Thirty.
The children kept coming in and out, of course, as they will. They genuinely don’t give a shit about what the adults in the room are up to until it gets in their way, at which point they’ll whine about it.
Theo was trying to get Charlie to go outside and play with him, which was causing the usual Gen-X parent cognitive dissonance: I want my kids to have the awesome free-range childhood I enjoyed and develop independence and grit, but I also want them to feel ‘seen’ by me, and not just benignly neglected. However, my fucking life is falling apart here and I might suddenly lose it and run around the kitchen stabbing appliances with a fork, so maybe now’s not the best time to play Frisbee.
“Now’s not the best time, Theo, sorry. I’m having a conversation with Michael.”
Theo shrugged and wandered outside, ending up on a swing, but not swinging. Charlie and Michael watched him go.
“So, he’s not taking it very well?” Michael kept his eyes on Theo, who had started swinging, but only to the extent of his own lower legs, back and forth.
Charlie shrugged, an echo of his son. “I don’t think so. It’s been a fucking shit show, these last two weeks. If I didn’t despise Anne so much I’d be giving her a medal for all the crap she’s been taking care of without me. I had no idea how much mind-numbing, repetitive detail went into just keeping them alive. I’ve upped the cleaners to three times a week.”
Michael smiled a small smile. “Grocery run getting you down?”
“It was fine for the first week. I decided I would run the whole thing like a Swiss Army Hospital . . .”
“I thought the Swiss didn’t have an army?”
“They don’t?”
“I don’t think so. I could be wrong.”
“Well, like some super-efficient type of organization, then, which doesn’t sound as good, but I defer to your greater knowledge of international defense. I had the kids up early, I made full cooked breakfasts, I bought a thing that lets you write their names in pancake batter, I did laundry at night, I folded clothes and put them away . . .”
Michael made a “wow” sound.
“Right? Anyway, after a week I had a total nervous breakdown in the bathtub after they’d gone to sleep. Sitting there with a beer in my hand, crying into the bubbles as quietly as possible, totally fucked in every possible direction. I am barely clinging to sanity. I really don’t know what to do.”
Kate came in. She had a Barbie-type doll in one hand, the hair of which was cut short, not very stylishly, and a roll of tape in the other. She came over and dumped both on the table. Then she reached into her pocket and pulled out all the hair from the doll.
“I need you to put this back on again.” She looked at her Dad. “I got the tape and everything.”
Charlie looked at her, seeing Anne in her face, but loving her regardless. “Uh . . . I’m not sure that’s going to work, honey.”
Kate frowned. “Yes. Just help me tape it on.”
“It won’t look the same as it did before.”
“That’s OK. Tape it.”
“You’ll be able to see the tape. And it might keep coming off.”
“Tape it, Daddy.” Your injection of reality is not needed here, old man. I have a vision and I am here to see it executed.
Charlie sighed, shared a quick glance with Michael, who tried to look supportive, and pulled out a long piece of tape. It kept curling. Michael reached over and held one end, and told Kate to hold the other. They held it taut and Charlie carefully applied the hair to the tape, chunk by chunk. It wasn’t completely successful, it must be said. The individual hairs that touched the tape would stick, but the ones above would fall off. So then he tried spreading the pieces, which ended up working better, but then they looked like spider legs, which apparently wasn’t what she was going for.
It was Michael who solved it. He held up a finger (not from the hand that was holding the tape down) and suggested they make a sandwich of tape, putting the hair in between, and then use additional tape to reattach it. The team voted, this approach was adopted, and it worked ever so slightly better. It still wasn’t winning any awards, and in the distance you could hear the whirring sound of Vidal Sassoon spinning in his grave.
Finally, after winding the “hair tape” around Barbie’s head, and then applying a metric ton of additional tape to hold it on, which ended up making Barbie look like she’d lost a fight with an industrial thresher, Kate held her up and evaluated.
“She’s perfect!” She ran off, calling back to Charlie. “Thanks, Dad!”
Charlie got up to get more coffee. “Want some more?”
“Sure, because it’s too early for beer, right?”
Charlie looked at the clock, hanging over the doorway to the garden. It was 3:00 p.m.
“Do the normal rules apply on the weekend?” He put down his coffee cup and opened the fridge instead, grabbing two bottles of Anchor Steam. “Anne wouldn’t approve, which makes it even better.” Sitting down, he popped the caps with a bottle opener that was already lying on the table, and held up a bottle. “Cheers.”
They drank, and Michael idly pushed the remaining Barbie hair into a pile. He looked out at the garden. Theo and Milo were now both out there, sitting on the swings and shooting the shit.
“Do you think Frances would cheat?” Charlie wasn’t looking at him as he asked, but gazing out at the kids.
Michael shrugged. “Probably not. When would she have time, for fuck’s sake?”
Charlie made a face. “Anne found time.”
“Anne worked. She wasn’t trailing kids around all the time. She had agency. Frances has about two hours of empty space in the morning and that’s usually filled with trips to the vet.”
“You do have a lot of pets.”
“She likes animals, what can I say? I tried protesting, early on, but there was no point. She likes taking care of things.”
“But what if some other guy is taking care of her, right? I mean, clearly Anne wasn’t getting what she wanted from me.” He finished his beer, rose to fetch another.
Michael was still nursing his. “Well then good luck to both of them.”
Charlie looked incredulous. “You wouldn’t care?”
“Of course I would care, but it clearly isn’t substantially affecting the quality of my marriage, right? If she’s managing to get a little on the side while still making everyone else happy, then congratulations. She’s even more competent than I thought. If she’s worked another guy into the mix, maybe she should be running a company, not me.”
“And you?” Charlie stepped out onto the deck a little, frowning. The boys were swinging properly now, and he could see the swing set flexing to a nerve-wracking degree.
“Do I cheat?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t even have sex with my wife, why on earth would I have sex with anyone else?”
Charlie turned to him and grinned. “Because you don’t have sex with your wife? You are a human being, after all.”
“Yeah, I guess. I just don’t get that horny anymore. I find women attractive, I watch porn, I whack off, but that driving, confusing level of desire that filled my twenties just went away. Maybe I’m happy, maybe I’m just too fucking tired. I’d rather lie in bed next to my comfortable, gentle wife and watch Netflix than go to a bar and hunt for fresh flesh. No contest.” He laughed. “I think I’d rather do that than almost anything, especially if in the distance I could hear my kids being thoroughly entertained and taken care of by someone else. But hey,” he took a final swig of his beer, “maybe I just haven’t met the right woman.”
“Or maybe you already have. And married her.”
Michael raised his bottle. “To my wife.”
“To Frances,” replied Charlie, “a faithful friend.”
Michael raised his eyebrows. “She’s not a dog.”
Charlie smiled. “What was she like when you first met her?”
“She was just the same. She’s nice, you know, a warm, loving woman who cares about other people. Maybe a bit too much, but that’s not the worst thing in the world. I was kind of an asshole, and she sorted me out.” He put down his beer bottle, wishing he’d had more coffee instead.
Charlie hesitated. “Was she always . . . you know . . . curvy?”
Michael laughed. “She’s overweight, Charlie, I can handle the truth. No, she was skinny. She always had big tits, but she was skinny everywhere else. Then she had three kids and filled the fuck out.” He indicated himself. “As did I, without the excuse of three pregnancies.”
“Does it bother you?”
“What?”
“That she let herself go?”
Michael looked at him curiously. “I don’t think she let herself go, Charlie. I think she just lets herself be.” He shrugged. “Do you know my friend Jason?”
Charlie nodded. “The one with red hair who bikes everywhere?”
“Yeah, the bike guy. Well, I met him around the same time I met Frances. He’s lost most of his hair and his ass kind of dropped, despite the cycling. Does anyone expect me to give a shit about that? Does anyone wonder if it affects our friendship?” He waited, but Charlie didn’t say anything. “It’s the same thing. I can’t expect Frances to do all that she’s done in the last twenty years, including simply aging twenty years, and not look different from the twenty-five-year-old I fell in love with. If she’s comfortable carrying extra weight, fair enough. If it bothers her enough, she’ll change it.” He drank some beer, and waved the bottle at Charlie. “I don’t get it when guys are like, ‘Oh, my wife isn’t like she used to be.’ Why would she be? Don’t you expect to change as you get older? I mean, I’ll look at a twenty-three-year-old as happily as the next guy—they’re pretty and their bodies are gorgeous—but what the fuck would we talk about? Juice cleanses and YouTube?” He made a face. “Besides, having daughters has ruined young women for me. All I can see is someone else’s daughter.”
Charlie thought about it. “Yeah, but what if they start out nice, like Anne, and then turn into selfish cheating cows?”
Michael shrugged. “No clue. But was everything else about her still good? Did she love your kids, take care of you, make you laugh, turn up when she said she would . . . ? If it was only sex then, you know, was that the only thing you loved about her? Is that the one thing that makes all the rest worthless?”
Kate came in, still carrying her Barbie, who’d given up the fight with the tape. “Dad, will you take me to the store? Barbie needs a hat.”
Out in the garden, Theo and Milo were swinging on the swings. They would try and stay in phase, but then one would pump harder and pull ahead.
“You have to stop pumping, idiot,” Milo said. “If you pump harder the swing goes higher.”
“I know how it works, buttface,” replied his friend. “But I’m bigger than you, so even if I only pump half the time I’m still going to go higher.”
“I don’t think that’s how it works, dorkasaurus. I might be smaller, but I’m stronger. I do Tae Kwon Do.”
Theo made a snorting noise. “Huh. I play soccer.”
“So do I.”
“I weigh more than you. It’s like if you throw something bigger, it goes farther.”
“I don’t think so. I think things go the same farness.”
Incredulous snorting noise, followed by the dragging of feet through the gravel under the swing. “Really? So if I throw a feather it’s going to go as far as if I throw a rock? Doofus.”
More dragging. “My dad told me if you drop a ton of feathers and a ton of stones they’re both going to hit the ground at the same time.”
There was a pause. “Watch and learn, sensei.” Theo picked up a small piece of gravel and a stick.
“Sensei is the teacher, you loser.”
Theo paused, his arm back. “You’re right, whatever. Watch and learn, wormbrain.”
He threw the piece of gravel, which arced over the garden and landed somewhere unseeably distant. Then he threw the stick, which landed closer.
“No! You didn’t throw it as hard. Watch.”
Milo picked up a rock and a stick and demonstrated. He had slightly better physical coordination than Theo, and managed to get the two things closer together.
“No way! You did that on purpose. This won’t work unless you throw them the same.” Theo looked pissed, suddenly. “I don’t want to play this anymore.” He turned back to the swings, but hesitated. “You’re not supposed to throw stones anyway.”
“I think,” responded Milo, judiciously, “you’re not supposed to throw stones AT things or people or dogs or something. You can throw them into space.”
“How can you throw them into space? You’d have to be Iron Man or something.” Theo sat on his swing. “Do you know what time it is?”
Milo shook his head. “I don’t have a phone. Do you have a phone?”
Theo made a face. “As if.”
Milo’s face brightened. “Maybe now that your mom and dad aren’t in the same place you could get a phone? Like, what if you were here and you needed to ask your mom something you could call her. Or FaceTime or something.” He tried to look modest. “My big sister might be getting a phone.” He looked rueful. “But she won’t let me use it. She’s a teenager. She doesn’t like me anymore.”
“Why?”
Milo shrugged a bit. “No idea. One day she just stopped liking me.”
Theo started swinging. “Maybe she’ll start again.”
“Maybe.”
Theo swung higher. “My dad doesn’t like my mom anymore. One day he did, then one day he didn’t.”
“Why?”
“I think she cheated on him.”
Milo looked at his friend, puzzled. “What’s that?”
“I think she kissed someone else. That’s what Eloise said at school. She said sometimes dads kiss other women and then they have to go live somewhere else. That’s what happened to her dad, and she thought maybe that was what happened to my mom.”
“Another dad kissed her? But then isn’t that the dad’s fault?”
Theo swung really high, and his answers dopplered in and out to Milo. “I don’t know. I don’t know why it matters. I kiss Grandma all the time, no one says I have to go live somewhere else.”
Milo started swinging. Lally suddenly appeared at the kitchen door. “Theo! Your dad says it’s time to go.”
Theo stopped pumping and drooped on his swing, reaching out with his toes for the gravel.
“Are you seeing your mom today?”
Theo had slowed the swing, and now jumped when it was still going pretty high. He landed well, then bent down and picked up a handful of gravel. He pulled back his arm and let it rip, sending the gravel all the way across the garden, into the hedge on the far side.
“No,” he said shortly. “Not today.”