‘Have a good day! Be good. Be safe,’ Hannah called down the stairs in response to Luke and Jackson heading out for the school bus.
She was finishing off the small amount of make-up she ordinarily wore to work and hoping that Rod would leave the house on time, before Hannah was expected to leave the house to drop TJ to nursery on her way to work.
On the day Andrea fired her, the first thing Hannah should have done was tell Rod. Confess that Andrea had been having an affair with Hunter, that Andrea was pregnant and Hannah was terrified she might get rid of the baby because Hunter had told her to. That she had lost her temper with Rosalie over Rosalie’s stupidity, accused her friend of being racist, which she knew was not true, and taken her anger with Hunter and Andrea out on Rosalie. That she had told Rosalie about the affair and deserved to be fired by Andrea for what she had done.
But she hadn’t told Rod on the day she was fired and now, days later, she still hadn’t confessed to Rod. Instead, she had been pretending to drop TJ at nursery and go to work. She had been keeping him home from nursery and cancelled the sitter, lying to her children about getting home from work early in the evenings, because she was afraid.
She was afraid that she had let down Rod and her whole family. They needed her salary to make ends meet. Even keeping TJ out of childcare wouldn’t save them enough money for Hannah to stop working.
All her adult life, she had strived to be better than her own mother. To put her family and her kids, especially, ahead of everything else. To prove her father, who had wanted to abandon her for having Luke, that he was wrong, that she could take care of her kids on her own.
Hannah’s family was her primary responsibility and she had failed them.
Rod came into their bedroom, picking up TJ from where he was lying on his jungle mat on the floor, ready for nursery. He threw the baby three inches into the air and was rewarded with TJ’s high-pitched giggles and limb-flapping as he repeated the move once, twice, three times.
‘Okay, okay. Enough, otherwise he’ll throw up,’ Hannah said, unable to help herself laughing at the sound of TJ’s happiness.
For that brief moment, she forgot that she was deceiving her husband.
‘Rod…’
He set TJ back on his mat.
‘Yeah, babe?’ he said, before pressing a chaste kiss to her lips.
How did she begin…? ‘Nothing. Have a good day.’
He kissed her again and was gone.
‘Well, TJ, it’s just you and me again, baby boy. Where should we clean today?’
After two hours of emptying, cleaning and refilling each cupboard and drawer in the kitchen, Hannah’s arms were aching. She was hot and flustered and in need of a coffee.
She turned to where TJ was in his bouncer chair on the table top, giggling as George the Giraffe swung back and forth from the rail above his head.
‘I would have normally had three coffees by now with the girls at work,’ she told her son as she stepped down from the chair she had been using to reach to top cupboards. ‘Today I haven’t even had one.’
She tugged off her rubber gloves and considered them, then her son. ‘What would you be doing at nursery, bubble? More than watching Mom clean the kitchen, huh?’
Dropping her gloves into the sink, she said, ‘I’ve got an idea. Let’s go out for that coffee, shall we?’
The summer was upon them when Hannah stepped outside with TJ strapped to her front, legs dangling in his carrier, his soft cap in place atop his increasingly unruly black curls of hair. Hannah had swapped cleaning clothes for a pair of yoga pants and a thin workout top. She walked briskly, happily building her heart rate as she and TJ headed toward the local park, where she knew she would find an exceptional oat milk latte and a fine Italian biscotti.
She passed other moms with their babies in strollers. Teenagers skated by her on roller blades and skateboards. A woman riding a bike chimed her bell to ask Hannah to step aside as she cycled the narrow pathway that was overhung by full trees.
All the people Hannah passed looked carefree. There was a part of Hannah that was loving her days off with TJ – she adored spending time with her kids. But the overwhelming feelings she had were guilt – guilt because she was lying to Rod; guilt because she had spent six bucks on a coffee and a biscotti when she was no longer contributing to the family finances – and a general sense of being out of sorts. She had no routine, no goals, no purpose.
She had thought that trying to work alongside having a family was exhausting. In fact, sleepless nights due to not working were worse.
Taking a seat on a park bench, she unstrapped TJ from her chest and bounced him on her knee, tickling him until he giggled.
‘You know I love you, buddy, don’t you? But this just isn’t me.’
TJ gurgled.
‘Why? Well, I’m used to… being needed, I suppose. In a different way to how you and your brothers need me.’
She pressed her nose to his. ‘And you, mister, have been the neediest kid so far. All that yucky sicky. That’s right, you laugh at Mommy.’
She kissed his brow and bounced him on her lap again.
‘Aunty Andrea will come around. She’ll give me my job back, I know she will. She needs me.’ Her stomach twisted with the thought of Andrea facing her pregnancy alone. It terrified her that Andrea might consider aborting her baby. She felt immeasurably horrible that she had been the one to bring Andrea’s affair with Hunter out into the open. And now she had ditched her best friend. True, Andrea had fired her but Hannah hadn’t put up much of a fight. Andrea had been the one person Hannah had been able to depend on when her own parents turned their backs on her when Luke was a baby and Rod was still at college. When it came to Andrea and her first pregnancy, Hannah had walked away.
TJ screeched as she bounced him more vigorously, making her laugh, too.
‘The thing is, I don’t know if I want my job back, Teej. I don’t know. I mean, we need the money, and I like the structure. I miss the girls, so much. And, you can’t understand this, but I’m the most me I can be when I’m in the city. I’m not Mommy or a wife. I’m Hannah.
‘But it’s exhausting. And when I’m at work, I miss you guys. I hate not being home when your brothers get in from school. I hate that there’s a chance I’ll miss your first steps because I’m working.
‘Your dad… he tries, I know he does, but he’s equivalent to having another child in the house; a very large, hairy child.’
At that choice moment, TJ belly laughed. ‘Is that funny? That Daddy is a big hairy monster, does that make you laugh?’
She turned TJ, bringing his back against her stomach, and she leaned her head back, lifting her face to the sun’s rays. And she was struck by a stark reality – Hannah really had no idea what she wanted because she had never truly put herself first. Since she fell pregnant in college and dropped out, since she took a job with Andrea and followed her to XM Music Group to make sure that she was okay, because everything she did was led by thoughts of Rod and her children and the money their family needed.
She was in her late thirties, with three kids, one of whom would be looking to college very soon. If she didn’t do something for herself now, would she ever?
She thought about Andrea and how alone she must be feeling. Assuming Hunter was the father of the baby and he didn’t want anything to do with it, Andrea wouldn’t be alone generally but when it came to home life, she would.
Her heart panged for her friend, despite everything.
And she realised something that she had been overlooking for a very long time. She wasn’t alone. She had a husband and maybe it was time for her to stop being a martyr.
What do I want, for me? she thought.
Working out the answer to that question was her number one priority. Right after she had faced the music and confessed to Rod that she was unemployed.