37. Shiny Happy People
Shiny Happy People
Arden
A rden
Riding shotgun in the passenger seat next to me, Charlotte shakes out the itinerary I’ve printed and smiles at the kids in the backseat. “Tours of some of the Frank Lloyd Wright houses and the mushroom houses are up first. Sounds exciting!”
“Houses made out of mushrooms?” Gabriel asks doubtfully.
“You can’t make houses out of mushrooms,” Henry says.
“You can if you’re a fairy.” Bronnie, strapped into her booster seat between the two boys, nods and lifts her eyebrows.
“There’s no such thing as fairies ,” Henry says.
“Yes there is! Grandma Miller builds houses for fairies. She puts doors on tree trunks for them so they can visit our world.”
“Those are pretend ,” Henry explains. “She’s being silly.”
Bronnie scowls. “My grandma is not silly. You’re silly!”
I try to catch Henry’s eye in the rearview mirror, but he shakes his head at Bronnie in exasperation and pushes his wire-framed glasses up his freckled nose. “I suppose you think the tooth fairy and Santa are real too.”
Charlotte sucks in a breath of horror beside me.
Bronnie turns on Henry with wide eyes. “What does that mean?”
“Henry,” I say firmly.
He glances up toward me.
“Not another word,” I say.
“But, Dad—”
“We’ll talk about it later.”
“Santa is too real,” Bronnie insists. “He leaves us presents on our porch.”
Gabriel picks up his brother’s torch. “That’s just D—”
“ D ’ Amazing that Santa leaves presents!” I say with exaggerated cheer. Talking over my sons is not something I would normally do, but desperate times call for desperate measures. I’ll apologize to them later when I explain why we don ’ t ruin Santa for other kids . “Wonderful. Gabriel, mushroom houses aren’t made of mushrooms, but they are shaped like mushrooms.”
“Cool,” Gabriel says.
Bronnie imitates his exact tone and cadence. “Cool.”
Crisis averted, I shoot a glance toward Charlotte. “Sorry about that,” I say quietly.
“It’s a miracle one of her cousins hasn’t done it already.” She glances back at Bronnie with a wistful expression. “I’m not ready for her to lose the magic, you know? There’s so much joy and wonder in her.”
“There’s so much wonder and joy in you too.” She’s regained her faith that the world can have happy surprises, beauty, and opportunity.
“If we can find some time alone, maybe you can put some more joy and wonder inside me,” she teases quietly.
I shift in the driver’s seat, sending her a mock scolding glare. She twinkles back, then sobers as she glances ahead to the unmarked security team driving ahead of us.
“It’s not strange for you?” she asks.
I tap the steering wheel. “It’s life for me. The same way you’d grab an umbrella before heading out into the rain.”
“The boys like the team,” she notes.
“They’ve known most of them their whole lives. I don’t have a lot of turnover. The boys know them as individual people they care about, not a mass unit of unnamed guards in dark suits.”
She relaxes, her frown clearing. “It’s kind of like extended family.”
“That’s how we see it.”
I look in the car’s visor mirror and tug the white Titleist ball cap lower over my eyes, then adjust the mirrored aviator shades on my nose. My disguise is pretty good, if I say so myself. Beard. Hat. Sunglasses. Board shorts and sandals. Gabriel giggled when he first laid eyes on me. Henry . . . well, he scowled and said I looked strange. He also suggested I wear socks.
“Are you guys ready for lunch before we climb some sand dunes?” I ask.
Henry nods. “Yes, please.”
Bronnie lowers her voice into an odd cadence and rasps, “PizzaPizza.”
Gabriel sings, “Oh, yeah.”
Charlotte smiles.
I park across the street from a place with a sign declaring Al’s Pizzeria.
One by one, the kids climb from the backseat onto the sidewalk to join Charlotte and me. I glance toward Reese where he stands ten feet away.
They’ve already scoped out the place. What we’re doing may feel unscripted to the kids, but very little has been.
An aromatic spring breeze ruffles our hair, and Charlotte and all three children whip their heads to the side in an almost comically orchestrated move.
“I smell . . .” Henry breathes deeply in delight.
“Chocolate!” Gabriel and Bronnie both cry.
A silver-haired woman walking her yappy terrier smiles at the children’s exclamations, points to a sign three doors down and laughs. “We’re famous for our fudge here. You can’t come to Lake Michigan and not eat fudge.”
N inety minutes later, we stand on the hot sidewalk while I contemplate the state of these children. I may need to buy another car.
“Dad,” Henry pushes his glasses up his nose and smiles blissfully. “Michigan is famous for fudge .”
I eye the boys’ once-pristine white shirts. All three kids have chocolate smeared around their mouths, on their clothing, their arms, and melted on their fingers. Bronnie has chocolate on the end of one of her pigtails and pizza sauce on her earlobe.
It’s a sign of how high on sugar Henry is that he isn’t freaking out at the mess. I give it less than three minutes before he comes off his cocoa-coated oblivion and realizes he’s covered in something sticky.
I pass him a wad of napkins, and he wipes his mouth with less than stellar results.
“So, I should have led with fudge, instead of cabins and pontoons, huh?” My napkin dabbing has similar unimpressive results on Gabriel. This stuff smears.
Henry’s expression looks almost drunk. “I love Michigan.”
Charlotte smiles. “Is this your first time?”
“Yes. Dad said, ‘Men, we’re going to Michigan,’ and I said, ‘Why?’ And he said, ‘There’s a lake and a cabin and a boat.’ And he didn’t say a word about fudge.” Henry’s last sentence sounds like an accusation.
Charlotte bumps me with her hip and smirks.
“I didn’t know about the fudge,” I say.
She digs around in her purse and produces a plastic packet of baby wipes, proceeding to scrub all traces of residual chocolate and pizza sauce from Bronnie’s person. Bronnie squirms under her thorough washing, but generally cooperates. When Charlotte steps back, stains remain, but Bronnie is no longer what I’d refer to as contaminated .
Charlotte moves on to Henry with another wipe. He stands perfectly still, but when she’s through, he says with dignity, “Thank you, Miss Charlotte, but next time, please allow me to clean myself. I’m not a baby.”
Charlotte blinks, then looks down at the wipe in her hand. “I’m so sorry, Henry. I don’t think you’re a baby. I shouldn’t have done that without your permission. I’m used to cleaning up Bronnie and didn’t think.”
“You can wash me.” Gabriel lifts his face to stare at her adoringly. Charlotte gently removes the chocolate from his face and hands.
When she’s done, Gabriel grabs her around the waist and hangs on. She squeezes him back and doesn’t release him until he makes the first move to step away. When he does, he reaches to hold her hand, and she takes it casually, giving it a squeeze and my six-year-old a little smile.
The moment blindsides me. Neither of my boys has any memory of what it is to be mothered by someone not paid to do so.
It’s patently obvious that Gabriel has been starving for a woman’s attention. I hadn’t realized he felt any lack within our little family.
I clear my throat. “Sand dunes for a couple hours. Then back to the cabin for dinner.”
Henry shakes his head. “Dad, you can ’ t cook .”
“It’s under control.” I shoot him an exasperated glance, and he shrugs doubtfully.
“At the cabin, can we play cowon hoe? I seen it,” Bronnie says.
“Errr.” I try to catch Charlotte’s eye because I have no idea what “cowon hoe” is, but Charlotte gives Bronnie an enthusiastic smile. “We sure can, baby.”
Bronnie punches out both her arms and legs in a random flurry of activity, then points at me. “Oh, yeah, I’m gonna kick your butt.”
Gabriel’s eyes flare wide in affront. “You can’t say that.”
She looks back at her mother in confusion. “Jack says you have to talk smack. It’s the rules.”
“Bad sportsmanship,” Gabriel says. “Bad form.”
“Nu-uh.”
“Yeah-huh.”
“I’m gonna kick your butt too!” Bronnie flails her arms and legs again.
Charlotte purses her lips. “Trash talking is a Miller family tradition. You can’t play cornhole without it.”
Ah. Cornhole . Whatever the hell that is.
Bronnie is tiny for her age. She’s smaller than my boys were when they were three years old, let alone four. But she’s flailing around with the most determined expression on her face. Henry and Gabriel have studied martial arts since they were practically toddlers. Henry is less naturally coordinated, but the level of training they've both had have given them impressive control over their own bodies, but Bronnie is . . . wild. It’s adorable.
“Cornhole must be a very energetic game,” I say.
“Yeah, it is.” Bronnie punches the air one more time.
I take a breath, swipe a hand down my face, and try to scrub off my grin. Bronnie dimples up at me, her fists coming to rest on her hips. “Bring it, sucker.”