Three. Under Pressure
THREE
Under Pressure
Joe
The sun is just making an appearance as I step out onto my back patio, steaming cup of coffee in one hand and protein shake in the other. The early morning breeze cools the sweat, making my running shorts and T-shirt cling uncomfortably to my skin. I put both drinks down on the railing with a click before stretching my calves, glorying in the burn. I hate running on the treadmill. It’s never as good as running the trails through the woods, but with school being back in session, it’s either the treadmill in the basement while my kids sleep or leaving them vulnerable and alone in the dark just so I can run outside.
Which is to say it’s not really an option at all.
My mom offered to come over in the mornings to sit with the kids but sitting would turn into coffee and making pancakes and asking me probing questions about my nonexistent social life and no thanks. It’s enough that my parents live next door with a clear view of my drive and every time I come and go. I appreciate their help, and I’m not too proud to admit I couldn’t do this without them, but they’re still my parents .
I gulp back the protein drink with a grimace because I’ll never get used to the chalky flavor. With that out of the way, I grab my coffee and lean against the railing looking out over my backyard.
This part I don’t mind. The back view. From the front, you can see the resort, the lake, the never-ending litany of things needing my attention with regards to being in charge of a thriving family business. I took over four years ago after I was honorably discharged from the Marines. My parents have run things for over thirty years and, while they still want a say in the important decisions, they’re less interested in the day-to-day.
It seemed ideal at the time. My wife, Kiley, had just given birth to Lucy, and we needed the stability. Besides, I’d always wanted to raise my family at the lake. I wanted my children to grow up the same way I had—safe, surrounded by family, and with the outdoors at their fingertips.
Kiley had other plans. I could raise our children on the moon if I wanted, but she was out. She said it was my turn to stay behind. She’d been doing everything alone for over a decade, following me from base to base while I “sowed my oats in the Marines.” Though, in my defense, I wasn’t doing much of anything besides just trying to stay alive in the Marines, so “sowing” is an exaggeration. I was blindsided. I’d stupidly thought she was happy building our family all that time. That was on me. I was so busy feeling lucky, I didn’t even clue in to how the woman I’d loved since I was eighteen was suffocating.
But she’d made it known in a really big, earth-shattering way, and that was that. There was more to it, of course. A lot more, but whatever it was was done now, and because of that, in the mornings, before the day presses in on me, I prefer my backyard. A small one-acre clearing surrounded by dense pines and wildlife. Some days, I’m even greeted by a herd of deer passing through. It’s quiet and all mine.
So I stand there, at peace, sipping black coffee and staring at nothing, until I hear the sliding door open behind me.
“Hey, Dad.”
Anders. I immediately turn and offer him my arm. He comes out—barefoot, sleepy-eyed, wearing his pink Encanto pajamas—and curls into my side. Truthfully, Kiley wasn’t on board with his “girly” clothes, glittery nails, or anything else. She thought Anders should be a “tough guy” like his dad.
I’d seen enough tough-guy shit to last a lifetime, though, and honestly, if pink makes him happy, I’ll buy him every shade of pink in the world. And seeing as Kiley is in Florida living it up with her new husband and I have full custody, she doesn’t get to have an opinion.
“Did I miss her?” my son whispers, peering attentively at the edges of the forest.
Her being the mama doe we’ve been watching since last spring, along with her growing baby.
“Not yet,” I answer softly. But as the words leave my mouth, he gives a sharp inhale, and there she is, slipping into the opening between two massive Norway pines. Anders reaches for my hand and squeezes. I squeeze back. In another life, I would have been eyeing up that doe for fall hunting. Setting up trail cams and planting a feed pile.
But my kid has a soft heart. Too soft for this world, probably, but that’s fine. I’ll protect him until he’s ready to face it on his own.
“The baby’s big.”
“He is. He’ll come back with a starter rack next year.”
“And then he can look after his mom?”
I swallow and ruffle Anders’s hair at the nape. My boy is soft, but he’s noble. “Yup.”
“Is Uncle Liam coming over today?”
“He should be here when you get off the school bus,” I tell him. “You’ll have to show him your crayfish collection.”
“Doesn’t Uncle Liam hate crayfish, though?”
I share a conspiratorial grin with my kid. “Yup.”
Truth be told, my best friend offered to stay with me and help with the kids this morning, but I turned him down. Firstly, because we have a pretty strict morning routine and I don’t need him in the way. And secondly, because his pitying looks annoy the shit out of me. I am in a very different place than I was two years ago. I don’t need him to get me out of bed anymore.
Oh, and thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, because he’s supposed to be here to help his little sister, not me.
Or should I say his not-so-little sister. Hell, Maren grew up hot, didn’t she?
But she’s entirely out of bounds because she’s Liam’s sister, and he would murder me for even noticing how she looks. Obviously. I give myself half a second to remember the way Maren’s shiny ponytail swung and swept along the soft-looking slope of her tanned bare shoulders in the late-afternoon sun and then scrub it from my brain. Jig. She’s just Jig.
And I’m a horny single dad with way too much on my plate and less than nothing to offer. Plus, didn’t Liam say she just broke up with a guy?
Doesn’t matter. Unavailable.
Anders and I watch a minute longer as the mom and baby meander across the corner of our yard, nibbling on grasses, before heading to the hidden spot we found this summer where they like to bed down.
“It’s cold,” I tell him. “And you aren’t wearing shoes. How about we head inside, and I wake up Lucy while you pour yourself some cereal?”
Lucy is not a morning person. Something she got from her mom. I’ve always preferred to be awake before sunrise, ready to face whatever comes my way. Not Luce. She likes her sleep and is slow to start her day. My mom bought her one of those sunrise alarm clocks when she started at the special preschool in town a few weeks back, and it helps some, but I have a feeling we’ll have a long road ahead of us when this one hits middle school.
The sunrise clock is full-on awake, with gentle music and birdsong, and I perch on the side of her tiny toddler bed and brush Lucy’s forehead the way she likes. After Lucy was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, we started working with an occupational therapist right away. They told us some children with ASD disliked touch, while others made connections through it. Same with speech, sound, reflexive movement… Just like the rest of the human population, people with autism were unique in how they manifested their sensory habits. If they liked something, they let you know. If they didn’t, they also let you know. The important thing was to let them reveal themselves to you and to give them a safe space to do so.
That’s about where Kiley lost it. She didn’t like someone telling her she didn’t know her own kid. She didn’t want to let Lucy tell us what she needed from us, and she really didn’t want Anders expressing himself in any way but purely masculine. She wanted “normal,” whatever that even means. So she left and found her version of normal somewhere else.
Turns out, Lucy loves gentle, repetitive touches. Massaging her arms and hands, rubbing her back, smoothing her forehead. She doesn’t love speaking, though she can speak just fine—it just took her longer to find her voice. She likes some noises, but zippers and loud machinery like power tools, Jet Skis, and blenders set her off.
“Good morning, Luce.” I speak in a low, soothing tone to ease her awake. “Time to get ready for school.”
Lucy blinks, staring at the ceiling above her.
“School?” she asks eventually.
“Yeah, kid. School.” I pick up the clock and show her its glowing screen and point out the numbers the way the therapist told me to do. “Time for Lucy to get up.”
“Anders up?”
“Anders is eating cereal. Do you want cereal, too?”
Lucy sits up and I stifle a grin at the way her fine blond hair sticks straight up in the back. “Cereal?”
I put down the clock. “First, potty,” I say, before pointing to the clothes we laid out the night before. “Then clothes, then breakfast.”
I learned this method the hard way in those first days of preschool when I realized that once Lucy left her room in the morning, it was nearly impossible to get her back there. We have to stick to a routine. A strict one. Which, honestly, works for me, especially after a decade and a half in the Marines. They love that shit. But it was a little trickier to get my free-spirited older kid on board.
Thankfully, he’ll do anything for his baby sister.
“First, potty,” she repeats to herself and shuffles toward the en suite bathroom. She takes care of business and I try to give her privacy while still remaining close enough to help her out. She washes her hands and comes to stand in front of me, though her eyes, as usual, are looking over my shoulder. “Clothes, please.”
She removes her pajamas piece by piece and replaces them with fresh clothes at a snail’s pace, but she does it all independently. One might think it would be faster with my help, but we learned that the hard way, too, when she pitched a two-hour-long fit after I tried to speed things up. Once she’s dressed in her leggings with an elastic waistband, a plain graphic tee with the tags cut out, and a cardigan with no buttons, I pass her a pair of special socks with no seams and she slips them on before stepping into her tiny Croc Mary Janes.
I’m feeling pretty good about this, since it only took us twenty minutes altogether and we’re early enough for her to watch an episode of Bluey while she eats her cereal, which means I can maybe jump in the shower. I’m just turning her tablet on when she accidentally upsets her bowl, pouring almond milk all down her front.
“Uh-oh!” she shouts.
“Oh no, Dad,” Anders says.
“Uh-oh!” Lucy says again. “Uh-oh. Uh-oh. Uh-oh,” she repeats over and over and over. She will do this until it’s cleaned up, so I toss a roll of paper towels to Anders, who starts the mop-up, and I lift a sopping Lucy and carry her in front of me back to her bedroom. “Uh-oh, uh-oh, uh-oh,” she says.
We peel off her wet clothes and I scramble in her drawers looking for something new. She starts to scream because her “tummy is sticky,” and, hiding my sigh, I carry her to the bathroom, running warm water and plopping her in the tub.
“Dad! The bus!” Anders yells from the other room.
“Is it here?” I yell back.
“Yeah!”
“Can you make it?”
I hear the screen door open and Anders yell out, presumably to the bus, “I’m coming!” before he directs his yelling at me. “Gotta go, Dad!”
I don’t have time to check on him—see what he’s wearing, make sure he brushed his teeth, combed his hair… I only have enough time to shout back, “Hot lunch, okay, bud?”
“Okay, Dad, bye!”
The screen door slams, and he’s gone. A moment later my smartwatch buzzes and I see a text from my mom.
Mom: Anders made it to the bus.
I sigh, relief battling it out with annoyance that I even needed the confirmation battling it out with guilt that Anders once again ran after the bus on his own.
“Uh-oh,” Lucy whispers, splashing in the tub. She picks up two rubber ducky bath toys and squirts them at her chest. “Uh-oh.” She giggles to herself and starts speaking to her ducks using an Australian accent and lines I recognize as being directly from the cartoon she loves watching.
I slump against the vanity cabinet, raising my knee and hooking my arm around it and letting my head fall back and my eyes close. I did three tours in Afghanistan. Three . Fought terrorists. Faced down a whole hell of a lot of scary dudes who wanted nothing more than to end me.
But I’ll be honest. Those motherfuckers had nothing on my four-year-old.