4. Bryan
4
brYAN
I was greeted by the smell of coffee as I entered the kitchen.
“Morning, Emma,” I said, my voice still groggy with sleep.
“Morning, Mr. Bryan,” my cook said. “How are you doing this morning?”
I groaned. I wasn’t quite fully awake yet. I had another dream about that goddess, Nova, whom I had met at the hotel. It had been several days and I could not get that woman out of my head. I ground the heel of my palm into my eyes as I yawned and poured myself a cup of coffee.
“Is Amelia up yet?” I asked.
“I don’t think so,” Emma said. She seemed particularly chipper and productive for the early morning.
“Crap. She’s going to be late for school.” I set my coffee down and headed out of the kitchen.
“She doesn’t have school today,” Emma called out after me.
“Huh? No school?”
She gave me one of her classic ‘you’re being dumb but I can’t say anything because you’re my boss and I need this job’ looks.
“Right.” I pointed at my temple. “Not fully awake. First day of winter break. Why do they have to do it in the middle of the week? It would make more sense to not have school at all this week. Easier to make plans. I forgot.”
“Have you also forgotten that Sherry and I are leaving on our vacation this afternoon?”
This time when I put the mug down, it splattered coffee on the counter. “What? That’s today?” I practically shouted. I hadn’t forgotten they were taking a holiday. I simply didn’t realize it was this week. I thought there was more time before they left.
“Is that today?”
“Why do you think I’m in so early? That’s why I’m making your dinner right now.” She smiled and returned to chopping vegetables.
“Crap! What am I supposed to do?” I asked rhetorically. If Emma and Sherry were gone, that meant I was out a cook and an afternoon babysitter. I hadn’t made any plans to fill in the vacancies while they were out of town. And I had been counting on Sherry, Emma’s teenage daughter who watched Amelia after school, to become more of a full-time nanny during the break.
“Are you sure it’s today and not next week?” I complained.
“Yes, Mr. Bryan, I told you we were leaving. You’ve known about this for a couple of months now.”
I could tell she was laughing at my pain.
She was right. I had completely screwed up my calendar on this one. I was going to be without a cook and without childcare.
“How long are you gone?”
“We’ll be back on the second. Sherry starts school on the fourth. When does Amelia go back to school?
Amelia’s private school had a slightly longer winter break than the public schools did, mostly because the families of those children tended to take extended vacations or go abroad during the break. Amelia hadn’t been in school long enough for us to have established a pattern of traveling over the breaks.
“She doesn’t start back until the next week. Crap. Crap. Crap.” Stronger words were needed. Emma didn’t like me cursing, and I was actively toning down my language around Amelia and Sherry.
“What am I supposed to do?”
“You could always take time off work.”
I laughed. I hadn’t taken time off work since… I don’t know when. Of course, I took a week off to take Amelia to the islands in the late spring, but that was for vacation and travel. I never took off work to manage household issues or to watch Amelia. The concept was foreign to me. That’s what I paid Sherry, and the nannies before her, for.
And I didn’t cook. That’s what I paid people for.
“What did you do last time we took a vacation?” Emma asked. “Didn’t you have your assistant? What was her name? Mandy. Didn’t she help out?”
Mandy had been a fabulous, super assistant until she decided to get married and abandoned me to have her own family. I still hadn’t managed to replace her properly.
Mandy helped out. She had organized and hired the temporary help I needed, but at that time, I had also had a full-time nanny for Amelia, whom Mandy had also hired.
Now that Amelia was in school, we no longer had a full-time child. Sherry, coming in after school, had really worked out to everyone’s benefit.
I missed Mandy. My current assistant only dealt with business issues and did not step into the realm of personal. It was one of her boundaries. I still had plans on finding someone to run the household, but it was just another line item on an already long list of shit I needed to take care of.
“You could always ask your mother for assistance,” Emma suggested.
“That’s not funny. You’ve met my mother.”
“I didn’t mean your mother would cook for you. I meant maybe she would be willing to share her cook with you.” Emma chuckled. She had met my mother. She knew Mother didn’t cook. She should have also been aware that my mother didn’t share. Mother certainly wasn’t going to send over her precious cook to make sure I had fresh coffee in the morning, a hot meal for dinner, and however many homemade cookies my daughter should or should not actually be eating.
“You’ll figure something out,” Emma said. “You always do.”
I didn’t want to figure this one out. I wanted to have easy solutions since this time of year always seemed to bring more trouble than it was worth.
“I’m gonna be late for school.” Amelia stumbled into the kitchen still wearing her pajamas, her dark, curly hair looked like a bird’s nest, and clutched in her hands was her beloved—much to my mother’s disapproval—Humphrey, a tattered old stuffed animal of a cat.
“Good morning, little Amelia,” Emma said as she crossed the kitchen and scooped my daughter up. “You don’t have school this morning. I’m surprised you are awake.”
“No school? Oh, it’s winter break. Did it snow?” She wiggled out of Emma’s hug and ran straight to the window to look outside. But it hadn’t snowed.
She complained, “How am I supposed to know it’s winter if it doesn’t snow?” As if the only requirement for winter was snow.
She climbed up onto one of the chairs at the kitchen table.
I got her a cup of orange juice while Emma scooped up two steaming bowls of freshly made oatmeal. Typically, Emma pre-made our breakfasts and I managed to heat everything up as needed.
“Do you want honey or do you want syrup?” Emma asked.
“Syrup and cinnamon,” Amelia demanded.
Her breakfast came topped with blueberries and maple syrup. Mine had a handful of nuts and a sparing amount of syrup drizzled over mine. I eyed the bowl in front of Amelia and thought that the blueberries looked like they would taste good.
“Can I get a handful of those blueberries?” I asked.
“Do you want a fresh bowl?” Emma asked.
I shook my head. “No, but a handful of blueberries on top would be great.”
I thanked her as she returned my bowl.
“What’s for dinner tonight?”
“You’re going to have a choice of two meals that will be in the refrigerator, and they will have some instructions on how to heat them up,” Emma said.
“You’re not making dinner tonight?” Amelia asked.
“No, Sherry and I are going to go see family in California. Remember?”
“That’s right, you leave today,” Amelia announced. She filled a spoon with oatmeal and then put it back in the bowl. She did this several times as if she expected the food to magically change, or, knowing my daughter, she was trying for the perfect balance of oat to blueberry to syrup ratio.
“Will I get to see Sherry before you go?”
“I don’t think we’re going to have time to stop by before we leave for the airport,” Emma said.
Amelia slid out of her chair and ran up to Emma, wrapping her arms around the woman’s hips. She squeezed tight. “This is for Sherry, since I don’t get to see her.”
Amelia sounded so disappointed.
Emma returned the hug before ruffling Amelia’s hair. “I’ll be sure to pass on that hug. Sherry will have expected me to give you one in return.” Emma leaned over and gave Amelia another hug.
There was a lot of hugging going on in this kitchen. I was feeling left out.
“Can I get one of those hugs?” I asked my daughter.
She ran across the kitchen and threw herself into my lap.
“So, what are we going to do?” she asked.
“What do you mean?”
“If I’m on vacation, what are we gonna do?”
I had to work. I could probably make arrangements to work from home, but that would still leave Amelia alone. She looked up at me with her big, dark eyes. I wasn’t about to tell her she would be left to her own devices, not that I would have left a six-year-old on her own. I didn’t trust the wealth of mischief this child could get herself into without some form of supervision.
“First thing we’re going to do is find somebody to cook for us while Emma and Sherry are on the West Coast.”
“I can cook,” Amelia proclaimed.
I laughed. “Oh, yeah? What do you know how to make?”
“I know how to make popcorn, all by myself.”
I glanced from Amelia to Emma.
Emma nodded. “It’s a button on the microwave.”
“I’m glad you know how to make popcorn. That’ll come in very handy when we watch a movie later, but that’s not dinner. I think we’re gonna have to find somebody who knows what they’re doing.”
“But I can cook, Daddy! Humphrey knows.”
“I’m sure Humphrey has had many pleasant tea parties with you. But I’ll find someone to cook for us.”
“And someone to play with me?”
I let out a sigh. “And someone to play with you.”