Tonight was different from the other times Wes has stayed with us. I kept imagining him as my own little boy, with us not for a few hours, but for a lifetime.
As the evening progressed, I tallied in my head all the wonderful—and not-so-wonderful—aspects of being a parent. Clearly there are glorious things about having a child.
1) The way a baby smells after a bath—soap, lotion, powder and that natural fragrance of sweet breath and fresh skin.
2) Baby toes.
3) Baby kisses.
4) Watching him suck his thumb as he soothes himself to sleep.
5) The kittenlike snore that reminds me of a purr and signals he’s no longer messing with my mind and is really, truly, asleep.
6) Pink, full lips relaxed in an innocent smile.
7) The comical way Wesley holds my face in his and turns it toward his own when he wants my attention.
8) Long, fine eyelashes that delicately fringe sleepy eyes.
There are, however, some not-so-blissful things about having a little one around, too.
1) The way a baby smells after depositing a large treasure in his training pants.
2) Baby toes—when they are uncovered because said baby has flushed his shoes down the toilet.
3) Baby kisses—when they are open-mouthed and that same mouth has recently been eating smoked oysters and crackers.
4) Watching him suck his thumb, biding his time, waiting for me to turn my back on him so he can wreak more havoc in my household.
5) The strange sounds children make in their sleep—the snuffles and grunts that make me leap to my feet to check on said child every few minutes.
6) Full, rosy lips screwed up into a pout.
7) The way a child can manage a vise grip on your face so tight that it feels like he might screw your head off to get your attention.
8) Long, fine lashes through which he can turn a glare into a full-scale emotional assault. With a look, Wesley can make me feel guilty for everything I’ve ever done to him, including administering vitamins, combing his hair, stopping him from putting his finger in a light socket and preventing him from pulling off my cat’s tail without anesthetic.
9) Potty training—and little boys with very bad aim.
10) Stubborn refusal to wear “big boy” pull-ups to bed. Changing bedding. Twice. In three hours…
Sometimes it’s best not to record everything in one’s journal. It makes reality too clear and, well, too much of a reality.
Chase, of course, loved every minute of the evening—me getting soaked when Wesley splashed in the bathtub; me standing on my head trying to get him to eat green peas; me setting off a crying jag by suggesting that Wesley might sleep better if his pajamas weren’t on backward.
It appears that as long as I serve smoked oysters with crackers to them as they sit on the couch watching men in ridiculous outfits try to injure each other over a bit of pigskin and a pumpful of air, everything will be fine. Maybe it’s a guy thing, but Chase came down on Wesley’s side of every issue.
About toilet training: “Little boys need the practice. Don’t worry, the floor can be washed.” By who, I wonder?
About flushing: “I’m sure Kim and Kurt have lots of other shoes he can wear.”
About pet care: “Don’t worry, Scram will grow another tail.”
“Chase, are you going to be one of those indulgent fathers who thinks everything his son does is cute?”
“It will be, won’t it?”
“What if your daughter decides it’s okay to pee on the floor, flush her shoes down the toilet, eat oysters and burp?”
He thought about it for a moment before answering. Then he glanced at me hopefully. “Then I won’t have to worry about guys flocking to our door asking her out on dates before she’s ready.”
Before she’s thirty, you mean.
Chapter Three
Wednesday, March 3
To whom it may concern:
To the owner of the leaking Ziploc bag that at one time may have contained a sandwich and some baby carrots that now houses fuzzy mold and oozing liquid, please remove your biological warfare project from our refrigerator. There are some in this office who want to keep their lunches cold and do not want vomitous yellow gunk dripping onto our yogurt cups. If this is not done immediately, fingerprints will be lifted from the plastic bag and the guilty party will be fined large amounts of money and forced to eat the contents of the baggie.
The Management
War has broken out in the Innova lunchroom, and it isn’t pretty. We’ve been eyeing each other with suspicion, covertly watching our once-trusted friends and coworkers stash their lunches in the break-room refrigerator to identify consistent patterns of behavior. Betty is my top suspect, for leaving a Tupperware container of cottage cheese and pineapple on the counter until the cheese aged into a yellowed slime the texture of yak milk.
Harry usually picks up something at the deli, so I assume the half-eaten pastrami on rye that’s fossilizing on the bottom shelf is his. Bryan is hard to pin down because he brings his lunch in everything from old bread bags to cast-off foam containers. Mitzi carries her meal in a tidy Gucci purse she’s turned into a lunch box. I suspect that beneath that designer exterior lurks a plebian plastic bag carrying the hard-boiled eggs that she intentionally leaves in the fridge for weeks at a time to torment the rest of us. Old eggs give off a distinctive rotten, sulfurous smell that is easily recognized but requires a full-scale refrigerator cleaning to eradicate.
And that’s part of the problem. Nobody wants to be in charge of cleanup, so we’ve allowed a zoo of microscopic bacteria, fuzz, mold and moss to build and flourish. Our lunchroom is not called the Bacteria Buffet for nothing.
I’ve ordered Mitzi to do the dirty deed, but she says it isn’t in her job description, that removing toxic waste is the task of a professional. Her only concession to helping out with this office problem was to send her cleaning lady in one day to do the job—and then submitting her bill to me for payment.
Mitzi breezed into the break room on strappy sandals that matched her pink designer suit, put her Gucci lunch box on the table, opened it and took out a delicate tray of sushi. She batted her fake eyelashes at me and put the sushi in the refrigerator. Then she took a bottle of designer water out of the bag and tripped off to her desk to file her nails, read the paper and make sure she and her husband had secured tickets for the symphony—all of which, she insists, are somewhere in the “unwritten” agreement concerning her job description.
Mitzi missed her calling. I could see her as an executive for a company run by Barbie and her stiff-legged dolly friends. Barbie has a Dream House. If she ever develops a Dream Office, Mitzi is the one for her. Work would involve picking out professional-looking suits in all shades of pink, refurnishing rooms with expensive furniture and groaning over long days at the office when one should really be at the beach.
“There you are, Whitney. I’ve been looking for you. Where have you been?” Harry had a stack of contracts in his arm and a frazzled look on his face.
“Standing here. You’ve gone by the door three times and looked in.”
“Nonsense. You must have been hiding.”
I didn’t bother to point out that hiding from the boss during office hours is frowned upon, even here at Innova where the expression “running a loose ship” was probably invented.