4. Berg
Chapter four
Berg
“ O h, come on!” I briefly lift my hands off the wheel in a “what gives” gesture at the driver who cut me off. Someone honks behind me, and I grip the wheel harder. West Isle may not be the biggest place, but the highway is jam-packed right now and I’m running late to get the girls. I pull into the nearly empty parking lot, my stomach growling as I hurry inside, still annoyed with myself for forgetting my lunch on the kitchen counter this morning. Hightailing it down a freshly mopped hallway as I apologise to the custodian for my dirty work boots, I reach the after school care room at last.
“Daddy!” Lou abandons her colouring sheet, a pink crayon rolling onto the floor.
Natalie’s greeting is more subdued, but she smiles all the same and collects her things from the cubbies along the wall .
“Good day, girls?” I ask as I scribble my initials on the bottom of the sign out form near the door.
There’s only one other kid left in the room now, and I wonder if they have a single parent, too. If they feel as frazzled as I do at the end of a workday.
“Say thanks, girls.”
They chorus a goodbye and as I double check that they have their bags and turn to leave, someone slams smack into my chest.
“Oh! Berg, hi!”
There’s a woman pressed to my body, and I recognize her dark eyes and prim hairstyle in an instant. She smoothes her hand over her bob even though there isn’t a strand out of place.
“Tamara. You alright?” I ask, even though I know she is.
Did she enter the room with her eyes closed?
“Of course. How I even managed to walk into a big guy like you is beyond me.”
“And me,” I mumble.
“It must be the heels,” she suggests, sticking out a bare calf below her pencil skirt.
“That, uh, could definitely be the problem.”
“Are you just picking up your girls now?” She asks, tucking her brown hair behind her ears.
I don't have the patience for small talk right now.
“Yup, long day today.”
“I can always take them home with me for a playdate if you’re busy at work. It’s not a problem! ”
Natalie tugs on the corner of my jacket, and I can see the slight shake of her head in my peripheral vision.
“Aren’t you picking up your daughter, too?”
“Me? Oh, no. I’m here on Parent Advisory Council business while she’s at horseback riding lessons. Anyway, I’d love to have them!”
Without a doubt, when we get into the truck, Louisa is going to ask me if she can take horseback riding lessons. And I'm going to have to tell her no. Because that costs a fortune and it will be another extra curricular I don’t have the time or energy to accommodate.
Tamara’s voice rises an octave. “Wouldn’t that be fun, sweeties? Then we could all have supper together afterward.”
The girls stay silent, and I fight back a smile.
“I think we’re good on that. Thanks for the offer.”
I usher the girls from the classroom and Tamara’s voice echoes off the clean linoleum after us. “I make a mean Marry Me Chicken!”
Could she be more obvious?
“I can cook my own chicken, Tamara,” I call, bending to scoop both my daughters up despite my tired muscles, and carrying my perfect little family right out the front door.
***
I scoop fluffy mashed potatoes onto Natalie’s plate, licking some of the smooth, buttery mixture off my thumb .
“Mmm,” I exclaim, nodding in approval.
My version of Marry Me chicken looks just like the damn picture on my phone, and I didn’t have to subject myself to an evening of shameless flirting to get it. I shake my head at Tamara’s earlier antics as I gather up some loose papers off the round kitchen table so I can set down the steaming chicken dish on the trivet. I’m no chef, but I can find my way around a kitchen well enough. And thank god for that, because it’s me on dinner duty day in and day out.
After Trudy died, the conveyor belt of casseroles and baked goods was endless. I could barely taste the food as I navigated those early stages of grief. After a lot of counselling and good old-fashioned time, the intense memories from my late wife’s death have faded from acute pain to the occasional dull ache. Is there truth that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach? Perhaps. But it grinds my gears when women find out I’m a single dad and immediately peg me for some bumbling idiot around the home. Yeah, I screw up sometimes, but I’ve got this. I’ve been doing it alone for this long, and I don’t need any help.
“Supper!” I holler, even though our place isn’t all that big. It’s three bedrooms and a ground level suite below with a nice backyard, even though I don’t get out to tame the grass as much as I’d like.
With minimal enthusiasm, my daughters grace me with their presence at the table, eyeing the meal with skepticism.
“It’s chicken,” I say, before they can even ask. “You guys like chicken. ”
I point to their chairs. “Sit. Please.”
“But what are those bits on it?” asks Louisa.
I steady her milk so she doesn’t knock it over with a wayward elbow as she scoots her chair in.
“Flavour,” I tell them, settling into my seat and prompting our normal supper conversation. “Highs and lows.”
I am not a perfect father by any stretch of the imagination, but I have a few tools in my toolbox, and even I know that asking, “How was your day?” is going to yield a couple of shrugs and that’s about it. I’ve been asking for “highs and lows” since they could talk. It’s one of the few things I remember doing with Trudy even before we had children, so the routine is here to stay.
Louisa splutters on a sip of milk as she rushes to share first. “Oh! My high was that we got to have extra free time today because Mrs. Anton had to talk to Bentley in the hallway about why we don’t stick food down our pants at snack time.”
She scoops potato into her mouth like this is a regular occurrence.
“Um, not going to ask about that one. Very nice. And your low?”
Louisa fork falls into her potatoes and her gaze follows it. “That you were so late picking us up today…”
My throat tightens around my bite of chicken and I wash it down with a sip of my beer. I want to explain that I was working and that lots of parents are late and that it isn’t a big deal, but I know that won’t help. To Lou, it was a big deal .
“You feel like you wish I picked you up earlier?” I mirror her low back to her.
“Yeah, could you pick us up early next week for a daddy daughter date?”
Her eyes gleam with hope and I’m ready to promise her a hundred daddy daughter dates to keep them like that. And then I remember I agreed to be acting project manager next week.
Shit.
“Next week Daddy is pretty busy, but let’s do something on the weekend, okay?”
She nods and goes back to eating her meal (nobody took any issue with the bits after all) and Natalie tells us about a school dance coming up in the spring, her high, and that a boy in her class told her that there are one million spiders on every acre of land, her low.
Her expression is horrified. “Is that true?”
“About the spiders?” I sigh. “What the hell is wrong with the boys at your school? No, that’s not true.”
Lou gasps. “Hell is a bad word, Daddy!”
There’s a one hundred percent chance she’s heard me say worse.
“If it’s so bad, why did you say it?” Natalie retorts.
I scrape up my last bite and lean back in my chair as I listen to them bicker. There’s no point in trying to stop them. It always peters out on its own.
After clearing the meal and sticking the leftovers in the fridge, which I’m determined to remember for my lunch tomorrow, we start our evening routine. I send them off to play and I drag my feet all the way to my ensuite bathroom and lock the door. My shower is calling my name as I kick off my wool socks and black Carhartt’s and toss them in the overflowing wicker laundry hamper. My bathroom is a no kid zone where I can recharge. Hot water sluices over my shoulders as I scrub myself down, washing off the day. I revel in the quiet that the locked door affords me. Sinking onto the teak shower bench, I sigh, head relaxing back against the white subway tiles. This is my time. I need this fifteen minutes to unwind before I take on bedtime. Because most nights, once the kids are already asleep, I’m too wrecked to do anything. And then morning comes, and it’s the same thing all over again.
I think about Chris and Isaac and how they are both free to take Anna and Ashlyn out whenever or wherever. About how they are in their early thirties and probably don’t wake up to anybody jumping on them or with lower back pain. But even if they are staying in for a quiet Monday evening, at least they’re together. When was the last time I laid in bed with somebody simply watching television or sitting side by side reading? To get to that easy, relaxed part of a relationship, you have to do whatever people are doing in the dating world these days. I’ve hooked up with a couple of women over the years when the kids were out of town at my sister’s house, but those dull interactions only left me lonelier than before. Swiping and ‘talking phases’ and all that?
Sounds like hell .
I don’t want to waste a single evening taking some woman out who hates the idea of a man with kids. Who will pity me for being a widower. Or worse, who pretends she’s fine with the idea of a blended family and later down the line turns out to be terrible with them. I’d rather endure a lifetime of celibacy than expose the girls to a toxic dynamic like that. I lean forward, elbows on my thighs, breathing through my mouth as the water pours down over me. It’s right there in front of me, my semi-hard dick perking up as if to say, “Celibacy? Woah, we never agreed to that.”
So I curl my hand around my shaft, using the water and a loose grip to stroke myself to full hardness. One quick jerk, I think, to keep me from doing something stupid like downloading a dumb app I’ll regret using the next morning. I’m hornier than I thought, my arm flexing as I concentrate my strokes at the tip of my cock, sliding up and down in a steady rhythm. I lean forward, bracing myself against the shower wall and planting my feet on the slippery tiles. The woman in my mind is faceless, nameless, kneeling. I picture smooth skin and soft curves and sweetness. Eyes that bore into mine as she smirks around my dick. I cup my full balls with my left hand, mouth falling open as my breathing speeds up. Shit, I need this. Of their own accord, my hips thrust forward until I’m fucking my clenched fist, the wet sounds of flesh and pre-cum hardly audible over the spray of water.
“Fuck, yes,” I sigh, squirting repeatedly onto the shower floor with a stuttering gasp .
I slow my strokes, shuddering as I take a moment to touch myself more gently, like I imagine a woman might. It’s been so long. So damn long. I don’t want to just come. I’m craving intimacy. The touching and the talking and the companionship. After all this time alone, don’t I deserve that? There won’t be anyone in my bed tonight, though, for conversation or comfort. I force myself to cut the water and step out onto the bathmat. Wrapping a blue towel around my hips, I wipe a fist over the mirror to clear the fog. After applying my deodorant and some cream to my face and beard, I lean closer to the mirror. Lines bracket the corners of my eyes and more greys pop up around my temples every time I look.
“Daaaad! Louisa kicked me!” I hear from behind the door, the overhead fan only partly drowning Natalie out.
I stare myself down, flexing my arms. I suck in a bit, giving my tummy a pat. “Duty calls,” I say, and then I go do Dad things.
***
I stifle a yawn. “Last style, okay?”
Natalie squints, holding a comb that I’m pretty sure is designed for use on plastic pony hair. We’re all cross-legged on their bedroom floor, curtains shut and the lights dim.
“Ow,” I cry, as she drags it through my beard, ripping out a few hairs in the process, hopefully the greying ones. “This is torture. Pure torture,” I howl dramatically, grabbing my girls and tackling them to their bedroom floor, softening their fall with a palm to the back of each of their little heads.
“Nooo,” Louisa protests, “This is not part of beauty salon!”
“Beauty salon?” I shake my head. “No, this is the bedtime ogre game. If you don’t get your butts into that bed over there, the ogre will commence his tickling.”
Squeals of laughter ring around my eardrums as I tickle them, anyway. We roughhouse on the carpet, rolling right over the discarded dress up clothes and costume jewellery. Eventually, I get up with a groan and click on the fan they like for white noise. Natalie and Louisa pile into the top bunk.
“Shove over,” I say, as I climb up the ladder and wade through stuffed animals to claim my spot.
“You’re too big! You’ll break it!” cries Natalie.
“I built this myself, thank you very much. It will not break.”
When I’m sandwiched between my daughters, I read the library book Louisa brought home this week. We usually alternate each evening to keep it fair. Lou conks out first, then Natalie, and I’m only vaguely aware of the pressure of the book against my chest as my breaths slow.