Mom's the Word

by Marilynn Griffith

  Hope4Today: Don’t start, okay?

  Chapter Eight

  “Mom! I got you a flower and Ryan stepped on it and now I don’t have nothing to give you and Dad said it’s a surprise but it’s not a surprise ’cause Ryan got the flower and—”

  “It’s okay, sweetie. I appreciate the thought—”

  “He’s lying! Do you hear me, Mom? Lying through his teeth. And on the Lord’s day, too.”

  “Am not!”

  The boys tussled until they fell onto the porch where they all waited for Rob to emerge and drive them to church. Instead of taking the boys on ahead, he’d insisted that they all ride together. From the not-so-quiet whispers buzzing through the house, Karol gathered that some kind of surprise was in the works. If Karol survived until Rob came out of the house, that is. The kids were in fighting form, and Mom was the word on all their lips.

  Just as she was about to go inside to tell Rob to just come on and forget whatever surprise he was rigging up, Judah jumped on his older brother and punched him in the face. In their new blue suits, both boys went down and rolled down the front stairs and right into the yard.

  “That’s it,” Ryan said quietly amidst the tumble. “Younger or not, that’s unacceptable.”

  Karol rolled her eyes as she pulled them apart. Her Ryan, always the gentleman, even in a fistfight. He’d been born far too late.

  “Boys! Why? Now look at your clothes. Wait, Mia. Don’t!”

  Like a fairy without a flying license, Karol’s beautiful little daughter tried to follow after her brothers, still wrestling around in the dirt. Her new patent leather shoes caught on the hem of her dress, a hand-me-down from one of Hope’s daughters. With a yell fit for Tarzan, the little girl tripped over the last two steps and fell with a thud on a patch of moist dirt next to her siblings.

  “Mom!” they all three cried at once.

  Karol forced herself up to see if Mia was all right, not wanting to admit that for one second she’d been frozen still, reluctant to deal with any of it. Meeting her children’s every need, even anticipating their needs before they occurred, had once been the mainstay of Karol’s life. These days, she wished that they’d just grow up a little bit and stop doing silly things like this. Maybe she still had a bit of growing up to do, too, she thought as guilt washed away her earlier feelings.

  Before, she and the children would have gone next door and helped braid hair and put on lip gloss while the boys talked among themselves. Now they were alone and suddenly everything seemed so hard, especially being a mother.

  It’s this thing with Hope. The way the guys just decided we should be apart. Lord, it’s eating at me still. Can’t I have something? Someone?

  “Mia, are you okay? Wiggle your fingers. Wiggle your toes. Wiggle your nose!”

  The little girl happily complied and held out her arms, but the front of her dress was so dirty that Karol didn’t bother to brush it off. She unzipped it and began to pull it over Mia’s head. “Go on in the house, all of you. Mia, Mom is going to have to give you a bath.”

  Ryan, who’d been concentrating on dispensing justice before, looked stricken now. “What about…Mother’s Day?”

  What about it? Karol thought.

  The day didn’t get better. With everyone scrubbed, played with, read to and set up with age-appropriate games and snacks, Karol curled up on the couch with a novel she’d been trying to read for a month. She gave up after starting over for the third time.

  Rob—bless his heart—had tried to get her to go out to lunch and salvage what was left of Mother’s Day, but Karol just didn’t feel like it.

  Until the washing machine overflowed.

  The bubbly flood, along with the mysterious electronic charge emitted by her oven when she tried to retrieve dinner, also known as Tazer Chicken, reduced Karol to a puddle of tears.

  When her husband rushed to the kitchen from the laundry room to see what was the matter, he got more than he bargained for.

  “Mom! What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

  She wasn’t okay, and for once, Karol didn’t try to hide it. “No, Rob. I’m not okay. The stove just zapped me like a stun gun. And I’m not your mother, either. You can’t call me that anymore. In fact, no one can!”

  Instead of the look of disappointment she expected, Rob offered his strong warm shoulders. He kissed her hair. “Go and get it, Ryan.”

  Karol struggled to turn and follow her son with her eyes, but Rob held her close. Her son returned, dragging a huge notepad of some kind behind him. Mia, who had disappeared, too, came dancing by with a banner that read We love you, Mom! She could see the front of the huge pad Ryan held now, too. It read: The Just for Mom coupon book, Gifts of Time and Talents.

  Judah approached with a bouquet of flowers, black-eyed Susans, her favorite. She’d had the children do this before, creating a coupon book for Rob on Father’s Day but never on such a grand scale. The cover was glossy and the booklet, a bit larger than poster size was bound together perfectly, like a real book.

  She buried her face in Rob’s shirt. “You shouldn’t have. I’m so sorry.”

  Her husband pulled her closer and led her over to the coupon book, which took both Ryan’s hands to hold up.

  “Open it,” Rob said.

  After taking a deep breath, she did. What she saw there took her breath away. There weren’t many coupons but just one, with blank pages behind it. It said:

  This entitles Karol Simon, the greatest mom ever, to twenty-one child-free afternoons to herself. These pages are to be used as a scrapbook for her adventures. Fill them with your beauty and grace as you have filled our home.

  With love,

  Dad and the kids

  Rob squeezed her hand. “Now you can work on your book. Get a good start. I can’t wait to read what comes out of this.”

  “Um…” Where Karol had felt overwhelmed with emotion at first, she now felt terrified. Her first attempt to be published had broken her heart. The children had mended it and created a safe hedge from having to deal with the words always swirling in her head, the stories that tugged the corners of her eyes in the twilight of morning. Rob had always known about her “promise boxes,” the crates of notebooks under Karol’s bed. He’d been encouraging, but content to let her write or not write. Since Hope’s departure, though, she’d been writing again. Poems quite different from the inspirational book she’d sought to publish years before. Different but somehow the same. She’d given a few of them to Rob to read. Karol saw now that may have been a mistake.

  “It isn’t possible. Hope isn’t here anymore. Faith just left. You have to work. Forget about it. Just the thought is enough.”

  Too much, in fact. Karol had earned her Master of Fine Arts in literature at Florida State University. She’d taught and learned writing techniques all over the world. But that was before Rob. Before kids. Before God. Though she still taught adjunct classes some summers, that part of her life had been tucked away safely into the plastic tubs under her bed. Her pulse raced at how easily it all could have overturned and spilled out, for everyone to see. But it wouldn’t. It couldn’t. Rob didn’t have the time.

  “It’s a done deal. I did some work for some of the network specialists. You remember, the fence Singh and I put in before he left? I’ve been planning this for a long time. Even before they left. I figured that this might be the someday we always talk about. When you started writing again, I knew this would be the best gift. Now is the time.”

  Ryan kissed his mother’s cheek. “I agree, Mom. All the inspirations you’ve written over the years for the church. Your poems. The stories you make up for us. You taught me to love books. One day, I want to hold one of yours in my hand. Of course, you can do whatever you want with the time. Read if you want to. It’d be great for you to write seriously again. You’ve done so much for us. Let us do this for you. I know we’ve been acting up lately, but I’ll help Dad with the kids. I promise.”

  She swallowed hard at her son’s apolo
gy. He had grown so much this year and it wasn’t quite summer. She could remember when he had to lean on tiptoe to kiss her cheek. Would she be looking up into his eyes one day? Probably. She hoped there wouldn’t be anger there waiting for her. Karol bowed her head with the weight of the moment, the love surrounding her as Mia hugged her leg and Judah tucked a flower in her hair. She had some apologies of her own to make.

  Fighting back tears—and losing—Karol raised her head and pulled her family to her.

  “I’ve been a wretch. To all of you. I am so, so sorry. When Miss Hope moved away, I just sort of—”

  “Went crazy?” Ryan offered with a smile until his eyes met with his father’s. “Sorry.”

  “I’m sorry, too,” Mia said. “For the drums and going next door.”

  Judah’s lips rolled inward. He closed his eyes. “I’m sorry, too. About the burgers and stuff. And messing up Mother’s Day.”

  Karol kissed his forehead and assured him that he hadn’t messed up anything. She was moving on to Mia, when Rob surprised her. Again.

  “And I’m sorry,” her husband said. “You’re right. You’re not my mother. And I’m not your dad. It’s been a rough few months. I’d wanted to just give you the afternoons to write but after this morning, I think you need twenty-one days without having to be a mom at all. If you can umpire in the mornings, Ryan and I will do all the chores. Even the dishes, the cooking and the shopping.” He kissed Karol’s cheek. “And…we won’t call you Mom. Not for the whole time. You can be Karol the First if you want to. You’re definitely number one with me.”

  Embarrassed, Karol shook her head. “No. You don’t have to do that. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I love my kids. I love you. I love being a mother. I’m just—”

  Rob shook his head, too. “No. It’s time. You and Hope were so good about giving one another a break. I went to the men’s retreat with the church and all those conferences for work and started to understand why you need time for yourself. I want to do this, but on one condition.”

  Karol wiped her eyes. This was crazy, but she didn’t want to interrupt him. He’d forget about it in the morning. There was no way he could take care of the kids himself for three weeks. Besides, what would she do all that time? Eat bonbons? “What’s the condition?”

  This time, he kissed her lips. “That you find what you love to do, something that doesn’t have anything to do with the kids or with me. Something that makes you want to jump out of bed in the morning—besides me…Just kidding. I want you to get all that stuff out of the garage that you’ve tried and quit, take a class, go back to the gym—”

  “Rob!”

  “Dad! Mom’s not fat. Not really. Just like mom fat. She’s supposed to be.” Ryan was really enjoying himself today.

  “Son.”

  “Sorry, Mom.”

  “Look, Karol, I didn’t mean it like that. Goodness, this is hard. I thought it’d be more fun. I want you to find your passion, like you’re always telling the kids. When you’ve done that, then we want you to be our ‘Mom’ again. For good. No more freak-outs, no matter who’s living next door. Deal?”

  Ouch. “Deal.”

  Rob smiled. “And I’ll work on trying to call you something else in the meantime. Again, I apologize. Just habit, I guess.”

  “Honey, I’m sorry. Forget it. Please…” Karol turned away from them and rested her forehead against the cool of the refrigerator, ashamed to see her children standing hesitantly in the kitchen door.

  “I won’t forget it. Now get dressed, Karol. We’re going to dinner.”

  As she turned to leave the kitchen, Judah tugged at her sleeve. “So what do we call you now? Mommy woman?”

  Rob whisked him away before he could hear Karol, whispering into the empty hall. “Call me anything you want, honey. Call me anything you want.”

  To-Do

  Get Fallon set up on voice recognition software

  Go out to dinner with Neal

  Go to church this Sunday? Maybe…

  Call Dad. Probably not…

  —Dyanne

  Chapter Nine

  In the weeks since the blowup over the minivan, Dyanne and Neal had made a shaky peace with their neighbors. They seldom saw them, although Neal often reported Rob’s departure for work when he came in from his run. Dyanne had been using the treadmill lately. The Florida heat was still a bit much for her most days.

  Her marriage, however, was running cold. Tonight she and Neal were going out to dinner alone for the first time since Fallon had arrived. A much-needed outing put in peril by her husband, shielding his eyes from the sun and heading next door where Rob Simon and his brood struggled with bags and boxes of what looked like a month’s worth of food, even for a family their size.

  Neal strode away from her with ease. “Looks like you’ve got your hands full there, Rob. Need some help?”

  Dyanne watched in horror as her husband crossed into the next yard to help their neighbor with the endless bags of groceries he and his children were carrying. The neighbors weren’t going to spoil things. Not this time.

  “Um, honey? We’re going to be late.”

  Neal shrugged and headed into Karol and Rob’s house with two bags in each hand. The children clung to him like vines, with the youngest, the girl, chattering on as though Dyanne’s husband was her long-lost big brother. Just as Dyanne was about to huff her way inside and drag her husband to the car, the oldest boy, whose name didn’t come to mind, walked over and took her hand.

  “You can still make it. The Interstate is fast here. Come on in. He’ll be right out, I’m sure. You look lovely. Green really looks great on you. Brings out your eyes some. Don’t you think?”

  Her legs faltered forward. “Why, yes. I…uh…do think that. Not that my eyes are green or anything, but—”

  “In the right light…” She and the boy said together as they approached the front door and Neal bounded out of it.

  “Just a few more,” Neal said squeezing past them. “I’ll be right to the car, babe.”

  “Sure,” Dyanne mumbled. She was too taken with the boy beside her. The boy was tallish with the type of shoulders Neal had once had—narrow and spare. She’d thought the boy younger before, but without his younger siblings running around him, he seemed much more mature. They paused again as the children ran out after Neal.

  “How old are you again?” Dyanne asked.

  “Ten. I’ll be eleven next month, but it’s no big deal. Not now anyway.”

  That stopped Dyanne in her tracks. Birthdays were always a big deal. For her anyway. “It’ll be great, I’m sure of it. Have you invited your friends, planned your party?”

  He shook his head and helped her up on the porch. “Usually it’s just us and the kids next door. Don’t look like that. We liked it that way. With so many of them, we all ended up having a birthday to share with someone in their house. It was fun. We all made cards for one other, a huge cake, the park, books…”

  That got Dyanne’s attention. “You like books?”

  His eyes lit up. “Of course. Don’t you? Books are like…everything. Anything you need to know, anywhere you want to go. I like games, too, of course, but there’s nothing like a book.”

  She couldn’t have said it better herself. They’d barely made it to number five of their all-time favorite novels when Neal ran up behind her.

  “There you are! Ready to go?”

  A few minutes before, she’d been more than ready to go, but now she wasn’t so sure. This boy had read things at ten that she hadn’t read until college, all while managing to fit in the usual fantasy, sci-fi and reading the entire Bible through every year. At his age, she’d still been reading Sweet Valley High and Seventeen magazine. And such a gentleman, too? The kid was amazing.

  “Just a second, sweetheart, Ryan and I—it is Ryan, isn’t it? Yes, well, he’s just been telling me the most amazing things. Just amazing…”

  Rob wove through them with a stack of frozen pizzas. He t
ossed one in the oven, then another. Dyanne leaned down to tell the boy she’d talk to him later when she saw Rob jerking back and forth in front of the oven.

  The younger boy, Judah, jumped up and down in front of Neal. “The oven got him! Tazer Pizza! Mayday Mayday. You gotta call Mom!”

  Rob swallowed hard and sat down in the nearest chair. “Don’t call Karol. And don’t call her Mom, either. We’ve made it this far, haven’t we? Three days. We can do this. Totally.”

  Ryan, still standing near Dyanne, shook his head and whispered in her direction, “We totally cannot do this.”

  Neal and Dyanne looked at each other, confused and trying to figure out what “this” was. In one long breath, Ryan explained.

  “Mom is having a midlife crisis or something. Well, not really. We’ve been out of control and screaming ‘Mom!’ all the time and then Dad calls her that, too, which I always thought was weird, even though Miss Hope did it—”

  “Ryan…” Rob had his face in his hands.

  “Right. Anyway, Mother’s Day was horrible. We got in a fight in the yard and messed up our clothes, the washer broke down, which Dad was too busy fixing to get to the oven—by the way, can we still call you Dad?”

  When Rob didn’t answer but narrowed his eyes, the boy continued. “So, Dad promised Mom that she doesn’t have to be a mom for twenty-one days. We gave her a big coupon book and everything. We can’t call her Mom, either. It’s like some crazy project, you know? Mom’s the word!” He held a finger up to his mouth.

  Dyanne held a hand up to her own mouth. What a loving, wonderful thing to do. She hoped Rob didn’t kill himself in the process, but it was a beautiful gesture. Maybe if her father had done the same after her mother lost those babies…maybe things would have been different. For all of them. She forced the thought from her mind.

  “We’ll help.”

  Shocked at the sound of her own voice, Dyanne pressed her lips together. She turned to Neal, expecting a glowering look, but instead there was pride in his eyes.