The following day was Friday. I must have been in a deep sleep, because when the morning alarm went off at its usual 5:30 AM, it felt like a bucket of cold water being dropped on me. I woke so violently that I woke Jenny, who normally slept peacefully through my alarm.
“Whaaaaat?” she moaned groggily.
I sat for a moment in bed, the klaxon call of the alarm growing steadily louder in our dark room, trying to catch my breath and slow my heart down. I had been dreaming. Running, I think, down a dark hallway, and being chased by shadowy figures with sharp teeth and sharper knives.
“Alan,” Jenny groaned, pushing me in the small of my back. “Get up.”
I did, dragging myself over to the dresser just long enough to switch off the alarm before flopping myself back down on the bed.
“Alan,” Jenny said again, rolling her pregnant belly over so she could face me. “Get up. You have to go to work.”
“I don’t want to,” I said. “Not today. I’m going to call in sick.”
Jenny seemed instantly awake. “Are you sick?” She reached out a motherly hand and felt my forehead for a fever.
“I’m sick, all right,” I said. “Sick of that fucking place.”
Jenny knew all about Gerald’s attempted coup, my role in it, and the fallout that I would now have to deal with. We had talked about it at length, Jenny pulling the details and confessions out of me like an experienced prosecutor. She was more committed than ever to getting me out of that place, and had been sending my resume to even the less attractive listings in the newspaper. She was still hopeful about Quest Partners, but, like me, was growing worried that I hadn’t heard from Steve Anderson or his assistant.
“Have you ever called in sick before?” she asked me, a tinge of hopefulness in her voice.
“Not that I can remember,” I said. “But I really feel like doing it today.”
“If you stay home,” Jenny said, “you can come with me to my well baby checkup. Help your fat, pregnant wife out of the car. See the latest ultrasound.”
That was all it took to decide it. In a moment my cell phone was in my hand and I was placing a call to Ruthie’s direct line -- the company-approved method for calling in sick. Checking the clock to make sure it wasn’t a time that Ruthie might be at her desk, I waited for her voicemail to pick up and then left a short and appropriate message. I’m sick. I won’t be in today.
That task completed Jenny actually gave me a kiss on my unshaven cheek. “Come on,” she said. “You can make us breakfast while I get in the shower. We have to be there by nine o’clock.”
Having just looked at the clock I knew that was more than three hours away, but I also knew that that would be calling it close. The clinic was only a few minutes from our home, but there was a lot that would need to be accomplished and organized before we could leave. Even still, I waited until Jenny was in the bathroom and I heard the water running before I even got out of bed. Making breakfast now would just mean a cold breakfast by the time she got herself dressed, so I went down the hall and peeked in on Jacob.
He was sleeping soundly -- a tuft of hair on his pillow and a pudgy calf and bare foot sticking out from under his blanket. I left his bedroom door open, expecting the noise of the house to wake him gradually in the next half hour or so, and went downstairs to use the second bathroom and start putting some things in order for everyone’s breakfast.
I didn’t feel the least bit guilty about calling in sick. Rather, I felt liberated, as if some heavy burden had been lifted from my shoulders. I suddenly decided that I was going to make the best breakfast ever, even pulling a package of bacon out of the freezer and getting the microwave working on defrosting it while prepping the other things I would need for both scrambled eggs and French toast. Jenny liked a little cinnamon on her toast, I knew, and I decided to include some of that even though I didn’t care for it. This breakfast was not about me. It was about her, my wife, my soulmate, the mother of my children. Cinnamon French toast with raspberries and warm maple syrup -- it would be like that bed and breakfast we had once stayed in, long before Jacob was born, before everything -- and I would act like it was no big deal, like it was everyday. Here you are, darling. Can I get you anything else?
Jacob was down first, trailing his baby blanket on the floor behind him and rubbing his eyes with a balled-up fist. “Daddy,” he said. “What are you doing?”
He wasn’t used to seeing me, I knew. I was usually up and gone to work before he even got out of bed in the morning, but now the noise of my bustle in the kitchen must have brought him disoriented to my door. I saw that his sleep diaper was full and sagging under his pajama pants. Everything was prepped but nothing had started cooking yet, so it was easy for SuperDad to wipe his hands on a towel, scoop his son up in his arms, and carry him back upstairs to get him changed and ready for the day. On our way past the bathroom door we heard the shower shut off and the shower door slide open. I told Jacob that I was making a special breakfast for Mommy and that he could help me with the fruit salad.
In a flash we were back downstairs and Jacob was sitting in a corner of the kitchen where I could keep an eye on him, carefully plucking grapes off their stems and dropping them into a bowl, while I started pouring the egg mixture into a pan.
Jenny suddenly appeared at the door in her bathrobe and with her hair wrapped in a towel. “Oh my goodness,” she said, feigning surprise. “What’s going on here?”
“We’re making breakfast!” Jacob proclaimed proudly, smiling with his cheeks stuffed with some of the grapes that were supposed to be going into the bowl.
“Indeed you are,” she said, as she came over and gave me another kiss on the cheek. “And what a breakfast! Is that bacon I’m smelling?”
“It sure is. Bacon and eggs and French toast -- just the way you like them, dear.”
“Well, I’d better go get dressed,” Jenny said. “And Jacob,” she said as she shuffled out on slippered feet, “save some of the grapes for the fruit salad.”
When everything was ready, I called up the stairs to let Jenny know. I could hear the blow dryer going so I had to shout in order to be heard over it.
“Okay!” Jenny called out. “I’ll be down in a minute!”
I got Jacob strapped into his booster seat and put his bowl of fruit in front of him as I retreated back into the kitchen in order to serve the plates and bring them to the table. In no time at all we were all around our small dining room table, enjoying the feast I had created, Jenny still in her bathrobe but with her hair dried and appropriately tousled.
“Fantastic!” she said, as she lifted her wine glass filled with orange juice and toasted me. “I think you should stay home from work more often.”
We ate in comfortable silence, Jenny encouraging Jacob to try some of the new-to-him things that I had made and Jacob firmly refusing. When she was done eating, I got up and started clearing the plates.
“Oh, I’ll do the dishes,” Jenny said.
“No,” I told her, looking pointedly at her bathrobe. “I’ll do them. You go get Jacob and yourself ready for the appointment.”
“Aren’t you going to shower?” she asked, a little bit of horror creeping into her voice.
I looked at the clock. It was a little past seven-thirty. “I’ve got time,” I told her. “I only need fifteen minutes to shower and get ready.”
She looked at me a little suspiciously, but accepted it, knowing that it was probably true. “Okay,” she said, rubbing me on the back. “Thanks for the wonderful breakfast.”
Truth be told, doing the dishes never took me as long as it took Jenny. She claimed I didn’t do them “right,” assuming, of course, that “her” way of doing dishes was the only “right” way of doing dishes. The same could be said about any other household chore she assigned, be it cleaning the bathroom or vacuuming the floors. Jenny both insisted that I help her with these chores -- which I did -- and she insisted that I didn’t do them “right.” As if there were a right way and a wrong way to vacuum a rug. What Jenny of course meant by the right way was her way.
I made short order of the dishes, making sure to hang the kitchen towels up just the way Jenny liked them, and then headed upstairs to take my shower and get ready. Jenny was still in her bathrobe, perched on the edge of our bed with a makeup mirror propped up on top of a pile of books on top of my nightstand. She pushed her eyelashes up with a mascara brush as she told me to get in the shower. Jacob’s bag was already packed and we needed to be out the door in twenty minutes.
When I came out of the bathroom a few minutes later with wet hair and a towel wrapped around my waist, Jenny told me that my phone had been ringing while I had been in the shower. I shouldn’t have, but without thinking I scooped it up and looked at its little screen.
“It’s work,” I said, recognizing the caller ID. “Someone from the office was trying to reach me.”
“You’re sick today,” Jenny said, standing up and shrugging herself out of her bathrobe. Underneath she was only wearing her bra and panties, her enormous belly exposed and glistening with the lotion she had recently applied.
“You’re right,” I said, putting the phone back down. “I went back to sleep after leaving the message for Ruthie. And I turned my phone off so I wouldn’t be disturbed.”
“I swear, your honor,” she said, beginning to slather her armpits with deodorant.
“Mommy!” Jacob suddenly cried, barreling into our bedroom like a forgotten and out-of-control freight train. He rushed at Jenny and wrapped himself around her bare legs, almost knocking her over.
“OH MY GOD!” Jenny practically screamed. “Alan, get him out of here!”
I rushed over to extract Jacob as ordered, knowing that I had committed one of the greatest domestic crimes there was in our household -- leaving our bedroom door open while Jenny was getting dressed. Ever since Jacob learned how to crawl, Jenny had made it very clear that there was nothing more important than keeping the bedroom door closed while she was getting dressed. As I struggled to pull Jacob away, I could feel the towel around my waist begin to loosen, and my efforts were hampered by my own need to keep one hand on it to keep it from falling away.
“Mommy!” Jacob was crying. “Mommy! Mommy!”
Jenny, for her part, was able to move closer to the bed and sit down, which both kept her from falling over and gave me the additional leverage I needed to finally pull Jacob away. Hooking him under one arm like a football and keeping my other hand on the knot of my towel, I carried him out of our room and into his. As soon as I left the master bedroom the door slammed shut behind me.
“Mommy!” Jacob continued to cry, but he wasn’t writhing like he would have been had this been a full-blown tantrum.
In his room I put him down on his bed and took the necessary moment to re-secure the towel around my waist. “Jacob!” I said. “What is the matter with you? What do you want?”
“I want Mommy!” he said, looking up at me defiantly.
“Well, Mommy is getting dressed,” I said. “And I need to get dressed, too. We’re going to Mommy’s doctor today.”
Jacob crossed his arms and started to pout. “I don’t want to go to Mommy’s doctor,” he said. “I want to stay home and play with my trains.”
“We can play with your trains later,” I said, doing the best I could to not lose my temper and to reason with this unreasonable creature. “The doctor is going to take a picture of your baby sister in Mommy’s tummy. Don’t you want to see a picture of your baby sister?”
“No!” Jacob cried, kicking his feet out and rumpling his blankets. “I want to stay home and play with my trains!”
I shook my head. “Well, we can do that later. In a few minutes we’re leaving for Mommy’s doctor, and you’re going to come along.”
“No, I’m not!” Jacob said, his voice threatening the darkest violence.
I’m not sure what would’ve happened next had Jenny not appeared behind me.
“Mommy!” Jacob cried, seeing her and extending his arms toward her.
She moved around me, now dressed in a pair of stretch pants and a fleecy maternity tunic, and confidently told me to go get dressed. She sat down on the bed next to Jacob and wrapped him in a tender embrace. He clutched her desperately, pressing his face into the soft fabric of her top.
“It’s okay, honey,” she said soothingly to him. “Mommy’s here now. Mommy’s here.”
I shook my head, not really understanding the why and how of anything that had happened that morning, nor what any of it might portend for the future, and left the room.
+ + +
“Dragons” is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. For more information, go here.
This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.
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