Something about her nervous energy bothers me, but I quickly forget about it. I have to navigate this monstrosity of a minivan down a street with potholes the side of Buicks. In the rain. And they’re doing construction at the end of the main road, causing a traffic back up at the light. It is going to take me forever to get home.
“Crap, damn, shit,” I mumble under my breath. But apparently not low enough to escape Evan’s dog like hearing.
“Bad word, Mama,” he admonishes while clapping his hands together as if I have performed a circus trick.
I just picked him up from preschool. The other kids are due home any minute now via bus, which is why I am very anxious to get home before they do. They are very unhappy about the bus situation, especially Lexie who absolutely loves talking my ear off on the drive home. I explained to them we would have to make changes if I was going to go back to school.
There was no way I could pick Evan up at 2:30 from preschool, and then dash to three other schools that all let out within minutes of each other. The older kids sulked and complained about Evan being my favorite. They have forgotten all about the endless hours I have spent shuttling their asses from school to practices and games and lessons and classes. They have forgotten that Evan has gotten the short end of this proverbial stick simply by being the last of four. His activities consist of TV viewing and an occasional swim class at the Y. When I can remember to take him, that is.
By the time I get home, it’s pouring. I pull into the garage, something I rarely do, but I want to avoid dragging Evan through the rain. He loves to stop and splash in the puddles and I am a typical mother…I don’t have time for that fun nonsense.
Although, pulling into the garage seems to be a mistake too. In the garage, he has decided to touch the gas can, a circular saw, and what looks like the remains of a dead mouse. Thoroughly disgusted, I dig through my purse, searching for my keys and muttering to myself about rabies. I wish I just let him jump in a puddle.
As I unlock the side door and step inside, the front door bell immediately rings. I race to the door to discover Lexie and Colt huddled on the front porch. I open the door and they storm into the house, dripping water everywhere. The squeaking sound of their shoes on the hardwood floor is deafening.
“Take your shoes off!” I yell as a greeting. They kick their shoes off into the corner of the living room. I don’t have time to yell at them because just then, I realize from the sound in the house, or rather, lack thereof, that I have left our poor dog Misty outside…again. I quickly shuffle to the back door and see her pathetic wet, drippy puppy face plastered against the glass.
“Oh, damn it,” I curse, sliding the glass door open. The dog dashes in, shaking her soaked fur at me as if to tell me off for leaving her outside.
“I’m so sorry, Misty,” I crone, noticing that she has also decided to roll in a puddle of mud for good measure. “Stay still while I grab a towel so you don’t get mud everywhere.”
I toss my back pack onto the kitchen table, causing the pile of mail that has been accumulating for nearly two weeks, to flap to the floor. Misty thinks the mail is an offensive intruder and begins yapping uncontrollably and snarling at the fluttering envelopes. As I crouch down and reach for one of the bills, she snatches it up in her mouth and dashes away with it. I lunge for the tiny dog, but I miss as she heads full speed into the living room. She is not only tracking mud all over the kitchen floor, but onto the living room couch as well.
“Shit,” I yelp, right before falling flat on my face in Misty’s wake.
“Bad word again, Mama,” Evan warns me from the stool that he has pushed against the kitchen counter. “Money in the bad word jar,” he orders while pointing at the jar on top of the fridge.
I ignore him as I struggle to my feet. Right now Evan is undoubtedly on a mission to forage in the kitchen cabinet for food.
Once upon a time, I was pretty neurotic about what my kids were eating, especially when it was just Allie I had to worry about. I made homemade baby food way back when it wasn’t even trendy to do that (nor did I have one of those fancy baby food processor things like Beth did). When Allie started eating solid food, I would painstakingly cut up organic fruits and veggies every morning after buying them fresh from the Farmer’s Market once a week. Allie and I only ate whole grains, while Roger shook his head in disgust and shoveled his over processed white flour into his mouth in front of us. Allie’s juice was 100% natural; everything that crossed her lips was carefully planned out to follow the then current food pyramid chart that hung in our pediatrician’s office in all its laminated glory.
And then, Lexie came along and it all went to hell. Well, I kept it up for a few months, but Lexie was a little colicky (I guess she was trying to talk my ear off even as a baby) and it was difficult to deal with a three year old and a kid who I had to constantly tote around just to shut her up. Even though I learned to do a lot of household chores with one hand, I barely had time to feed myself, let alone chop up little veggies in the shapes of stars and cantaloupe in the likeness of hearts. Lexie survived with premade baby food (and subsequently so did Colt and Evan) but I still didn’t let the girls have junk food.
But when Allie started school, she saw all the other cool snacks the kids brought in, including orangey cheesy chips in various flavors and cookies filled with cream. What’s more, she discovered we also stocked those items in our own house (because if I didn’t buy them, Roger would just go to the store himself for them. And he wouldn’t use a coupon either). I started lifting the ban on junk food slightly and soon, it all fell apart. Actually, by the time the boys came around, I was perfectly content shoving a Pop Tart at them or letting them eat sugar fueled cereal. I just didn’t have the energy to argue with four kids and a husband anymore.
I still try to sneak fruits and veggies into their lunches and sometimes ground into meatloaf and other questionable dishes. I make an attempt to serve veggies with dinner and offer fruit as snacks; it often backfires because I am usually too busy to check to see what they’re pilfering from the cabinets. Sometimes it’s easier just to look the other way, as I am doing right now while my youngest is scaling the counter tops like Spiderman to find the hidden Twinkies. But hey, don’t judge me.
“Misty!” I wail as I snatch the dishtowel from the counter. “Come back here and let me dry you! At least let me wipe your paws!” Yes, I realize I am attempting to rationalize with a canine, but sometimes Misty listens better than the kids do.
I find her perched on the back of the couch, playing neighborhood crime watch. She leans forward and barks, repeatedly smashing her head against the front window with fury, droplets of water flying off of her body and hitting the curtains. She’s so agitated that she actually loses her footing and slips down the couch, muddy footprints dotting the beige and rose fabric. Yeah, I know what you’re thinking…beige couch with four kids, a dog, and a cat? Amy Maxwell, you must be nuts! I am nuts. But after fourteen years of brown and navy blue furniture, I decided to throw caution to the wind a few months ago and get pretty freaking furniture. It was pretty for about twenty seven seconds. Sigh.
“Get down, Misty!” I inch closer in attempts to grab her and wrap her in the towel. This is going to be a very daring feat as Misty does not like to be picked up. She bites us if we try to hold her. I had to put oven mitts on just to put the cone around her neck the time she had fleas.
She snarls at me as I try to pick her up, squirming out of my reach, furiously barking now. Misty is extremely over protective of the house and pretty much barks at anything. A leaf falls on the next block and Misty is all over that. Having lived with this dog for over eight years now, I have come to know her barks quite well. There are barks we can ignore (kids on their way to the bus stop), barks that alert us (someone is at the door), overdramatic barks (the mailman is here! The mailman is here!), and barks that mean something sinister (Danger Will Robinson!). This is one of her danger barks.
I part the curtains and peer out the w
indow, squinting to see what she is carrying on about. And Misty is absolutely correct. Danger! Danger! Danger! What I see stops my heart cold.
Allie is standing in front of the house, hoodie pulled over her head, completely disregarding the fact that there is a monsoon outside. She has her arms wrapped around someone or something. I can’t tell who exactly because she has her back to the window and is blocking my view. But what I can tell is that this person has large hands (translation: boy hands) and they are wrapped around my daughter’s back. I can also see that Allie’s head is raised toward this person as the other person lowers their own head. Translation: she is kissing them.
Forgetting about the dog, I storm over to the front door and pull it open. I step out onto the porch, pellets of rain assaulting me. “Alice Regina Maxwell!” I scream into the rain.
She swivels toward the sound of my voice and I register the horror on her face.
I now have a good look at her kissing partner. His grubby hands are shoved deep into his pockets and his own hoodie is pulled over his head, but tufts of jet black hair peek out from underneath. His eyes are dark and stormy, and he appears like he’s on the hunt for his next snack of fresh meat to feast upon. I can tell from the looks of him that he may be one of the delinquent boys that spend a lot of time in Roger’s office at school. He reminds me of Judd Nelson’s character in The Breakfast Club.
“Mother!” Allie hisses under her breath while storming toward me. Oh, great, I’m reduced to being called Mother again. Allie knows I hate that. I feel like I’ve been shoved into the pages of some stuffy, turn of the century British novel when she calls me Mother. And not the turn of the millennial century, either.
“What are you doing home, Mother?”
What am I doing here? Um, I live here?
I must be staring at her quizzically, because she rolls her eyes. “Where’s your car? Why isn’t your car in the driveway?”
Ooo. The car. She assumed I wasn’t home because the car wasn’t in the driveway. Hey! What was she going to do if I wasn’t home?
“Get in the house,” I growl at her.
“But can’t I at least say goodbye to Fang?”
What? Is she for real? Does she seriously think I am going to let her near anyone named Fang?
“No. Fang can find his own way home.” I shove her into the house and offer hoodie boy a fake wave. “Bye bye, Fangie boy.” I step toward the house as I mutter, “I thought vampires didn’t come out at this time of day?”
“Mother! That is so wrong! It’s…well, it’s prejudiced!”
I ignore her accusations as I watch the kid lumber over to the curb where I now notice a motorcycle is parked. I glare at my daughter, who is attempting to get a glimpse of Fang over my shoulder. “A motorcycle? You better not have been on that motorcycle, Allie!” I push her into the house.
“Like you care!” Allie scoffs as she spins on her heel and stomps up the stairs. The reverberations from her steps cause a picture to bounce off the wall. The glass shatters and the frame cracks. In all fairness, it’s her fifth grade picture. I cringe as I hear her bedroom door slam.
As I am sweeping the pieces of glass into my palm, the house phone rings. “Can somebody get that?” I ask as I proceed to pick up a large shard of the glass and cut my thumb. “Ouch!” I stick my thumb in my mouth as I add with a mumble, “Check the caller ID first!”
Too late. Lexie has already snatched up the phone and is babbling into it.
Oh good, maybe it’s one of her dingleberry friends. They can talk each other’s ears off while I get myself together here. I continue to pick up the glass with one hand, needing to do it quickly before Evan gets the idea to play with the shiny pieces.
“Moooooommmm! It’s Aunt Beth!” Lexie informs me as she dances into the living room, waving the cordless phone around like she has won a Willy Wonka Golden Ticket.
“What? No! That’s impossible!” I yelp, leaping to my feet. I’ve already been tortured by Beth today. This is not fair! “Tell her I’m not home,” I attempt to mouth to my daughter, but it’s no use because she has already thrust the phone into my hand.
Ughhhhhhhhhhh! I reluctantly place the phone against my ear, expecting to be admonished by my sister because she heard what I mumbled to Lexie. Beth has supersonic hearing. I think she might have been a dog in a former life.
“Hello, Beth,” I say while gritting my teeth.
“Oh hi, Amy,” my sister remarks in a muted tone. She sounds unsure of herself. If I didn’t know better and had to gander a guess, I would even say she sounded drunk. But not happy drunk. The drunk you end up when you’ve been happy drunk and now you know you’re going to throw up in the bushes in front of your house kind of drunk. Not that I would know what that was like or anything. But at any rate, I’ve never heard Beth sound like that. Oh, except for the time she called me to tell me our Nana had died. Holy crap, did someone die?
“Is everything ok?” I ask with concern. “You’ve already torture…er, called me today.”
“Yes, yes,” Beth remarks breathlessly. “I just want to remind you about the forth.”
I wrinkle up my brow as I head over to the cabinet in the kitchen to retrieve a Band-Aid. We have to hide them from Lexie in the kitchen, otherwise she uses them all. I now see Colt trying to also sneak a snack, but I’m too distracted by my conversation with Beth to scold him.
The forth what? Did she say forth or force? Is this a Star Wars reference? Because I have no patience for Star Wars. I have no idea what she is talking about, but I can’t let on. “What about it?” I am attempting to trap the phone between my shoulder and chin while I wrap a Band-Aid around my thumb. The phone slips right and plunk! Right into the dishwater.
“God damn it! Shit! Crap!” I screech as I quickly scoop it out of the water. Since when does anyone in this house fill up a dishpan and leave it in the sink like they’re going to do dishes? Then I realize that I was the one who left the dishpan in the sink. Three days ago.
“Sorry! Sorry!” I try to dry the phone on my pant leg while muttering my apologies, even though the receiver is close to my knee. Old bat ears will probably hear it anyway.
“What in heaven’s name is going on there?” Beth remarks with a nervous chuckle.
“Nothing, I just dropped the phone,” I explain.
“Oh, well then, I guess that’s alright.” Well thank you, your majesty. “What do you need now, Beth?” I ask with one eye on the clock. Gosh darn, it’s too late to defrost the pot roast for dinner…I guess we will have to order Thai food.
“I just wanted to remind you about the forth,” she repeats. Oh yes, we’re back to that. “Don’t forget to pick Jillian up. I texted you the address and you didn’t answer me.”
Oh! The fourth! Not the forth! “Didn’t you just tell me about that a half hour ago?” Really, did she think I would forget it that quickly? Ok, so maybe I did forget, but how does she know that? Is she clairvoyant?
“Well, you were in your car if I recall. Now you’re home and you can write it on your calendar,” Beth remarks.
I stare at the dry erase calendar that is hanging precariously on the wall. Half of the appointments have been smudged off and the other half are written in such small handwriting that I may need a hieroglyphics expert to decipher them.
“I’m logging it into my head right now,” I tell her and proceed to make beeping noises for fun. Beth is not amused.
“Write it down, Amy. You can’t forget!” Her voice is nearly frantic. Geez Louise, is she for real?
“Sure thing, Beth,” I reply with a hint of snarkiness. How rude! She thinks I can’t remember to pick up her precious princess unless I write it down?
“I’ve got to go cook dinner now,” I lie while depressing the end button. I can still hear her shouting something indecipherable at me. I’m quite certain that she’s telling me to write it down.
~Five~
“Hey! Amy, wait up!” I hear River calling from behind me. We have just left
Jerk, er, Cummings’ class after one of his routine pop quizzes. Well, I guess it’s not a pop quiz if it’s routine, but…oh, never mind. I have a lot on my mind today and Cummings’ quiz was not number one.
I reluctantly stop and allow River to catch up. It seems like everywhere I go, River isn’t too far behind these days. Maybe it’s my own imagination, but I thought I even saw him skulking around the grocery story last Tuesday when I was there. I am starting to wonder if he has friends his own age. He’s a good 200 yards behind me, jogging to catch up.
“Whoa, do you do speed walking or something?”
“Like at the mall with the rest of the old people?” I manage to snap as I run my hands through my tangled hair.
“Uh, no,” River steps back as if I have slapped him clear across his face. “That’s not what I meant. You’re not-”
I hold my hand up and shake my head. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you. I’m just…frustrated. I don’t think I did very well on that quiz. Actually, I’m pretty sure I failed.” I rub my temples. “I apologize. I should not have taken it out on you.”
“It’s okay,” River tells me with a shrug of his shoulders.
“No, it’s not. It’s not your fault that I’m a moron and I don’t know why I even signed up to do this in the first place…”
“You’re not a moron,” River interrupts. “That quiz was hard.”
“Not for you,” I scoff as I pull my book bag strap up onto my shoulder. “I’m sure you aced it as usual.”
River turns a little pink and offers me a half shrug. “I did alright.”
“Exactly. I don’t belong here with smart kids like you,” I tell him as I turn to head back to my car.
“Wait!” I feel River’s hand on my shoulder. “The reason I was chasing after you was I wanted to know if you wanted to come with me to my dorm.”
Amy Maxwell & the 7 Deadly Sins (The Amy Maxwell Series Book 2) Page 6
