This was my first day. My whole body pulsed with excitement. I had managed departments before – this was just a mini department. I was the new CEO of Beaulieu Incorporated!
I forgot one important fact: there was no orientation, no training and could not quit.
The meals, and herding the girls here to there, I had done that before – I was not completely new to this circus. Okay the floor crunched, but that was a detail which would sort itself out – eventually. What I didn’t realize was how much Alison helped before. It was no wonder she felt over whelmed when she first started working for her dad. My realization came with an empty refrigerator. I called my wife in a panic. It was lunch time. “There isn’t any food in the house.” I told her in a harsh whisper. The smell of sickening sweet fabric softener over whelming me as I hid in the utility room I muffled my voice with my hand over the phone.
“That means you need to go shopping.” She staged whispered back.
“Where is the list?” My body tensed.
“It is on the right side of the fridge.” I felt as if I was discussing national security.
There it was on the side of the fridge. Realization came to me in small drips as I skimmed the five pages, “That wasn’t a joke?”
“No,” she growled. “I didn’t make a grocery list.” I thought I heard a tooth crack.
“Why?” my voiced squeaked as I tried to not freak out.
“Because it’s your job now.” The silence flowed between us and waves of reality hit me. I looked at the list she had made of everything she had done while a stay at home mom. sure, enough there it was.
#5. Plan menus and grocery shop.
I fed the girls stale fruit loops long forgotten in the back of the pantry while I tried to put something down on the piece of card board. I had ripped it off the back of the cereal box. Our cupboards were bare, with the exception of a three-year-old can of formula and an expired packet of seasoning mix.
I realized I never brought home the bacon – Alison had shopped for it.
I did meditation exercises which HR had taught at work. You know, when the stress level had everyone double up on their blood pressure medication. One half of my brain was saying I was being ridiculous – the other was telling me to run. As the breathing exercises started to work, I tried to focus.
What to get?
Milk.
Bread.
I looked at the girls slurping up their meal. Cold cereal. What kind? I rub my forehead to stimulate the logical part of my brain, I knew I still had one – some place. Menus? Alison always had a menu, I could make a list from those. I searched the kitchen for them and found each cupboard and drawer neatly organized with the exception of the junk drawer where I found batteries, dried up super glue, a pack of cigarettes and tucked in the back corner a dildo? I ached to call her just to ask, I knew better.
I decided to just plan a meal for tonight and breakfast. Then I could research after the girls went to bed. There had to be options – you could order anything on-line why not food?
When we entered the store, it was the horror show I remember with its prison lighting, the stale smell of recycled air and the musty aroma of open coolers, all mixed together with over perfumed women. I grab a carriage and remember one of the helpful notes on Alison’s list, “put both girls in a cart.” The girls picked out one with a plastic car on the front. It was long enough I suspected I needed a CDL license. Shaw’s should offer driving lessons. The first stop was the produce section, each verity stacked to resemble fans at a football game only segregated in to their individual sections of the statum. Very Jim Crow.
“Apples, please.” Mellissa asked.
“No, I don’t like apples.” Emily said. “I want cookies.”
“Okay, apples and cookies,” as the suicidal statement exited my mouth, I was trying to figure out how many potatoes I was going to need for tonight. My stomach turned at how many different kinds there were. How many spuds options does one person need?
“I want cookies too!” Mellissa wailed.
“Okay cookies for you too.” I said as I praised the grocery gods that carrots came prepackaged and with only one variety and only two sizes – the potato people really could learn a thing or two from them. Onions – check, I buy two. Apples? I don’t see them on the list, but I think we need them. Apples – chec-….
“. . . don’t like apples.” Mellissa cried out as I put a few in a plastic bag. “Cookies.”
My mind is over stimulated from the unlimited selection before me, but the girls’ words pulled me out of my fog. “No, cookies.” Both girls started to cry. Now, I was totally aware of them with the vague memory of promised cookies. My stomach was twisted as a grey-haired woman with judgement slathered on her face. I needed to focus on getting through the moment. “You can do this Emerson.” I muttered to myself. Then I switched into grandparent mode and promised cookies. I am going to kick ass as a grandparent – if I survived.
John Wayne popped into my head, “All battles are fought by scared men who’d rather be someplace else.” Amen Duke, Amen.
Next on the list, Roast. I passed the deli counter with the vague thought of sandwich meat, but I became distracted by a cheer for lobsters which came from the front of this eighteen-wheeler I pushed. The girls got out. The deli became a traffic jam of women smart enough to leave their children at home. Their saccharine smile which masked everyone’s frustration and anger permeated the air. While my crustacean groupies stood plaster, hands and noses to the glass, oohing over them like they were little puppies.
“Get in or no cookies,” and they did so without a peep. I arrived at the meat counter and pick the biggest roast I could find. I glance at the price – $38.32! I did not have the brain capacity to re-vamp my list on the fly. It tossed into the cart with a grunt of discuss. The black shadow of the doomed encompassed me as I hoped I could make five meals out of it. I scanned the list and then the isles with their very vague signage. Cooking supplies – is that where the milk is? We cook with that. I dismiss it quickly – refrigerated section. Breathe Emerson, became my mantra.
I found the dairy products. Milk – check. I grabbed orange juice as I passed by the display.
“That is not what Mommy gets.”
“Tough.” My jaw started to grind somewhere between the lobsters and this jug of overpriced orange juice. I still had two more things on my list. “Coffee, cold cereal.” I muttered under my breath and thankfully my daughter over heard me.
“I know where that is.” Emily said. Emily hung out of the windshield looking down each isle as we passed with her zebra print sunglasses perched on top of her head. The vague thought ‘was she safe?’ ambled in and out of my brain. Then she smiled and the picture of her as a teenager in a tube top and daisy duke’s hanging out of some loser’s pickup flashed in my brain. Emerson, not the time for father freak-out – concentrate.
“Nope.” She shouted back to me as we passed each canal. Suddenly she started to excitedly point down an isle I had passed at least three times. “Turn here.” I don’t check but blindly turned – the row is lined with nothing but cookies. My eyes roll into the back of my head and my knees buckle – whether it was from frustration or from the desire to pass out, I’m not sure.
We spent five minutes debating cookies. What size, what kind, soft or hard, tried and true or something new – they were a committee of short indecisive CEOs. I didn’t know whether to be pissed or impressed. I would have let them get two, but I was scared of our family food Nazi. Yah, I was man enough to admit it. Hell had no furry like my woman hurling guilt of the detriment of bad nutrition to young bodies and minds. We finally decided on Super Chunky Chocolate-Chips and we were off. Once a store clerk was found I broke the man code – I asked for help.
Both were in isle eight. I was barely holding it together as the shelving seemed to close in; I kept envisioning them crashing on top of us. We could be buried alive. I took whatever looked familiar and told to myself New Hampshire did not get earth quakes. Often. The girls protest over the cereal I picked was back just ground noise, as I rushed to the register. They quickly changed their tune to candy begging. I didn’t care – I let them each have one. I buried the evidence in the bottom of the trash can when I got home. Survival was my goal.
By some miracle my head hadn’t popped off by the time we left. I was loading into my vehicle of shame, because no self-respecting man drove a minivan, when I realize I forgot bread. Fuck it, I think as I continued loading my hard-earned treasures. My brain was swearing in unholy proportions and I wonder if our insurance would cover a twelve-step program. I knew Alison would in roll me one once she found out.
Emotional back up came in the way of my friend George. He showed up in his uniform and beater truck as I was unloading the car. He wrestled with the girls while I brought things into the house. As they ran to play in the back yard, he followed me in with the six pack I refused to leave behind, even if it wasn’t on the list.
“You are going to want to buy this by the case.” He smiled and cracked one open, “Whenever Georgia wants to punish me, she sends the boys with me and drinks wine while we are gone.”
“All of them?” He had four boys.
“Yup.”
“How did you do it?”
“The first time I wanted to handcuff them to the cart.” He guzzled down his beer, “I checked with child services” he shook his head in discus, “You can’t do that.” He slapped me on the back, “Hang tough dude.” We have a moment of silence before sighed and pushes off the counter he had been leaning on. “Gotta to get to work.”
“You just had a beer!”
“It would have been rude not to toast your entrance into real parenting. You had the life man, but now you are a millennium father.” As he placed his hand on the door knob, he turned the back and said, “You were a 1950’s husband. Every man who found out was envious.”
As he left me alone in the kitchen. The afternoon sun poured over my hard-won loot. I had one single thought, I had been my father.
That evening the girls were in their room; the muted argument over the pink tea cup could be heard. The smell of pot roast scented the air. I had flopped down in the middle of the couch boneless drinking a beer; eating the cookies I had hidden between the couch cushions. Numb. When Alison staggered in drained. She groaned in orgasmic delight as she ate my cookie which had almost made it to my mouth.
“People suck,” She stated and then asked, “Tough day?” she snuggled in beside me.
“Yup.” I said. The beer felt good as it poured down my throat. “You?” I popped a whole cookie in my mouth.
“Yup.” We sat and listened to the girl’s argument escalate. “Should we interfere.”
“Nope.” I said, and took another deep pull of my beer.
“Punish the winner it is.” She said and nestled under the arm I couldn’t move. We sat separate in our thoughts as we clung to each other.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“For what?”
“More than I can list.” Suddenly a scream of outrage, then the very distinct sound of a slap came from the other end of the house.
“Rock, paper, scissors.” She lost.
