across the length of the house and dump him down next to the bathroom sink.

  “Why did you carry me?” he asks in between snotty sniffs.

  “The situation seemed to require it. Bear with me. I’m new to this handling-emergencies thing,” I say softly.

  “You’re doing okay,” he says. And gives me a tiny smile. He’s got blood smeared down one side of his face and it still seems to be flowing. I start tearing the cabinets apart looking for Band-Aids, a bandage, ice pack—anything! There’s nothing here. Where has Peter moved it all to? He has a habit of moving essential things and not telling me where they’ve gone that frustrates me to the point of frenzy. I’ve got my own m
edical kit I use for travel, but it’s still buried right at the bottom of my backpack, which I’ve yet to unpack. I squash down a silly suspicion that this whole scenario’s been engineered by Peter to expose me as a terrible mother. All I can find to stem the flow of blood is one rather old maxi pad. If maxi pads had expiration dates, this one would be well past it. Still, this is material designed to absorb flowing blood, technically speaking, so I carefully stick it over his eye and apply pressure. That will have to do till I can dig out my kit.

  At that moment Peter walks in with a basketful of first aid items, an ice pack, and a damp washcloth.

  “My son has a sanitary pad stuck to his head,” he says.

  “I couldn’t find the first aid kit. It’s stemming the blood loss,” I reply.

  He gives me a look that I immediately translate as: So not only have you usurped my hard-earned place as the parent to run to after receiving an owie, the first thing you’ve done in your new role is to stick a product for menstruating women on my firstborn’s face.

  My look back translates as: Get over it. And in the future, keep the first aid kit in the bathroom like the rest of the world does.

  I notice with a little disappointment that he’s now wearing a pair of jeans that he must have pulled out of the laundry pile.

  “Shall I?” he says out loud, indicating that he’s going to remove the maxi pad.

  “I’ll do it,” I say. You’re not overthrowing me that quickly. I give it a little tug.

  “Ow,” says Billy. The damn thing’s stuck to his head.

  “Let me try,” Peter says.

  “No, let Mommy do it,” says Billy.

  “Okay,” says Peter, hands up in the air. “If you want me, I’ll be doing laundry.”

  Double score! Now I have to figure out how to get this pad off. Genius strikes. I wet a sponge and gently squeeze it behind the pad, over Billy’s eye, and after a moment it releases. I pull the pad away and try not to let my face show any reaction. There’s blood everywhere. I consciously repress an urge to call Peter back and instead start dabbing at the cut. Billy’s being remarkably brave about it. Especially for Billy. He and I have been cautiously moving toward a new understanding over the past few days since I read all of that parenting book and got some pointers on how to handle a child with an “overactive emotional system.” It mostly boils down to this: when dealing with a crazed child, be as mellow as he is insane. I’ve been trying the extra-calm approach with Billy, and I keep getting flickers of signs that it might be working. Finally, I manage to get the area clear, and after a short while the cut seems to stop bleeding.