30. Kellen
Thirty
Kellen
My argument with Elizabeth has me down. I even called my nephews and canceled family dinner this week, although Orla told me she’s still coming over to do her laundry. I suspect she’s coming to fret over me. Or maybe to yell some more.
When my doorbell rings, I assume it’s her, ringing because her arms are too full to open the door. But I see Jake standing out there clutching his physics notebook, looking eager.
“Kellen,” he shouts through the glass storm door. “I need assistance understanding Faraday’s law.”
Like magic, my mood elevates. I push the door open and Jake greets me with a hug. “We’ve begun discussing electromagnetism,” he says, barging past me toward my dining room. He starts spreading out his things before I get my bearings. I love his enthusiasm and focus.
I sit next to him and ask him to tell me what he’s learned so far, and Jake regurgitates the textbook definitions of the concepts and formulas he needs to solve the problems he’s been given for homework.
“Can you tell me what this means in your words,” I ask. He looks at me puzzled.
“Those were my words,” he says. “I spoke them.”
I nod. “Ok. Let’s look at this first problem and see if you know how best to approach it.
‘A UHF television loop antenna has a diameter of 11 cm. The magnetic field of a TV signal is normal to the plane of the loop and, at one instant of time, its magnitude is changing at the rate 0.16 T/s. The magnetic field is uniform. What emf is induced in the antenna?’”
Jake looks up at me expectantly, blinking. “Ok,” I tell him. “Where do we start?”
“That’s why I’m here,” he says. I chuckle.
“You know,” I tell him, “This is the work my daughter Orla does every day. She’s an electrical engineer.”
“Are all of the Bradys licensed engineers like Callum?” He chews on the end of his pencil methodically and I nod.
“We are. Well, not my brother. All the rest of us, though!”
“I wish I had relatives who knew about physics.”
“Well,” I tell him. “You know you’re welcome over here any time, Jake. We’d all love to talk physics with you.”
The front door opens as I say that and Orla staggers in with her laundry. “Oh,” she says, seeing Jake at the table. She pinches her lips together and says, “So you canceled dinner with us to hang out with—“
I cut her off before she says something she will regret later. “Jake came over and asked for some help with his homework,” I tell her. “Faraday’s law.”
Her face brightens a little but she still seems upset. I meet Jake’s glance and say, “Can you get started with an attempt at this problem? I need to help Orla get her laundry started.”
Jake nods. “It can be difficult to decide which clothing goes together for loads of laundry.” He bends over his notebook, still chewing the end of his pencil.
I walk toward the basement steps and beckon for Orla to follow me to the laundry area. We each carry a basket down the stairs and she dumps her clothes in the machine, not looking at me.
“Want to tell me what’s bothering you?”
She shakes her head. But then she turns and leans on the machine, palms up in frustration. “Did you seriously cancel family dinner this week but make plans with your new family?”
“Orla, I did not know Jake was coming over. Not that it’s much of your business, but I canceled family dinner because I had an argument with Elizabeth and, well, I’m rattled by it.”
“You had a fight and didn’t ask all parties to sit down and discuss immediately?” She nudges me with her shoulder, then sighs. “We didn’t finish our conversation from the other week, did we?”
“We did not.” I drape an arm around her shoulder. “Do you want to start or should I share first?”
Orla squeezes her eyes shut tight and starts talking. “I didn’t know it would feel this way to see you with someone else,” she says. “You’ve been…you’ve been all of our dad for so long. Like, you’re the one who talks everyone down from stupid decisions and dishes out wisdom.”
“That’s not going to change, Orla.”
“I guess I know that. I just…where does it leave me if you’ve got a girlfriend and a new kid?”
I huff out a laugh. “I don’t know if Elizabeth wants to be my girlfriend right now. But that’s not the point,” I add quickly. “You’re my most important person, Orla. That will never change. Why do you think I’m in the basement with you in my house helping you wash your unmentionables?”
She leans her head on my shoulder. “I miss Mom,” she says. “Like, I miss the idea of her, and having a mom and all that.”
“I miss her, too,” I say. “I’ll always miss her. I’m not aiming to replace her, Orla. Elizabeth is…she’s different. And she makes me feel good, and I’d like to figure out how to earn back her esteem.”
“Her esteem? Jesus, Dad. No wonder you’ve been single for so long.”
“That’s enough of that,” I tell her, and I can tell the mood has shifted. I sigh. “Want to come upstairs and help me explain electromagnetism to a teenager?”
She purses her lips for a minute and squeezes her arm around me tighter. I match her embrace. “That actually does sound really interesting,” she says.
We head back upstairs and both sit at the table with Jake and his high school physics textbook.
Orla is enthusiastic, animated while she explains the concepts to Jake.
She pulls a pencil from her shirt pocket and starts scratching out multiple approaches to the problem on some scrap paper, and Jake’s jaw drops.
“You are so much better than my teacher,” he says, looking at her in admiration. “You really make me want to master this.”
She looks smug. “You’ll have to come shadow me at work sometime,” she tells him, and I feel glad that she clearly means it. Jake works his way through a few more problems, needing less assistance each time, until he finally slams his notebook shut and rises to his feet.
“You heading home?” I lean back in my chair, my fingers laced behind my head in a posture I’m always chastising my nephews for. Jake nods and walks out of the house without saying goodbye.
Orla raises her brows and turns to me. “He’s very…blunt,” she says.
“Takes one to know one.” I wink at my daughter.
“That’s fair, I guess. I’m glad we aren’t a family that dances around delicate topics.” Orla sighs and blows her hair out of her eyes. “So tell me more about what happened with your lady friend, Dad.”
“You sure? Because my hope is that I get back to a place where you see her here at my house more often.”
She nods. “I mean, I’m not running out to buy her a Christmas present early. But I want to be supportive.” She winks. “I did urge you into this, after all.”
I squeeze her hand and fill her in on my argument with Elizabeth. “I didn’t appreciate what it really meant for Jake to follow such different social rules,” I tell her. “I wish I could take back what I said to Elizabeth about autistic adults being past their challenges.”
Orla considers me and then pulls out her phone.
She taps around for a bit and I see she’s pulled up the advocacy site I had naively mentioned to Elizabeth.
“This group does workplace trainings,” Orla says, showing me a section of the website I had not visited.
“You can pay them to come in and talk about making the office more inclusive, helping with some understanding of autistic brains.”
“Huh.” I squint to look at her phone screen. “We should do that at Beltane.”
She nods. “Obviously. Want me to schedule it?”
I shake my head. “I’d like to do it,” I tell her. “I am the president of the company after all.” I ruffle her hair. “What are you making your old man for dinner?”