Hello everyone, this is Brad. Paige was kind enough to let me write for her little blog here. Here’s a story I’ve been working on for a while.
By the time I’d scrambled almost a whole carton of eggs, toasted and buttered half a loaf of bread, and fried a package of bacon, my husband finally stumbled groggily into the steaming kitchen. His newspaper, which I’d fetched from the front porch, slapped down on the table while he poured himself a cup of coffee that’d been warming on the burner for about an hour now. Just as I placed a plate of breakfast on the table in front of him, a massive cacophony of screaming, door-slamming, and fist-pounding. I jogged upstairs to find two of my kids, Jordan and Bailey, pounding desperately on the bathroom door.
“Sydney’s been in there for like an hour!” Bailey whined, crossing her arms over her High School Musical pajama top and huffing out one of those classic adolescent sighs.
“I’m almost done!” a muffled scream called out from the bathroom. “Just give me a couple more minutes!”
“First off,” I began, “I know for a fact that none of you have been up for an hour, and second off, just be patient.”
“Moooommmmmm,” cried Jordan, clutching his crotch, “why does this house have only one bathroom? Sydney and Bailey just hog it all the time. I really have to go!” He did this little hopping dance that young boys love to do when they have to go to the bathroom.
I knocked on the door just as the handle turned. A cloud of steam drifted out, and along with it a haze of hairspray and cheap department-store perfume. A screaming fit erupted between the children, which I figured I’d let them work out on their own. I went back downstairs and finished putting out plates for them on the table. My husband stayed absorbed in the paper.
“Hey, Anna, just letting you know,” he said, pausing to take a quick nibble from his toast, “I’m going with the guys from work to The Elbow Room tonight to watch the game. Do you think you’ll be able to pick up Sydney from volleyball practice?”
“I thought her practice was cancelled tonight,” I responded.
“No, that’s next Tuesday. Or at least that’s what she told me last night.”
“Well, what time are you going?”
“Right after work.”
“Would you be able to pick up Jordan from piano then? It’s right on your way.”
“I’m going right after work, I don’t think so.”
“Joel, come on, we have this argument every time you want to do something like this. Please, just run him home, bring him to a friend’s house, I don’t really care. It’s on your way.”
“Why are you suddenly so busy you can’t do it yourself?”
“Because I have to pick up Jordan from school and take him to his lesson, then go pick up Bailey and take her over to her Rachel’s so they can work on their science project, or something, and at some point I have to go pick up dinner, and we all have to eat it – together, you included.”
“Why don’t you ever cook dinner anymore? You always bring home that take-out stuff. It’s starting to get a little old.”
I didn’t fault him on his infuriating circular logic, but instead responded, “I’ll fix whatever you want tonight if you just go pick up Jordan.”
He got up and straightened his tie. “Grill up some t-bones,” he whispered in my ear, “and I’ll pick up all the kids for a month.”
With that, he pecked me on the cheek and I ran a hand along his shoulder. Just as I watched his sedan pull out of the driveway, the air filled with the thumping of the kids clambering down the stairs. Per the norm, chaos erupted with the children attempting to shovel as much food as humanly possible into their mouths in as little time as possible. Sydney dropped her fork first; it clattered against the plate, like a bell reminding the other children that she’d beaten them. She was just in time to run out to her bus to the middle school.
Before sprinting out the door, she asked, “Are you picking me up from volleyball tonight or is dad?”
“I am,” I responded, hesitantly. “At least I think I am.” I trailed off.
The other two kids were still plowing away at their breakfast plates, competing to see who could clean their plate the fastest. Bailey won, slamming her fork down to the table triumphantly before scampering out of the kitchen. Jordan was soon hot on her tail, chasing her through the living room.
“Hey guys,” I called out to them, “the bus will be here soon, are you ready to go?” I got no answer, so I sat down in the kitchen and had a cup of coffee. It wasn’t very good. Looking over the newspaper that Joel had left on the table, I noticed in the entertainment section that Hannah Montana was starting a new concert tour, and would be in our city in a few months. I made sure to throw it away before the kids saw it, although I was sure that they’d find out one way or another and make me drag them to see it.
The sounds of screams and feet-pattering amplified as Jordan and Bailey tore through the kitchen, whipped around the table, and then ran back into the living room. Without dropping the paper or coffee, I yelled, “You’re going to be late!” With that, they dashed to the front door, backpacks in tow. The bus coughed up to the door, and the kids split as soon as I could get the door open.
“Have a good day!” I called out, but they didn’t notice.
Before I even had a chance to start going stir-crazy in the house, I decided to pick up stuff for dinner at the grocery store. The place was surprisingly packed for nine o’clock in the morning. I wandered down the aisles, not searching for anything specific, just gazing deep into the heart of rampant, necessity-based consumerism; all of our suburbanite woes answered in increments of two for five dollars, buy one get one free, save fifty cents by joining our club. Here I was buying love by the pound, standing there at the meat cooler like some horrendous peep show. I picked up a package of t-bone steaks. I ran my finger along the cool cellophane, edging along the bone. I poked into its firm flesh and watched the watery blood – or maybe it was bloody water – ooze out from its pores and fill up its little styrofoam casket.
The cars rushed past along in their little circadian parade on the six-lane road outside the grocery store. I watched them, slightly envious of that overarching cyclical control they had in their lives. I secretly wanted to be a perky little secretary behind a big oaken desk plastered with photos of my children, swiveling around in my big padded chair with the little lever that went up and down underneath and startled me every time I leaned too far back and felt like I was going to fall. I could almost feel my hair falling gently over my shoulders as I released my tight chignon and whipped my glasses across the supply closet as my beet-red, sweaty, horny, sixty-something, overweight, gray-haired, cheap-suit-wearing boss thrust his tiny, half-flaccid member up my short pleated skirt. I could hear him wheezing as he thrust into me and my back slamming some filing cabinet against the wall. I could feel his stubble scraping my cheek, his clamoring hands groping me like an octopus, squeezing my breasts like tubes of toothpaste as I clawed into his back.
A car pulled out to make a right turn too soon, and another coming from his left smashed into the front end, shattering the headlight, the offending vehicle wrapping its fender around the front corner of the other. Airbags burst open, windows crashed to tiny glass pebbles, drivers whipped around, and a vicious sound filled the air. The sound was soon replaced by that of a chorus of honking horns of drivers too impatient to ignore the damaged vehicles in the middle of the road, the drivers of which had proceeded to begin a shouting match. No one was dead, nothing was in flames, therefore this accident was nothing but an inconvenience for everyone involved.
At home, I put the groceries in the fridge and slumped into the overstuffed recliner in the living room. Joel would kill me if he ever figured out I sat in his throne of chauvinism while he was out. I flipped on the television, which was tuned to home shopping for whatever reason. I watched some fifty-year-old women shill bad sweaters for roughly half an hour, and began to develop Stockholm syndrome. The more I watched, the more I became transfixed with these gaudy fashion abominations. Perhaps it was the grating, incessant voices of the hostesses, or perhaps the flashy, tessellating patterns hypnotized me, but I had this uncontrollable urge to whip out my credit card and dial up the 1-800.
At this point, I realized I’d become the most stereotypical housewife in history. Is this what I’d become? So complacent, such banal feminine figure, willing to buy into the collective desires of those with less willpower and taste than me. Is this what those first-wave feminists fought for? Did they march on Seneca Falls, bras aflame, for us women to enslave ourselves to our commercialized, societal-based fever visions of true female equality? What would Susan B. Anthony say?
I sat on that thought for a minute, trying to remember exactly what Susan B. Anthony did. The only thing I could think of was that there used to be a dollar coin with her face on it. I kept trying to use them to buy Diet Coke from vending machines thinking they were quarters.
-brad
