Courting Mrs. McCarthy

by Ian Thomas Malone

  April looked either impatient or mischievous. Nathan couldn’t be sure.

  “Well?” she said obnoxiously.

  He was deep in thought and growing displeasured with the constant nagging of the girl in his care. “Hang on. I’m thinking. There is hardly much to work with.” He mixed the possibilities together as if he was playing a game of Tetris. The bacon was his only meat and the pasta was pretty much the only thing to work with in the summer. Soup was both lazy and sort of inappropriate for warm weather. He didn’t think that was a good way to get himself invited back to the McCarthy home.

  “I know,” he said, as an idea sprung into his head. “What about linguini carbonara?”

  “What’s that?” she asked. “Sounds gross.”

  Nathan laughed. “It’s basically pasta with butter and bacon. Though we’ll have to use spaghetti, not to worry. If it fails, I’ll order out.”

  April looked puzzled. Not wanting to see his idea left solely in the hands of a difficult young girl, Nathan yelled into the TV room. “Hey, Randall, do you like bacon?”

  He was met with a loud, “Yessss.”

  “Does Tiffany?” he asked April. The third child had become a bit of an afterthought.

  “I think so,” she replied. “I don’t really care if she doesn’t.”

  “Good. Do you want to help me?”

  She grinned.

  Chapter 10

  April was about as much help as one might expect from a child, but Nathan didn’t mind. She was happy to be of any assistance while her brother watched TV and her sister was in her room. He had not spoken to Tiffany yet, and Randall was preoccupied with a show that Nathan had never seen. He knew not to unnecessarily disturb either. He was at least sort of fulfilling his duties as a babysitter.

  Nathan pulled up a recipe for spaghetti carbonara on his phone to avoid any major blunders. The recipe called for heavy cream, but whole milk was going to have to do. Nathan put slightly less of it in to try and make up for that. String cheese was the only mozzarella available, so that was going to have to work as well. This wasn’t Top Chef, so Nathan wasn’t too worried about these minor substitutions.

  The meal was peculiarly easy to prepare. When Nathan had made it in cooking class, it felt a lot slower but many of his classmates insisted on taking notes throughout the whole process. He wondered what his teacher would say if she could see him now, preparing food for strangers, confident and collected. He even put on an apron on that he found in a drawer.

  The meal took a little less than half an hour to make. The recipe said that it would take fifteen minutes, but Nathan thought that was a bit unrealistic given his caution. He also kept the bacon away from the sauce until it was all in one big pot.

  “Go get your siblings,” he said to April while he looked for serving utensils. He used this opportunity to grate up the string cheese while no one was around to notice his improvising. He wasn’t sure how it was going to taste, but he was pleased with himself.

  “Wow, that smells good,” Tiffany said, as she walked in bearing the shock that food was being prepared in their home. She was only ten, and had not reached the age where girls became annoying as his aunt often feared for her own daughters. This surprised Nathan a bit since she was also the daughter of a somewhat celebrity, but he was grateful that she was not a nuisance.

  The combination of butter and bacon had filled the whole house. Nathan had forgotten to open any windows, but thankfully nothing had burned. It was a very satisfying scent to anyone who was not a vegan.

  April was the first to dig into her meal. Nathan was pleased there had been no hesitation before the first bite. The sauce was a bit soupier than he would have liked, but it wasn’t a bad effort at all. He couldn’t tell if the kids liked it because it was home cooked or if they’d never had it before, but he didn’t care.

  “This would go really well with a Bordeaux,” Nathan said, in an ill-fated attempt at humor that would’ve gone over well at his cooking class.

  “What’s that?” Tiffany asked.

  “It’s a wine. I made a fancy joke, pardon me.” Nathan still hadn’t mastered talking to children.

  “Where’s the bread,” Randall asked. “We always get bread when we go out to eat.”

  April was annoyed by this and said, “Randy, don’t be rude. This isn’t a restaurant.”

  Nathan thought quickly to diffuse the situation. “Not to worry, I’ll get you some.” He went to the cupboard to retrieve the bread he’d seen earlier. “This isn’t the kind you’d get at a restaurant, but if you soak it in the sauce it’ll taste real good,” he said, as he handed Randall a slice of white bread. Nathan wasn’t certain, but he guessed the boy was around five, and did not understand that you didn’t really need bread if you had pasta, but he at least he was behaving well.

  When they were finished with their food, Randall got up and returned to the TV. This once again irked his sister, and April said, “Randall, we’re not at a restaurant. You need to put your plate away.”

  Nathan grabbed it instead, and said, “That’s okay. I’ll take care of it.” He was thankful enough that dinner had gone well, so he wasn’t as concerned with their manners.

  Their dishwasher was filled with clean dishes, so Nathan put them away and put the dirty dishes from the sink into the dishwasher. He thought about Jackie again and wondered what she did with her spare time if she didn’t cook or clean. Her seeming immaturity attracted him to her once again, but being in the presence of her children made him feel guilty for his thoughts.

  It was a little after seven by the time dinner was cleared up. No instructions had been given on bedtime protocol. Jackie had not told him anything except to order food, which he had already ignored. It was a school night for him, but not for these West Coast private school children. Nevertheless, none were old enough not to have a bedtime. Nathan got the idea that Jackie wasn’t a stickler about bedtimes.

  “Hey, April, what time do you guys usually go to bed?” he asked.

  She was unable to hide the mischievous smile that came from being asked a question, which gave her some control. “In a couple hours,” she replied with a smirk.

  Nathan laughed. “Yeah, maybe on West Coast time. “Half an hour for your brother and an hour for you,” he said as firmly as he could muster. Even though Tiffany was ten, he struggled with the idea of telling the oldest of the children that she had a bedtime.

  He sat down with April and Randall to watch some TV. The Disney Channel might have bothered someone else his age, but his cousins watched it enough for Nathan to know how to brace himself. The Suite Life of Zach and Cody was no issue to him, though he struggled to understand why anyone would find it humorous.

  His phone vibrated, showing a text message from Griffin.

  What are you up to?

  He chose not to tell him the truth.

  Can’t hang out, studying.

  Griffin replied by calling him lame. He stopped to think for a second about his decision to lie to his best friend for no real reason. He didn’t really consider it lying since he would in fact study later, but it was far from the full truth.

  This was the second time in a week where Nathan had withheld information from Griffin. He said nothing of his break-up with Sarah even though word could easily reach him. It was less likely that he would find out about babysitting, but Nathan still felt uneasy that these decisions were coming to him with such ease. For someone who didn’t like to lie, he was doing it at an alarming rate.

  After a few episodes of mindless television, Nathan told Randall that it was time for bed, forgetting about his bedtime ultimatum. He didn’t object, which showed Nathan that he had guessed the timeframe reasonably well. Thankfully Randall did not ask for a story. He did not appear to have many books in his room.

  Nathan returned to the TV room to sit with April. He wondered if he should ask Tiffany to join them, but he decided not to disturb her. He imagined that he wouldn’t have wanted to be disturbed by a babysi
tter if he was her age either.

  April seemed happy to have him back in the room. “Do you have a girlfriend?” she asked suddenly.

  Nathan was taken aback by the question, but her forwardness caused his reservations to dissipate. “No. I did, but we broke up last week.”

  This drew April’s interested. Nathan had forgotten how much kids loved drama. “Oooh,” she said. “What was her name, and why did you guys break up? Did she dump you?”

  Nathan laughed. His cousins had never taken an interest in his love life and he was slightly amazed by how intrigued April was. “Her name is Sarah, and I’m not really sure. It was kind of mutual. These things happen,” he added, not really aware of how philosophical that might sound to an eight-year-old.

  April maintained a keen interest. “Were you in love?”

  Nathan laughed again, though it sounded more defensive than the last one. He had just realized that she was the first person he had talked to about his break-up with Sarah, and he’d done it with such ease. He had second thoughts about his decision to keep the information from Griffin and Mrs. Buchanan.

  “No. Teenagers don’t fall in love.” He realized how pessimistic that sounded and added, “Well, not me at least. There will be plenty of time for love later on.” April seemed skeptical, but Nathan got her to drop it by mentioning that their show was back on. He wasn’t sure if April qualified as a peculiar child or not.

  When nine-thirty rolled around, Nathan forced April to go to bed. She didn’t want to at all, but he needed to study and was getting sick of the Disney Channel. As he wished her good night, he walked by Tiffany’s room and told her that if she was going to stay up, she should refrain from making noise so that her siblings wouldn’t get jealous. He wasn’t sure why she should get preferential treatment, but he wasn’t feeling the desire to be more authoritative.

  He didn’t bother to make sure there was no noise coming out of the bedrooms. Nathan’s aunt often berated him for letting his cousins stay up late, but he wasn’t too worried about the McCarthys. He wanted to watch TV, but he made the responsible decision to get some studying in before finals. The weekend was not likely to have anything major going on, but he wanted to spend some time with Griffin, and at the library with Mrs. Buchanan.

  The McCarthy household made for a pretty decent study place. He didn’t text Griffin out of guilt and didn’t have his phone constantly buzzing from Sarah anymore, which gave him a newfound desire to actually put some effort into his studies in the house that belonged to the actual woman of his dreams.

  Much like his varied interests outside of school, Nathan was a pretty well-rounded student. His grades were never phenomenal, but there was no subject that he was downright awful in either. His guidance counselor always told him that he could do better in school, but Nathan did not have much of a desire to push himself farther in his schoolwork.

  He was buried deep in pre-calculus when Jacqueline McCarthy came through the door at fifteen minutes after midnight. This was a bit late for someone to be out on a school night, but Nathan was not tired or annoyed by her late arrival. Jackie, on the other hand, felt awful.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry I’m late, Nathan. I kept trying to leave but people kept handing me drinks. Ugh, that’s no excuse.” Her tone matched the teenage girl Nathan pictured who would say such a thing. He picked up two distinct scents from across the room. One was her perfume, which could only be described as “expensive smelling.” The other scent was of tequila. His crush was drunk.

  Mrs. McCarthy also picked up on something. “It smells good in here. What did you guys order?” she asked, ignoring any reply Nathan could provide for her apology in favor of the lingering carbonara smell. He had grown used to the smell and had opened no windows.

  “Oh, I made pasta. Spaghetti carbonara, taking a few liberties with what was available.”

  Jackie had the same puzzled yet intrigued look he had seen on her daughter earlier in the night. “You cooked an Italian dinner?”

  Nathan smiled. “It wasn’t that hard. Pasta is easy and the sauce wasn’t too difficult,” he replied, trying to sound modest but also avoiding selling himself short on this minor yet noteworthy achievement.

  “Is there any left? I’m starving.”

  Nathan recognized this as the drunken hunger that often plagued kids his age. He was not surprised to see that adults suffered the same ailments when intoxicated.

  “I’m so sorry. We finished it all. If I knew you’d be hungry, I would have saved some,” he said. He laughed at how he had taken on the role of the adult in the conversation. Jackie appeared to be thinking to herself, but Nathan wasn’t so sure, and he added, “I could make something another time.”

  This snapped her out of her dazed and confused state. “I’d really like that. It’s a date.”

  Jesus Christ, Nathan thought to himself. Things had just gotten a little interesting and potentially a lot more awkward. A blind person would be able to tell how drunk this woman was just based of the smell of her, but that didn’t affect the way Nathan felt about what she had just said to him.

  “That sounds nice,” he said, wishing to tread lightly after the bombshell that had just exploded. He could probably make a move on her if he was bold, but that wouldn’t be the right thing to do. “I think I should get going. Goodnight,” he said, as he made a break for the door. He didn’t worry about asking for money. He’d see her soon enough, and she wasn’t in the best position to hand out money anyway.

  As he was leaving the McCarthy residence, a voice across the street called out to him. “Nathan, is that you?” The voice belonged to Mrs. Corinne Kalford, a member of Seers Point and a noted gossip. She was about as close to an informant as one could find in his town and she frequently reported on Nathan’s whereabouts to his aunt, who didn’t exactly enjoy the information. She knew anything worth knowing in the town of Roxburgh.

  “Yes,” Nathan replied, who did not wish to engage her in conversation.

  “It’s late. Are you babysitting?”

  “I was, yes. I have school tomorrow and I must be going. Good night,” he said in a similar abrupt manner to his departure. It was too late and he was too hazy minded to deal with her. He also wasn’t sure she hadn’t been spying on him for a while. He wouldn’t put it past her.

  Nathan thought of nothing but those three words, “It’s a date,” for the whole ride home and a good portion of the night. Thankfully no one was awake when he got home. The shell shock had not worn off.

  Sleep was elusive that night. He was afraid to go to sleep for fear of having another dream about Jackie, which was hardly a ridiculous notion. He had written the first dream off as merely chance before, but the way things were unfolding left him in a very uncomfortable position.

  The dream on its own meant nothing considering his conflicting lingering emotions for Sarah. Being asked to babysit was just a matter of being in the right place and the right time. Her words that night could also be written off as the byproduct of tequila and loneliness.

  But all three of them together over the course of a week? They couldn’t all be ignored. Nathan wasn’t ready to count fate out on this one. He could tell himself to let it go, but that wasn’t going to happen and he felt like something was telling him not to.

  The thing that really had him all tied up was a rather obvious fact that was swept under the carpet in fantasy land, but was the first huge and perhaps immovable roadblock. Jackie had three kids and he now knew their names and faces. The husband part wasn’t as much of an issue given the whole out of sight out of mind mentality, and had Nathan known about their marital troubles, he would’ve considered it more of a moot point.

  He found himself in a state or moral disgust with himself. Were the feelings left over from Sarah or was it more than that? He tried his best to shake his lustful feelings toward the woman whose children he had babysat for. Children he cooked dinner for and watched TV with. The whole thing felt wrong, but also in a weird way it felt oddly r
ight.

  He tried to think of other things, but those feelings weren’t going away, like fate was moving him closer to this woman. He thought of Mrs. Buchanan’s advice not to act on impulsive feelings, but to wait them out. He would have a sign soon enough from her if she was serious about wanting him to cook for her. He told himself that it was okay as long as Jackie made the first move. The ball was no longer in his hands.

  This method of thinking slowly allowed him to fall asleep.

  Chapter 11

  School was a nightmare the next day. The last day of classes meant that nearly everyone was in a state of impatience for the day to be over, but none as much as Nathan. He felt hung over despite not having anything alcoholic to drink. His fatigue was worse than he could ever expect from a night of simple, yet troubled sleep.

  When he finally managed to fall asleep, he ended up oversleeping as he’d forgotten to set an alarm and slept through Griffin’s numerous wake up texts. He had also missed out on an invitation to wake-and-bake with Griffin, who looked amused as he sat across from him in the cafeteria.

  “You look like shit,” Griffin observed. He was eating a cinnamon roll without a care in the world. The cafeteria was full of students freaking out over the end of the year even though finals were a few days away. Nathan was not really in the mood to talk.

  “Late night studying,” he replied. This was a half lie, as he had been studying his future prospects with Jackie.

  Griffin seemed skeptical, but he didn’t linger on Nathan’s reply. “I don’t remember you being such a scholar. Anyway, one of Ralph’s friends who goes to boarding school is having a party tonight, are you in?” He said it without making it sound like a question.

  Nathan showed no signs of enthusiasm for this invitation. One of the few saving graces for him that morning was the idea that he could sleep it off later in the day. He had not been expecting a party the weekend before finals.